And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill.
How tedious, false, and cold seem all things! I
Have met with much injustice in this world;
No difference has been made by God or man,
Or any power moulding my wretched lot,
'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.

I am cut off from the only world I know,
From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet

prime.

You do well telling me to trust in God;

I hope I do trust in him. In whom else Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold. [During the latter speeches GIACOMO has retired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out; GIACOMO advances.

GIACOMO.

Know you not, mother-sister, know you not?
Bernardo even now is gone to implore
The Pope to grant our pardon.

LUCRETIA.

Child, perhaps

It will be granted. We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years:
O, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.

BEATRICE.

Yet both will soon be cold:

O, trample out that thought! Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:

It is the only ill which can find place
Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose
couch

Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free; Now stench and blackness yawns, like death. O, plead

With famine, or wind-walking pestilence,

Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man! Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words, In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die: Since such is the reward of innocent lives; Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.

And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep; 'twere just the grave
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure
Death,

And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,

And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another
As we were once, who now—

BERNARDO (rushes in.)

BERNARDO.

O, horrible!

That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in

prayer,

Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
Should all be vain! The ministers of death
Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
Blood on the face of one-what if 'twere fancy?
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if 'twere only rain. O, life! O, world!
Cover me! let me be no more!
To see
That perfect mirror of pure innocence
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon—
Thee, light of life-dead, dark! while I say, sister,
To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother,
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves-
Dead! The sweet bond broken!

Enter CAMILLO and Guards.

They come! Let me Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves Are blighted-white-cold. Say farewell, before Death chokes that gentle voice! O let me hear You speak!

BEATRICE.

Farewell, my tender brother. Think

Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now :
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,

. But tears and patience. One thing more, my

child:

For thine own sake be constant to the love

Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,

Though wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and

shame,

Lived ever holy and unstained.

And though

Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves.
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!

BERNARDO.

I cannot say farewell!

CAMILLO.

O, Lady Beatrice!

BEATRICE.

Give yourself no unnecessary pain,

How often

My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot: ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down.
Have we done this for one another! now
We shall not do it any more. My Lord,
We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.

END OF THE CENCI.

NOTE ON THE CENCI.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE sort of mistake that Shelley made, as to the extent of his own genius and powers, which led him deviously at first, but lastly into the direct track that enabled him fully to develop them, a curious instance of his modesty of feeling, and of the methods which the human mind uses at once to deceive itself, and yet, in its very delusion, to make its way out of error into the path which nature has marked out as its right one. He often incited me to attempt the writing a tragedy he conceived that I possessed some dramatic talent, and he was always most earnest and energetic in his exhortations, that I should cultivate any talent I pos sessed, to the utmost. I entertained a truer estimate of my powers; and, above all, though at that time not exactly aware of the fact, I was far too young to have any chance of succeeding, even moderately, in a species of composition, that requires a greater scope of experience in, and sympathy with, human passion than could then have fallen to my lot, or than any perhaps, except Shelley, ever possessed, even at the age of twenty-six, at which he wrote The Cenci.

On the other hand, Shelley most erroneously conceived himself to be destitute of this talent. He believed that one of the first requisites was the capacity of forming and following up a story or plot. He fancied himself to be defective in this portion of imagination-it was that which gave him