Mar. Nothing more easy. He partakes it now-
Ay, he may veil beneath a marble brow
And sneering lip the pang, but he partakes it.
A few brief words of truth shame the devil's servants
No less than master; I have probed his soul
A moment, as the eternal fire, ere long,

Will reach it always. See how he shrinks from me!
With death, and chains, and exile in his hand,
To scatter o'er his kind as he thinks fit;
They are his weapons, not his armour, for

I have pierced him to the core of his cold heart.

I care not for his frowns! We can but die,
And he but live, for him the very worst

Of destinies: each day secures him more

His tempter's.

Jac. Fos. This is mere insanity.

Jac. Fos. They might behold their parent any where.
Mar. I would that they beheld their father in
A place which would not mingle fear with love,
To freeze their young blood in its natural current.
They have fed well, slept soft, and knew not that

I know his fate may one day be their heritage,
But let it only be their heritage,

Mar. It may be so; and who hath made us mad? Their sire was a mere hunted outlaw. Well
Lor. Let her go on; it irks not me.
Mar.
That's false!
You came here to enjoy a heartless triumph
Of cold looks upon manifold griefs! You came
To be sued to in vain-to mark our tears,
And hoard our groans-to gaze upon the wreck
Which you have made a prince's son-my husband;
In short, to trample on the fallen-an office

The hangman shrinks from, as all men from him!
How have you sped? We are wretched, signor, as
Your plots could make, and vengeance could desire us,
And how feel you?

And not their present fee. Their senses, though
Alive to love, are yet awake to terror;
And these vile damps, too, and yon thick green wave
Which floats above the place where we now stand-
A cell so far below the water's level,
Sending its pestilence through every crevice,
Might strike them: this is not their atmosphere,
However you-and you—and, most of all,
As worthiest you, sir, noble Loredano!
May breathe it without prejudice.
Jac. Fos.

I had not

In all things painful. If they're sick, they will
Be left to me to tend them; should they die,
To me to bury and to mourn; but if
They live, they'll make you soldiers, senators,
Slaves, exiles-what you will; or if they are
Females with portions, brides and bribes for nobles!
Behold the state's care for its sons and mothers!

Ewind

Lor. The hour approaches, and the wind is fair.
Jac. Fos. How know you that here, where the genial
Ne'er blows in all its blustering freedom?
Lor.
"T was s
When I came here. The galley floats within
A bow-shot of the "Riva di Schiavoni."
Jac. Fos. Father! I pray you to precede me, and
Prepare my children to behold their father.
Doge. Be firm, my son!

Jac. Fos.
I will do my endeavour.
Mar. Farewell! at least to this detested dungeon,
And him to whose good offices you owe
In part your past imprisonment.
Lor.

Father, let not these Liberation.

Our parting hours be lost in listening to
Reproaches, which boot nothing. Is it—is it,

(1) "If the two Foscari do nothing to defeat the machinations of their remorseless foe, Marina, the wife of the younger, at least revenges them, by letting loose the venom of her tongue upon their hateful oppressor, which she does

Doge. He speaks truth.
Jac. Fos.

And present

No doubt! but 'tis

without stint or measure; and in a strain of vehemence not inferior to that of the old queen Margaret in Richard the Third." Jeffrey.-L. E.

Exchange of chains for heavier chains I owe him:
He knows this, or he had not sought to change them.
But I reproach not.
Lor.
The time narrows, signor.
Jac. Fos. Alas! I little thought so lingeringly
To leave abodes like this: but when I feel
That every step I take, even from this cell,
Is one away from Venice, I look back
Even on these dull damp walls, and-
Doge.

Boy! no tears.
Mar. Let them flow on: he wept not on the rack
To shame him, and they cannot shame him now.
They will relieve his heart-that too kind heart-
And I will find an hour to wipe away

Those tears, or add my own. I could weep now,
But would not gratify yon wretch so far.
Let us proceed. Doge, lead the way.
Lor. (to the Familiar.)

The torch, there!

Mar. Yes, light us on, as to a funeral pyre,

With Loredano mourning like an heir.

Doge. My son, you are feeble; take this hand.

Jac. Fos.

Mast youth support itself on age, and I

Alas!

Take mine.

Who ought to be the prop of yours?
Lor.
Mar. Touch it not, Foscari; 'twill sting you. Signor,
Stand off! be sure, that if a grasp of yours
Would raise us from the gulf wherein we are plunged,
No hand of ours would stretch itself to meet it.
Come, Foscari, take the hand the altar gave you;
It could not save, but will support you ever.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

A Hall in the Ducal Palace.

Enter LOREDANO and BARBARIGO.

[Exeunt.

Bar. And have you confidence in such a project?
Lor. I have.

Bar. Lor.

"Tis hard upon his years.

Kind to relieve him from the cares of state.

Bar. "Twill break his heart.
Lor.

Bar. And did not this shake your suspicion?
Lor.

Bar. But if this deposition should take place
By our united influence in the Council,
It must be done with all the deference
Due to his years, his station, and his deeds.
Lor. As much of ceremony as you will,
So that the thing be done. You may, for aught
I care, depute the Council on their knees
(Like Barbarossa to the Pope), to beg him
To have the courtesy to abdicate.

Bar. What if he will not?
Lor.

And make him null.

Bar.

No.

We'll elect another,

But will the laws uphold us?

Lor. What laws?-"The Ten" are laws; and if

The impression of his former instances:

If they were from his heart, he may be thankful:
If not, 't will punish his hypocrisy.

Come, they are met by this time; let us join them,
And be thou fix'd in purpose for this once.

I have prepared such arguments as will not
Fail to move them, and to remove him: since
Their thoughts, their objects, have been sounded, do not
Say rather You, with your wonted scruples, teach us pause,
And all will prosper.

Age has no heart to break.
He has seen his son's half broken, and, except
A start of feeling in his dungeon, never
Swerved.

Bar. In his countenance, I grant you, never;
But I have seen him sometimes in a calm
So desolate, that the most clamorous grief
Had nought to envy him within. Where is he?
Lor. In his own portion of the palace, with
His son,
and the whole race of Foscaris.

Bar. Bidding farewell.
Lor.

Bid to his dukedom.

Bar.

A last-as soon he shall

When embarks the son?

Lor. Forthwith-when this long leave is taken. "Tis Time to admonish them again.

Bar.

Forbear;

Retrench not from their moments.

Lor.

Not I, now
This day

We have higher business for our own.
Shall be the last of the old Doge's reign,
As the first of his son's last banishment,

Thus hesitate? "The Ten" have call'd in aid
Of their deliberation five-and-twenty

Patricians of the senate-you are one,
And I another; and, it seems to me,

Both honour'd by the choice or chance which leads us
To mingle with a body so august.
Sen. Most true. I say no more.
Mem.

Jac. Fos.
Never yet did mariner
Put up to patron saint such prayers for prosperous
And pleasant breezes, as I call upon you,
Ye tutelar saints of my own city! which
Ye love not with more holy love than I,
To lash up from the deep the Adrian waves,
As we hope, signor, And waken Auster, sovereign of the tempest!
Till the sea dash me back on my own shore
A broken corse upon the barren Lido,
Where I may mingle with the sands which skirt
The land I love, and never shall see more!

And all may honestly (that is, all those
Of noble blood, may) one day hope to be
Decemvir, it is surely for the senate's
Chosen delegates, a school of wisdom to
Be thus admitted, though as novices,
To view the mysteries.

Look back. I pray you think of me.
Doge.

Alas!

You ever were my dearest offspring, when
They were more numerous, nor can be less so
Now you are last; but did the state demand
The exile of the disinterred ashes

Of your three goodly brothers, now in earth,
And their desponding shades came flitting round

(I) "Unnerved, and now unsettled in his mind

From long and exquisite pain, he sobs and cries,
Kissing the old man's cheek, 'Help me, my father!
Let me,
I pray thee, live once more among ye:

No

Mar. And wish you this with me beside you?
Jac. Fos.
No-not for thee, too good, too kind! Mayst thou
Live long to be a mother to those children
Thy fond fidelity for a time deprives
Of such support! But for myself alone,
May all the winds of heaven howl down the Gulf,
And tear the vessel, till the mariners,
Appall'd, turn their despairing eyes on me,
As the Phenicians did on Jonah, then
Cast me out from amongst them, as an offering
To appease the waves. The billow which destroys
Will be more merciful than man, and bear me,
Dead, but still bear me to a native grave.
From fishers' hands upon the desolate strand,
Which, of its thousand wrecks, hath ne'er received
One lacerated like the heart which then

Will be-But wherefore breaks it not? why live I?

Mar. To man thyself, I trust, with time, to master
Such useless passion. Until now thou wert
A sufferer, but not a loud one; why,

What is this to the things thou hast borne in silence-
Imprisonment and actual torture?

The feelings If we should measure forth the cities taken
By the Doge Foscari, with citizens
Destroy'd by him, or through him, the account
Were fearfully against him, although narrow'd
To private havoc, such as between him