of slavery, and consequently, the greatest of obstacles to its abolition, as long as its obligations are in force."

Does any one suppose that the clause of the constitution which allows a representation for the slave population would withstand six months agitation in the Northern States? What is the practical operation of that clause of the constitution that provides the restitution of fugitive slaves?

Can the Southern people be deceived to the conclusion that the constitution is the basis of an Union of equal States, after the exclusion of their property from the common territories of the Union?

Should a servile insurrection arise, think you that Northern representatives in Congress would vote you men and money for its suppression?

The abolitionists tell us truly that the terms loyalty and allegiance have ceased to have any meaning with reference to this constitution; it is looked on as the article of a trading partnership.

We have traced the picture of a community, whose domes. tic institutions have been overturned by an agitation, which commenced abroad, and which finally reached their firesides.

We have traced it, that our people might see in advance the end, of which we now see the beginning.

Mobile, Ala.

J. A. C.

ART. IV. DRAMATIC LITERATURE.

Calaynos: a Tragedy; by GEORGE H. BOKER. Second edition. Philadelphia: Published by E. H. Butler & Co. 1848.

IN settling the rank of the different departments of literature, the precedence has long since been conceded to the drama. In no other is the standard of capacity so high; in no other must so much genius be combined with so much toil; and in no other have so many vigorous attemps been marked by so many and so signal failures. Here, alone, there is no place for mediocrity; and though both gods and men may tolerate it in every thing else, yet

in a dramatic poem they look for an excellence that cannot be challenged. To few, indeed, are granted those qualities which are essential to the dramatic author. One may write songs with Moore, satire with Pope, or romances in verse with Scott, and yet possess no claims to the title of dramatist. A Hudibras, a Night Thought, or a Thalaba may be composed with comparative ease, when a Hamlet or an Othello would be but a miserable abortion. All those requisites which suffice singly in other species of poetry, the drama seems to require in combination. The dramatic poet must have feeling, passion, fancy, conception and invention, but he must have them in their highest degree; and to these also must be added a lively relish for the beauties of nature and an intimate acquaintance with the human breast. Of all the poets, the epic alone approaches the dramatist in the number and importance of his qualifications; but even he is proximus longo intervallo. He, from some "loophole of retreat," gazes at the battle raging afar, watches and depicts with the curiosity of a spectator or the coolness of the historian, while his rival of the drama must be in the thickest of the fight, encouraging the timid, heading the bold, and dealing destruction upon the foe. The one narrates, the other acts; the one describes the action as he beheld it, the other places before us the very action itself. In the epic poem, we trust the senses of the author; but in the dramatic, we must have the evidence of our own: we must see and hear for ourselves. It is not the task of the dramatist to deal merely in sentimental abstraction or in set descriptions of the beautiful; nor is it merely to present to us a vivid account of the noble expressions and heroic deeds of men: he must bring before us the very men themselves, living, breathing, speaking and acting. He must address our eyes and ears; he must satisfy our judgments; he must touch our hearts and awaken our imagination. He must identify himself with a great many persons, as different from each other as the ever varying creations of the kaleidoscope, and must know exactly how each one will act under particular circumstances. He must in turn represent the husband and the lover, the mistress and the wife, the miser and the prodigal, the hero and the coward, the misanthrope and the philanthropist, the cheat and the dupe, the philosopher and the fool. If, to any mate

rial extent, he fails in this, he does not then "hold the mirror up to nature," and though his production may be good as a poem, it will be little better than execrable as a drama. Virtue would scarcely be able to find in it "her own feature," scorn, "her own image" or "the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure."

But if any one is disposed to be sceptical in regard to the difficulties of dramatic composition, nothing will sooner convince him than a review of the illustrious failures. Men of the most profound knowledge, of the most varied acquirements, of the most delicate taste, of the keenest relish for the beauties of nature, of the deepest insight into the human character and of the loftiest imagination; men who, in other departments, have instructed, amused and delighted us; men who have poured forth "thoughts that breathe and words that burn, or on fancy's pinions have soared to the highest heaven or penetrated to the deepest hell, have no sooner set their feet within the precincts of the drama than they find themselves spell-bound to the earth, and they are only loosed to take a few tottering steps and reel helpless out of the charmed circle.

Dryden, Addison, Johnson, Thomson and Byron are only a few of the great names whose lustre has been diminished by fruitless invocations of the dramatic muse. Few men have attracted a larger share of the attention of their contemporaries than John Dryden; few, for so long a term, have wielded the sceptre of dictatorship over the literature of their country. When shall we look for diction more splendid, versification more faultless, satire more bitter and penetrating, logic so completely reduced to the empire of metre and melody, yet without loosing its native strength, and criticism, where it suited his purpose to be just, or rather, where it did not suit his purpose to be unjust, more profound and discriminating. Whatever may have been his faults, however oblique his course in morals, or however indifferent in religion; though instead of curbing, he drove the corrupt taste of a most corrupt age with a free rein; though born and bred under the influence and example of the most rigid protestanism, in his grey hairs, and the accumulated wisdom and experience of more than half a century, turning apostate and going voluntarily into the shambles of popery; though writing with the same pen the elegy upon the death of Cromwell and the congratulatory address to Charles II; in short, however we may

censure and despise him as a man, yet, as a poet, we are forced to yield him our regard and applause we are forced to acknowledge that among the second class of English poets, and in what other nation is this class of poets so numerous or so able, the highest place belongs to Dryden; and that he is not in the first class arises, perhaps, less from a want of the natural talents requisite to secure for him that rank, than from the fact that he undeviatingly and obstinately misdirected and perverted them. But now let us turn for a moment to glance at his dramatic writings; and these unhappily constitute the larger proportion. What is the exact number of his contributions to the legitimate drama, not having a copy of his works at hand, we can not say; but the Wild Gallant, the Rival Ladies, the Indian Emperor, the Conquest of Grenada, Don Sebastian, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Spanish Friar, are some that just occur to us, and we do not flatter ourselves that we are sufficiently intimate with his dramatic writings, at least, to remember one half of them. We may gain some clue to the number from the fact that he engaged himself to the managers of the King's theatre to supply them with three plays annually. Yet, with all his fecundity, what is the worth of Dryden's plays? This question, we think, has no where been better answered than in the 66 Dramatische Kunst" of the great German critic, who has the honor of having been the first to hold up Shakspeare to the world in his true rank and character, who speaks "as one having authority," and whose manner is fully justified by his matter. Dryden's plans are improbable, even to silliness; the incidents are all thrown out without forethought; the most wonderful theatrical strokes fall incessantly from the clouds. He cannot be said to have drawn a single character, for there is not a spark of nature in his dramatic personages. Passions, criminal and magnanimous sentiments, flow with indifferent levity from their lips, without ever having dwelt in their heart: their chief delight is in the heroical boasting. The tone of expression is by turns flat or madly bombastical; not unfrequently both at the same time; in short, this poet resembles a man who walks upon stilts in a morass. His wit is displayed in far-fetched sophistries; his imagination in longspun similes, awkwardly introduced."

To this we need not add a word; in these few sentences

are condensed all his faults-faults which convince us at once, that whatever may have been his powers for satire, his mastery of verse, his qualifications for translation, his capacity as a critic, his pretensions to the honors of the buskin were forever hopeless.

As one planet paled its rays in the west, another, whose zenith was to be still higher in the literary firmament, rose fresh and bright in the east. Whether Addison had more native genius than Dryden, it is not necessary just now to determine; but one thing is certain-he did not misdirect and abuse his natural gifts; instead of truckling to the taste of his age, which, however, was vastly superior to that of his great precursor's, he corrected and improved it. He was contented to walk in the pleasant paths and shaded groves which nature had prepared for him, and, mindful of the fate of Icarus, he did not persist in his efforts to rise into an element for which he was not created, and from which he must inevitably fall.

Dryden, in his dramatic performances, reminds us of the prince in the Arabian tale, who mounted the flying horse, and in an instant found himself whirling through space at an inconceivably rapid rate, without power to guide or control his enchanted courser, and after a frightful ride is only saved from total destruction, to be tossed, stunned and deprived of an eye, upon the palace of the ten blind princes, who had been guilty of the same rashness and suffered the same penalty. With scarcely any of this presumption, Addison has avoided his dilemma, and instead of writing a score of tragedies, the best of which are almost beneath criticism, and cannot boast ten readers per annum, he has left us many thousand pages of unpretending, yet exquisite essays and sketches, which will continue to excite interest and elicit admiration as long as the language in which they are written can find an interpreter. Who has not read or does not read the Spectator? What school boy of any promise, ever yet waited until he had thrown aside the satchel to make his thumb familiar with its pages; who of middle life has been so immersed in the cares and perplexities of business, that he could not spare many an hour to partake of an entertainment which it affords; and where is an old age so dimmed and blunted, that it can no longer relish the freshness and the beauty which dwell in its every paragraph. For the man of humor here is its