Call you the son of Procida. My friends, On his revenge : remember it. Come on! This scene is sweeping and rapid, as it ought in such an emergency to be. The conspirators precipitate themselves from the stage, with Procida at their head, to accomplish their sanguinary purpose, of which the outrages committed by the French furnish a sufficient extenuation, to divest the leader of this enterprise of that horror with which our imaginations would have arrayed him, had not his dreadful deed been palliated, to a certain extent, by the enormity of those offences against his country which he was sworn to revenge. A mere unmitigated villain is an undramatic personage. He excites no other sentiment than that of detestation, as unmingled as his own atrocities. Unmodified depravity may be occasionally introduced for the purpose of bringing other characters into relief, and making their good qualities more conspicuous from the depth of shadow which borders on their delineation. But, in general, cold-blooded malignity should be banished from theatrical representations. Procida commits a deed repugnant to all our notions of morality and honour; but it receives from the injuries which he has endured a partial alleviation. The author should, perhaps, have dwelt at greater length upon the outrages of the French, and entered into more minute details of their barbarities; but he was writing for a Parisian audience, whose vanity would have recoiled from the spectacle of their national atrocities, and upon this account he was, in all probability, induced to sacrifice to the necessity of pleasing a people so sensitive upon every subject connected with the honour of their country, what was at once due to justice and to dramatic propriety. To return from this deviation: Lorédan remains upon the stage, having undertaken to put his friend and benefactor to death. This is a fine situation, and is managed by the author with exceeding skill. A person unacquainted with the stage would, probably, have indulged himself in a long soliloquy upon an occasion of this kind, in which he would have scrupulously and minutely anatomized the feelings of Lorédan, and have made him, at great length, descant upon his misfortunes, and indulge in much lachrymatory egotism and self-contemplation. But the author knew better, and accordingly he is satisfied with putting into the mouth of Lorédan a few lines, the brevity of which is their chief merit; because in such a situation the audience, who are awakened into the most intense expectation, and pant for the event, would listen with impatience to the finest poetry that was ever endited. Thus the author has, with singular dexterity, brought Montfort upon the stage in a moment that assembles in its compass so many deep and thrilling interests. It is likely that an English writer, who thinks that there is even a merit in breaking the unities, would have led Lorédan to the couch on which Montfort was reposing. For our own part, we conceive that the unities ought never to be violated during an act, except where some great object, incompatible with their observance, is to be attained. The sudden appearance of Montfort, awakened by the call of Lorédan, is infinitely more impressive than any change of scene, which in the hands of one of our melodramatists would have presented Montfort to the audience talking, in all likelihood, in his sleep. Upon Montfort's entrance he says— Montfort. What mean these cries, my friend?-what shouts have scared Montfort. Montfort. I thought and wish'd to hate thee. Gracious heavens! And tremble. They shall see me, Madman, whither wouldst thou go? They shall perish For the last time, Beneath its brandish'd might. Loredan (stopping him) You were my friend-for the last time, my friend!—(Embracing him.) Montfort. Oh, Lorédan! Lorédan. Tis done! we are foes for ever: We are sensible that we do great injustice to the force and brevity of the original in this loose and hasty translation. Encumbered as the author was with rhyme (which so often obliges a French writer to dilate his ideas into a tedious amplification) he has swept through this excellent verse with equal smoothness and rapidity, and concluded it by touching the heart with an instance of noble and manly friendship, in which he has wrought a complete and instantaneous, and therefore a most dramatic revolution, in the feelings of Montfort and Loredan, which sends them into the streets of carnage with all the sympathies of the audience for their anticipated fate. But this verse demands acting of the first order, without which it would be flat and insipid, and press upon the spectator a sense of improbability, which, if once awakened, would mar the noblest writing, and divest it of that which is the very life and essential spirit of the drama. Thus ends the fourth act; and we regret to be obliged to state that our praise must terminate with it. The fifth act is crudely and feebly composed. We shall dispose of it in a few words. Amelia and her suivante enter for the purpose of describing the massacre to the audi ence, which was perfectly unnecessary, as it was easy to conceive its horrors, to which no verse could furnish an adequate delineation, and whose description retards the progress of the play, which at such a moment should hurry to its catastrophe. If we may venture on the illustration, a dramatic work should possess "the torrent's smoothness ere it dash below." Fine poetry itself becomes an interruption, where the passions are all in a state of excitation, and curiosity is trembling for the result. The result in this instance is, we must confess, little calculated to satisfy the emotions which the author had previously succeeded in exciting. Lorédan enters, and informs Amelia that he has put Montfort to death to save his father, against whom the former was raising his sword, at the moment that Lorédan plunged his poniard in his heart. Lorédan raves in the usual style of insanity, into which it is so convenient for dramatic writers to precipitate their heroes when their own invention is stranded. Montfort, however, who has not been wounded to instant death, enters bloody and expiring. Lorédan discloses to him that he is his murderer, and receives his forgiveness. Montfort dies. Procida enters at the head of the triumphant conspirators, and Lorédan stabs himself upon the body of his friend. Procida exclaims (and the conclusion is certainly a fine one) Oh my country! I have saved thine honour, and I have lost my son ! I can scarce keep these tears: be they forgiven me. (He stands in silence for a moment and then turns to the conspirators.) Soldiers, be ready for the fight to-morrow! Our limits prevent us from indulging at any length in any farther observations, which might be suggested by this tragedy with reference to the present state of our own stage. We shall take some future opportunity of pointing out what we consider to be the cause of the little hold which modern tragedy has taken of the public, when compared with the enthusiasm manifested in France upon the appearance of "Les Vêpres Siciliennes." That there is no want of poetical talent in England at this moment, is universally admitted; and the disrepute into which tragedy has fallen, and the failure, in a great degree, of every person who has attempted it, is a curious subject of speculation. Our acquaintance with the green-room will enable us to supply some elucidation of this fact; for which it may, at first view, seem to be difficult to furnish a satisfactory solution. In the interval we cannot refrain from expressing a wish, that our stage could produce a tragedy equal to that of which we have given this imperfect outline. A SABBATH IN LONDON. BY A SEVEN YEARS' ABSENTEE. AN Englishman who has passed seven consecutive years on the Continent, might be fairly reckoned an eighth sleeper. His eyes have been open, 'tis true, but he has been virtually visionless-a wonderseeking somnambulist; cheated by a dream of splendor and variety, but unblest by any "sober certainty of waking bliss," or actual reality of comfortable enjoyment. Comfort! how that word will come into the sentence in spite of me! It is hacknied, worn out, threadbare : I know it is. But what then? Must I discard it on that account? must I not speak the truth, because it is a truism? must I not bask in the sunshine, because the sun has shone since the creation? must I inly adore and idolize this word, but never utter it, like the Hebrew who closes his lips on the sacred syllables of the Cabala uprising from his heart? It is in vain to think of baulking my fancy. Reader, I cannot write this paper without comfort being its staple, for I write it in the central sanctuary of happiness-in the penetralia of enjoyment-at home. Home and comfort! these are, indeed, our own peculiar words. Well may we be proud of them, for they are not understood beyond our shores. Let England be my home, then, and comfort and cleanliness my Dii Penates, and I freely grant to cavillers against commonplace the right of laughing at my prejudice. The steam-boat, like a great sea-monster winging its way through the waters, bore me across the Channel in three hours, and disgorged me and a hundred other passengers on the Quay of Dover, one Saturday afternoon in the month of September last. The weather was calm, the sea smooth, the sun clear. Every thing, in short, conspired around the shores of England to give the lie to those prattling impertinences, which I had been latterly accustomed to, about eternal fogs, and clouds, and vapours. But on landing I was electrically struck by observing the compact and diminutive look of every thing. I had been so long surrounded by extravagant and disproportioned combinations, that the thrill of pleasure on touching the solum natale was for a moment checked. I shrunk, like Mimosa at the touch of mortality, or, by a plainer and better illustration, like a snail into its shell. But when I got fairly within the comfortable contraction, I was much more at my ease, and I experienced a relief as instantaneous as little Poucet must have enjoyed when he flung off the jack-boots of the Giant. I was at once reduced to my fitting scale and level, and an instant sufficed to make me appreciate the contrast of what I felt with what I had been feeling. I saw at a glance that all I had been so long accustomed to was unnatural and artificial; that the whole surface on which I had for years been floating, was swelled out beyond its due proportions; society puffed up like the frog in the fable; bloated bubbles waiting only to be pricked to make them burst; and men, so many political Titans waging war against Nature, and buried under the elements they are unable to wield. These were rapid associations running down the chain of thought; yet all this, and much more, rushed on my mind on looking at the short-set, small-windowed, narrow-doored, two-storied residences ranged on the Quay of Dover. Every thing which followed was qua lified to strengthen this impression. The snug parlour in which I dined; the light carriage in which I placed myself to start for the metropolis; the narrow roads, compact inclosures, neat gardens, and natty cottages, as we rattled out of the town-all made me understand that I was no longer in Brobdignag. The very boots of the postilion taught me a lesson of humility. It was evening when I quitted Dover. The sun was sinking behind the Kentish hills, throwing a rich glare on the hop-gardens—a million times more lovely than the vineyards of Italy or France; and he was covered as he went down by a huge cloud, its edges fringed with his golden beams, and its broad shades throwing a solemnity on the effulgence of his descent. The full moon soon rose upon us, almost as bright as day; and with the beautiful country thus illuminated for me, and my heart penetrated with "a sacred and home-felt delight," I travelled the whole night without closing my eyes. At five o'clock in the morning the carriage entered the yard of the Golden Cross. Every thing was still as we drove over Westminster-bridge and up Whitehall -no labourers of any kind to be seen. The repose seemed more than natural, but was not the less impressive on that account. It was quite unlike what I had remembered of a summer morning in London; but I believe it was the first Sunday morning I had been in the streets so early. By ten o'clock I had got rid of the discomforts consequent on three night's travelling-had given vent to my admiration of the comparative cleanliness of this inelegant inn with the state of the most magnificent foreign hotel-and had finished my breakfast of tea and French bread, as they call those rolls; which are, by the way, as like French bread, as some other necessaries of life, which the French call à l'Anglaise, are like their originals. I then sallied out to pay several visits, where I hoped to make some fine experiments of the effects of a pleasant surprise. I proceeded straight towards Grosvenor-square, and stepping up to the door of an old chum of mine, I raised the brazen visage that served for a knocker, and struck a blow, strong and heavy, with that ponderous implement. The sound reverberated through the house, answered by the cheerless echoes of emptiness. A woman, however, came out into the area below, and called shrilly, "Why, what the devil d'ye make that noise for, d'ye hear? couldn't you ring the bell, eh? what d'ye want?" Rough manners, thought I, but this is English independence, which levels ranks and soars above distinctions of sex. "Why, mistress, I want your master, by your leave." "Do you, indeed? an you want him, e'en go and look him out near Norwich, d'ye hear?"—and muttering something, God knows what, but certainly nothing civil, she retired into the passage, and I lost her-perhaps for ever. I comprehended perfectly that my friend T. was down at his place in Norfolk, for the partridge shooting; but I was sadly puzzled to know the meaning of his housekeeper's want of ceremony. I looked at myself right and left, saw that my coat was good, a watch in my fob, and various other indications of gentility, all as they should be;-but my English readers will scarcely credit, that it was three hours afterwards before sundry such receptions reminded me that a single knock at the door was an official announcement that the hand which struck it was plebian; and that all ranks are now-adays dressed so much alike, that the man who has not the dandy knack |