say,

The spectre that so cruelly pursues thee? Arist. The innocent that persecutes the guilty.

Ces. And who the guilty?
Arist. I.

Ces. Thou? Wherefore thus

Strive to persuade me thou art criminal?
Arist. Because I slew her-

Ces. Whom? Whom didst thou slay?
Arist. My daughter.

Ces. Heavens! he raves. Alas, what
frenzy

Urged him within her tomb to set his foot?

Merciful gods, to be termed merciful
If 'tis indeed your pleasure, oh restore
His wandering faculties! Be moved to
pity!

Alas, thou tremblest; what so fixedly
Gazest thou on?

Arist. It comes again- -the spectre ! 'Tis there! Dost thou not see it? Oh, protect me,

In pity shield me from its sight!
Ces. Oh! this

Is mere distraction-Nothing I perceive
Save yonder tomb.

Arist. Observe, upon its threshold Erect and menacing the phantom stands. Observe, immovably on me its eyes Are fixed;-it shudders.-Oh, be thou appeased,

Thou ever-wrathful! If my daughter's

The silent horror from the yawning tomb

Out-breathed, thy words, the paleness of thy cheek,

Chiefly the inward tumult of my soul,
All, all forbid me longer to dispute
That in yon dismal sepulchre abides
A dreadful spectre. But if manifest
To thee, say wherefore is't from me con-
cealed?

Arist. Thou'rt innocent; those pure
and gentle eyes

Were ne'er designed to look upon such secrets

As the indignant deities reveal

But to the guilty, with remorse and shame,

To overwhelm them. Thou no mother's blood

Hast shed; the cry of Nature dooms not thee.

Ces. Art thou indeed then guilty?
Arist. I have said it.

But question me no farther-Prythee, fly,

Forsake me.

Ces. I forsake thee? Never, never! Whatever thy misdeeds, within my heart Is written thy defence.

Arist. My condemnation

In heaven is written, written with the blood

Of innocence.

Ces. And thus implacable

Are parted spirits?

Arist. Wholly to themselves

The gods beyond the confines of the grave

Reserve the privilege of pardoning. But say, wert thou my daughter, and, misled

By guilty wishes, I had murder'd thee: Spirit of clemency, couldst thou forgive Thy barbarous assassin? Speak, Cesira;

Wouldst thou forgive ?

Ces. Oh, speak not thus !
Arist. And farther,

Believest thou Heaven would sanction thy forgiveness?

Ces. Is't possible that Heaven should allow

In souls of children such enduring wrath, Against a father, such relentless vengeance?

Arist. Severe, inscrutable, unfathomable,

Are Heaven's decrees; through their obscurity

No mortal eye may penetrate. Perchance

Heaven, as a warning to mankind, ordains

Mine agonies, whence Nature to revere, Ay, and to dread, may every parent learn.

Believe it, Nature outraged is ferocious.

Oh, the gods be praised! A deity, Gonippus, sends thee hither. The king is frantic-Fly, pursue his steps, Preserve him from the frenzy of his soul. Gonippus silently obeys, and after this powerfully-conceived and striking scene, Cesira remains alone, overwhelmed with grief and terror. In this condition, she is found by Eumæus, the guardian of her infancy, who, upon being liberated from his Spartan imprisonment, has forthwith hurried home. It can hardly be necessary to say what his arrival immediately reveals to Cesira, or, as she is thenceforward called, Argia, the mystery of her birth, and extorts from the still unwilling Lysander, a confirmation of the important discovery. Argia, delighted at learning her near affinity to him she already so filially loves, flies to seek her father; and the Spartans take their final departure from Messenia, which the good-natured Palamedes has no longer any object in retarding. Thus ends the fourth Act.

The fifth is very short. It begins with the anxieties and alarms of Argia and Gonippus, neither of whom has been able to find Aristodemus. Argia desires Gonippus to prosecute the search, promising to wait the result where she is, the hall, containing Dirce's monument, being the king's favourite haunt. She is no sooner alone, however, than she recollects her

unhappy father's recent visit to the interior of the tomb, and is seized with terror, lest he should have returned to a spot so well calculated to exasperate his previously frenzied feelings. After a moment's hesitation, proceeding from dread of the spectre, which

she has learnt to believe inhabits the

sepulchre, she resolves to enter it in quest of the royal penitent. She has scarcely disappeared in execution of her enterprise, when Aristodemus comes upon the stage, armed with a dagger, and after a very brief monologue, stabs himself. Argia, Gonippus, and Eumæus, rush in, and the wretched man is presently informed, that in his beloved Cesira, he beholds his long-lost, and vainly-regretted daughter, Argia. He exclaims, in despair at thus discovering, too late, what happiness had been within his reach, And thus must I recover thee! Oh, now Of heav'n's revenge the direful consummation

I see, the agonies of death now feel!
Oh, cruel recognition! Oh, my child
Ungovernable fury fills my breast,
Compelling me to curse the hour that
gives

A daughter to mine arms.

Argia. Ye pitying gods, Oh, give me back my father, or with Here let me die !

him

All colour fades.

Arist. Oh, whither do ye drag me? Where am I? What a darksome solitude! Remove those pallid phantoms. Say for whom

Those dreadful scourges are design'd?
Argia. Woe's me!

Eum. Unhappy king!
Gon. The agony of death
Causes insanity. Aristodemus,

My sovereign, dost thou know me? Me,
Gonippus?

See'st thou thy daughter?

Arist. Well, what would my daughter ?

If I destroy'd, have I not wept for her? Is't not enough of vengeance? Let her come,

I'll speak to her myself. Look on her, see; Her tresses bristle on her brow like thorns,

And in those empty sockets, eyes are

That I-expired---[Dies.

Gon. Oh, what a dreadful end! We have in general little relish for a long critique, appended, epilogue fashion, to the end of the analysis of a drama. If the analysis and extracts be worth anything, the faults and merits of the piece in question must have been already made manifest; and moreover, in these enlightened days, when, whatever reading and writing may do, criticism indisputuably "comes by nature;" all the labours of the Reviewer, whether laudatory or damnatory, but more especially explanatory of either sentence, might seem to be works of absolute supererogation. But notwithstanding these motives for suppressing all further reflections upon this extraordinary tragedy, and following our author's example by abruptly concluding our article as he does his drama, with the death of its hero, there is one remark with which we must trouble our readers; because, being perhaps rather of a negative than of a positive character, no power of ge

nius could, without an attentive perusal of the whole play, enable them to make it for themselves. It is this-to not a soul of the dramatis persona, from the commencement of the first Act to the close of the fifth, does it ever occur to suggest as a topic of consolation to the grieving monarch, the good use he has made of his royal authority, however nefariously acquired; to dilate upon the battles he has fought for the protection of his people; upon the happiness he has diffused around him by wise government; or upon the grateful affection borne him by his subjects. Once indeed, Cesira, in combating his belief of being an object of divine wrath, observes, that on the contrary, the gods must be favourably disposed towards so good a father, citizen, and king. This, of course, is previous to her knowledge of her royal friend's guilt. And once Gonippus invites him, by way of a diversion to his sorrows, to walk forth, and see how the people rejoice in the peace concluded with Sparta. This last is the only passage in which we find the slightest intimation of what ought to constitute the enjoyment of sovereignty, or the slightest tendency towards what might have been conceived to be the topics best adapted for soothing the pangs of the miserable criminal with hopes that his unnatural deed had been in any degree expiated. Through the whole play, the pomp and exaltation of royalty seem to be the principal, if not the only ideas connected with the kingly office, or, to speak more in the spirit of the work we are reviewing, with the kingly title; and the remorse, tears, and secluded melancholy of the sorrowing penitent, including, we cannot but apprehend, the at least occasional dereliction of duties which neither nature nor fortune had thrust upon him, are the sole grounds upon which he is encouraged to hope for pardon. We suspect that this marvellous apparent deficiency of all philosophical conceptions of public virtue, love of fame, or even of generous ambition, as at least not incompatible with high station, must be ascribed rather to the moral and political mal aria of the fair, but degraded land, where our poet's "young idea" first learned "to shoot," than to any vulgar or jacobinical prejudices appertaining more idiosyncratically to it Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti.