I am but a skimmer of surfaces, and little burdened with the learning of your books. Yet a man who walks about with his eyes open, may be philosopher enough to see how the world goes. (Assuming a mock serious air.) And I do opine, advance, and maintain, that what is against nature is unnatural. It cannot hold, because, twist it and turn it as you will-morally, physically, mathematically-it tumbles to pieces. Upon this incontrovertible position I build my sys. tem. The Princess Diana is a proud woman. All women naturally expect admiration; withhold the tribute, and you mortify her pride; without pride she is a simple woman; and for a simple woman, it is natural to fall in love.-There, sir, you have it-premises, inference, and conclusion.-What think you of Professor Perin?

D. Ces. A truce to jesting, friend, and tell me what I am to understand by this? Per. Simply, that if you adopt my advice, I stake my head upon schooling her pride, and showing her philosophy

in its true ridiculous colours.

D. Ces. Explain yourself.

Per. Remember, Prince, what won your love. Not Diana's beauty, but her pride.

D. Ces. I begin to see the light.

Per. When she receives you coldly meet her with indifference. If she look scornful-throw her back a glance of pity, coupled with a compassionate shrug of the shoulders, or a French twist of the mouth. The greater pride will subdue the lesser, and you have the dame as tractable as a newly-whipped child.

D. Ces. Twere easily resolved-but then I love!

Per. The greater the merit and the pleasure of the conquest. Arm yourself with confidence, depend upon my aid, and you can't fail of success.

But remember, we must appear to have no understanding with each other, or we are both ruined; for both our fortunes are at stake. Be wise-be resolutebut, above all-be cold.

D. Ces. How is it possible to conceal the feelings which absorb my every thought! Yet, if it must be so-gigantic as the effort is-it shall be made.

Per. Bravo! rely upon my support in time of need. But see where the Duke and your friends approach. We must not be marked together, and your disguise must be worn even to them. Now, Prince, to work! Remember a good start is half the race. [Exit.

D. Ces. Yes, I see this way alone conducts me to her love; and hope begins to dawn, like the auspicious opening of a happy day. They come, and now the

scene commences.

Don Cesar puts his design in force at their next meeting, which takes place in the presence of the female friends and the attendants of the Princess. She is in her own apartments, and with the conscious authority of one accustomed to deal out her

lectures on Platonism to submissive, or at least unanswering auditors, she utters an invective, (discouraging enough, it must be owned,) to her lover, against that passion which, for. tunately for fair ladies and dramatists, holds such universal sway over the world. Since we are recording the wiles with which her adversary in this subtile warfare seeks to win her within his power, it is but fair to hear what she has to say in support of her

cause.

P. Dia. Well, then, if I perforce must enter this arena, unworthy as I am to plead a cause so noble, I do it fearlessly, because I know its greatness is supe

nature.

rior to detraction. I hold that the brief space of life should be devoted to the care of those immortal powers, which give to man the sovereignty in In love, man abdicates his throne, and is as mere an animal as any in the wide creation. Search history, consult the wisdom of all time, and show me where the benefits of love are written down. What dragged Semiramis from her proud glory? What has unlaurelled many a hero's brow? Nay, what destroyed the city of the hundred towers? This vanity which you call love; this creature of your fancies, who, being himself a child, is made a god by children! This pestilence, which has ever been the abasement of the weak, the downfall of the strong, the degradation of my sex, the instrument of craft and tyranny in yours! And yet you wonder that I cast it from me with aversion. Look at the other picture, where the star of mind rises above the waste of time, and sheds its light upon the wanderer's path, at once the guide and glory of humanity. No! what Plato fondly dreamed shall be affected in my realms. Woman shall be as noble and as free as man.

We need hardly observe, that this bravery does not continue long. Don Cesar plays his part most adroitly, notwithstanding one or two (of course unavoidable) falterings, by which he is nearly betrayed ; and before the close of the second act the Platonist finds that she is but an ordinary mortal. Pride gives birth to partiality, or perhaps we should rather say developes, when wounded, a partiality which, while it was flattered, like a petted

child affecting aversion for his toy, it was able to conceal. Diana has already acquainted Perin, the plotting secretary before mentioned, not with her love indeed, but with her rage and disappointment. Through him and her female associates she had managed to become Don Cesar's partner in a masquerade, given by her father on the eventful day of this contest between the softest and the sternest of the passions. She now engages the secretary to draw away Don Cesar (who is ungallant enough to desert his partner at her own imperious mandate) from the rest of the party to a bower in the garden, where she tries the effect of her musical talents, both vocal and instrumental,-in vain. Her lover is schooled by Perin, and exhibits the most stoical insensibility to the strains of the syren. This whole scene is worked up with great skill. The loud rhapsodies of Don Cesar upon the superiority of inanimate to animated nature, uttered while he gazes upon the flowers and scenery around him, wholly regardless of the presence or the music of his mistress, are some of the few instances in which declamation may be not out of place in comedy, and are amusingly contrasted with the pathetic efforts of Diana to arrest his attention, and her anxiety, now growing every moment less angry and more painful, at witnessing his apparent neglect.

In the Fourth Act, her distresses accumulate. We are not sure if the author's highest powers are not exerted in the manner in which he makes his machinery here work upon the feelings of his heroine. The contrivance is simple, but it displays a thorough knowledge of human nature.

Don

Cesar's two former rivals, Don Luis and Don Gaston, tired of their ineffectual vows at so cold a shrine, had abandoned their devotions to the Princess, and paired off, the former with Donna Laura, the latter with Donna Lousia. Perin, who, we should say, is most ably supported throughout by Donna Floretta, the loving, laughing good-natured maid of honour (attached, as may be supposed, to the secretary,) contrives to bring the two couples just mentioned to a place where they can be seen by Diana exchanging their vows of new-born love. Music lends its soft enchantments to this scene of fondness; and the presence of Don Cesar, standing apart,

and appearing utterly insensible to every tender emotion, inflames the heart of the tortured Princess, from which Platonism has now almost wholly melted away. She is at once mocked by the sight of happiness which she cannot share, and by the cold and averted looks of the man with whom she would now give the world to share it. That love is a most catching disorder, prudent mothers know from still surer sources than poetry; and our author has here illustrated, with considerable power, one of the most pervading principles of our nature, prone as it is in all things to sympathy and imitation.

Don

The Princess now tries the last, and usually the most successful resource of woman's art-jealousy. But Don Cesar, through the indefatigable Perin, is apprized of her design, and foils it by repaying her in kind. She assures him, that at that very hour she has selected Don Luis for a husband. Cesar replies, that by some strange conjunction of the stars, he, at identically the same hour, had chosen Donna Laura for his bride; and the Fourth Act closes with the despair of the discomfited Princess, and the sure and triumphant anticipations of her lo

ver.

In the beginning of the Fifth Act, we find the meshes completely drawn around the devoted victim of Love and Pride; and no little art is displayed in making her, in the midst of comic incident and lively dialogue, an object of compassionate we had almost said, of deep interest. Don Luis and his intended bride join in the plot against her. The former comes, as if just apprized by Don Cesar of his good fortune, to pour out at her feet his gratitude for her having made him the happy object of her choice, and leaves her without giving her time for explanation. Donna Laura comes to ask from her friend and cousin an approval of her own union with Don Cesar. The poor Platonist is here completely subdued, and her feelings gush their way in the following passionate expressions, which well sustain the highest tone of serious comedy, without at all passing beyond its legitimate range.

Enter D. LAURA, and D. FLORETTA. D. Lau. Dear cousin, I am come to throw myself upon your friendship. Don Cesar has just offered me his hand, and is gone to ask your father's sanction to our nuptials. My uncle's will is mine,

Cousin, do you not hear me?

P. Dia. Yes, Laura, I will unbosom all my feelings, and throw myself upon your love. Alas! our hearts are like the restless winds that shift from point to point as the eye glances, yet have no visible cause of motion. I will confess to you that Cesar's pride has irritated me beyond endurance. I have despised all whose passions I have ever moved, and he, the only man that ever moved my heart, dares to despise me. I am insult ed, wronged, dishonoured; and I claim that friendship at your hands, Laura, which you came to seek at mine. You shall avenge me. Let him endure the scorn which has tormented me. Repay his arrogance; and let him find a heart as flinty as his own. My dear, dear Laura, let him suffer, writhe, consume with agony; then mock his tears, deride his thousand and accumulating woes.

D. Lau. Mercy! Cousin,-what counsel would you give me? If ingratitude be criminal in him, it cannot be a virtue in me. No; if he loves me sincerely, I shall return the sentiment.

P. Dia. Love him! And wilt thou dare to love him?

D. Lau. Heavens, what do I hear? D. Flo. (Aside to LAURA.) Don't be frightened.

P. Dia. Don Cesar thine, whilst I am dying for his love? Never! His very pride enchants me; and in the depth of that abasement which he caused, I still adore him. (Starting and turning from them.) What's this? Have I forgot my honour and my fame? No, thou perverse heart

-bleed! bleed! But let me save Diana's fame untainted. (TO LAURA.) Laura, you see I'm ill,-delirious. My tongue had lost the guidance of my reason. Believe not what it spoke so falsely,--but hear me, dearest Laura. Give him your hand -I am content. You will be happyvery-very happy-and I can rejoice in that. Go, then, and bless him with thy constant love. Go-enjoy that bliss, and leave me to a life of wretchedness and shame. (LAURA is going.) Yet stay! O Heaven, it is impossible, I cannot bear the thought. The flame bursts forth and wraps me in destruction. I sink, I die -the victim of my pride.

[Sinks into LAURA's arms. All the author's springs are now wound up, and in the next scene the grand feat is achieved. Diana is ushered in by her father, attended by the various parties whose destinies are to be decided at the same time with hers;

and she atones for all her sins against the sensibilities of womanhood, by a voluntary surrender to Don Cesar.

We have said enough, we think, to communicate to those who have not yet seen this drama, the very favourable impression which we have ourselves received from its perusal. The plot is certainly well managed. The principal action is not suspended for a moment. The distresses of the heroine increase from act to act; and the contrivances employed by her to relieve, and by her adversaries to enhance them, become more and more important for their purposes, and are attended with greater and greater success on the one side, and disappointment on The dialogue, on the whole, possesses the other, until the piece concludes. much dramatic power; and although some flowery Spanish conceits are scattered through it, reminding us occasionally that at least its seeds are exotic, it is, for the most part, sparkling, lively, and well sustained.

We wish we could stop here, but we cannot help deprecating, for the sake of the remaining part of this comedy, and the reputation of its author, the intrusion of two most intolerable bores, in the persons of a conceited old man, who does nothing but talk the silliest fustian, and of a most talkative servant of his, who yet scarcely says or does anything but make piteous complaints of incessant hunger. They have literally no more to do with the plot, than have the witches of Macbeth with the distresses of Hamlet. They seem introduced for no other purpose than to raise a laugh among certain parts of the audience by the most common of all the tricks of broad low farce-the rapacious appetite of a starved servant -and by what is still less sufferable to a lover of genuine English Comedy, a most absurd caricature of one of its most brilliant creations-Lord Ogleby. It is the constant fate of extravagancies of this kind, that, unnatural as they are of themselves, they derive additional improbability from the circumstances with which they are blended; and they are surer to exert in turn a sinister influence on all around them. Thus, in the first place, it shocks all credibility that Lopez, the servant of Don Pedro, should be left "to feed upon shadows" in the palace of the Duke of Barcelona, where his master

is actually an admitted suitor to the heiress of a Duchy; and this, too, in the midst of splendid festivities. And in the next place, the repeated assurances of ill-usage which this hungry being gives us, at almost every ten minutes of the play, and in language of most formidable amplification on this pathetic theme, actually produces at last a suspicion that his master is the stingiest of mankind, and that the Duke and his daughter are most unpoetically and unfeelingly careless of the comforts of their household. The effect is, for so much, a weakening of the interest of the piece in its most important point. The incongruity must be gross indeed, which could excite these reflections; yet such is the effect of a sacrifice to Farce in its worst extravagance, of Comedy, where Comedy might have stood secure without such humiliation.

We

Of Don Pedro we have said little or nothing in our account of the plot, for the reason just mentioned, that in fact he has no concern in it. A plot is, however, made for him; and part of it is, that he shall receive a forged letter, as if from the Princess, from which he is to collect, that she is over head and ears in love with him. would not willingly mar the merit of what we have already quoted; but criticism is useless when it is not impartial, and we must cite the following passage, if it were but to warn the author against again descending to a species of composition, in which it is no little praise to say, that he is utterly unfit for succeeding.

FLORETTA takes PEDRO aside and gives him the letter.

D. Flor. There, read that, and take care that you comply with its contents. You know not how soon you may be the happy man.

(She motions to the rest to retire and observe him.) D. Ped. (Alone in the front of the stage.) -The happy man? Heir-apparent to the dukedom!

(Opens the letter and reads.) "To marry a presumptuous, self-doating fool were to undergo the necessity of ringing 'Cuckoo' in his ears; therefore, I'll none of him." Ay, "therefore I'll none of him." That's the coxcomb who jested on my age. (They laugh at GASTON behind.) "Neither will I wed with a fellow whose

soul lies in the fineness of his hose, or in the sitting of a coat lap; for he would wear me, or cast me off, according to the fashion, like one of the feathers in his hat." That's the Prince of Bearne-he wears feathers in his hat. "But if the true man would have his deserts, let him serenade me in the garden this evening, before the banquet; and have a priest at hand." Don Pedro, thou art the true man-and thou shalt have thy deserts! I'll haste to Father Sebastian. But, for the serenade-verily I am no hand at a cantation. Yet, I'll try; my vocalities may be improved. (Tries to sing.) What is the reason that I sing not as well as another? I have a mouth, and a throat, and a stomach, like other men,-yet sing I cannot. Ah! I remember-my villain, Lopez, singeth the do-re-mi, and he shall execute the serenade. (Looking at the letter.) No presumptuous, self-doating fools-nor fellows whose souls lie in the

fineness of their hose." But if the true man".

[Goes off reading. The others come

forward laughing and the curtain. falls.]

But notwithstanding these blemishes, the Play is highly creditable to Mr Hyde, and we sincerely hope that we

shall soon have occasion to notice another dramatic effort from him, in which he shall consult his own taste, and rely more upon his own resources. From the total absence of anything that could degrade the dignity of pure Comedy, in those portions of the play now under notice, which are not beset with the absurdities of DON PEDRO or the importunities of his servant, we cannot but conclude, that he knows well the lines which separate the higher from the lower walks of the Drama. The Author of Alphonzus, and the writer-be he author or adapter-of "Love's Victory," is a man of taste as well as of genius. It would be difficult to say which is most requisite in dramatic productions; but of late years, (with perhaps a single exception,) we have had so little of either, that we hail with a pleasure mixed with expectation, the appearance of one, who can bring both these rare gifts in aid of what we cannot yet deem a hopeless task,-that of lifting from a mire of follies and extravagancies the goodly person of BRITISH Co

MEDY.

II

THERE are many most unaccountable things done in these days, and the examining of Mr M'Culloch by the Parliamentary Committee for inquiring into the state of Ireland was one of them. Mr M'Culloch has no personal knowledge of Ireland; he was not called to state facts respecting it; he merely appeared as a Political Economist to edify the Committee with general doctrines. He is a public lecturer on Political Economy, and the rage for this fashionable science being, as we suspect, strong upon the sagacious legislators, they resolved to obtain a lecture at an economical rate, under the name of evidence on the

state of Ireland. If our conjecture be just, they displayed in this far more cunning than generosity; but, however, certain money-market disclosures show that thrift is now the order of the day even among gentlemen and nobles. It may be very proper for great people to be immoderately fond of great bargains, but we think it is not very proper for them to use Parliament as their instrument. We do not like to see Parliamentary Committees using their privileges to enable them to slake their glorious thirst for knowledge and science," and especially for economical science" at a cheap rate, to the grievous loss of poor Mr M'Culloch.

We may be mistaken. Perhaps the philosopher was brought forward by the absentee landlords to throw dust in the eyes of the nation, when the misery and depravity of their tenants were coming before it. Perhaps these individuals found a storm gathering around them, which could only be quelled by the bewildering dogmas of Political Economy. But whatever was the cause, Mr M'Culloch, who is not a man of business-who is neither an Irish landlord, nor an Irish farmer, nor an Irishman of any kind, who actually never saw Ireland, appeared before the Committee to dilate on the condition of the sister kingdom.

In looking over Mr M'Culloch's evidence, one thing causes us prodigious amazement; this is-on some of the most important points, he repeats precisely the same opinions, which we had, on more occasions than one, published in this Magazine, touching Ireland, before he appeared before the

Committee. In proof, we may refer to what he says respecting subsetting, emigration on a large scale, the associating of the landlords, &c. It certainly is exceedingly odd, that any Economist, after what we have said of the tribe, should come after us to do anything but contradict us. We say not this from vanity, for the same opinions, for anything that we know to the contrary, may have been published ten thousand times before we published them. We wrote from our own observations, but it by no means follows that we wrote what was new. We mention the matter, because in some quarters we see it asserted that government is preparing a bill which is to embody Mr M'Culloch's principles touching sub-letting; we see his views touching emigration puffed most extravagantly as exclusively his own; we see it very broadly insinuated that the opinions contained in the only sound part of his evidence were utterly unknown until he condescended to lay them before Parliament. This will not do; if we set up no claim to originality ourselves, we certainly must not permit any such claim to be set up by Mr M'Culloch.

The sage Economist, however, differs very widely from us in many things, and, where he does this, we naturally imagine that he blunders excessively. His opinions on some points are, we are pretty sure, perfectly original; but, unhappily for him, these are not the opinions which are so hugely lauded by people in general. When he has ventured to think for himself, he has produced in the public a vast portion of laughter, and very little belief. Some of his opinions, which are peculiarly his own, or at any rate, which are not ours, we shall now examine. We are led to do this by the great importance of the general question, and a wish to protect our former papers on Ireland from misapprehension. We will begin with his doctrines touching absenteeism. Something may still be added to the refutation which these have already received from various quarters.

The following we extract from his evidence :

"Supposing the absentee landlords of Ireland were to return and reside upon