In the last act we see Dunstan authoritatively demanding access to the imprisoned Athelwold, to whom he utters a stately exhortation to take the vows, and so receive the protection of the church-which Athelwold sternly rejects, and Dunstan withdraws, leaving Athelwold calm, but animated by implacable resentment towards the faithless Elfrida, who had so readily surrendered him to his fate. In this humour she enters his apartment, and passionately entreats him to forgive her, and receive her again as his wife-surely a reasonable request, and one inspiring us with high sympathy for Elfrida. It is impossible to peruse this highly-drawn scene without emotion. She offers to stab the king that night, if Athelwold will but be reconciled to her. She clings to him in desperate embrace, but he repels her; on which she exclaims-

"Great God! if at the day of final doom
I stand at thy tribunal to be judged
For some unheard of crime, let this repulse,
This agony, this penitence, and shame,
This deep humiliation i have borne,
Plead in behalf of mercy!"

Athelwold, however, is inexorable, and, maddened by his bitter, contemptuous reproaches, she suddenly throws open the folding-door, the guard rushes in, and Athelwold is slain. The uproar, however, brings in the king and Dunstan, who sternly

attributes the murder to Elfrida.

"Dunstan. Tigress! Oh thou savage, painted fair!

Thou beautiful ferocity!
Dar'st thou avouch this crime?

Elf.

1 dare.

Then ensues a dialogue between the murderess and the archbishop. Her calm despair is depicted with thrilling power; but, somewhat unexpectedly, she turns to Edgar, saying, "Now, Edgar, I am thine." Dunstan vehemently protests that he has not sanctioned, nor ever will sanction, a marriage under such guilty circumstances; but Edgar makes his nobles do homage on the spot to Elfrida as their queen; and while they are successively performing that act, she suddenly falters, and, pronouncing the name of Athelwold, falls with a shriek upon his dead body, and the curtain drops.

It should be mentioned that Athelwold-of course, with considerable curtailments--was represented on the stage, in Covent Garden theatre, under the auspices of Mr. Macready, with great splendour and considerable

success.

III. Of Guidone, the reader has already had one or two glimpses. Its dramatic action is still more feeble than that of Crichton: but it is full of beautiful poetry, alternating between strength and tenderness, and overspread with a cheerless contemplative air, that would remind one of evening sunlight shining on but mournful loveliness. The author sepulchres, suggestive of tranquil calls Guidone "a dramatic poem." Its name is derived from the leading, virtually the only, character in it— that of a noble Italian exile, brokenhearted and guilt-laden; having assisted Manfred, aspiring to be king of Naples, in the murder of his natural brother Conrad, and being

To scorn your loud and tragic railings, priest-
The deed is mine. Oh for still wider field
Of daring deed, and wild ambitious thought,
Where sense of crime in the bold act of crime

the royal partner of his guilt. Guidone's only daughter, Bianca, long destined to Camillo by their

him, because of his having formed an attachment elsewhere-to Fiorinda. Camillo is a pensive, contemplative youth, shut out, since his youth, from the great world, and rendered unfit for it. Instigated by the Pope, the Count of Anjou makes war upon Manfred, who betakes himself in his extremity to Guidone, who retains great military power. Both Manfred, indeed, and the Count of Anjou, by turns solicit his aid

against each other, but in vain: he is deadened in heart to the world, and will interfere no more in its concerns. Manfred is slain, and the Count of Anjou mounts the throne. Bianca's grief and broken-heartedness are presented to us as though we beheld a lovely flower crushed under foot, and in death exhaling sweetness. The moody mind of the bereaved and woe-stricken Guidone is soothed by turns by two visitors a hermit and a minstrel-introduced simply as ethical contrasts, to exhibit different views of life and feeling. The poem ends with a gloomy soliloquy of Guidone, on hearing of the triumphant entry of the Count of Anjou into Naples. The moral of the poem is to be found in these few lines, uttered by the hermit to assuage the remorse of Guidone:

I found her sitting on her mother's tomb;
Approaching, I petitioned her to leave
That melancholy spot.-I spoke to one
Now as the marble cold! Her forehead
leaned

Upon her arm as one who pensive sat,

passages:

THE YOUNG SCHOLAR, AWAKING FROM THE DREAMY SCHOLARSHIP OF HIS YOUTH.

"Camilla. There I stood. and conned

The straggled tresses lay-Death, rudest

wooer,

Now kneeling at her side, withheld the hand That should have put them back."

Such are the three "dramas" before

With ponderous revolution once again.

the purposes of men of dramatic genius, disposed to exercise their own powers in constructing the professed drama, or the novel, or romance. They will teach, on the one hand, the consequences of imperfect dramatic struc

WOMAN'S LOVE, UNAVOWED AND

UNSOLICITED.

other, they give out in every direction bright sparks of suggestion, inestimably valuable to vivid and creative

Solicited, or bruited to the world

Is so o'erruled by virgin purity,
And dignity serene of womanhood,
It is a harmless guest. A pleasing fear.

It plays observed upon the verge of thought,

Like silent lightning in a summer sky,
Whose lambent beauty does but hint the

power

Which may some other time be perilous."

contrasts and combinations of character, as well as unhackneyed situations for exhibiting them effectively. No one could have written these dramas who had not read extensively, thought deeply, and been, at the same time, a man of refined and original mind,

POSTERITY.

"Hereafter, when our story shall be known, As known be sure it will-for deeds like ours, Pile on them what we may, are not extinct,

But through the mountain obstacle will work,

And from its summit glare upon the world-
VOL. LXXI.

3

the tender, the true, and capable of expressing his thoughts in language at one exact, free, and, when the Smith's conceptions are always clear occasion required it, picturesque. Mr.

as crystal: it is evident that he sees his own way with unwavering distinctness, and contrives to take his educated reader along with him. That companion, however, he continually delights and surprises, by, as it were, dropping at his feet rich pearls of thought which he must fain stop to pick up, to admire, and determine on treasuring; but he forgets, the while, that both profess to have set out upon a journey, and are like to be benighted, or lose their way, or forget their errand. On casting over, at the close of one of these plays, the course of thought which they have suggested, one beholds the slight vehicle of plot, of incident, of character, already melted out of sight, but leaving, in all its distinctness and entirety, the poetical and philosophical spirit which it had conveyed. And, in fact, to deal justly by the author, this seems to have been very nearly his professed object, which we shall explain in his own words. "In writing Sir William Crichton, and also its predecessor Athelwold, the author addressed himself immediately to the reader and it was his ambition to be read: but, at the same time, he has been disposed to think that both these dramas, after the curtailment of certain parts manifestly of too reflective a character”—that is, in one word, after pulling down the building, but leaving the scaffolding-"would perhaps be found not ill adapted for the stage. Guidone is strictly the dramatic poem, and was written without even this secondary, or the most remote, reference to the theatre. It aims at exhibiting rather states of mind"-here is supplied a true key to the whole of this volume-" than individual character, and pretends to no interest of plot or story." The delineation of states of mind rather than individual character, and the subordination of action to reflection, constitute at once the distinguishing delights and the excellence of this author; and he seems to be aware of it, yet unable to forego a secret yearning for the visible embodiment of his musings upon the stage, linked with

a secret suspicion that it might be ineffective.

There is yet another poem to be noticed in this little volume-the last, entitled Solitude: it is short, but full of beauty, and exhibiting occasionally very subtle thought. If any one were to commence the perusal of this volume with the poem in question, which stands in it last, he would find, in coming to the dramas, that he had gained a very clear insight into the mind and character of the author; that of a man of refined and sensitive mind-of speculation rather than action, of a melancholy turn, and long habituated to solitary observation and reflection. Did he write thus, with a sigh ?—

"My thread of life stands still,
And the tired fate forgets the sluggish wheel,
And drops her song. Becalmed, yet anchored
not,-

No breath of heaven of all the winds that blow,
Visits my flagging canvass ;-never mine
The stir, the chase, the battle, and the prize."

We must, however, draw to a close. These dramas, though they have not hitherto made any noise in the world, and have come in a measure accidentally under our notice, we think entitled to take high rank in literature. They are manifestly the production of a man of genius, and a well-trained thinker on moral and metaphysical subjects; some of the most difficult and perplexing points in which will be found touched in these poems with the delicate yet decisive touch of a masterly familiarity. We have afforded many illustrations of this in the foregoing extracts, which we could easily have extended. It is delightful to read, to hang over an author, in these days of superficiality, slovenliness, and vulgar mannerism, who does not meditate in order to come before the public, but comes before the public because he has meditated that which he believes worthy of their attention. In the present case, we have reason to know that the gentleman who has shown himself so capable of high excellence in poetry is himself an acute and accomplished critic.

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago when children's books were rare presents, and so were prized, and read, and read again, until the very position of the paragraphs was known by heartI had a little volume given to me at the Soho bazaar, called The Peasants of Chamouni, which told, in a very truthful manner, the sad story of Dr. Hamel's fatal attempt to reach the summit of Mont Blanc in 1820. I dare say that it has long been out of print; but I have still my own old copy by me, and I find it was published by Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy,

in 1823.

My notions of the Alps at that time were very limited. We had a rise near our village called St. Anne's Hill, from which it was fabled that the dome of St. Paul's had once been seen with a telescope, at a distance of some sixteen or seventeen miles, as the crow flew: and its summit was the only high ground I had ever stood upon. Knowing no more than

this, the little book, which I have said had a great air of truth about it, made a deep impression on me; I do not think that The Pilgrim's Progress stood in higher favor. And this impression lasted from year to year. Always devouring the details of any work that touched upon the subject, I at length got a very fair idea, topographical and general, of the Alps. A kind friend gave me an old four-volume edition of de Saussure; and my earliest efforts in French were endeavours to translate this work. I read the adventures of Captain Sherwill and Dr. Clarke in the magazines of our local institution; and finally I got up a small moving panorama of the horrors pertaining to Mont Blanc from Mr. Auldjo's narrative-the best of all that I have read; and this I so painted up and exaggerated in my enthusiasm, that my little sister who was my only audience, but a most admirable one, for she cared not how often I exhibited-would become quite pale with fright.

Time went on, and in 1838 I was entered as a pupil to the Hôtel Dieu,

at Paris. My first love of the Alps had not faded; and when the vacancies came in September, with twelve pounds in my pocket, and an old soldier's knapsack on my back, (bought in a dirty street of the Quartier Latin for two or three francs,) I started from Paris for Chamouni, with another equally humbly-appointed fellow student, now assistant-surgeon in the -th Hussars. It was very late one evening when I arrived at the little village of Sallenches, in Savoy-then a cluster of the humblest chalets, and not as now, since the conflagration, a promising town-very footsore and dusty. At the door of the inn I met old Victor Tairraz, who then kept the Hôtel de Londres at Chamouni, and was the father of the three brothers who now conduct it-one as maître, the second as cook, and the third as head waiter. He hoped when I arrived at Chamouni that I would come to his house; and he gave me a printed card of his prices, with a view of the establishment at the top of it, in which every possible peak of the Mont Blanc chain that could be selected from all points of the compass was collected into one aspect, supposed to be the view from all the bed-room windows of the establishment, in front, at the back, and on either side. I was annoyed at this card; for I could not reconcile, at that golden time, my early dreams of the valley of Chamouni, with the ordinary business of a Star-and-Garterlike hotel.

I well remember what a night of expectation I passed, reflecting that on the early morrow I should see Mont Blanc with my own practical eyes. When I got out of my bed the next morning-I cannot say "awoke,” for I do not think I slept more than I should have done in the third class of a long night train-I went to the window, and the first view I had of the Mont Blanc range burst on me suddenly, through the mist-that wondrous breath-checking coup d'œil, which we all must rave about when we have seen it for the first time—