curses, The spurn of menials whom this hand had fed... Nor food, nor fire, nor raiment, and his child Or wed with him---or--see thy father perish. not Though thou hast made me, woman, very wretched Though thou hast made me---but I will not curse thee Hear the last prayer of Bertram's broken heart, Of thy rank wishes the full scope be on thee--- ness-- May he thou'st wed, be kind and generous to thee, Bertram extorts a promise from Imo. gine to meet him under the castle walls, and yield him an hour's intercourse. The appointment is kept, and in a wretched moment the stain of guilt is added to the sorrows of the unhappy wife. Immediately after the parting, Bertram hears that Lord Aldobrand had received a commission from his sovereign to hunt down the outlawed Bertram. From this moment he forms an inexorable determination to murder (for whatever gloss is given to the act, in reference to the manner, place, and time of doing it, no other name could properly describe it) his devoted enemy. His horrid purpose is declared to the wretched wife, whose pitiable and mad despair, on being unable to move him from his purpose, is certainly a most distressing picture of female anguish. The murder is committed; and all that succeeds is the utter misery, madness, and death of Imogine, and the death of the Count by his own hands. That there is much deep distress in the story of this tragedy, very considerable force in the expression of feeling and passion, and both vigour and beauty in the imagery and diction, we are very ready to admit; but in dignity, propriety, consistency, and contrast, in the finer movements of virtuous tenderness, the delicacies of female sensibility, the conflict of struggling emotions, heroical elevation of sentiment, and moral sublimity of action, this play is extremely deficient. The hero is that same mischievous compound of attractiveness and turpitude, of love and crime, of chivalry and brutality, which in the poems of Lord Byron and his imitators has been too long successful in captivating weak fancies and outraging moral truth. Let but your bero be well-favoured, wo-begone, mysterious, desperately brave, and, above (Bertram, p. 25---30. all, desperately in love, and the interAt the next meeting of this luckless est of the female reader is too apt to be pair, which is at the convent of St. secured in his behalf, however bloody, Anselm, after much painful conflict, dark, and revengeful, however hostile ness, Writhe in detesting consciousness of falsehood--- Who cannot love the father of her child, May ruined Bertram's pledge hiss in thine ear Joy to the proud dame of St. Aldrobrand--- towers. towards God and man, he may display fatigue of a journey. All this he rehimself in his principles and actions. The solves, and the deed is done, without whole theory and secret of this poeti- any tender visitings of nature, and with cal philosophy is amusingly detailed in less compunction or conflict in his bothe epilogue to the piece, from which, som than Milton's devil expressed on small as is our general esteem for these the eve of destroying the felicity of literary performances, we must, for the Paradise. And yet, says the epilogue, sake of the profound ethical maxims it in apology for all this, contains, exhibit an extract to the "Bertram! ye cry, a ruthless blood-stain'd I know thou comest for evil, but its purport Ber. Guess it, and spare me." (a long pause, there; But what my fears do indistinctly guess Ber. Dost thou not hear it in my very silence? Ber. (throwing his dagger “on the ground"} The cardinal crime on which the story turns is the fatal act of infidelity committed under the walls of the castle of Aldobrand. And this crime is proposed and assented to by the contract. ing parties, in a manner as little consistent with common modesty in woman, and common generosity in man, as can well be imagined. But if that which ought most to soften a man towards the sufferings of a woman be the consciousness that he himself has been the cause of it, then is this Bertram one of the worst specimens of a man and a soldier that we have yet encountered in the course of our experience. After crop- "I will arouse the castle, rouse the dead, ping this fair flower, he treads it under To save my husband; villain, murderer, monfoot, and scatters in the dust its blasted Dare the bayed lioness, but fly from me. beauty. With ruthless delight, and de-. moniac malice, he spurns the soft and melting prayers in her husband's behalf, whom he resolves to murder in his own mansion, in the presence or hearing of his wife and child, and, as it seems, while he rests on his couch after the He'll curse the with his pardon. ster, "Ber. Go, wake the castle with thy frantic cries: Those cries that tell my secret, blazon thine. Yea, pour it on thine husband's blasted ear. mercy. "Ber. No, hope not such a fate of mercy from him; “And would his death-fixed eye be terrible "As its ray bent in love on her that wronged him? "And would his dying groan affright thine ear "Like words of peace spoke to thy guilt-in vain? "Imo. I care not, I am reckless, let me perish. “Ber. No, thou must live amidst a hissing world, "A thing that mothers warn their daughters from, "A thing the menials that do tend thee scorn. "Whom when the good do name, they tell their beads, "And when the wicked think of, they do triumph; "Canst thou encounter this? “Imo. I must encounter it-I have deserved it; "Begone, or my next cry shall wake the dead. "Ber. Hear me. "Imo. No parley, tempter; fiend, avaunt. “Ber. Thy son.—(She stands stupified.) Go, take him trembling in thy hand of shame, "A victim to the shrine of public scorn "Poor boy! his sire's worst foe might pity him, "Albeit his mother will not “Banished from noble halls, and knightly con "I plead but with my agonies and tears-" Kind, gentle Bertram, my beloved Bertram, For thou wert gentle once, and once beloved, Have mercy on me Oh, thou couldst not think it flooking up, and seeing no relenting in his face, she starts up wildly) By heaven" and all its host," he shall not perish. Ber. "By hell and all its host," he shall not live. "This is no transient flash of fugitive passion"His death hath been my life for years of misery "Which else I had not lived "Upon that thought, and not on food, I fed; "Upon that thought, and not on sleep, I rested "I come to do the deed that must be done "Nor thou, nor sheltering angels could prevent me." Imo. "But man shall, miscreant"-help! Ber. Thou callest in vain The armed vassals all are far from succour Following St. Anselm's votarists to the conMy band of blood are darkening in their half "Wouldst have him butchered by their ruffian hands "That wait my bidding? "Imo (falling on the ground)—Fell and hor rible "I'm sealed, shut down in ransomless perdition. “Ber. Fear not, my vengeance will not yield its prey. "He shall fall nobly, by my hand shall fall"But still and dark the summons of his fate, "So winds the coiled serpent round his victim. Ill as the lady Imogine was used by her sanguinary and brutal lover, we cannot say that her own character is such as to entitle her to much respect. The author has endeavoured in a very lame manner to support her constancy in the present instance clumsily enough by the pretext, not a very new one, and inserted, of a starving parent whose life was saved by the sacrifice; and after this first sacrifice to convenience or exigency, not unlike those which, in the coarse arrangements of ordinary life, parents are apt to require of their daughters, and daughters are apt very cheerfully to submit to, she makes another voluntary sacrifice of her honour, her husband, and her child, to another sort of convenience or exigency which is created by the urgency of nature or the stress of passion. The events are of ordinary occurrence and of ephemeral frequency in vicious society; and though the author has raised them to and describing them, and the vivacious tragic dignity by his manner of telling touches of a very glowing pencil, yet the real substratum of the tale is one of those turbulent triumphs of passion over duty, which mar the peace of families Commons. and make the practicers in Doctors' That this murderous fellow of a count interest our sympathies, is but too apis meant to engage our admiration and parent. After Bertram bas revealed to the Prior his bloody trade as the lead. er of a banditti, and his yet more horpurposes, the holy man, as he is called, thus addresses him : rible Prior. High-hearted man, sublime even in thy guilt. And again, after the horrible murder, which certainly had as little sublimity in it as the murders of Radcliffe High- tender object of the love of both its way, the saintly Prior meets the bloody Bertram with this exclamation: Prior. This majesty of guilt doth awe my spi rit-- Is it the embodied fiend who tempted him Never was a murderer of a man in parents, stands pretty much without defence, even at the bar of that tribuna! where love holds its partial sessions. 'On the stage there should be no tampering with the Majesty of Heaven. Neither appeals, or addresses, nor power let off so well. He walks abroad prayers, nor invocations to the King of kings, nor images taken from his revealed word, or from his providences, a chartered ruffian; and he who but a little before had been proclaimed as an outlaw, and his life declared to be for- or his attributes, can be decorously or feited, is left, after the assassination of safely introduced on the stage, or adopted for the purposes of mere poetithe greatest and most honourable man cal effect, in the country, to hold a long parley with monks and friars, and at last to die at his own leisure, and in his own manner. What occasioned the fall of Count Bertram and his banishment is not disclosed, but we are at liberty to suppose it was rebellious and treasonable conduct. The Prior, who seems to have known him well, alludes to the similarity of his case to that of the "star-bright apostate;" and the main ground of his implacable hostility to Lord Aldobrand is the patriotic office with which he is invested of preventing him, if possible, from infesting the coast as a marauder, and chasing him out of the woods wherein he and his banditti were secreting themselves. It does not appear that Aldobrand had vowed his destruction, but on the contrary the Prior thus advises him, "Flee to the castle of St. Aldobrand, His power may give thee safety.” or pretended situations. Objects of such tremendous reality are not the proper appendages of fiction. They were intended only for hallowed uses, and not for entertainment or ornament. Upon these grounds it seems to us to be a practice that cannot be justified by any prescriptive usage of the drama, to blend the pure idea of Heaven and Heaven's King with the corrupt display of human passions, and representations of earthly turmoils and distractions. We do not mark the play before us as peculiarly deserving of censure in this respect; but the passage which follows has given us the opportunity of boldly declaring ourselves on this subject, whatever credit we may lose by it in the opinions of the more liberal critics of these times. "Imo. Aye, heaven and earth do cry, impos. sible. The shuddering angels round the eternal throne 'So that upon the whole there seems to be a want of a sufficient provocation 'We take our leave of Christabel and to the horrid crime which Bertram com- Bertram, but not without adverting, as mitted, except a tendency by nature in justice we ought, to the great disto acts of blood and cruelty be suppo- parity between these productions in sed to have pre-existed in his mind, the merits of the compositions. The and to have prepared the way to the poem which has been denominated villany which followed. And when "wild and singularly original and beauall this is properly weighed, the despe- tiful," is, in our judgment, a weak and rate love towards such a restless ill-dis- singularly nonsensical and affected perposed person in the mind of a gentle formance; but the play of Bertram is lady, unsubdued by a union with a kind a production of undoubted genius. The and noble husband, distinguished by descriptive as well as the pathetic force public fidelity and private worth, the of many passages is admirable, and the fruit of which union was a child, the rhythm and cadence of the verse is musical, lofty, and full of tragic pomp. lent itself to the trickery of Lord Byron's cast of characters, and employed itself in presenting virtue and vice in such delusive colours, and unappropriate forms.' As the reader has observed, we have many serious objections to the piece, and we cannot but greatly regret that a mind like that of its author should have ART. 4. Airs of Palestine, a Poem. By John Pierpont, Esq. Baltimore. B. Eddes. SOON after the discovery of America, citizens, to names that would adorn the and when little was known of it, with anuals of any age or nation; and in certainty, but its existence, a theory point of general information, intelliwas started, by some of the philosophers gence, ingenuity, and enterprise, we of the old world, highly derogatory to dread comparison with none. the importance of their new acquisition; It is true we have produced but few -which was no less than that this authors;-yet fewer bad ones, in proContinent was a sort of after-creation, portion, than is generally the case. As when nature was in her dotage; and we do not often see any but the more that in all her efforts in this hemisphere, approved works that appear abroad, we she betrayed manifest indications of imbecility. A notion so suited to flatter European pride readily obtained; and as more pains are usually taken to circulate calumny than to refute it, the belief may possibly yet prevail where it was propagated. are led to judge of the remainder by these specimens. From fallacious premises, it is not wonderful that we should draw a false conclusion. Probably not one work in ten, that is published in Great Britain, survives the first edition, and scarcely one in ten of this decimation ever reaches this country. We have little idea of the number of volumes that fall daily still-born from the press in the British metropolis. The philosophers, however, happened, for once, to be mistaken,-the fact being directly the reverse of the hypotheses. The aspect of nature is both grander and more beautiful in America, But still, we are reproached because -her mien is more majestic, her fea- we have produced so few authors,—let tures are more varied and more lovely, their merits be as they may. We susher disposition is kinder, and her pro- pect that the old leaven of the original ducts are more liberal and diversified, error in regard to this country is at the than in any other quarter of the globe; bottom of this argument, which is urged --and whatever grade, in the scale of by cavillers. The reason of this alleged, intellect, may be assigned to the abori- and admitted deficiency, is perfectly gines, we can now boast a race of men who are able to vindicate their claims to the prerogative of talent. obvious, and in no degree impeaches our capacity. Books are the manufacture of the mind;-and precisely the We have no reason to blush at the same reason which has led us to rely character of our countrymen. We can on foreign skill and industry for many point, in the catalogue of our illustrious other fabrics, has induced us to import |