While Manuel filled the vacant chair of state,
Thrusting Count Valdez from his heritage.
Inherent kindness smiled upon this wrong,
And, taking 'vantage of my gentleness,

They planned their treason, and I smiled amen.
The seeds they sowed have ripened with my years,
And 'gainst a brother they have raised the hand
That should have led him to immortal fame.
Oh! I could love him, but an innate hate,
A secret canker gnawing at my heart,
Envies each joy I had bestowed on him
With willing hand, had fortune smiled on me.
Yet he is innocent. Children unborn,
Issue unconceived, are not more guiltless.
The people love him-it should glad my heart,
Yet every shout rings in my ear a groan.
Nourmahliel loves-and I should give him joy,
Yet every smile that beams to glad his heart
Sends a cold chill of horror into mine,

Making joy-sorrow, laughter, burning tears.
It is unjust, yet I am powerless-

I am not master even of myself.

We must confess that we cannot see the point of the expression, "While Manuel filled the vacant chair of state,"-how it could be vacant while Manuel filled it we cannot imagine; yet it is a mere trifle, and may have a meaning beyond what we perceive.

We have alluded to a fierceness in the character of Nourmahliel rather incompatible with our ideas of female gentleness. The following extract from Act I, Scene 3, speaks for itself:

"There are traitors here

Whose treason beams so boldly from their eyes,
Whose overt acts are black with treachery,
Thou can'st not fail to see their deadly aim.
And yet he feasts them-I would starve them all.
Had he the spirit of my woman's rage,

He'd tear them piecemeal, leaving not the trace
Of their existence 'mid the things of time.
Oh! I would wed this feeble hand of mine
To the dark fiend that o'er destruction smiles,
And blot such villains from the face of earth,
Annihilate their very memories,

Save in the annals of unfading shame."

The soliloquy, of which the following is a portion, has the great fault we have often mentioned; it is too long.

VALDEZ.

Toil! toil and study; and hour after hour
Within the storehouse of thy memory,
Lay up to winter all thy gathered fruits.

Poor child of science, Earth rewards thee not;

The spell that's o'er thee had its birth beyond
The little limits of this transient world.

The wasting tiller of the fertile brain,

Mortal Creator-sage philosopher,

May starve, vain cumberer, while the earth enriched
Smiles to repay his hours of midnight toil.

*

Once found I pleasure in the joys of life;
My soul was filled with earthly melody,
The work of mercy was my spirit's choice,
And I was singled for my charity.

The envious world looked upon me with pride,
Tongue vied with tongue to emulate my praise;
And, when the whisper of the watcher told
The palsied tenant of the dreary couch
That hopeless pined beneath his agony,

Count Valdez comes'-there was a beam of hope,
An unknown stranger on the brow of pain.

In the lone hovel by the bleak hill-side,
Where wan despair in stern attendance sits,
On crowded streets with houseless poverty,
Ay, in the cell of penitence and crime,

These feet have wandered, and these limbs reclined,
This tongue with censure mingled words of peace,
Gilded with hope, reproof came gratefully,

And on the ocean of the passion's strife
Bade rage be quiet and remorse be still;
And to uplift the fallen, aid the weak,
Became the holy burden of my time!

The world was thankless, and ungrateful men
Laughed into scorn the errand of my life.
Still I persisted-still I labored on

In mercy's vineyard, 'till my very kin,

They in whom nature should have fostered love-
(Why, why this undeserved agony,

Why, why, oh God, these unremittent pangs!)
Ay, even they, whose blood within my veins

Is boiling o'er at their ingratitude,

They fell upon me-crushed my spirit down;
This was the zenith of my misery,

It was enough, their work was finished then:

The last sad stroke fell heavy on my heart,

Love, Hope were vanquished, and confusion thence
Held its wild orgies o'er the mental wreck,
Till vengeance fell upon the tempting field
And lighted all in its great sacrifice!

A pretty thought is expressed in the following:

CALIPPUS.

Lords, we'll indulge in revelry till morn,
The rising sun shall find our goblets.

ZAIERA.

Dry!

And we like bubbles o'er the ruby sea,

Shall ride as thoughtless as the silver wave!

There is also much truth, and no little poetry, in the remarks of Nour

mahliel:

There is a thing that men call Honesty,

'Tis a chimera-phantom of the brain,
will-o'-wisp of the beclouded mind,

Which leadeth man in fancy's ideal realm,
Yet ever keepeth a respectful space

Between itself and its poor votaries.

Show me the man, that I may worship him,

That e'er hath reached this spirit of his dreams;
Who lives for others-sacrifices self-

And makes this Honesty his rule of life."

18

We will conclude our extract with the story of Heclah, told by her to
Nourmahliel, who grieves for the death of Valdivira:

"Thou hast not known the history of my life,
Nor dreamed my being had a brighter place
Than that in which we have so often met.
(Showing a casket of jewels.)

Look on these jewels; once, these orient pearls
Vied to outshine the beauty of my brow,
And vainly urged their peerless purity.
These clustered rubies, diamonds so bright,
And changeling opal, with their gathered hues,
All were eclipsed by nature's lavish hand,
That blended here its matchless coloring,
Casting my lot among the beautiful,

Made the bright Lelia to be flattered-lost!

*

As thou art now, was blooming Lelia fair,
Singled from thousands but to be admired,
A thing for men to look upon and love,
Face, form and feature, nature's proudest work.
The breezes toying with her tresses, seemed
But to spare the rudeness of their force,
And play with them more gently than the rest.
Sorrow ne'er came to blight her thoughtlessness,
Pain never checked the wildness of her laugh,
And care ne'er mingled with her merriment.
As beauty sat unrivalled on her cheek,
So grace enchanted paid its tribute there.

Oh! there was one, upon whose guilty soul
Hang all the curses I have given birth;
May he be bowed beneath the weight of years,
And live to creep through an unhonored age
Of ceaseless torture to a lingering death.

Or-may he fall at zenith of his pride,

His body, poisoned with some loathsome plague,
His mind disturb'd with memories of the past-
I will not curse him-justice waits him there.

One that smiles on thee,
E'en as he smiled destruction upon me.
His hand consigned the living unto death,
Made thee a mourner at the bridal hour,
To work the end of his dark purposes:
King Manuel fell, and others of his kin;

Would'st thou believe Count Valdez were so base?
Could'st thou conceive such abject heartlessness?
Can'st picture to thy mind so dark a fiend?

THE LATE ELECTION.-NEW-YORK POLITICS. TAE election is over.

WASHINGTON Hunt is chosen governor of the State of New York by a majority of votes; but a majority so small, and for many days so doubtful and precarious, as scarcely to furnish for his friends m

of congratulation at the final result. The language of the king of Epirus, on his first triumph over the Romans, might be appropriately used by Mr. Hunt: “ Another such a victory, and I am undone,

Besides the election of their governor, however, the opposition have secured in the state other and more substantial triumphs. The new Assembly is overwhelmingly whig; the Senate, all the members of which hold over, has a whig majority of two, thus giving our opponents a large majority on joint ballot in the legislature, and securing the return of a whig to the Senate of the United States, in place of our present able, indefatigable and patriotic member, Daniel S. DICKINSON. Lamentable as this result no doubt is, in our view of the case, it was inevitable. Perhaps it is an idle waste of time now to discuss the means which have been used, and to indulge in any speculations as to the causes that have produced it. We cannot, however, resist the inclination to do so, and briefly to throw out a few suggestions that occur on a careful review of the late political campaign.

And first it may be remarked, that from an examination of the result, it is impossible to say where the real majority lies, or which party has, in fact, carried the State. The majority of the representatives to the Legislature, elected by Assembly Districts, are whigs. The Congressional delegation, elected by Counties or Congressional Districts, is equally divided-seventeen being nominally democrats, and seventeen nominally whigs; Messrs. Church, Benton, and Angell, three of the candidates on the democratic state ticket, are elected by handsome and decisive majorities. Mr. Mather, the candidate for Canal Commissioner, barely runs in, and by a most meagre majority—while Seymour, the Governor, is defeated.

The first and most obvious inference from this result is, that the Democratic Party has not been, during the canvass, really united. The State ticket has, no doubt, been pretty generally supported by both “sections of the party,” (using a somewhat ambiguous, though common phrase,) but the result in the Assembly Districts proves that the union has been a mere truce—an agreement upon candidates, not generally upon principles—a coalition, not a thorough and effectual consolidation of the party upon the national platform.

It is unnecessary to go into the history already but too well known of the schism created by certain designing demagogues and disappointed aspirants in the Democratic Party, on that most contemptible of all modern humbugs—the lana caprina of Mr. Benton--the “Wilmot Proviso." These men, having at Buffalo consummated their political perfidy-having erected altars to unknown gods, and kindled upon them strange fires, drew with them in their secession from the party such a proportion of the masses," as to ensure the defeat of the Baltimore nominees for the pre

4

VOL, XXVII.NO. VI.

sidency, and thus accomplished the sole motive which could have influenced the leaders in the crusade in which they engaged. The efforts which have since been made to reunite the party upon broad and national principles—to purge it entirely of the anti-slavery and sectional elements which the supporter of the northern man with southern principles” had labored to instil

, have been no doubt honestly made, but we cannot say that they have been successful. The injury was too deep for so rapid a cure. The wound has been cicatrized, not entirely healed. The State Convention of last year, which sent out the first union or coalition ticket, was, in our judgment, a failure. We should pronounce its course a political error. Í'he resolution of Mr. CHATFIELD, on the slavery question, which was adopted as the basis of union, was indefinite and vague. It might be interpreted both ways, like the words of the Delphian Oracle--but it established nothing, and settled nothing. We presume, however, it accomplished the object of the mover, who was placed upon the ticket and elected Attorney-General, by the aid of the anti-rent vote, while his colleague, Mr. Lott, for Comptroller—a national democratwas defeated. În our judgment that Convention should have reaffirmed, in its fullest extent, the national democratic doctrine upon the slavery question, leaving the seceders to come in upon the platform or stand apart, in pharisaic complaisance, as they deemed proper.

The mischief has been put partially counteracted by the late Convention of this year. The resolutions of that Convention, introduced by Mr. O'Conor, of New York, lay down a broader and more definite platform. The first two are as follows:

1. Resolved, That the Democratic Party of New York are proud to avow their fraternity with, and their devotion to the great principles of the Democratic Party of the Union, as declared at the National Democratic Convention held at Baltimore in 1840, '44 and '48, and they look forward in hope and confidence to the complete triumph of the party in 1852.

2. Resolved, That we congratulate the country upon the recent settlement by Congress, of the questions which have unhappily divided the people of these Statos.

This was striking at the very foundation of the Buffalo platform. The few in the Convention who were unwilling to walk with Mr. O'Conor

arm in arm to the funeral,” opposed these resolutions—the second one not being, as was alleged, " historically correct.” The great body of the Convention, however, sustained them—some twenty only voting with Mr. J. Van Buren in the negative—not enough to form even the nucleus of another Herkimer gathering. The Abolition organs of the minority, the New-York Evening Post and Albany Atlas, publicly ridiculed and repu. diated the resolutions—thus continuing alive the agitation, denouncing the principles upon which the very candidates they professed to support were nominated, and voting the ticket with a mental reservation. Mr. WAGER, of Oneida, moved an amendment to the resolutions, approbating the course of Daniel S. DICKInson in the Senate. Mr. Hart, a warm political friend of Mr. Dickinson, now elected to Congress from New-York, moved the previous question, we believe, under a misapprehension, sup, posing it would bring a direct vote on the amendment. The President of the Convention, applying the rule of the New-York Assembly, decided that the previous question cut off the aprendment. Here lay another