Is time for union and For family disputes.

for action, not

While you were tortured,
Could I be calm? Think you that I have heard
This fellow's tale without some feeling?-You
Have taught me feeling for you and myself;
For whom or what else did you ever teach it?
Sieg. Oh! my dead father's curse! 't is working now.
Ulr. Let it work on! the grave will keep it down!
Ashes are feeble foes: it is more easy

To baffle such, than countermine a mole,
Which winds its blind but living path beneath you.
Yet hear me still!-If you condemn me, yet
Remember who hath taught me (once too often)
To listen to him! Who proclaim'd to me

That there were crimes made venial by the occasion?
That passion was our nature? that the goods
Of Heaven waited on the goods of fortune?
Who show'd me his humanity secured
By his nerves only? Who deprived me of
All power to vindicate myself and race
In open day? By his disgrace which stamp'd
(It might be) bastardy on me, and on
Himself a felon's brand! The man who is
At once both warm and weak invites to deeds
He longs to do, but dare not. Is it strange

That I should act what you could think? We have

done

He

With right and wrong; and now must only ponder
Upon effects, not causes. Stralenheim,
Whose life I saved from impulse, as, unknown,
I would have saved a peasant's or a dog's, I slew
Known as our foe-but not from vengeance.
Was a rock in our way which I cut through,
As doth the bolt, because it stood between us
And our true destination--but not idly.
As stranger I preserved him, and he owed me
His life: when due, I but resumed the debt.
He, you, and I stood o'er a gulf wherein

(1) "I am ready to allow every fair license to dramatic verse, but still it must have more than the bare typographic impress of metre. Ten syllables, counted by finger and thumb, will not do. None of us imagine

Day and Martin,

To prevent fraud, request purchasers to
Look on the signature on the patent Blacking
Bottles, etc.-

to be versification, and the great majority of the lines in this tragedy are just as harmonious-e. g.- Ul. He too must be silenced.-Wer. How so?- Ul. As Stralenheim is. Are you so dull as never to have hit on this before? When we met in the garden, what except discovery in the act could make me know his death? Or had the prince's household been then summoned, would the cry for the police been left to such a stranger? [Pretty English this last sentence, by the by!] Or should I have loitered on the way? Or could you, Werner, the object of the baron's hate and fears, have fled-unless by many an hour before suspicion woke? I sought and fathom'd you, doubting if you were

Ulr. Let us have done with that which cankers Familiar feuds and vain recriminations [life-Of things which cannot be undone. We have No more to learn or hide: I know no fear, And have within these very walls men who (Although you know them not) dare venture all things. You stand high with the state; what passes here Will not excite her too great curiosity: Keep your own secret, keep a steady eye, Stir not, and speak not;-leave the rest to me: We must have no third babblers thrust between us. [Exit ULRIC.

Sieg. (solus.) Am I awake? are these my father's halls?

And yon-my son? My son! mine! who have ever
Abhorr'd both mystery and blood, and yet
Am plunged into the deepest hell of both!
I must be speedy, or more will be shed-
The Hungarian's! Ulric-he hath partisans,
It seems: I might have guess'd as much. Oh fool!
Wolves prowl in company. He hath the key
(As I too) of the opposite door which leads
Into the turret. Now then! or once more
To be the father of fresh crimes, no less
Than of the criminal! Ho! Gabor! Gabor!
[Exit into the turret, closing the door after him.

Let it not be more fatal still!-Begone! Gab. By the same path I enter'd? Sieg.

But loiter not in Prague;-you do not know
With whom you have to deal.

Gab.
I know too well—
And knew it ere yourself, unhappy sire!
Farewell!

[Exit GABOR. Sieg. (solus and listening.) He hath clear'd the staircase. Ah! I hear

The door sound loud behind him! He is safe!
Safe! Oh, my father's spirit!-I am faint-

[He leans down upon a stone seat, near the wall of the tower, in a drooping posture.

Ulr.

Leave that unto me.

I am not alone; nor merely the vain heir
Of your domains; a thousand, ay, ten thousand
Swords, hearts, and hands, are mine.
Sieg.

The foresters! With whom the Hungarian found you first at Frankfort!

Ulr. Yes--men-who are worthy of the name! Go tell

drawn.

Ulr. Despatch!--he's there! Lud. The count, my lord! Ulr. (recognising SLEGENDORF.) You here, sir! Sieg. Yes if you want another victim, strike! Ulr. (seeing him stript of his jewels.) Where is the ruffian who hath plunder'd you? Vassals, despatch in search of him! You see "T was as I said-the wretch hath stript my father Of jewels which might form a prince's heir-loom! Away! I'll follow you forthwith.

[Exeunt all but SIEGENDORF and ULRIC. What's this?

With Wallenstein!

Ida (taking ULRIC's hand). Who shall dare say this of Ulric?

Sieg. Ida, beware! there's blood upon that hand. Ida (stooping to kiss it). I'd kiss it off, though it Sieg.

It is so!

Ulr. Away! it is your father's!
Ida.

And I have loved this man!

[were mine. [Exit ULRIC Oh, great God!

[IDA falls senseless-JOSEPHINE stands speechless with horror.

Sieg.

The wretch hath slain Them both!-My Josephine! we are now alone! Would we had ever been so!-All is over For me!-Now open wide, my sire, thy grave; Thy curse hath dug it deeper for thy son In mine! The race of Siegendorf is past!

I.

THE "good old times"—all times when old are good-
Are gone; the present might be if they would;
Great things have been, and are, and greater still
Want little of mere mortals but their will:
A wider space, a greener field, is given
To those who play their "tricks before high Heaven."
I know not if the angels weep, but men
Have wept enough-for what?—to weep again!

II.

All is exploded-be it good or bad.
Reader! remember when thou wert a lad,
Then Pitt was all; or, if not all, so much,
His very rival almost deem'd him such. (2)
We, we have seen the intellectual race
Of giants stand, like Titans, face to face-
Athos and Ida, with a dashing sea
Of eloquence between, which flow'd all free,
As the deep billows of the Ægean roar
Betwixt the Hellenic and the Phrygian shore.
But where are they-the rivals!-a few feet
Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet. (3)
How peaceful and how powerful is the grave
Which hushes all! a calm unstormy wave
Which oversweeps the world. The theme is old
Of "dust to dust;" but half its tale untold:
Time tempers not its terrors-still the worm
Winds its cold folds, the tomb preserves its form,
Varied above, but still alike below;
The urn may shine, the ashes will not glow,
Though Cleopatra's mummy cross the sea
O'er which from empire she lured Antony;
Though Alexander's urn a show be grown
On shores he wept to conquer, though unknown-
How vain, how worse than vain, at length appear
The madman's wish, the Macedonian's tear!
He wept for worlds to conquer-half the earth
Knows not his name, or but his death, and birth,
(1) This poem was written by Lord Byron at Genoa, in
the early part of the year 1823; and published in London,
by Mr. John Hunt. Its authenticity was much disputed at
the time.-L. E.

(2) Mr. Fox used to say-" I never want a word, but Pitt never wants the word." The story occurs in many memoirs of the time.-L. E.

(3) The grave of Mr. Fox, in Westminster Abbey, is within eighteen inches of that of Mr. Pitt:

Where-taming thought to human pride!—

The mighty chiefs sleep side by side.

Drop upon Fox's grave the tear,

'T will trickle to his rival's bier :

O'er Pitt's the mournful requiem sound,
And Fox's shall the notes rebound:
The solemn echo seems to cry-
'Here let their discord with them die;
Speak not for those a separate doom,
Whom fate made brothers in the tomb;
But search the land of living men,
Where wilt thou find their like again?'"
Sir Walter Scott.-L. E.

And desolation; while his native Greece
Hath all of desolation, save its peace.

He "wept for worlds to conquer!" he who ne'er
Conceived the globe he panted not to spare!
With even the busy Northern Isle unknown,
Which holds his urn, and never knew his throne. (4)
III.

But where is he, the modern, mightier far,
Who, born no king, made monarchs draw his car;
The new Sesostris, whose unharness'd kings, (5)
Freed from the bit, believe themselves with wings,
And spurn the dust o'er which they crawl'd of late,
Chain'd to the chariot of the chieftain's state?
Yes! where is he, the champion and the child
Of all that's great or little, wise or wild?
Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were
thrones?

Whose table earth-whose dice were human bones?
Behold the grand result in yon lone isle, (6)
And, as thy nature urges, weep or smile.
Sigh to behold the eagle's lofty rage
Reduced to nibble at his narrow cage;
Smile to survey the queller of the nations
Now daily squabbling o'er disputed rations;
Weep to perceive him mourning, as he dines,
O'er curtail'd dishes and o'er stinted wines;
O'er petty quarrels upon petty things:

Is this the man who scourged or feasted kings?
Behold the scales in which his fortune hangs,
A surgeon's (7) statement, and an earl's (8) harangues!
A bust delay'd, (9) a book refused, can shake
The sleep of him who kept the world awake.
Is this indeed the tamer of the great,
Now slave of all could tease or irritate-
The paltry gaoler (10) and the prying spy,
The staring stranger with his note-book nigh? (11)
Plunged in a dungeon, he had still been great;
How low, how little, was this middle state,

(4) A sarcophagus, of breccia, supposed to have contained the dust of Alexander, which came into the pos session of the English army, in consequence of the capitulation of Alexandria, in February, 1802, was presented by George III. to the British Museum.-L. E.

(5) Sesostris is said, by Diodorus, to have had his chariot drawn by eight vanquished sovereigns:—

Between a prison and a palace, where
How few could feel for what he had to bear!
Vain his complaint,—my lord presents his bill,
His food and wine were doled out duly still:
Vain was his sickness, never was a clime
So free from homicide-to doubt's a crime!
And the stiff surgeon, who maintain'd his cause,
Hath lost his place, and gain'd the world's applause. (1)
But smile-though all the pangs of brain and heart
Disdain, defy, the tardy aid of art;

Though, save the few fond friends and imaged face
Of that fair boy his sire shall ne'er embrace,
None stand by his low bed-though even the mind
Be wavering, which long awed and awes mankind:
Smile for the fetter'd eagle breaks his chain,
And higher worlds than this are his again.(2)
IV.

How, if that soaring spirit still retain

A conscious twilight of his blazing reign,
How must be smile, on looking down, to see
The little that he was and sought to be!
What though his name a wider empire found
Than his ambition, though with scarce a bound?
Though first in glory, deepest in reverse,
He tasted empire's blessings and its curse;
Though kings, rejoicing in their late escape
From chains, would gladly be their tyrant's ape;
How must be smile, and turn to yon lone grave,
The proudest sea-mark that o'ertops the wave!
What though his gaoler, duteous to the last,
Scarce deem'd the coffin's lead could keep him fast,
Refusing one poor line along the lid,

To date the birth and death of all it hid;
That name shall hallow the ignoble shore,
A talisman to all save him who bore:

The fleets that sweep before the eastern blast
Shall hear their sea-boys hail it from the mast;
When Victory's Gallic column shall but rise,
Like Pompey's pillar, in a desert's skies,
The rocky isle that holds or held his dust
Shall crown the Atlantic like the hero's bust,
And mighty nature o'er his obsequies
Do more than niggard envy still denies.

(1) The circumstances under which Mr. O'Meara's dis missal from his Majesty's service took place will suffice to show how little "the stiff surgeon" merited the applause of Lord Byron. In a letter to the Admiralty Board by Mr. O'M., dated Oct. 28, 1818, there occurred the following pa. ragraph: In the third interview which Sir Hudson Lowe had with Napoleon Bonaparte, in May, 1816, he proposed to the latter to send me away, and to replace me by Mr. Baxter, who had been several years surgeon in the Corsican Rangers. Failing in this attempt, he adopted the resolution of manifesting great confidence in me, by loading me with civilities, inviting me constantly to dine with him, conversing for hours together with me alone, both in his own house and grounds, and at Longwood, either in my own room, or under the trees and elsewhere. On some of these occasions he made to me observations upon the benefit which would result to Europe from the death of Napoleon Bonaparte; of which event he spoke in a manner which, considering his situation and mine, was peculiarly distressing to me." The Secretary to the Admiralty was instructed to answer in these terms:-"It is impossible to doubt the meaning which this passage was intended to convey; and my Lords can as little doubt that the insinuation is a calumnious falsehood: but if it were true, and if so horrible a suggestion were made to you, directly or indirectly, it was your bounden duty not to have lost a moment in communicating it to the Admiral on the spot, or to the Secretary of State, or to their Lord. ships. An overture so monstrous in itself, and so deeply involving, not merely the personal character of the go

But what are these to him? Can glory's lust
Touch the freed spirit or the fetter'd dust?
Small care hath he of what his tomb consists;
Nought if he sleeps-nor more if he exists:
Alike the better-seeing shade will smile
On the rude cavern of the rocky isle,
As if his ashes found their latest home

In Rome's Pantheon or Gaul's mimic dome.

He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
Of this last consolation, though so scant;
Her honour, fame, and faith demand his bones
To rear above a pyramid of thrones;
Or carried onward in the battle's van,

To form, like Guesclin's (3) dust, her talisman.
But be it as it is-the time may come

His name shall beat the alarm, like Ziska's drum.(4)
V.

O heaven! of which he was in power a feature;
O earth! of which he was a noble creature;
Thou isle! to be remember'd long and well,
That saw'st the unfledged eaglet chip his shell!
Ye Alps, which view'd him in his dawning flights
Hover, the victor of a hundred fights!

Thou Rome, who saw'st thy Cæsar's deeds outdone!
Alas! why pass'd he too the Rubicon-
The Rubicon of man's awaken'd rights,
To herd with vulgar kings and parasites?
Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,
And shook within their pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear;
While the dark shades of forty ages stood
Like startled giants by Nile's famous flood; (5)
Or from the pyramid's tall pinnacle
Beheld the desert peopled, as from hell,

With clashing hosts, who strew'd the barren sand
To re-manure the uncultivated land!
Spain! which, a moment mindless of the Cid,
Beheld his banner flouting thy Madrid!
Austria! which saw thy twice-ta'en capital
Twice spared, to be the traitress of his fall!
Ye race of Frederic!--Frederics but in name
And falsehood-heirs to all except his fame;

vernor, but the honour of the nation, and the important interest committed to his charge, should not have been reserved in your own breast for two years, to be produced at last, not (as it would appear) from a sense of public duty, but in furtherance of your own personal hostility against the governor. Either the charge is in the last degree false and calumnious, or you can have no possible excuse for having hitherto suppressed it. In either case, and without adverting to the general tenour of your conduct, as stated in your letter, my Lords consider you to be an improper person to continue in his Majesty's service; and they have directed your name to be erased from the list of naval surgeons accordingly."-L. E.

(2) Bonaparte died the 5th of May, 1821.-L. E.

(3) Guesclin, constable of France, died in the midst of his triumphs, before Châteauneuf de Randon, in 1380. The English garrison, which had conditioned to surrender at a certain time, marched out the day after his death; and the commander respectfully laid the keys of the fortress on the bier, so that it might appear to have surrendered to his ashes.

(4) John Ziska a distinguished leader of the Hussites. It is recorded of him, that, in dying, he ordered his skin to be made the covering of a drum. The Bohemians hold his memory in superstitious veneration.-L. E.

(5) At the battle of the Pyramids, in July, 1798, Bonaparte said," Soldiers from the summit of yonder pyramids forty ages behold you."-L. E.

Who crush'd at Jena, crouch'd at Berlin, fell
First, and but rose to follow! Ye who dwell
Where Kosciusko dwelt, remembering yet
The unpaid amount of Catherine's bloody debt!
Poland! o'er which the avenging angel pass'd,
But left thee, as he found thee, still a waste,
Forgetting all thy still-enduring claim,
Thy lotted people and extinguish'd name,
Thy sigh for freedom, thy long-flowing tear,
That sound that crashes in the tyrant's ear-
Kosciusko! On-on-on-the thirst of war
Gasps for the gore of serfs and of their czar.
The half-barbaric Moscow's minarets
Gleam in the sun, but 'tis a sun that sets!
Moscow thou limit of his long career,

For which rude Charles had wept his frozen tear
To see in vain-he saw thee-how? with spire
And palace fuel to one common fire.

To this the soldier lent his kindling match,
To this the peasant gave his cottage thatch,
To this the merchant flung his hoarded store,
The prince his hall-and Moscow was no more!
Sublimest of volcanos! Etna's flame

Pales before thine, and quenchless Hecla's tame;
Vesuvius shows his blaze, a usual sight
For gaping tourists, from his hackney'd height:
Thou stand'st alone unrivall'd, till the fire
To come, in which all empires shall expire!

Thou other element! as strong and stern,
To teach a lesson conquerors will not learn!-
Whose icy wing flapp'd o'er the faltering foe,
Till fell a hero with each flake of snow;
How did thy numbing beak and silent fang
Pierce, till hosts perish'd with a single pang!
In vain shall Seine look up along his banks
For the gay thousands of his dashing ranks!
In vain shall France recall beneath her vines
Her youth-their blood flows faster than her wines;
Or stagnant in their human ice remains
In frozen mummies on the Polar plains.
In vain will Italy's broad sun awaken
Her offspring chill'd; its beams are now forsaken.
Of all the trophies gather'd from the war,
What shall return?--the conqueror's broken car!
The conqueror's yet unbroken heart! Again
The horn of Roland sounds, and not in vain.
Lutzen, where fell the Swede of victory,(1)
Beholds him conquer, but, alas! not die:
Dresden surveys three despots fly once more
Before their sovereign,-sovereign as before;
But there exhausted Fortune quits the field,
And Leipsic's treason bids the unvanquish'd yield;
The Saxon jackal leaves the lion's side

To turn the bear's, and wolf's, and fox's guide;

(1) Gustavus Adolphus fell at the great battle of Lutzen, in November, 1632.—L. E.

(2) The Isle of Elba.-L. E.

(3) I refer the reader to the first address of Prometheus in Eschylus, when he is left alone by his attendants, and before the arrival of the Chorus of Sea-Nymphs.

["Etherial air, and ye swift-winged winds,

Ye rivers springing from fresh founts, ye waves,
That o'er the interminable ocean wreath
Your crisped smiles, thou all-producing earth,
And thee, bright sun, I call, whose flaming orb
Views the wide world beneath, see what, a god,
I suffer from the gods; with what fierce pains,
Behold, what tortures for revolving ages

I here must struggle; such unseemly chains,

This new-raised ruler of the gods devised.

And backward to the den of his despair
The forest monarch shrinks, but finds no lair!

Oh ye! and each, and all! Oh France! who found
Thy long fair fields, plough'd up as hostile ground,
Disputed foot by foot, till treason, still

His only victor, from Montmartre's hill
Look'd down o'er trampled Paris! and thou Isle,(2)
Which seest Etruria from thy ramparts smile,
Thou momentary shelter of his pride,

Till woo'd by danger, his yet weeping bride!
Oh, France! retaken by a single march,
Whose path was through one long triumphal arch!
Oh, bloody and most bootless Waterloo!
Which proves how fools may have their fortune too,
Won half by blunder, half by treachery:
Oh, dull Saint Helen! with thy gaoler nigh-
Hear! hear Prometheus (3) from his rock appeal
To earth, air, ocean, all that felt or feel
His power and glory, all who yet shall hear
A name eternal as the rolling year;
He teaches them the lesson taught so long,
So oft, so vainly-learn to do no wrong!
A single step into the right had made
This man the Washington of worlds betray'd:
A single step into the wrong has given
His name a doubt to all the winds of heaven;
The reed of Fortune, and of thrones the rod,
Of Fame the Moloch or the demigod;
His country's Cæsar, Europe's Hannibal,
Without their decent dignity of fall.
Yet Vanity herself had better taught
A surer path even to the fame he sought,
By pointing out on history's fruitless page
Ten thousand conquerors for a single sage.
While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven,
Or drawing from the no less kindled earth
Freedom and
peace to that which boasts his birth; (4)
While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er
Shall sink while there's an echo left to air: (5)
While even the Spaniard's thirst of gold and war
Forgets Pizarro, to shout Bolivar! (6)
Alas! why must the same Atlantic wave
Which wafted freedom gird a tyrant's grave-
The king of kings, and yet of slaves the slave,
Who burst the chains of millions to renew
The very fetters which his arm broke through,
And crush'd the rights of Europe and his own,
To flit between a dungeon and a throne?

"Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis," (5) "To be the first man (not the Dictator), not the Sylla, but the Washington, or Aristides, the leader in talent and truth, is to be next to the Divinity." B. Diary-L, E.

(6) Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Colombia and Peru, died at San Pedro, December, 1830, of an illness brought on by excessive fatigue and exertion. For an account of Lord Byron's scheme of settling in South America in 1822, sec Moore's Life of Byron.-L. E.