"Sweet sleep! were death like to thee, It O world! farewell! Listen to the passing bell! [The scene closes. SCENE IV.-A Hall of the Prison. Enter CAMILLO and BERNARDO. Camillo. The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent. A rite, a law, a custom; not a man. He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick Presenting the defences, which he tore And threw behind, muttering with hoarse harsh voice: Killed in his sleep?" Then to another: "Thou He turned to me then looking deprecation, And said these three words coldly: "They must die." Camillo. I urged him still; Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young Authority and power and hoary hair Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,— I did believe indeed words and looks Bernardo. O God, not so! He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample And remorse waken mercy? I will do it! Oh wait till I return! Camillo. Alas! poor boy! A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray To the deaf sea. [Rushes out. Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded. Beatrice. Beatrice (wildly). My God! Can it be possible I have Oh Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground? To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world! His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down! On earth, and ever present? Even though dead Lucretia. Trust in God's sweet love, Beatrice. 'Tis past! Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more. 'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me. I am cut off from the only world I know, From light and life and love, in youth's sweet prime. I hope I do trust in him: in whom else Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold. [During the latter speeches GIACOMO has retired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out; GIACOMO advances. Giacomo. Know you not, mother-sister, know you not? Bernardo even now is gone to implore The Pope to grant our pardon. Lucretia. Child, perhaps It will be granted! We may all then live Like the warm blood. Beatrice. Yet both will soon be cold. Oh trample out that thought! Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope: It is the only ill which can find place Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost Blind lightning or the deaf sea;-not with man ! In deeds a Cain! No, mother, we must die: Since such is the reward of innocent lives, Such the alleviation of worst wrongs. And, whilst our murderers live, and hard cold men, Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death, Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom, And rock me to the sleep from which none wake! As we were once, who now Bernardo. BERNARDO rushes in. Oh horrible! That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer Should all be vain! The ministers of death Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw Cover me! let me be no more! To see Thee, light of life-dead, dark! while I say "Sister," Dead-the sweet bond broken! Enter CAMILLO and Guards. They come ! Let me Beatrice. Farewell, my tender brother. Think Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now: And let mild pitying thoughts lighten for thee But tears and patience. One thing more, my child : Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I, Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame, Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name Camillo. Beatrice. Oh Lady Beatrice ! My dear Lord Cardinal.-Here, mother, tie And yours, I see, is coming down. How often We shall not do it any more. My lord, We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well, Is it a party in a parlour, Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, But, as you by their faces see, All silent, and all-damned? Peter Bell, by W. WORDSWORTH. OPHELIA. What means this, my lord? HAMLET.-Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. DEDICATION. TO THOMAS BROWN ESQ. THE YOUNGER, H. F. DEAR TOM,-Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dullness. You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well-it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And, in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three. There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells-that, if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells: they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated, to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell. Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull-oh so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dullness. You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in "this world which "-so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi -The world of all of us, and where |