fond of change. You will never hear reason; you | said something very different: you must not joke; will never do your duty. it vexes me. Bothwell. By the stars above! I will do mine before I ever presume to pray again. Mary. And so, you dare to swear and laugh in my presence! I do really think, Bothwell, you are one of the most impudent men I ever met withal. Bothwell. Ah, my beloved lady! Mary. Stop, stop! I shall not let you say that. Bothwell. My most gracious queen and mistress! Mary. You are now, I believe, within the rules and regulations. . that is, if you would not look up to me in such a very odd way. Modest men always look down on the eyelashes, not between them. Bothwell. Happy the modest men, if they do. Mary. There! now you look exactly as you should always. Bothwell. Faint as I am and sinking betwixt fear and love, I feel that, by thus taking my hand, your Highness in part forgives and entirely pities the most unfortunate of your servants. For surely he is the most unfortunate, who, having ventured the most to serve you, has given you thereby the most offence. I do not say I hazarded my freedom; it was lost when I first beheld you: I do not say I hazarded my life; I had none until to-day and who dares touch it on the altar where I devote it. Lady! vouchsafe to hear me! Mary. What a rough hand you have, Bothwell! what a heavy one! and (holy Virgin!) what a vastly broad one; it would cover I don't know what! and what a briary bower of hair over-arching it! Curious! it is quite red all over; everywhere but where there is this long scar; and these two ugly warts. Do I hurt you? Bothwell. My heart and every fibre feel it, but can well bear it. Mary. How much whiter the back of the hand is, for a moment, by just passing two fingers over it look! But really warts are frightful things; and scars not much better. And yet there are silly girls who, when they have nothing else to think about, could kiss them. Bothwell. Ay, ay; but be girls as silly as they will, I never let them play such idle tricks with me. Mary. I am glad to hear it: I fancied you had Bothwell. The warts will vanish under the royal touch. As for the scar, I would not lose the scar for the crown of Scotland, in defence whereof I fairly won it. Mary. O! you are a very brave man, but a very bold one. Bothwell. Illiterate and ignorant as I am, I would gladly learn from the best-informed and most intellectual of God's creatures, where lies the difference. Mary. I don't know, I don't know; I am quite bewildered. Move your hand off my knee. Do not lay your cheek there, sir! O Bothwell! I am tired to death. Take me back! O take me back! pray do! if you have any pity. Bothwell. Would your Highness 'he pleased to repose awhile, and remain by yourself in a chamber up-stairs? Mary. I think it might do me good. Bothwell. May I order the trustiest of the handmaidens to attend your Highness? Mary. You may. Go, go; I thought I desired you before not to look up at me in that manner. Thank you, gentle Bothwell! I did not speak too harshly, did I? If I did, you may kiss my hand. Bothwell. If this scar and these warts (which are fast disappearing, I perceive) are become less frightful to your Highness, might the humblest of your servitors crave permission to conduct your Highness nigh unto the chamber-door? Mary. Ah me! where are my own women? where are my ushers? Bothwell. Your Highness, in all your wrongs and straits, has the appointment of one super numerary. Mary. Be it so: I can not help myself, as you know; and the blame is all yours. Bothwell. When your Highness is ready to receive the services of the handmaiden, how may it please your Highness that she shall know it? Mary. Let her tap twice with her knuckles: I can open the door myself.. or she may. Bothwell. My queen's most gracious commands shall be duly executed. TASSO AND CORNELIA. it for an evil omen. At this season of the year the vintagers are joyous and negligent. Tasso. How! what is this? Cornelia. The little girl was crushed, they say, by a wheel of the car laden with grapes, as she held out a handful of vine-leaves to one of the oxen. And did you happen to be there just at the moment? Tasso. So then the little too can suffer! the ignorant, the indigent, the unaspiring! Poor child! She was kind-hearted, else never would calamity have befallen her. Cornelia. I wish you had not seen the accident. | Tasso. I see it? I? I saw it not. No other is crushed where I am. The little girl died for her kindness! Natural death! Cornelia. Be calm, be composed, my brother! Tasso. You would not require me to be composed or calm if you comprehended a thousandth part of my sufferings. Cornelia. Peace! peace! we know them all. Tasso. Who has dared to name them? Imprisonment, derision, madness. could confer on his vassal. No part of my insanity was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet the idea cleaves to me strangely, and is liable to stick to my shroud. Cornelia. Woe betide the woman who bids you to forget that woman who has loved you: she sins | against her sex. Leonora was unblameable. Never think ill of her for what you have suffered. Tasso. Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those we love, we love for everything; even for the pain they have given us. But she gave me none: it Cornelia. Hush! sweet Torquato! If ever these was where she was not, that pain was. existed, they are past. Tasso. You do think they are sufferings? ay? Tasso. No, not too surely: I will not have that answer. They would have been; but Leonora was then living. Unmanly as I am! did I complain of them? and while she was left me? Cornelia. My own Torquato! is there no comfort in a sister's love? Is there no happiness but under the passions? Think, O my brother, how many courts there are in Italy: are the princes more fortunate than you? Which among them all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously? Among them all is there any one, for his genius, for his generosity, for his gentleness, ay, for his mere humanity, worthy to be beloved? Tasso. Princes! talk to me of princes! How much cross-grained wood a little gypsum covers! a little carmine quite beautifies! Wet your forefinger with your spittle; stick a broken gold-leaf on the sinciput; clip off a beggar's beard to make it tresses; kiss it; fall down before it; worship it. Are you not irradiated by the light of its countenance ! Princes! princes! Italian princes! Estes! What matters that costly carrion? Who thinks about it? (After a pause). She is dead! She is dead! Cornelia. We have not heard it here. Cornelia. Suppose the worst to be true. Cornelia. Surely, if love and sorrow are destined for companionship, there is no reason why the last comer of the two should supersede the first. Tasso. Argue with me, and you drive me into darkness. I am easily persuaded and led on while no reasons are thrown before me. With these you have made my temples throb again. Just Heaven! dost thou grant us fairer fields, and wider, for the whirlwind to lay waste? Dost thou build us up habitations above the street, above the palace, above the citadel, for the Plague to enter and carouse in? Has not my youth paid its dues, paid its penalties? Can not our griefs come first, while we have strength to bear them? The fool! the fool! who thinks it a misfortune that his love is unrequited. Happier young man! look at the violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah! but thou must wake! Cornelia. O heavens! what must you have suffered! for a man's heart is sensitive in proportion to its greatness. Tasso. And a woman's? Cornelia. Alas! I know not; but I think it can be no other. Comfort thee, comfort thee, dear Torquato! Tasso. Then do not rest thy face upon my arm; it so reminds me of her. And thy tears too! they melt me into her grave. Cornelia. Hear you not her voice as it appeals to you? saying to you, as the priests around have been saying to her, Blessed soul! rest in peace! Tasso. I heard it not; and yet I am sure she said it. A thousand times has she repeated it, Cornelia. If she ceases, as then perhaps she must, laying her hand on my heart to quiet it, simple to love and to lament you, think gratefully, con- girl! She told it to rest in peace. . and she went tentedly, devoutly, that her arms had clasped your from me! Insatiable love! ever self-torturer, neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in never self-destroyer! the world, with all its weight that long sleep which you have rendered placid, of miseries, can not crush thee, can not keep thee and from which your harmonious voice shall once down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings more awaken her. Yes, Torquato! her bosom had of certain springs, only harden and petrify what throbbed to yours, often and often, before the they fall on; but mine sank deep into a tender organ-peal shook the fringes round the catafalc. heart, and were its very blood. Never will I Is not this much, from one so high, so beautiful? believe she has left me utterly. Oftentimes, and Tasso. Much? yes; for abject me. But I did long before her departure, I fancied we were in so love her! so love her! heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the Cornelia. Ah! let the tears flow: she sends gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it you that balm from heaven. Tasso. So love her did poor Tasso! Else, O Cornelia, it had indeed been much. I thought, in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as great as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed on me as much as the German had conferred or in the broad daylight, when my eyes were open, when blessed spirits drew around me that golden circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could enter. Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it; and sometimes in the intermediate state, in that serenity which breathes about the transported soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span | quato? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears below the feet of the Immortal. run only from my pride and joy! Princes have Cornelia. She has not left you; do not disturb bestowed knighthood on the worthy and unworher peace by these repinings. Tasso. She will bear with them. Thou knowest not what she was, Cornelia; for I wrote to thee about her while she seemed but human. In my hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the gracefulness of her lofty form! how pliable in her majesty! what composure at my petulance and reproaches! what pity in her reproofs ! Like the air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple of the Christian world, her soul at every season preserved one temperature. But it was when she could and did love me! Unchanged must ever be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots upward, and is the glory that encircles their brows when they meet above. Cornelia. Indulge in these delightful thoughts, my Torquato! and believe that your love is and ought to be imperishable as your glory. Generations of men move forward in endless procession to consecrate and commemorate both. Colourgrinders and gilders, year after year, are bargained with to refresh the crumbling monuments and tarnished decorations of rude unregarded royalty, and to fasten the nails that cramp the crown upon its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my Torquato there will always be one leaf above man's reach, above time's wrath and injury, inscribed with the name of Leonora. Tasso. O Jerusalem! I have not then sung in vain the Holy Sepulchre. Cornelia. After such devotion of your genius, you have undergone too many misfortunes. Tasso. Congratulate the man who has had many, and may have more. I have had, I have, I can have, one only. Cornelia. Life runs not smoothly at all seasons, even with the happiest; but after a long course, the rocks subside, the views widen, and it flows on more equably at the end. Tasso. Have the stars smooth surfaces? No, no; but how they shine! Cornelia. Capable of thoughts so exalted, so far above the earth we dwell on, why suffer any to depress and anguish you? Tasso. Cornelia, Cornelia! the mind has within it temples and porticoes and palaces and towers: the mind has under it, ready for the course, steeds brighter than the sun and stronger than the storm; and beside them stand winged chariots, more in number than the Psalmist hath attributed to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again, hath its hundred gates, compared whereto the Theban are but willow wickets; and all those hundred gates can genius throw open. But there are some that groan heavily on their hinges, and the hand of God alone can close them. Cornelia. Torquato has thrown open those of his holy temple; Torquato hath stood, another angel, at his tomb; and am I the sister of Tor thy; thou hast called forth those princes from their ranks, pushing back the arrogant and presumptuous of them like intrusive varlets, and conferring on the bettermost crowns and robes, imperishable and unfading. Tasso. I seem to live back into those days. I feel the helmet on my head; I wave the standard over it: brave men smile upon me; beautiful maidens pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not let them break my slumber, nor undraw the curtain. Corneliolina! ... Cornelia. Well, my dear brother! why do you stop so suddenly in the midst of them? They are the pleasantest and best company, and they make you look quite happy and joyous. Tasso. Corneliolina, dost thou remember Bergamo? What city was ever so celebrated for honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for beautiful girls! There is but one class of those: Beauty is above all ranks; the true Madonna, the patroness and bestower of felicity, the queen of heaven. Cornelia. Hush, Torquato, hush! talk not so. Tasso. What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling, are the Brembo and the Serio! What a country the Valtellina! I went back to our father's house, thinking to find thee again, my little sister; thinking to kick away thy ball of yellow silk as thou wast stooping for it, to make thee run after me and beat me. I woke early in the morning; thou wert grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento: I knew the road: a few strides brought me back: here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will walk together, as we used to do, into the cool and quiet caves on the shore; and we will catch the little breezes as they come in and go out again on the backs of the jocund waves. Cornelia. We will indeed to-morrow; but before we set out we must take a few hours' rest, that we may enioy our ramble the better. Tasso. Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich and avaricious. They have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to prohibit the wayfarer from their vineyards. Cornelia. I have a basket of grapes for you in the book-room that overlooks our garden. Tasso. Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still against the window? Cornelia. It harboured too many insects at last, and there was always a nest of scorpions in the crevice. Tasso. O! what a prince of a sage-tree! And the well too, with its bucket of shining metal, large enough for the largest cocomero* to cool in it for dinner. Cornelia. The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever. Tasso. Delicious! delicious! And the stonework round it, bearing no other marks of waste than my pruning-hook and dagger left behind? *Water-melon. Cornelia. None whatever. Tasso. White in that place no longer? There has been time enough for it to become all of one colour; grey, mossy, half-decayed. Cornelia. No, no; not even the rope has wanted repair. Tasso. Who sings yonder? Cornelia. Enchanter! No sooner did you say the word cocomero, than here comes a boy carrying one upon his head. Tasso. Listen! listen! I have read in some book or other those verses long ago. They are not unlike my Aminta. The very words! Cornelia. Purifier of love, and humaniser of ferocity! how many, my Torquato, will your gentle thoughts make happy! Tasso. At this moment I almost think I am one among them.* Cornelia. Be quite persuaded of it. Come, brother, come with me. You shall bathe your heated brow and weary limbs in the chamber of your childhood. It is there we are always the most certain of repose. The boy shall sing to you those sweet verses; and we will reward him with a slice of his own fruit. Tasso. He deserves it; cut it thick. Cornelia. Come then, my truant! Come along, my sweet smiling Torquato! Tasso. The passage is darker than ever. Is this the way to the little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down toward the bath? 0 yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil ; it may scratch your fingers! Pray, take care it has many thorns about it. And now, Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others may hear them too. Ah! you press my Many, well I know, there are But when comes the darker day, When the springs o'erflow the heart; Give, while these he may divide, chamber: can not you remember it, having looked You thought I wanted rest: why did you waken me Cornelia. May you never more be otherwise! Indeed, he can not be whose last verses are such as those. Tasso. Have you written any since that morning? Cornelia. What morning? Tasso. When you caught the swallow in my Rondinello! rondinello! * The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagina- *The author wrote the verses first in English, but he SOLON AND PISISTRATUS. Pisistratus. Here is a proof, Solon, if any were wanting, that either my power is small or my inclination to abuse it: you speak just as freely to me as formerly, and add unreservedly, which you never did before, the keenest sarcasms and the bitterest reproaches. Even such a smile as that, so expressive of incredulity and contempt, would arouse a desire of vengeance, difficult to controll, in any whom you could justly call impostor and usurper. together round one table in the narrowest lane of Athens. Pisistratus. But, Solon, you yourself are an example, ill treated as you have been, that the levity of the Athenian people requires a guide and leader. Solon. There are those who by their discourses and conduct, inflate and push forward this levity, that the guide and leader may be called for; and who then offer their kind services, modestly, and by means of friends, in pity to the weakness of their fellow-citizens; taking care not only of their follies, but also their little store of wisdom, putting it out to interest where they see fit, and directing how and where it shall be expended. Generous hearts! the Lacedemonians themselves, in the excess of their democracy, never were more zealous that corn and oil should be thrown into the common stock, than these are that minds should, and that no one swell a single line above another. Their own meanwhile are fully ade quate to all necessary and useful purposes, and constitute them a superintending Providence over the rest. Solon. I do you no injustice, Pisistratus, which I should do if I feared you. Neither your policy nor your temper, neither your early education nor the society you have since frequented, and whose power over the mind and affections you can not at once throw off, would permit you to kill or imprison, or even to insult or hurt me. Such an action, you well know, would excite in the people of Athens as vehement a sensation as your imposture of the wounds, and you would lose your authority as rapidly as you acquired it. This however, you also know, is not the consideration which hath induced me to approach you, and to entreat your return, while the path is yet open, to reason and humanity. Pisistratus. Solon, I did not think you so adPisistratus. What inhumanity, my friend, have dicted to derision: you make me join you. This I committed? in the latter part is a description of despotism; a monster of Asia, and not yet known even in the most uncivilised region of Europe. For the Thracians and others, who have chieftains, have no kings, much less despots. In speaking of them we use the word carelessly, not thinking it worth our while to form names for such creatures, any more than to form collars and bracelets for Solon. No deaths, no tortures, no imprisonments, no stripes: but worse than these; the conversion of our species into a lower; a crime which the poets never feigned, in the wild attempts of the Titans or others who rebelled against the gods, and against the order they established here below. Pisistratus. Why then should you feign it them, or rings (if they use them) for their ears of me? Solon. I do not feign it; and you yourself shall bear me witness that no citizen is further removed from falsehood, from the perversion of truth by the heat of passion, than Solon. Choose between the friendship of the wise and the adulation of the vulgar. Choose, do I say, Pisistratus? no, you can not your choice is already made. Choose then between a city in the dust and a city flourishing. Pisistratus. How so? who could hesitate? Solon. If the souls of the citizens are debased, who cares whether its walls and houses be still upright or thrown down? When free men become the property of one, when they are brought to believe that their interests repose on him alone, and must arise from him, their best energies are broken irreparably. They consider his will as the rule of their conduct, leading to emolument and dignity, securing from spoliation, from scorn, from contumely, from chains, and seize this compendious blessing (such they think it) without exertion and without reflection. From which cause alone there are several ancient nations so abject, that they have not produced in many thousand years as many rational creatures as we have seen and noses. You go Solon. Preposterous as this is, there are things more so, under our eyes: for instance, that the sound should become lame, the wise foolish, and this by no affliction of disease or age. further; and appear to wish that a man should become a child again: for what is it else, when he has governed himself, that he should go back to be governed by another? and for no better reason than because, as he is told, that other has been knocked down and stabbed. Incontrover tible proofs of his strength, his prudence, and the love he has been capable of conciliating in those about him! Pisistratus. Solon! it would better become the gravity of your age, the dignity of your character, and the office you assume of adviser, to address me with decorous and liberal moderation, and to treat me as you find me. Solon. So small a choice of words is left us, when we pass out of Atticism into barbarism, that I know not whether you, distinguished as you are both for the abundance and the selection of them, would call yourself in preference king or tyrant. The latter is usually the most violent, at least in |