Go without calling!

Kath.

Why should not I

Yes brother, so you might,

Were there no place to go to when you're gone,
But only this.
Frank. 'Troth, sister, thou say'st true;
For when a man has been an hundred years
Hard travelling o'er the tott'ring bridge of age,
He's not the thousandth part upon his way.
All life is but a wand'ring to find home:
When we are gone, we're there. Happy were man,
Could here his voyage end; he should not then
Answer, how well or ill he steer'd his soul,
by heav'n's or by hel.'s compass; how he put in
(Losing bless'd goodness' shore) at such a sin;
Nor how lite's dear provision he has sp.nt:
Nor how iar he in's navigation went
Beyond commission. This were a fine reign,
To do ill, and not to hear of it again.
Yet then were man more wretched than a beast:
For, sister, our dead pay is sure the best.

Kath. 'Tis so, the best or worst: and I wish

Heaven

To pay (and so I know it will) that traitor,

I came no nearer to you than yon place,
At your bed's feet; and of the house had leave,
(alling myself your horse-boy, in to come
And visit my sick master.

Frank.

Then 'twas my fane

Some windmill in my brains for want of sleep. Win. 'Would I might never sleep so you coul rest!

But you have pluck'd a thunder on your head,
Whose noise cannot cease suddenly: why should yo
Dance at the wedding of a second wite,
When scarce the music which you heard at mine
Had ta'en a farewell of you? Ó, this was ill?
And they who thus can give both hands away,
In th' end shall want their best limbs.
Frank.

The chamber door['s] fast?

Win.

Frank.

Winnifrede,

Yes.
Sit thee then down;
And when thou'st heard me speak, melt into tears:
Yet I, to save those eyes of thine from weeping,
Bing to write a story of us two,

Instead of ink, dipp'd my sad pen in blood.
When of thee I took leave, I went abroad
Onl for pillage, as a treebooter,
What gold soe'er I got, to make it thine.
To please a father, I have Heaven displeas'd,
Striving to cast two wedding-rings in one,
Thro' my bad work manship I now have none.
I have lost her and thee.
Win.

I know she's dead:
But you have me still.
Frank.

Nay, her this hand
Murdered; and so I loose thee too.

Win.
Oh me!
Frank. Be quiet, for thou my evidence art,
Jury and judge: sit quiet and I'll tell all.

[They whisper

The murder is now out; and old Carter brings the body of Susan in a coffin, and forces the inurderer to look upon it. The officers of justice enter, and he is taken to prison.

Meanwhile, Mother Sawyer is in jeopardy, and calls on her familiar. Her character seems to acquire a tinge of sublimity, as her despair deepens, and the hour of her death is at hand. ACT V.

SCENE I.-The inside of the Witch's Hut.

Enter Mother Sawyer.

Saw. Still wrong'd by ev'ry slave? and not a dog Bark in his dame's defence? I am cal'd witch, Yet am myself bewitch'd from doing harm. Have I giv'n up myself to thy black lust Thus to be scorn'd? not see me in three days? I'm lost without my Tomalin: pr'ythee come, Revenge to me is sweeter far than life;

Thou art my raven, on whose coal-black wings Revenge comes flying to me. Oh, my best love! I am on fire, even in the midst of ice,

Raking my blood up, till my shrunk knees feel Thy curl'd head leaning on them. Come then, my darling,

If in the air thu hover'st, fall upon me
In some dark cloud; and as I oft have seen
Dragons and serpents in the elements,
App ar thou now so to me. Art thou i' th' sea?
Muster up all the monsters from the deep,
And be the ugliest of them. So that my bulch
Shew but his swarth cheek to me, let earth cleave,
And break from hell, I care not: could I run
Like a swift powder-mine beneath the world,
Up would I blow it, all to find out thee,
Tho' I lay ruin'd in it. Not yet come!
I must then fall to my old prayer.

The dog enters white, and by that sign the witch knows that her familiar has deserted her, and that she is doomed to death and to hell. The rabble rush upon her, and she is

borne off to prison-but not before the dog gives some good advice to the spec

tators.

Dog. I'll thus much tell thee: thou never art so di tant

From an evil spirit, but that thy oaths,
Curses, and bla-phemies, pull him to thine elbow;
Thou never tell'st a lie, but that a devil

Is within hearing it; thy e il purposes
As thy tongue slandering, bearing false witness,
Are ever haunted; but when they come to act,
Thy hand stabbing, stealing, cozening, cheating,
He's then within thee; thou play'st, he bets upen
thy part;

Although thou lose, yet he will gain by thee.

In the last scene, Mother Sawyer passes on a hurdle to execution, and also Frank Thorney. The first is furious and foaming, yet not without an upbraiding indignation at the cruelty of her persecutors and murderers; the latter is remorseful and penitent, and bids an affecting farewell to Winnifrede, his own father, and the father of Susanna. We feel ourselves standing in the crowd around the gallowsand every thing is sad, shocking, and ignominious. As in real life, the souls of the spectators turn away from their own agonies-and the two old men, the fathers of the murderer and the murdered, walk together from the dreadful scene-and tell us that they must again mix with the bitter busy world to which they belong, and sustain, in its few remaining comforts, the sorrow which they can never overcome. And so passes away this dark shadow of life!

WILL our readers turn from those fierce, wild, and turbulent passions, breathed out from the constantly agitated bosom of European life, as they have been exhibited to them in the English and German drama, and, going back with us "into a long recess of years," wander for a while among the still and sacred groves of India, and indulge in the fantastic but splendid visions of her allegoric mythology? One flight of the imagination, and we find ourselves almost on another earth, living in the spirit of that deep religion, and surrounded with its symbols, its priests, its fanes, and its forms of worship. We breathe, as it were, the fresh, bright, and beaming beauty of the youthful creation-in the drama that there moves before us, the chief agents are either set apart and sanctified from the world -or they are half-human, half-di

vine, the offspring of mortals beloved by the gods or the gods themselves descending from their holy mountains upon an earth scarcely less beautiful than their own celestial abodes. From the strife and tumult of our own energetic existence, it is delightful to sink away into those old green and noiseless sanctuaries, to look on the Brahmins as they pass their whole lives in silent and reverential adoration,-Virgins playing with the antelopes and bright-plumaged birds among those gorgeous woods-and, as the scene shifts, to find ourselves amid the old magnificence of oriental cities, or wafted on the chariot of some deity up to the palaces of the sky.

Dramatic poetry, Sir William Jones remarks, must have been immemorially ancient in the Indian empire. The Indians have a wild story, that the first regular play was composed by

Harumat or Pavan, who commanded an army of satyrs, or mountaineers, in the famous expedition of Rama against Lanca-that he engraved it on a smooth rock, which, being dissatisfied with his composition, he hurled into the sea, and that many years after, a learned prince ordered expert divers to take impressions of the poem in wax, by which the drama was in a great measure restored-and Sir William Jones' Pandit assured him that he was in possession of it. The Indian drama however, it is certain, was carried to very high perfection during the reign of Vicramaditya, who flourished in the first century before Christ-and who, at the time when Britain was a country of savages, gave encouragement at his court to poets and philosophers. Of the nine men of genius, called the nine gems, whom he splendidly patronized, Calidas, the author of Sacontala, or, the Fatal Ring, was the brightest. Sir William Jones has ventured to call him the Shakspeare of India-not perhaps a very philosophical opinion, for neither the human mind nor human life did ever so exist in India, as to create such kind of faculties as those of Shakspeare, or to furnish field for their inspiration. Yet, perhaps our readers, on perusing the following production of Calidas, may think that he possessed, at least, the delicate sensibilities-the gentle fancy -and the simple heart of our own divine poet, as they are shewn to us in Cymbeline and the Tempest.

Our great Orientalist observes, the play of Sacontala must have been very popular when it was first represented, for the Indian empire was then in full vigour, and the national vanity must have been highly flattered by the magnificent introduction of those kings and heroes in which the Hindus gloried the scenery must have been splendid and beautiful, and there is good reason to believe that the court at Avanti was equal in brilliancy, during the reign of Vicramaditya, to that of any monarch of any country. Dushmanta, the hero of the piece, was supposed to have flourished in the twenty-first generation after the flood -and Puru, his most celebrated ancestor, was fifth in descent from Buddha, or Mercury, who married the daughter of the pious king whom Vishnu preserved in an ark from the universal deluge. With respect to the

machinery of this drama, all that is necessary to say of it in our present analysis, is, that Casyapa, who seems to be a personification of infinite space, comprehending innumerable worlds, is the offspring of Marichi, or Light, the first production of Brahma-that his consort, Aditi, is Active Powerand his children, Indra, or the Visible Firmament, and the twelve Adityas or Suns presiding over so many months. The representation of such a drama must indeed have been something glorious during the time of India's glory; and we see no reason why Sacontala might not yet be introduced on the stage of the East. Enough yet remains of inspiration, both in the spirit and practice of her old faith, to give the natives a deep delight in such representations of the sanctities of antiquity-and surely Europeans have not so long inhabited that land without being, many of them, imbued with the character of its mythology, and capable, amid the pursuits of avarice and cupidity, of sympathising with the manifold and high associations indeli bly connected with its union of falsehood and truth. If got up with suitable dresses, manners, and scenery, nothing could be imagined more beau tiful and magnificent.

The very prologue, seeming at once so different from our common-places, makes us feel in the heart of ancient India. In it a Brahmin enters, and pronounces a benediction,-imploring Isa, the god of Nature, as apparent in the form of water, fire, the two lights, ether, earth, and air, to bless and sustain the audience; then the manager enters, and observing that there is no occasion for a long speech, calls on the principal actress, if her decorations are completed, to come forward:-she advances, and is informed by the manager that the piece to be performed before King Vicramaditya,-the patron of every delightful art,-is a new production of Calidas, 'Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring.' She expresses herself delighted with the beauty of the drama, and is retiring, when the manager says, "What better can you do, since you are now on the stage, than exhilarate the souls and gratify the senses of our auditory by a song?" She does so,-and the manager exclaims, "A charming strain!" The whole company sparkles as it were with admiration ;-and the

I feel an emotion scarce consistent with a grove devoted to piety."Dushmanta tells them that he is a student of the Veda, and, in the discharge of religious and moral duties, has come thither to behold the sanctity of virtue. In return, he learns, from one of her attendants, that Sacontala, though the adopted child of the Brahmen Canna, is the daughter of Menaca, one of the nymphs of the lower heavens, by Causica, the sage and monarch. Every moment Dushmanta and Sacontala are becoming more desperately enamoured of each otherbut, at last, a voice from behind the scenes cries out, that a wild elephant, alarmed at the appearance of the Stranger's car, is laying waste the forest, and threatening destruction to its inmates. This gives Sacontala the opportunity of a very beautiful and fascinating fright-and she hurries away, impeded partly by the entang ling stalks of flowers, and partly by her own languid emotions, while Dushmanta remains behind.

my

Dush. My body moves onward, but restless heart runs back to her; like a light flag born in a staff against the wind, and fluttering in an opposite direction !

This first scene is throughout, and without the exception of one single word or thought," exquisitely natural and beautiful-and has all over it, more than almost any thing we ever read, the air of an adventure. Sacontala and Dushmanta love in a momentand in a moment we love them-while a single hint dropped by one of the attendant virgins awakens, in the midst of so much happiness, a faint fear of some evil impending over the incomparable daughter of the celestial nymph. Indeed this act is a very beautiful little poem in itself.

The second act opens with a soliloquy of Madhavya, the buffoon of the monarch, who has accompanied him on this hunting-and who, by the way, is a very amusing and not uninteresting personage. Sir William Jones expresses some little dissatisfaction with poor Madhavya, and is for curtailing his colloquies with the monarch. To our minds he throws a cheerful air over the forest, like Touchstone in As You Like It, or Wamba in Ivanhoe-and his absurd talk with Dushmanta, perhaps prevents the egotism of that prince's love

from becoming rather wearisome. We have not room, however, for more of honest Madhavya's wisdom than the opening soliloquy of this act.

"Strange recreation this! Ah me! I am wearied to death, my royal friend has an unaccountable taste. What can I think of a king so passionately fond of spearing unprofitable quadrupeds!" Here runs an antelope, there goes a boar!" Such is our only conversation. Even at noon, in excessive

heat, when not a tree in the forest has a shadow under it, we must be skipping and prancing about, like the beasts whom we follow. Are we thirsty? we have nothing to drink but the waters of mountain torrents, which taste of burnt stones and maukish leaves. Are we hungry? we must greedily devour lean venison, and that commonly roasted to a stick. Have I a moment's repose at night? my chamber is disturbed the sons of slave girls blubbering out, "more with the din of horses and elephants, or by venison, more venison !" Then comes a cry that pierces my ear-" away to the forest! away"-nor are these my only grievances; fresh pain is now added to the smart of my first wounds; for while we were separated from our king, who was chasing a foolish deer, he entered, I find, yon lonely place, and there, to my infinite grief, saw a certain girl called Sacontala, the daughter

of a hermit. From that moment not a word of returning to the City. These distressing thoughts have kept my eyes open the whole night-alas! when shall we return! I cannot set eyes on my beloved friend Dushmanta, since he set his heart on taking another wife.

(Stepping aside, and looking.)

Dushmanta cannot, it is plain, leave the forest in which so beautiful an antelope dwells-and he is thrown into some distress by a message from his queen-mother in the city, to return thither to attend an annual solemnity kept on his own account. He has been waited upon by a deputation of two Brahmins, informing him that the forest is haunted by demons, and earnestly entreating him to remain for their protection till the return of their master Canna. The king deliberates with himself which course to pursue ; and at last resolves to despatch that egregious Brahmin Madhavya to the city, in room of himself, and to guard the holy men from the demons. The buffoon is not so blind as not to attribute this decision rather to Sacontala than to the demons; and the act, which is a short one-and very lively, ends with Dushmanta and the buffoon endeavouring to outwit each other with respect to the secret of the mo