signed his drama have been impressed into the service of the muses. Plato, influenced by the fate of Socrates, had introduced his new mystical Theogony, without attempting the demolition of the established theory, and, though obviously a believer in the unity of the Deity, was cautious in denying Polytheism. These conflicting opinions, producing doubt upon all points rather than conviction upon any, stimulated that insatiable curiosity for prying into the mysteries of nature, of which it has been attempted to delineate a faint outline in the character of Amarynthus, the Nympholept. In the more pastoral parts, the Author has borrowed from Theocritus almost as unblushingly as Virgil did before him, though he fears that he has been more successful in imitating his rusticity than in catching any portion of his Doric and graceful beauties."

A poet may be allowed to assume what he pleases relative to the state of popular opinion at any assigned period: we shali not, therefore, stop to inquire into the justness of our Author's representation of the prevalence of religious scepticism among the vulgar, as the result of conflicting opinions which had their rise after the death of Socrates. But we must just intimate our opinion, that at no period would the philosophical sentiments put into the mouth of Chabrias, the priest of Pan, have been hazarded by a minister at heathen altars. What may be termed the sacerdotal belief, though much less grossly idolatrous than the notions built on the fables of the poets, was very far from approaching so pure a system of theism; and it was not the policy of the priests, more especially, to diffuse among the uninitiated, too curious and refined speculations. The speech of Chabrias has some beauty but no propriety, and some of the expressions, such as benighted flock,' 'sanctifying aid,' and 'pure and primitive belief,' are offensively misapplicable.

The personages of the drama are as follow: Urania, a nymph of the air; Dryope, a wood-nymph; Theucarila, a priestess of Pan, sister to Amarynthus; Enone, a Delphic girl; Amaryllis, a shepherdess; and Doris, her mother; --Amarynthus, the Nympholept; Chabrias, a priest of Pan; Phœbidas, a herdsman; and Celadon, a ricli Athenian. In the scene from which we select our first extract, Enone bursts in on the Nympholept's soliloquy, singing; she is followed by Theucarila. To the question, who and what art thou,' she replies by announcing herself as a prophetess.

• Thou may'st believe

I am no vulgar witch, with shears and sieve,
Poppy and orpine leaf, or sinister

Forebodings from the course of crows or hares.

Nor do I owe my mystery to her

Who reigns in Hell, three-faced Hecate!

Who in her cauldron black prepares

The charms and magic ministry

VOL. XV. N.S.

P

By midnight Perimeda learnt,

Where salt is strew'd and laurel burnt,

And melted wax and bones are mix'd,

Where the whizzing wheel of brass is fix'd.

Amarynthus. Whence, then, mellifluous maiden, comes thy

lore?

Enone. From listening to the elemental noises

And Nature's various voices,

Until I learnt their language to explore.

For frugal Nature wastes no breath; her tongue
In every sound of every element,

Conveys her orders that this world, uphung
In air, may float majestically on
To calm eternity. Th' infolded spheres
Are music-guided through the firmament,
Though our degenerate ears

No longer catch their glorious echoes. Gone-
Gone are the days of prophecy,
When bards could listen to the sky,
And from the planetary harmonies

Learn the dread secrets of the future. These
Are dumb;-but we have sounds as mystical,
Ay, and I know them all-all-all!
What, think'st thou that the whistling wind
Pipes in the storm for nothing? Idle notion!
'Tis to call up the howling waves, confin'd
In the sea's depths. No wave of ocean
That, in the solitudes of space

Upturns its foamy face

Unto the moon, and, with a gushing sigh,
Sinks down again to die,

But is commission'd, and that parting breath,
Perhaps, a fiat bears of life and death.
Why do the runnels urge their races
Through the earth's crevices and secret places ?
But that their tongues with nimble guggles
May scatter orders as they flow,
And summon from the caves below,
Agents for the earthquake's struggles.

When on the ground I lay mine ear,
I hear their secret plots

Come murm'ring up from the central grots;-
Hark! 'tis the nightingale-how loud and clear !
Tune up, ye feather'd choristers, your throats,
For unto me your melody
Conveys a hidden sense in all your notes;
Such as, in mystic days of yore,
To sage Melampus' ear they bore.
Ay; but the master mystery

Remains untold. Come hither-hark! prepare;
For I must whisper this. Is no one by?
Amarynthus. We are alone.

• Enone.

'Tis well; but have a care!

Thou'lt not divulge?

Amarynthus.

By the Twin Gods, not I!

• Theucarila. Thy secret is with me in holy keeping.

• Enone. At nightfall, in those wild, sequester'd lawns, Which even the nymphs and fawns

Have fled from out the herbage sleeping,

And flowers up-closing,

Sometimes a hushing murmur rises,

As if the earth were whisp'ring to the air.
It is the voice of Nature, as reposing,

She communes with herself in deep surmises.-
Mysterious mutterings!-but not to me;
I can explain each accent as it rolls;

And thus I have a master-key

Into her soul of souls.'

This, we think, is very beautiful, if not powerful poetry. Amarynthus questions Enone respecting his own destiny, and receives for reply, this augury:

From fancied visions he shall be

Relieved by their reality.'

With this she leaves him; and the Nympholept asks his sister whether she knows her story.

Theucarila. They say she was a chorister
At Delphi, in Apollo's temple. Love,
There a forbidden inmate, was to her
An inauspicious visitant: her lover,
Himself a votary of the God, was keeper
Of the holy chalices. The Muse's grove,
More than half-up Parnassus, rustles over
A grotto, from whose marble floor up-flung,
The fountain of Castalia gushes; deeper
Within its rocky arch a golden lyre,
The gift of the Arcadians, is hung.
Thither the lovers would at dark retire,
And sat one night within the silent cell
Fondling, while the full moon arose and flung
Her rays into the cave, until they fell
Upon the lyre: when lo! two lovely arms
Advancing on the moonlight, swept the strings,
And, while a wondrous melody alarms

Their ears, a voice of heavenly sweetness sings,
Announcing deep yet dulcet threatenings,
Unless, thenceforth, they were for ever parted.

Some will assert that Dian's self out-darted
Her alabaster arms to strike the chord;
While others think it was the temple's lord
Apollo, shock'd to see his cave profan'd,
That sent this vision to forewarn them. Shrieking,
Œnone fled her lover; nor remain'd

Longer at Delphi, but bewilder'd, craz'd,
Roams o'er the Grecian territory, secking
All rites, solemnities, and festivals,
Where she may exercise her choral art;
And chaunting to the villagers, amaz'd,
Snatches of songs, heroic madrigals,
And tales of the olden time. Her chosen sphere,
As thou hast witnessed, is to act the part

Of prophetess.”

Amarynthus eagerly drinks in these legends, and his curiosity to become acquainted with the imaginary mysteries of Nature, is gradually wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement. He-invokes the earth, the nymphs of the sky, of the hill, of the urn, of the sea, and of the grove, to resolve his doubts by returning an audible answer to his challenge. Enone assists at his invocation, which contains some very beautiful description. In the mean time, Celadon, in revenge for having had his splendid proffers disdainfully rejected by both Theucarila and Amaryllis, has contrived to have the latter, who is betrothed to Phœbidas, chosen priestess of Pan in the room of the sister of Amarynthus, in obedience to the supposed mandate of the god. Amaryllis, however, elopes with her lover from the temple, and has taken refuge in a cave, where the unhappy Amarynthus breaking upon her solitude, mistakes her for a nymph, and is immediately seized with Nympholeptic pangs and panic terror, Of these he is cured by the wood-nymph Dryope, by means of a celestial recipe received from her tricksome spirit Urania, who has become earth-bound' for having kissed a lip of earth, and can be restored to her aërial freedom only in the event of her mistress being betrayed into a similar weakness. Urania does regain her liberty, and Dryope, degraded into a mortal, becomes the bride of the enamoured Amarynthus. Celadon's plot is discovered, and all is well that ends well. As a specimen of the songs interspersed through the drama, we transcribe the following: it is Urania that sings.

• In the Milky Way's fierce lustre,
Do my starry sisters cluster:
Quickly shall I cleave the air,
Their pastime and their flight to share,
'Neath the lids of morn to creep,
In our twilight bowers to sleep,

Till she opes her amber eye,
On a sun-beam then we fly,
Dancing up the jocund sky,
In delicious revelry.

• As on air we float and swing,
Merry madrigals we sing,
Bind with amaranth our brows,
As on odours we carouse;
Or in races start amain

To kiss some star and back again;
All the while our voices timing
To the sphere's harmonious chiming.

• If on earth we deign to tread,
'Tis some precinct hallowed,
Charmed lake or haunted dell,
To hear the hymn of Philomel ;
And when summer's evening flashes
Ope the sky in flaming gashes,
Thither do we speed our flight,
Leap into the liquid light,

And bid the winking world good night.' pp. 119-20.

In the concluding scene between Dryope and Amarynthus, there is a very unaccountable misprint: the name of Urania occurs seven times, at the beginning of different sentences, instead of Dryope. How this should have escaped the Author's eye, we cannot conceive; for there are no Errata. Till the mistake is perceived, it involves the reader in strange perplexity. The word baptized' is used in the same scene in the technical sense of bestowing a name :

We were not aware that the heathen Greeks had any such custom as christening. This is something worse than an anachronism in the use of words. The scene itself is drawn out to an injudicious length.

Our readers will have noticed in the extracts a remarkable facility, and freedom, and cleverness of versification. The whole of the drama is in rhyming verse, and the rhymes are so exquisitely managed as to add greatly to the beauty of the dialogue without seeming in the least to impede or embarrass its progress. We recollect no similar instance in our language of dramatic dialogue being carried on in rhyme to so great an extent without having the effect of a most wearisome monotony. The Author is indebted for his success, partly to his having rejected the rhyming couplet, which has enabled him to avail himself of every possible variation of the cesura that occurs in blank verse, as well as of great variety in the occurrence of the