doctor to read this tragedy in manuscript, and to give her his opinion of it. The following is an extract from the letter:

"The construction of the play is not completely regular; the stage is too often vacant, and the scenes are not sufficiently connected. This, however, would be called by Dryden, only a mechanical defect, which takes away little from the power of the poem, and which is seen rather than felt.

"A rigid examiner of the diction might, perhaps, wish some words changed, and some lines more vigorously terminated. But from such petty imperfections what writer was ever free?

"The general form and force of the dialogue is of more importance. It seems to want that quickness of reciprocation which characterizes the English drama, and is not always sufficiently fervid and animated.

"Of the sentiments, I remember not one that I wished omitted. In the imagery, I cannot forbear to distinguish the comparison of joy succeeding grief, to light rushing on the eye accustomed to darkness. It seems to have all that can be desired to make it please. It is new, just, and de

lightful.*

"With the characters, either as conceived or as preserved, I have no fault to find; but was much inclined to congratulate a writer who, in defiance of prejudice and fashion, made the archbishop a good man, and scorned all the thoughtless applause which a vicious churchman would have brought him.

"The catastrophe is affecting. The father and daughter, both culpable, both wretched, and both penitent, divide between them our pity and our sorrow."

The plot of "The Step-mother" is less involved than that of "The Father's Revenge; " but the catastrophe is equally dreadful. In the one we behold a parent presenting the heart

"I could have borne my woes; that stranger joy

Wounds while it smiles:

the long-imprison'd wretch,

Emerging from the night of his damp cell,

Shrinks from the sun's bright beams; and that which flings
Gladness o'er all, to him is agony."

fresh torn from the bosom of her lover to the agonized sight of a distracted daughter; in the other we find a father and a son, instigated by a cruel and revengeful woman, inflicting mutual death.

In 1806 Lord Carlisle published some verses on the death of Lord Nelson; and in 1808 (anonymously) "Thoughts on the present condition of the Stage, and the construction of a new Theatre." On the death of Buonaparte, understanding that he had bequeathed to Lady Holland a snuff-box, Lord Carlisle addressed to her ladyship the following stanzas:

To Lady Holland, on the Legacy of a snuff-box, left to her by Buonaparte.

"Lady, reject the gift! 'tis ting'd with gore!

Those crimson spots a dreadful tale relate:

It has been grasp'd by an infernal power;

And by that hand which seal'd young Enghien's fate.

"Lady, reject the gift: beneath it's lid

Discord, and slaughter, and relentless war,
With every plague to wretched man lie hid
Let not these loose to range the world afar.

Say, what congenial to his heart of stone

In thy soft bosom could the tyrant trace?
When does the dove the eagle's friendship own,
Or the wolf hold the lamb in pure embrace?

"Think of that pile* to Addison so dear,

Where Sully feasted, and where Rogers' song
Still adds sweet music to the perfum'd air,
And gently leads each grace and muse along.

Pollute not, then, these scenes

the gift destroy :

'Twill scare the Dryads from that lovely shade;

With them will fly all rural peace and joy,

And screaming fiends their verdant haats invade.

* Holland House.

"That mystic box hath magic power to raise

Spectres of myriads slain, a ghastly band;
They'll vex thy slumbers, cloud thy sunny days;
Starting from Moscow's snows, or Egypt's sands.

"And ye, who bound in Verdun's treacherous chains,
Slow pin'd to death beneath a base controul,
Say, shall not all abhor, where freedom reigns,
That petty vengeance of a little soul?

"The warning muse no idle trifler dream;

Plunge the curst mischief in wide ocean's flood;

Or give it to our own majestic stream,

The only stream he could not die with blood."

In the "Hours of Idleness," published by Lord Byron in 1808, his noble relative Lord Carlisle's works are said "to have long received the meed of public applause, to which, by their intrinsic worth they were entitled." This forms a striking contrast to Lord Byron's subsequent asperity. On his coming Eof age, Lord Byron, wishing to take his seat in the House of Lords, applied to Lord Carlisle to introduce him; and being just at that time engaged in the composition of the "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," adverted in it to Lord Carlisle in the following lines:

id

"On one alone Apollo deigns to smile,

And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle."

The noble subject of this adulation, however, declining to accompany Lord Byron, the latter, for the lines just quoted, substituted this heartless sarcasm :

"No more will cheer with renovating smile,

The paralytic puling of Carlisle."

And in speaking of Lord Carlisle's tragedies (the worth of which he had so lately proclaimed) says:

"So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age,

His scenes alone might damn our sinking stage;
But managers for once cried, hold, enough!
Nor drugged their audience with the tragic stuff."

That even Lord Byron himself, however, became sensible of the gross injustice of permitting personal feeling not merely to influence, but entirely to pervert critical judgment, is evident from that fine stanza in his exquisite poem, the Third Canto of Childe Harold, in which, after describing the field of Waterloo, and the gallantry of the British heroes who fell there, he thus particularly adverts to the fate of the Hon. Frederic Howard, Major of the 10th Hussars, Lord Carlisle's youngest son:

"Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine:
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,
Partly because they blend me with his line,

And partly that I did his sire some wrong,
And partly that bright names will hallow song;
And his was of the bravest, and when shower'd

The death-bolts deadliest the thinn'd piles along,
Even where the thickest of war's tempest lower'd,
They reach'd no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!"

It now remains to treat of Lord Carlisle as a lover of the Fine Arts; and for that purpose, we will take the liberty of transcribing a passage from the thirteenth number of the inresting monthly publication called "The Parthenon."

"In the fine arts, to which Lord Carlisle was fondly attached, his knowledge was extensive; and of his correct judgment and delicate taste, his collection of pictures, which is much more remarkable for its value than its magnitude, bears incontestible evidence. This noble lord was not only a generous but a judicious patron of the arts. He loved to bring merit to light wherever he found it, and many artists who have risen to eminence, owe much of their success to the approbation and encouragement he bestowed on their early labours. He was an early friend and patron of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and when that eminent painter was occupied on his celebrated picture of Ugolino, Lord Carlisle made, at the request of the artist, a translation of the passage of Dante, in which the dreadful story is told. The collection in Castle Howard consists, with the exception of a few ortraits, almost entirely of pictures by the old mas

fa

ters, in various schools and classes, but particularly of the Italian schools. They are partly contained in a picture gallery, and partly dispersed about the different apartments; the former, indeed, being not well constructed with regard to light, it has been found expedient to hang all the best pictures in the dwelling-rooms. The chief point of interest in this collection is a small picture by Annibale Caracci, well known under the name of the Three Marys.' This picture was formerly in the possession of the Duke of Orleans, and passed into the hands of the late Earl of Carlisle on the sale of that Prince's collection. Fuseli should have made an exception in favour of this picture, when he talked of the school of Caracci's aiming at a combination of every excellence, and falling short of all; for this surely comes as near to the perfection of painting as any work can be expected to do. In all the executive departments, in drawing, colouring, chiaro-scuro, composition, its excellence is astonishing, and in the still more important quality of expression, it is inimitably fine. Had Annibale Caracci painted no other work than this, his fame would probably have stood much higher than it does; but it is not by a single work that a painter is to be judged. His talents can be justly estimated only by a general examination of his various productions, and Annibale Caracci must be content to take a much lower station on the list of painters than the excellence of such a work as the Three Marys' would seem to entitle him to.* His relation, Ludovico Caracci, whose sober twilight effects have given such an air of grandeur and solemnity to his compositions, was perhaps the greater genius of the two, though his qualifications as a painter were of a less varied and extensive character. The Entombment of Christ,' at Castle Howard, which is also from the Orleans collection, is a very fair specimen of his powers of execuThe figure of our Saviour is drawn with admirable science, and the whole composition is distinguished by a

tion.

It is much to be regretted that there exists no tolerable print of this admirable work. Sharp, we understand, was occupied in an engraving from it for some years previous to his death, but we have not heard whether it was ever accomplished.