Earth, ocean, air, night, mountains, winds, thy star,
Are at thy beck and bidding, Child of Clay!
Before thee at thy quest their spirits are-

What wouldst thou with us, son of mortals

say?'

The songs of six of these Spirits have not much spirit in them but the Mountain-Spirit sings with better effect:

• Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains,

They crowned him long ago

On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow.

Around his waist are forests braced,
The Avalanche in his hand;
But ere it fall, that thundering ball
Must pause for my command.
The Glacier's cold and restless mass
Moves onward day by day;

But I am he who bids it

Or with its ice delay.

pass,

I am the spirit of the place,

Could make the mountain bow
And quiver to his cavern'd base -

And what with me wouldst Thou?'

Manfred demands of them oblivion, self-oblivion:' but this, unfortunately, is the only boon which they cannot confer. He then desires to see them face to face, and the Spirit of his star appears in the shape of a beautiful female, which, on his attempting to clasp it, vanishes, and he falls senseless. A voice is next heard in a long and fearful incantation, in the style of the famed curse of Kehama, of which we shall quote only the concluding lines:

By thy cold breast and serpent smile,

By thy unfathom'd gulfs of guile,

By that most seeming virtuous eye,
By thy shut soul's hypocrisy ;
By the perfection of thine art

Which pass'd for human thine own heart;
By thy delight in others' pain,
And by thy brotherhood of Cain,
I call upon thee! and compel
Thyself to be thy proper Hell!

And on thy head I pour the vial
Which doth devote thee to this trial;
Nor to slumber, nor to die,

Shall be in thy destiny;

Though thy death shall still seem near

To thy wish, but as a fear;

Lo! the spell now works around thee,

And the clankless chain hath bound thee;

O'er

This incantation was included in Lord Byron's last publication, "The Prisoner of Chillon and other Poems ;" and, by the intimation prefixed, it appears that this "Witch Drama," as it is there designated, was begun some years ago. The opening of the second scene is in better taste. A pleasing and pathetic melancholy pervades the sentiments uttered by Manfred as he wanders alone on the Alps, which makes us doubtful whether most to pity the mind that is a prey to them or to admire the power of expressing them so well; and they shew a capacity in the poet (for it is ever impossible wholly to disunite Lord Byron and his hero) not only for the most refined enjoyment but for superior virtue. We have not room for the whole, but we must not omit the following lines: How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself;

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will
Till our mortality predominates,

And men are

what they name not to themselves,
Hark! the note,

And trust not to each other.

[The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard.

The natural music of the mountain reed

For here the patriarchal days are not

A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air,

Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd;

Oh, that I were

My soul would drink those echoes.
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment-born and dying
With the blest tone which made me!'

This soliloquy is closed with Manfred's determination to rid himself of life: but, when in the aet of springing from the cliff, he is seized and retained by a Chamois hunter, who conducts him in safety to his cottage. There the Second Act opens with a scene of much force, in which Manfred alludes to some half-maddening sin;' and, in answer to a natural exclamation of his host, Alas, he's mad!' he says,

I would I were
for then the things I see
Would be but a distempered dream.

C. Hun.

What is it

• Man.

That thou dost see, or think thou look'st upon?

Man. Myself, and thee a peasant of the Alps-
Thy humble virtues, hospitable home,

And spirit patient, pious, proud and free;
Thy self-respect, grafted on innocent thoughts;
Thy days of health, and nights of sleep; thy toils,
By danger dignified, yet guiltless; hopes
Of cheerful old age and a quiet grave,
With cross and garland over its green turf,
And thy grandchildren's love for epitaph;
This do I see and then I look within

It matters not my soul was scorch'd already!'

He leaves the hunter; and in the next scene, where a description is given of an Alpine sun-bow, he calls up the Witch of the Alps, from his conversation with whom we are made acquainted with a little more of his history:

From my youth upwards

My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine;
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh,

Nor midst the creatures of clay that girded me
Was there but one who but of her anon.

-

Manfred then describes his daily pastimes,' viz. to breathe the difficult air of the iced mountain's top,'-to roll along the torrent, to observe the stars, to catch the lightnings till his eyes grew dim,'-and to pass the nights of years in sciences untaught.' Having enlarged on these ideas, he thus proceeds:

Oh! I but thus prolonged my words,
Boasting these idle attributes, because

As I approach the core of my heart's grief-
But to my task. I have not named to thee
Father or mother, mistress, friend, or being,
With whom I wore the chain of human ties;
If I had such, they seem'd not such to me
Yet there was one-

*How different is the youthful picture of himself which Milton has supposed our Saviour to draw!

"When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing: all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good: myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth,
All righteous things."

t

Paradise Regained, i. 201.

• Witch.

- her eyes,

Witch. Spare not thyself-proceed.
Man. She was like me in lineaments
Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone
Even of her voice, they said were like to mine;.
But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty;
She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To comprehend the universe: nor these

Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine,
Pity, and smiles, and tears -which I had not;
And tenderness but that I had for her;

Humility and that I never had.

Her faults were mine- her virtues were her own
I loved her, and destroy'd her!

• Witch.

With thy hand? 'Man. Not with my hand, but heart

heart

which broke her

It gazed on mine, and withered. I have shed
Blood, but not hers

and yet her blood was shedI saw - and could not staunch it.'

This passage, obscure as it is, affords the most guidance to the conjecture to which we are finally left respecting the crime of Manfred. After a grand picture of his despair, he refuses the offer of the witch to aid him if he will " do her bidding:" 'I will not swear- obey! and whom? the spirits

Whose presence I command, and be the slave

Of those who served me. - never!'.

He then resolves to use his only remaining resource, to call the dead,' and thus forcibly concludes the scene: Within few hours I shall not call in vainYet in this hour I dread the thing I dare: Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze On spirit, good or evil-now I tremble, And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart,

But I can act even what I most abhor,

And champion human fears. The night approaches.'

The succeeding scene is the meeting of Nemesis and the three Destinies, in their way to the hall of Arimanes;' where we are next introduced to that dread power, seated on a globe of fire, and surrounded by the spirits; whose hymn,

'He breatheth; and a tempest shakes the sea

He speaketh,' &c.

rather too closely reminds us of the chorus of " Great Jove in his chair," in the opening of Midas:

"When he winks, Heaven shrinks,

When he speaks," &c.

Manfred enters, and, being a magian of great power, and fearful skill,' he is as disobedient to the tremendous personage

REV. JULY, 1817.

X

or

on the throne of fire as Lord Amherst is reported to have been to his Imperial Majesty of China. He demands that they should call up the dead;'

She appears; and, after an address from him, of much beauty and pathos, she is induced to speak, but merely tells him that to-morrow ends his earthly ills.'

The third act is chiefly occupied by the attempts of the Abbot of St. Maurice to convert Manfred. Of course, they are unavailing. In the Abbot's second interview, - the evening of the day of Manfred's pre-disclosed death being at hand, -the spirits rise to claim their victim: but he, though he feels his soul is ebbing from him,' defies their power: they disappear; and he expires, uttering these words:

'Tis over my dull eyes can fix thee not;

But all things swim around me, and the earth
Heaves as it were beneath me. Fare thee well-
Give me thy hand.'

In this act is a very beautiful address to the setting sun; 'which, however, we must exclude, in order to close our extracts with the following reflections on night, the softened beauty of which almost redeems the unpleasing wildness that precedes them:

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.- Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,

I learn'd the language of another world.
I do remember me, that in my youth,
When I was wandering, - upon such a night
I stood within the Coloseum's wall,
'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watchdog bayed beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song
Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot. Where the Cæsars dwelt,
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst

A grove