wilt seize them, the first the best,-if thou be man.- -I, I am but a woman, but so came I here! Firmly resolved !-We, old man, we can put faith in one another. For we both are wronged; wronged by the same seducer.—Ah, if you knew, if you knew how infinitely, how inexpressibly, how beyond thought I have been wronged, yet shall be wronged, by him!-You could, you would forget your own wrongs over it.-Do you know me? I am Orsina: the deceived, the deserted Orsina.-Perhaps, maybe, deserted only for your daughter.-Yet what can your daughter aid me ?—Soon will she also be forsaken. And then again another!—And again another!—Ha! (as if in ecstasy.) what heavenly phantasy! When all of us one day,—we, the whole army of deserted ones, we all, changed into Bacchantes, into furies; when we all shall have him among us, among us tear him, pull him to pieces, grope among his entrails, to find the heart that the traitor made promise of to each, and gave to none! Ha! 'twould be a brave dance that! it would!

SCENE VIII. ORSINA, ODOARDO, and CLAUDIA GALOTTI.

CLAUDIA. (who looks around in entering, and so soon as she perceives her husband, rushes towards him.) As I guessed!—Ah, our protector, our preserver! Art thou there, Odoardo ? art thou there?-From their whispering, from their looks I perceived it.What shall I tell you, if you know yet nothing?—What shall I tell you, if you know already all?-But we are innocent. I am innocent. Your daughter is innocent. Innocent, innocent in all!

ODOARDO. (seeking to collect himself in the presence of his wife.) Well, well. Be but calm, but calm,—and answer me. (Towards Orsina) Not, madam, that I still doubt you-Is the Count dead?

CLAUDIA. Dead.

ODOARDO. Is it true that the Prince spoke this morning with Emilia, at the mass?

CLAUDIA. True. But if you knew the terror it occasioned; in what distraction she came home

ORSINA. Now? have I lied?

ODOARDO. (with a bitter laugh.) And I would not that you had! O by how much rather would I not!

ORSINA. Am I mad?

ODOARDO. (pacing wildly to and fro.) Oh-neither am I so

yet.

CLAUDIA. You bade me to be calm; and I am calm.-Best of husbands, may I also I entreat thee

ODOARDO. What would you? Am I not calm? Can a man be calmer than am I? (constraining himself.) Does Emilia know that Appiani is dead?

CLAUDIA. Know it she cannot. But I fear that she suspects it, for he is not here.

ODOARDO. And she is weeping and bewailing.

CLAUDIA. No longer. That is past: after her manner, that you know. She is the most timid and most determined of our sex. Never having power over her first impressions: but after the slightest reflection in all points armed, and upon all resolved. She holds the Prince at a distance; she speaks to him in a toneBut see thou, Odoardo, that we leave this place.

ODOARDO. I came by horse.-What can be done?-Yet— madam, you return I think into the town?

ORSINA. Even thither.

ODOARDO. Would you

home with you?

in kindness condescend to take

ORSINA. Why not? Very gladly.

my wife

ODOARDO. Claudia,—(making the Countess known to her) the Countess Orsina; a lady of the highest understanding; my friend, my benefactress.-You must return home with her, to send the carriage out to us directly. Emilia returns no more to Guastalla. She must with me.

CLAUDIA. But-if only-I part not gladly from my child. ODOARDO. Remains not the father close at hand? In good time surely he will be admitted. No protests!-Come, noble madam. (aside to her) You will hear from me.-Come, Claudia.

(He leads them off:)

(End of Act IV.)

NOTES BY THE WAY.

MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.

"MUSIC" alone might have been made our title; for, in speaking of the drama, we, of course, allude only to its higher part-dramatic poetry; and poetry is in the end but a sublimer form of music. We believe, little as there is to show it in the present day, that the genius of our country is essentially dramatic. There is a terseness, a reality, in this kind of poetry-an amount of vigour and keen observation-a warmth and a blunt kindliness of sentiment required, that none but an English mind seems perfectly calculated to supply. Experience of the past confirms us perfectly in this belief, for it is on our dramatic poetry that the literary fame of our nation chiefly rests-Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Ford,-where shall we end naming them? The stage was open and the genius was called forth; the stage is shut and-Stay, the stage shut, say you!—is not Old Drury now alive, vigorous and healthy, crying up her own qualities as foster nurse to English poetry and music; the rival patent, too--say you the stage is shut? Well, it is open then, and how stands poetry withal? Shakspere is often acted. Very good. And with profit? Of course; how could it be otherwise. The national taste is raised? Out on such impudence! A manly English audience is palled with lions and tigers, absurd farce, and trashy melodramas: these are dropped; Shakspere is acted, is greeted with enthusiasm, and you lay claim to the merit of raising the standard of popular taste, whereas you only touch by accident on part of your true duty, and find how easy it would be did you perform the whole. The English mind is fully capable of appreciating the truly great, and those who have the care of the stage would serve their interests better, if they endeavoured modestly to raise themselves up to it, instead of vain-gloriously professing to raise the people up to them. Well: Shakspere is acted, and what then? this gives pleasure, it is true, but it does nothing towards fostering poetry, or, rather, nothing towards encouraging the present age to write, and this is part of the profession made. Yes, there are more revivals-Melo-dramatic tragedies of moderate worth, and comedies of a century or two back, exceedingly useful to teach the manners of past times; good comedies undoubtedly they are-but where is dramatic poetry all this time? Have we nothing but revivals? Can no manager speculate in taste? Is every one afraid to judge excellence before it has been tried? Great store seems set by a revival of Congreve's "Love for Love." Is this to benefit the good cause? We fancy not. "Love for Love" is only a second-rate comedy, and full of thoughts and deeds no audience now can hear or look upon. But it is "altered for stage representation "—if all be omitted that should, the play must be shortened by at least one-half; the whole nature of several of the characters must be entirely altered, and what then will the value be of the remainder? Congreve and Co. will, we doubt not, be pushed into success, by which Congreve suffers, Co. profits, and the cause of dramatic poetry is kicked aside. This "Love for Love" cannot be brought forward for inherent worth. Oh, no! but think with what an excellent cast they were able to produce it But original plays,-but new poems,-how do they stand, we ask again? One or two farce writers have been found in bread. And, in the season, about one play may be produced, -that of the last year being (confessedly most excellent)

the production of one who was dead, a work rejected in his lifetime, and brought forward then; was it as a great encouragement or sad example to all living writers? We confidently think the directors of our stage act on a wrong principle, in confining such few new plays as they do produce to men whose names bear weight with them. Presupposing that the acceptor of the maiden play be capable of knowing what is good, we are very sure that an English public would hail with as much, if not with more, enthusiasm, the first earnest they receive of a new genius risen up amongst them.

Leaving this unprofitable subject, what can we say for music? The English are becoming a musical people. We fear not. The English are losing their musical character; they hear more music because more is brought to them, but they are drenched with uncongenial stuff, until their sense for what is good is spoiled. Fashion alone maintains an Italian opera. We are not so narrowminded as to look with anger on all success of foreigners who bring their talents to our market. We would greet talent wherever it be met. But we do feel sadness, if not anger, when we see thousands listening with a delight they are compelled by fashion to pretend, to ridiculous musical corkscrews and languishing strains, without a shade of honest feeling, while not ten out of these thousands are perhaps aware that their own nation has a music too, a music of its own that in its simple grandeur would overflow this trumpery, until it shook and quavered beneath an ocean that might bury it for ever. Italian music appeals to the ear, the external ears imply, which it titillates pleasantly enough; French music dances and splashes merrily in watery brains; Spanish appeals strongly to the legs; German to the soul; and English strikes directly to the heart. But Englishmen have heard of a man by name Purcell, and a person of the name of Arne, with others. They may have been told that they are vulgar, and if vulgar mean that they appeal to the lowest as the highest, they have been told right. Theirs is English music; an Italian no doubt would sneer at it, a Frenchman would laugh at it, a Spaniard might kick at it, but a German can admire it, and an Englishman must love it. Why should it be distasteful abroad? it dares to enter in beyond the Italian's outer ears, therefore it must be very coarse; it appeals to the Frenchman's brains, and he has not sufficient to respond-it is national. It allows of no trickery of flourish, it demands to be sung in its single, simple majesty ; tricksters therefore do not sing it, and for that reason it is never sung. For every singer that would flourish in life, must flourish also in his music: this because we are spoiled; we have been robbed by fashion of our character. We have English singers, of no ordinary power, that stand in English theatres before an English audience, and sing translations of Italian operas. Rather than encourage English musicians, the depths of foreign wretchedness are fathomed, and Grétry is fished up, and flung contemptuously into the English teeth, an insult that we are happy to say the English greeted with a hearty damn. One manager proposes to revive the taste for musicians of the English school, and has fed us for a whole season upon Handel! Handel's was a German mind, and English patronage should not rob us of our native generosity, in permitting a son, although we did nurture him, to return to the mother that gave him birth. But Purcell's "King Arthur" is comingso is Christmas--and we hope they will arrive together. We look for much good to be effected by the revival of “King Arthur.”

THE

KING'S COLLEGE MAGAZINE.

DECEMBER, 1842.

CHAPTERS ON GENIUS.

II.

UNTIL it can be demonstrated that genius has some faculty peculiar to itself, by which it performs the wonders it gives rise to, we must both believe and assert that it can only differ from talent in having the mental attributes in greater force. The man of genius and the man of talent may only vary from each other in the degree of mind which they possess, whilst their works may be totally opposite in their characters. The understandings which effect them are of similar construction, however dissimilar they may be in action, in so far as the number and nature of the faculties which compose them are concerned; but they may disagree altogether in relation to the extent to which one, several, or all of those faculties may be developed. A conspicuous feature in the mind of Shakspere was imagination,-in that of Demosthenes, language,-but the vilest of the poet tribe has the one, and the most discordant and irrational street-brawler is gifted with the other; they possess to a certain extent those same faculties for which these illustrious persons were so pre-eminently famed.

To determine accurately where talent terminates and genius commences, is a question of no small difficulty; it is a knot, sometimes as puzzling to untie, as that which the distinction between instinct and reason has presented to certain ingenious gentlemen, who, instead of loosening it, have fastened it the tighter. Where the talent is bordering close upon mediocrity, or the genius is exceedingly vast and comprehensive, there can be no room for hesitation; but between the extremes, how many points are there which furnish problems hard to be explained! Were several men of decided ability to select from the teeming history of the past, such individuals as they might deem worthy the appellation of