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The darkness, like a dome of stone,

Ceils up the heavens.-'T is hush as death-
All but the ocean's dull, low moan.

How hard Lee draws his breath!
He shudders as he feels the working Power.
Arouse thee, Lee! up! man thee for thine hour!
CXI.

'T is close at hand; for there, once more,
The burning ship. Wide sheets of flame
And shafted fire she showered before ;-
Twice thus she hither came;-
But now she rolls a naked hulk, and throws
A wasting light; then, settling, down she goes.

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MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE.

While you are laughing or talking wildly to yourself, in walking, suddenly seeing a person stealing close by you, who, you are sure, must have heard it all; then, in an agony of shame, making a wretched attempt to sing, in a voice as like your talk as possible, in hopes of making your hearer think that you had been only singing all the while.

Seeing the boy who is next above you flogged for a repetition, which you know you cannot say even half so well as he did.

Entering into the figure of a country-dance with so much spirit as to force your leg and foot through the muslin drapery of your fair partner.

After walking in a great hurry to a place, on very urgent business, by what you think a shorter cut, and supposing that you are just ariving at the door you want-'NO THOROUGHFARE!'

Stopping in the street to addresss a person whom you know rather too well to pass him without speaking, and yet not quite well enough to have a word to say to him-he feeling himself in the same dilemma-so that after each has asked and answered the question, "How do you do, sir?' you stand silently face to face, apropos to nothing, during a minute; and then part in a transport of awkwardness.

As you are hastening down the Strand, on a matter of life and death, encountering at an arch-way the head of the first of twelve or fourteen horses which you know must successively strain up with an overloaded coal-waggon before you can hope to stir an inch, unless you prefer bedeviling your white stockings and clean shoes by scampering and crawling among and under coaches, scavengers' carts, &c. &c., in the middle of the street.

Walking half over London side by side with a cart containing a million of iron bars, which you must out-bray, if you can, in order to make your companion hear a word you have further to say upon the subject that you were earnestly discussing before you were joined by this infernal article of commerce.

Walking briskly forward while you are looking backward, and so advancing toward another passenger (a scavenger) who is doing the same; then meeting, with the shock of two battering-rams, which drives your whole stock of breath out of your body, with the groan of a pavior,

'Breast against breast, with ruinous assault
And deaf'ning shock they come.'

At length, during a mutual burst of execrations, you each move, for several minutes, from side to side, with the same motion, in the vain endeavor to pass on.

On your entrance to a formal dinner-party, in reaching up your hat to a high peg in the hall, bursting your coat from the arm-hole to the pocket.

At night, after having long lain awake, nervous, restless and unwell, with an ardent desire to know the hour and the state of the weather, being at last delighted by hearing the watchman begin his cry-from which, however, he allows you to extract no more information than 'past.... clock.... mora. ing!'-then, after impatiently lingering through another hour

for the sound of your own clock (which had before been roared down by the watchman), being roused to listen by its preparatory click and purr, followed by one stroke-which you are to make the most of the rest being cut short by a violent fit of coughing, with which you are seized at the instant. Being accelerated in your walk by the lively application of a chairman's pole a posteriori—his By your leave' not coming till after he has taken it.

which you sit to be tickled, by a celebrated tickler, in the most sensitive parts of the body.

At a long table, after dinner, the eyes of the whole company drawn upon you by a loud observation that you are strikingly like Mrs. or Miss, particularly when you smile.

The mental famine created among poor students by the modern luxury of the press-hot-pressed paper-Bulmer's types-vignette's in every page, &c., obliging every reader During the endless time that you are kept waiting at a door with less than £500 per annum, to seek for all his knowledge in a carriage while the ladies are shopping, having your im- of new books by hearsay, or through the glimmering medium patience soothed by the setting of a saw close at your ear. of those Wills-o'-the-wisp, the reviewers, or out of the CircuSitting on the last row, and close to the partition of an up-lating Library, where nothing circulates-but the Catalogue.

per box at a pantomime, and hearing all the house laughing around you, while you strain your wrists, neck and back, with stretching forward-in vain.

At the play-the sickening scraps of naval loyalty which are crammed down your throat faster than you can gulp them, in such afterpieces as are called England's Glory —The British Tars,' &c-with the additional nausea of hearing them boisterously applauded.

On packing up your own clothes for a journey, because your servant is a fool-the burning fever into which you are thrown, when, after all your standing, stamping, lying, kneeling, tugging, and kicking, at the lid of your trunk, it still peremptorily refuses to approach nearer than half a yard to the lock. A chaise window-glass, that will not be put down when it is up, nor up when it is down.

Tearing your throat to rags in abortive efforts to call back a person who has just left you, and with whom you have forgotten to touch on one of the most important subjects which you met to discuss.

After having left a company in which you have been galled by the raillery of some wag by profession-thinking, at your leisure, of a repartee, which, if discharged at the proper moment, would have blown him to atoms.

After relating, at much length, a scarce and curious anecdote, with considerable marks of self-complaceney at having it to tell, being quietly reminded by the person you have been so kindly instructing, that you had it-from himself!

In conversation-inadvertently touching the string which you know will call forth the longest story of the flattest proser that ever droned.

Being compelled by a deaf person, in a large, and silent company, to repeat some very washy remark three or four times over, at the highest pitch of your voice.

In reading a new and interesting book, being reduced to make a paper-knife of your finger.

On arriving at that part of the last volume of an enchanting novel, in which the interest is wrought up to the highest pitch -suddenly finding the remaining leaves, catastrophe and all,

torn out.

doubled.

Writing on the creases of paper that have been sharply The moment in which you discover you have taken in a mouthful of fat, by mistake for turnip.

At a formal dinner-the awful resting-time which occasionally intervenes between the courses.

In the depth of winter-trying in vain to effect a union between unsoftened butter, and the crum of a very stale loaf, or quite a new one.

Cracking a hard nut with your teeth, and filling the gap left by the grinder you have knocked out, with black bitter

dust.

At the instant of drawing the cork, starting back, from the eagerly expected burst of froth-but without the least occasion either for your hopes or fears—the liquor all remaining in the bottle as quiet as a lamb.

Dropping something, when you are either too lame, or too lazy, to get up for it; and almost breaking your ribs, and quite throwing yourself down, by stretching down to it over the arm of your chair, without reaching it at last.

Dressing for a ball by a foul and ill-cast looking glass, (not knowing it to be so till next morning,) and so mourning, and wondering, over your own unaccountable and unseasonable ugliness.

The night-cap half slipped off, when you are too sleepy to readjust it.

Suddenly recollecting, as you lie at a very late hour of a Lapland night, that you have neglected to see, as usual, that the fires are all safe, below-then, after an agonizing interv a of hesitation, crawling out, like a culprit, and quivering dowl stairs.

Your real sensations, during the pretended indifference with

Catching a glimpse, at a corner of a street, of your oldest and dearest friends, Punch and his party, all in full squeak and scuffle, from whom, however, the cruel decorums of age and character oblige you, after snatching a fearful joy,' to tear yourself away.

Wandering from one shop to another in search of a book, and finding twenty copies of it, of a date immediately before and after that of the only edition which will be of any use to you, and which you, consequently, never find.

The state of writhing torture into which you are occasionally thrown by the sudden and unexpected questions, or remarks, of a child, before a large company-a little wretch of your own, for instance, that will run up to an unmarried lady (one who would rather be thought a youthful sinner than an elderly saint), and then harrow you by crying out, before you have time to gag it-"Now, do, Miss —, let me count the creases in your face-there's one, there's two, there's three," &c.-or, accosting another lady in the same explicit strain, electrifies you by breaking out with-" Why do you come here so often? for, do you know, my aunt always says she can't, abide you-do n't you, aunt?" &c. &c.

After eating mushrooms-the lively interest you take in the debate that accidentally follows upon the question "whether they were of the right sort?"

Taking a step more or a step less than you want, in going up or down stairs.

The task of inventing a new dinner every morning devolving on you, in the long absence of your wife.

Attempting to open the stiff blade of a rusty knife at a wellworn notch, with a short thumb-nail.

On shaking off a long reverie, the sudden consciousness that during the whole of your absent fit your eyes have been intently fixed on a letter which a stranger is writing or reading close at your elbow.

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The morose severity with which Johnson has treated the and unjust; but we know not that it has been remarked, that works of Gray has been universally condemned as ungenerous the worthy doctor-who was, after all, a 'fine old fellow,' as Byron terms him, though sadly swayed by masterless passion and inveterate prejudice-has himself fallen into the very sins for which he so very coarsely censures the poet. In his remarks on the 'Ode to Eton College,' a poem which, from its sedate contemplative character, one would think Johnson must have admired, he styles the apostrophe to the Thames 'useless and puerile,' and adds, as if with the blunt obtuseness of a true matter-of-fact critic, Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself.' This is certainly a fact, but who ever before thought of applying such a test to poetry?

'Gadzooks, must one swear to the truth of a song?'

Dr. Johnson, however, when he so far forgot himself as to pen this sage dictum, forgot also, that some sixteen or seventeen years before, when his imagination was, perhaps warmer and his perceptions more vivid, he had written a book called Rasselas,' in which the river Nile is thus nobly apostrophised

Answer, great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint?' Now, pray, Dr. Johnson, what better means of knowing had the Nile than your Princess Nekeyah, or the much-injured Father Thames ? and don't you think you stand much in the same situation as poor Mr. Gray ?

In the same life, the critic censures the poet for conceiving that he could not write but at certain times, and terms this harmless imagination, which has been entertained by almost

every writer of works of fiction, a fantastic foppery. In the life of Milton a similar charge is adduced. Now, Dr. Johnson himself, in his life of Denham, admits the force and reality of this conceit. Speaking of the four sonorous and oft-praised lines, also addressed to 'Father Thames,'

'O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull:
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing full,"—

the doctor remarks-"The passage has beauty peculiar to itself, and must be numbered among those felicities which cannot be produced at will by wit and labor, but must arise unexpectedly in some hour propitious to poetry.' This is alwhich Milton and Gray claimed-the very keystone of the fabric-the 'fantastic foppery' which Johnson afterwards labored to destroy. Critics, like a certain description of moral offenders, ought to have good memories.

Johnson's criticism of Milton's Lycidas is wholly unworthy of his talents, and demonstrates, better than a thousand dissertations, that he was either sometimes wilfully blind from prejudice, or that to the charms of a certain class of imaginative poetry he was utterly insensible. The exquisite relish for the pleasures of a town life which predominated in the mind of Johnson, and his constitutional aversion to solitude, seem to have blunted his perception to the simple beauties of external nature, and to have rendered him distasteful of poetry which did not include some striking moral sentiment, or attract by the stately grandeur and measured melody of its numbers. His mind disdained an alliance with the gentler graces. He could comprehend and develope, with matchless skill and wisdom, the sublimities of Paradise Lost; but the myrtle and ivy of Lycidas shrank from his touch, and eluded his grasp. With our great critic, the proper study of mankind was man.

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So dandies from Kamtskatka flirt

With damsels from the Wrekin;
And belles from Berne look very pert
On Mandarins from Pekin;
The Cardinal is here from Rome,

The Commandant from Seville;
And Hamlet's father from the tomb,
And Faustus from the devil.

What mean these laughing Nuns, I pray?

I

What mean they, Nun or Fairy?

guess they told no beads to-day,

And sung no Ave Mary.

From mass and matins, Priest and P x, Barred door, and window grated,

I wish all pretty Catholics

Were thus emancipated.

Four seasons come to dance quadrilles,
With four well seasoned sailors;
And Raleigh talks of railroad bills,
With Timon, prince of railers.
I find Sir Charles of Aubyn Park

Equipped for a walk to Mecca:
And I ran away from Joan of Arc,
To dance with the sad Rebecca.

Fair Cleopatra's very plain;

Puck rants and Ariel swaggers;
And Cæsar's murdered o'er again,
Though not by Roman daggers.
Great Charlemagne is four feet high,
Sadshaff has Bacon spoken;
Queen Mary's waist is all awry,
And Pysche's nose is broken.

Our happiest bride, how very odd,
Is the mourning Isabella;
And the heaviest foot that ever trod,
Is the foot of Cinderella.
Here sad Calista laughs outright,

There Yorick looks most grave, sir; And a Templar waves his cross so high, Who never crossed the wave, sir.

-

Thus run the giddy hours away,
Till norning's light is beaming;
And we awake to dream by day,
What we to-night are dreaming:
To smile, to sigh, to love, to change,
Oh, in our heart's recesses,
We dress in fancies quite as strange
As these, our fancy dresses!

THE FANCY BALL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'

You used to talk, said Miss M'Call,
Of flowers, and flames, and Cupid,

But now you never talk at all

You 're growing vastly stupid:

You'd better leave your Blackstone, sir,
You never will get through it;

There's a Fancy Ball at Winchester,
Pray let us take you to it.

I made last night a solemn vow
To startle all beholders;
I wore white muslin on my brow,
Green velvet on my shoulders;
My trowsers were supremely wide,
I learned to swear by Allah;
I stuck a poinard by my side,
And called myself "Abdallah.

A Fancy Ball's a strange affair,
Made up of silks and leathers,

Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair,
Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers:
The dullest Duke in all the town
To-night may shine a droll one;
And he who has but half a crown,
Look royal with a whole one.

Hail blest confusion! here are met
All tongues, and times, and faces;
The Lancers flirt with Juliet,

The Bramin talks of races;

And where's your genius, bright Corinne,
And where's your brogue, Sir Lucius?
And Chinca Fi you have not seen
One chapter of Confucius.

CHARADE.

In a bower of roses fair Isabel lay,
When my FIRST came idling by,
And he paused awhile with her tresses to play
And bask in the light of her eye.
Fatigued with his journey he longed for rest,

And craved in her bosom a home,
For he envied the jewel that lay on her breast
Like a flower on ocean's foam.

"Now nay young rover, now nay," she cried,
"Thou never shalt have thy will,
My heart is as free as the world is wide,
And free I would have it still."
And she thrust him forth on his lonely way,
Nor heeded his look of wrath,
And she woke my SECOND so blythe and gay
To cheer the wanderer's path.

Then there came a knight to the lady fair,
And wooed her with smile and tear,
But she heeded not a sigh, or prayer,

Till he breathed my WHOLE in her ear. Then she saw my first on the warrior's crest, And with smiles as the morning bright, She gave him a home in her faithful breast, For the sake of the stranger knight.

B. H. K.

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The Play of the UNCLE was performed for the first time at Berlin, in the autumn of 1835; where Emile Devrient, one of the greatest actors, not only of Germany, but of all Europe, played Dr. Lowe.* It was immediately afterward produced at the Court theatre at Weimar; where Durand, an excellent actor, and a very amiable and accomplished man, performed the principal character with almost equal effect. The success of the comedy was complete in both capitals, and it has since appeared on every stage in Germany, and every where with applause. Of all the Princess Amelia's dramas THE UNCLE has been perhaps the most frequently played, and has given the most general and unmingled pleasure: the causes of its success lie deep in the peculiar habits and sympathies of the German character; it is, in fact, the most essentially German of all these comedies, the one least likely to be understood in England. Some of those scenes which I remember to have been most effective on the stage, would not be comprehended by any English audience, would appear perhaps flat ia effect and puerile in sentiment-perhaps provoke a smile, where

In cases of divorce on the plea of the husband's infidelity, he forfeits all claim whatever on the property of his wife. The care of the children is adjudged to the party who, upon evidence produced, appears most likely to give them a good education: when very young, invariably to the mother, except where the guilt of infidelity rests with her. In no case can either parent be denied all access to the children, unless it be proved before a tribunal that the habitual course of life is so perverse as to endanger the moral well being of the offspring; in that case, an order of prohibition is issued. The expense of the maintenance and education of the children rests with the father; but should the mother be rich and the father poor, she also must contribute to their support, in proportion to her wealth.

Some years ago, before the late revolution in the Saxon government, divorce was more difficult than at present; while in Prussia it was less so. The law is at present almost on an equal footing in both countries, perhaps stricter in Prussia, where it has lately been altered, public morals having suffered greatly iu consequence of the facility of divorce. Again, in Saxony, it was from consideration for the morals of the community that the law was relaxed: all which is worthy of reflection and investigation on deeper and higher grounds than mere superficial morality and expediency.

The expense of procuring a legal decree for divorce may be from twelve dollars (two pounds sterling) and upward to a very large sum. according to the circumstances of the case.

The action of this drama, we may suppose to take place at one of tin, Dessau, &c., where a young lady, rich, noble and beautiful, might the small capitals* in the north of Germany, as Weimar, Cobourg, Stetput on her bonnet and walk through the streets unattended, with perfect propriety.

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SCENE I.... A Street.

feelings of a very opposite nature would be excited in Germany. We Enter RIEDLER on one side, and HENRIETTE, with a vial

are in England almost as much the slaves of certain arbitrary associations as the French themselves, while the Germans are less subjected to the influence of conventional ridicule than any people among whom I have lived. To make an old bachelor, a physician, a recluse philosopher, who feeds birds and dries butterflies, the serious hero and lover of the drama, is an idea which certainly would not have entered into

the mind of any common playwright. Yet this original conception

has been here most happily executed, without the slightest violation of nature or probability, as far as German manners and feelings are concerned. Dr. Lowe, with his personal negligence and his mental refinement, his child-like simplicity and moral grandeur, in the beautiful blending of loveliness, sentiment, humor and pathos, is one of the happiest and most perfect delineations I have met with in the German modern drama. The fervent approval, the tearful sympathy, it never fails to excite, particularly among the young, and the high rank it has taken in the popular estimation, strike me as a very pleasing characteristic of the German public. Anna, the young English heiress, has some traits which remind us of Miss Edgeworth's admirable character of Miss Broadhurst in the "Absentee"-with beauty and the softer graces of her sex superadded. Her self-dependence, her decision of purpose, her generous yet mistaken motives for marrying Julius, without being absolutely in love with him, and the going over of her heart to the Doctor, appear to me beautifully managed. Julius is just one of those whiskered, welldressed, well-meaning, weak young men, so commonly to be met with, who are inclined to do right when they are not tempted to do wrong; and Anna is precisely the woman to be disgusted by the want of strength of mind and truth in her lover, the moment she has a perception of his real character. The part of Anna requires to be played with exquisite delicacy and grace, lest it verge, though ever so little, on prudery and harshness. It is most charmingly performed by Mademoisselle Bauer of Dresden, and Mademoiselle Lortzing of Wei

mar.

comic effect.

Madame Sturmer, the malade imaginaire, is a part which reads ill, I am afraid—at least in English; but it acts well, and produces much In the second scene of the first act of this play, an allusion occurs which seems to require a more detailed and satisfactory explanation than can well be given in a marginal note. Madame Sturmer lamenting her deceased husband, exclaims rather in the style of an Irish widow at her husband's wake-"Ach warum musste er sterben!" literally, "Ah, why must he have died ?"-to which the satirical waitingmaid replies, sotto voce," Um sich den Scheidungs prozess zu ersparen!" to spare himself the trial for a di orce; a phrase which might easily, according to our English ideas on the subject, expose the lady to most undeserved imputations. The English law admits but one plea for divorce-the infidelity of the wife. But in Saxony the legal pleas for divorce are several; viz. 1.Theproved infidelity of either party; the wife, as in Scotland, being able on this plea to divorce her husband. 2. Bigamy on either side. 3. Desertion of home (bed and board) by either party. 4. Quasi-desertion; that is, as I understand it, when the husband and wife have agreed to be separated for life without other cause than mutual aversion, disparity of temper or character, &c.; and coercive measures have been tried, or apparently tried, without result. 5. An attempt made by either party on the life of the other. Lastly, any disgraceful crime subjecting one party to an imprisonment of not less than four years' duration, affords a legal plea for divorce to the

other.

* Pronounced Leuvé.

in her hand, on the other.

REID. Ha, Mamsell Henriette! whither away so fast? HENR. Whither-can you ask, sir? as if there was any way for me but from the house-door to the apothecary's shop! REID. Is your good lady fallen sick again, by way of a change?

HENR. Oh, yesterday evening we had a terrible scene! She had an inflammation of the lungs, it seems; and because Dr. Richter would n't believe it, and refused to bleed her, she became downright mad, wished the doctor at the mischief, and herself in heaven; and, in short, went so far in the height of her fury, that the doctor ran off without his hat, and swore he would never enter the house again-a catastrophe which of a sudden changed my lady's inflammation into a bilious fever.

REID. Bravo! admirable!—and how well you tell the story! HENR. Yes I'm used to it-had always a knack at telling a story; and if I had not the comfort of relating the scenes that happen at home to half a dozen of my intimate acquaintance, I'm sure I do n't think I could stay another hour in such a detested service.

REID. And what said Miss Anna to all this ado?

HENR. Why, Miss Anna had to play the harp to her mamma from midnight till after one this morning, to quiet her nerves, forsooth!

RIED. A very pleasant task!

HENR. O that's nothing! formerly, I remember that she had to play all night long; and all the physic that my lady takes, she must taste it first; and not long ago, when my lady had the toothache, they talked of pulling out one of Miss Anna's beautiful teeth, just that she might tell her mamma if it was really so very painful or not-ha, ha, ha!

RIED. [laughing]. That's awful.

HENR. Ay, in truth; but so it always is, when one spoils people in that way. My young lady would bear it all, if it were ten times worse. Now, suppose a rich uncle had adopted me, and left me his sole heiress; "My lady mamma," says I, "for your daughter I'm not good enough, it seems, and for your waiting-maid too good; you have your jointure, I have my dowry-the world is wide-your most obedient!" [with a mock courtesy.]

RIED. Pity that Miss Anna has not so much sense as Mamsell Henriette!

HENR. Sense! Lord knows you rich people have seldom much to boast of, and she hasn't a grain; for she can never

"In German "Residenzen," as being the residence of the sovereign prince.

12-617

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HENR. In Switzerland! Oh, I hope we shall go there, after the wedding to pay her a visit. I once saw the Swiss Family at the play-[Sings]—

"Who ever heard me complain ?"

perhaps I may find a Jacob for myself.a

RIED. Of course you will: but here comes the Baron, and your lady will be asking for her medicine.

HENR. O! she'll take another in the meantime.

[She goes out.] Enter JULIUS. RIED. If there were such servants in every house, the secret police might save a good round sum. Good morning, Löwenberg: how is it with you?

JUL. Il-ill.

RIED. Ill! the post is not come in then?

JUL. It is I must needs say it-unpardonable, the way i which I have lately neglected my studies!-if I go on in thi manner, I shall certainly forget every thing I know. RIED. Pooh!

JUL. And besides, I have got horribly into debt.

RIED. A splendid appointment will make all right, and tha you will have through the connection I have obtained for you and you shall not lose Anna's hand either. I will not lay m head to rest till I have gained it for you: and-[putting his hand to his forehead]-I have just thought of a stroke o Genius! Anna is yours! and in a month from this we shal see your creditors scampering out of the way of your equi page.

JUL. But hear me, Riedler-you don't mean to try you eloquence on my uncle? That were pains thrown away, and would probably only make the mischief worse.

RIED. Do you think me mad? Not a syllable shall he hea from me; he shall not even suspect that I have any hand in it and yet I will weave such a net around him, that I will put i out of his power to refuse his consent

JUL. I do not comprehend—

RIED. Your uncle knows nothing of this new flame o yours?

JUL. Assuredly not: I have never spoken of her, and he never listens to mere gossip.

RIED. Well, your uncle, in spite of this fancy of setting up for an old man at eight-and-thirty, is not absolutely insensible Anna is beautiful, and somewhat tedious with her learning and her virtue-just the sort of thing to charm him-if he could see her without prejudice, and not as the beloved of his nephew and that is just what we have to bring about.

JUL. But even then we are still far from our object. RIED. Not so far as you think.-Eh! if your uncle now, for example, should fall in love with her?-could he blame in his nephew an inclination in which he had got entangled himself? I JUL. You know nothing about it. My uncle in love! believe that for the last eighteen years, nothing of the femiREID. You alarm me-have you had a letter from your nine gender has interested him, except the wide-mouthed

JUL. Yes, it's come; but I wish one of those Swiss avalanches had stopped the road up, on its way.

mother?

JUL. Yes that's the very thing.

RIED. Why, surely against a marriage with the daughter of Baron Stürmer and Lady Temple, the sole heiress of her uncle the rich Lord Temple, she can have nothing to object? JUL. No, not exactly that-but hear what she writes-[he reads]" My dear Son," and so forth-" with regard to your project of marrying this rich young English woman, I have nothing against it, for my own part; but as in an affair of such importance I do not trust your inexperience, and not knowing, beside, how far your engagement with the Lindners may have gone, your excellent uncle must be the sole judge in this case; what he thinks right will have my approval; and his consent shall immediately be followed by mine."-Now what do you

say to that?

RIED. That women were sent into the world for nothing
else but to pull down what men have toiled to build up.
JuL. Before I get my uncle's consent to a marriage with
Anna, the stream shall flow backward to its fountain.

RIED. Why, it seems he has dried flowers and empaled butterflies with old Lindner, and the girl Caroline has read Matthison's poems to him--and therefore he has set his heart on the match

JUL. And accordingly will never give his consent to any

other.
RIED. You are too easily discouraged. Your uncle is an
oddity-hard as a rock one day, and the next so soft, you may
twine him round your finger.
JUL. There you mistake him: he is not hard or soft, ae-
cording to the day-but according to the matter in hand.

RIED. But it would be really a cursed bore if he were to ruin this marriage affair: what, after all, does he mean you to do in the world?

JUL. He means the best, I believe-that I should become an active, useful member of society; that's what he means. RIED. Active-useful-every journeyman laborer is that. JUL. And he esteems such laborers, Riedler. Don't take it ill-but really there are moments when I repent that I did not follow his advice from the beginning; I believe I had been better off for it. Now, indeed, all return is cut off-it is now too late.

statue of Hope on the monument of his Marie.

RIED. That were precisely the jest-to make him faithless to his buried love, and so oblige him to forgive your infidelity to Caroline.

JUL. I hope you do not mean to make my uncle ridiculous with this contrivance? I should not like that-nor would I suffer it.

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SCENE II.... An apartment in the house of MADAME
STURMER.

Enter MADAME STURMER, leading on ANNA and HENRIETTE.
MAD. S. A little farther-there-set me down. Do you
not see how weak I am on my feet?

HENR. A fly in September is stronger than your ladyship, truly.

MAD. S. And yet I do believe that Doctor Richter could see me in this condition, and have the audacity to prescribe me a ride for exercise. A man without a conscience is that Doctor Richter! let him go, but when I am dying, Henriette, then do me the kindness to send for him, and bring him here, that before I depart this life I may have the satisfaction of RIED. She's a prude and a pedant: if she hadn't so much hearing him confess how ill I am! Anna! you do not speak a money, I would really advise you to give her up.

RIED. Tell me what is it that disturbs you thus?
JUL. Anna speaks just as my uncle does.

word?

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