"MAN. The spirits I have raised abandon me-
The spells which I have studied baffle me-
The remedy I reck'd of tortured me:

I lean no more on superhuman aid,

It hath no power upon the past, and for

The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness,
It is not of my search.-My mother Earth!

And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains,
Why are ye beautiful? I cannot love ye.
And thou, the bright eye of the universe,
That openest over all, and unto all

Art a delight-thou shin'st not on my heart.
And you, ye crags, upon whose extreme edge
I stand, and on the torrent's brink beneath
Behold the tall pines dwindled as to shrubs
In dizziness of distance; when a leap,

A stir, a motion, even a breath, would bring
My breast upon its rocky bosom's bed

To rest for ever-wherefore do I pause?

-Ay,

Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, [An eagle passes.
Whose happy flight is highest into heaven,

Well may'st thou swoop so near me--I should be

Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone
Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine
Yet pierces downward, onward, or above
With a pervading vision.-Beautiful!
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,

And trust not to each other. Hark! the note,

[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;

My soul would drink those echoes.-Oh, that I were
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!" P. 20-22.

At this period of his soliloquy, he is descried by a chamois hunter, who overhears its continuance :

"To be thus

Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,

A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,

Which but supplies a feeling to decay

And to be thus, eternally but thus,

Having been otherwise!

Ye toppling crags of ice!

Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me !
I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass,
And only fall on things which still would live;
On the young flourishing forest, or the hut

And hamlet of the harmless villager.

The mists boil up around the glaciers! clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell,
Whose every wave breaks on a living shore,
Heap'd with the damn'd like pebbles.-I am giddy !"

Just as he is about to spring from the cliff, he is seized by the hunter, who forces him away from the dangerous place in the midst of the rising tempest. In the second act, we find him in the cottage of this peasant, and in a still wilder state of disorder. His host offers him wine; but, upon looking at the cup, he exclaims

"Away, away! there's blood upon the brim!
Will it then never-never sink in the earth?

C. HUN. What dost thou mean? thy senses wander from thee.
MAN. I say 'tis blood-my blood! the pure warm stream
Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours

When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
And loved each other as we should not love-

And this was shed: but still it rises up,

Colouring the clouds, that shut me out from heaven,

Where thou art not-and I shall never be.

C. HUN. Man of strange words, and some half-maddening sin," &c.
"Man. Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?

It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine

Have made my days and nights imperishable,

Endless, and all alike, as sands upon the shore,

Innumerable atoms; and one desert,

Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,

Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.

C. HUN. Alas! he's mad-but yet I must not leave him.
MAN. I would I were-for then the things I see

Would be but a distemper'd dream.

C. HUN.

What is it

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!" P. 27-29.

In a

The following scene is one of the most poetical and most sweetly written in the poem. There is a still and delicious witchery in the tranquillity and seclusion of the place, and the celestial beauty of the Being who reveals herself in the midst of these visible enchantments. deep valley among the mountains, Manfred appears alone before a lofty cataract, pealing in the quiet sunshine down the still and everlasting rock; and says→→→

"It is not noon-the sunbow's rays still arch
The torrent with the many hues of heaven,
And roll the sheeted silver's waving column
O'er the crag's headlong perpendicular,
And fling its lines of foaming light along,
And to and fro, like the pale courser's tail,
The Giant steed, to be bestrode by Death.
As told in the Apocalypse. No eyes
But mine now drink this sight of loveliness;
I should be sole in this sweet solitude,
And with the Spirit of the place divide

The homage of these waters.-I will call her.

[He takes some of the water into the palm of his hand, and flings it in the air, muttering the adjuration. After a pause, the WITCH OF

THE ALPS rises beneath the arch of the sunbow of the torrent.

MAN. Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light,

And dazzling eyes of glory, in whose form

The charms of Earth's least-mortal_daughters grow

To an unearthly stature, in an essence
Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,-
Carnation'd like a sleeping infant's cheek,
Rock'd by the beating of her mother's heart,
Or the rose tints, which summer's twilight leaves
Upon the lofty glacier's virgin snow,

The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,—
Tinge thy celestial aspect, and make tame

The beauties of the sunbow which bends o'er thee.
Beautiful Spirit! in thy calm clear brow,
Wherein is glass'd serenity of soul,
Which of itself shows immortality,

I read that thou wilt pardon to a Son

Of Earth, whom the abstruser Powers permit
At times to commune with them-if that he
Avail him of his spells-to call thee thus,
And gaze on thee a moment.

WITCH.

Son of Earth!

I know thee, and the Powers which give thee power;
I know thee for a man of many thoughts,

And deeds of good and ill, extreme in both,

Fatal and fated in thy sufferings.

I have expected this-what wouldst thou with me?

MAN. To look upon thy beauty-nothing further." P. 31, 32.

There is something exquisitely beautiful, to our taste, in all this passage; and both the apparition and the dialogue are so managed, that the sense of their improbability is swallowed up in that of their beauty;-and without actually believing that such spirits exist or communicate themselves, we feel for the moment as if we stood in their presence. What follows, though

extremely powerful, and more laboured in the writing, has less charm for us. He tells his celestial auditor the brief story of his misfortune; and when he mentions the death of the only being he had ever loved, the beauteous Spirit breaks in with her superhuman pride:

"And for this

A being of the race thou dost despise,
The order which thine own would rise above,
Mingling with us and ours, thou dost forego

The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink'st back

To recreant mortality-Away!

MAN. Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that hour

But words are breath-look on me in my sleep,

Or watch my watchings-Come and sit by me!

My solitude is solitude no more,

But peopled with the Furies;-I have gnash'd
My teeth in darkness till returning morn,
Then cursed myself till sunset; I have pray'd
For madness as a blessing-'tis denied me,
I have affronted Death-but in the war

Of elements the waters shrunk from me,

And fatal things pass'd harmless." P. 36, 37.

The third scene is the boldest in the exhibition of supernatural persons. The three Destinies and Nemesis meet at midnight, on the top of the Alps, on their way to the hall of Arimanes, and sing strange ditties to the moon, of their mischiefs wrought among men. Nemesis being rather late, thus apologises for keeping them waiting :

"I was detain'd repairing shatter'd thrones,
Marrying fools, restoring dynasties,

Avenging men upon their enemies,

And making them repent their own revenge;
Goading the wise to madness; from the dull
Shaping out oracles to rule the world

Afresh, for they were waxing out of date,
And mortals dared to ponder for themselves,
To weigh kings in the balance, and to speak
Of freedom, the forbidden fruit.-Away!

We have outstaid the hour-mount we our clouds!" P. 44.

This we think is out of place at least, if we must not say out of character, and though the author may tell us that human calamities are naturally subjects of derision to the Ministers of Vengeance, yet we cannot be persuaded that satirical and political allusions are at all compatible with the feelings and impressions which it was here his business to maintain. When the Fatal Sisters are again assembled before the throne of Arimanes, Manfred suddenly appears among them, and refuses the prostrations which they require. The First Destiny thus loftily announces him :

"Prince of the Powers invisible! This man

Is of no common order, as his port

And presence here denote; his sufferings
Have been of an immortal nature, like

Our own; his knowledge and his powers and will,
As far as is compatible with clay,

Which clogs the ethereal essence, have been such
As clay hath seldom borne; his aspirations
Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth,
And they have only taught him what we know-
That knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.

This is not all;-the passions, attributes'

Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor being,

Nor breath from the worm upwards is exempt,

Have pierced his heart; and in their consequence

Made him a thing, which I, who pity not,

Yet pardon those who pity. He is mine,
And thine, it may be-be it so, or not,

No other Spirit in this region hath

A soul like his-or power upon his soul." P. 47, 48.

At his desire, the ghost of his beloved Astarte is then called up, and appears but refuses to speak at the command of the powers who have raised her, till Mandfred breaks out into this passionate and agonising address:

"Hear me, hear me

Astarte! my beloved! speak to me:

I have so much endured-so much endure

Look on me! the grave hath not changed thee more

Than I am changed for thee. Thou lovedst me

Too much, as I loved thee: we were not made

To torture thus each other, though it were
The deadliest sin to love as we have loved.
Say that thou loath'st me not-that I do bear
This punishment for both-that thou wilt be
One of the blessed-and that I shall die,
For hitherto all hateful things conspire
To bind me in existence-in a life
Which makes me shrink from immortality-
A future like the past. I cannot rest.
I know not what I ask, nor what I seek ;

I feel but what thou art-and what I am;

And I would hear yet once, before I perish,

The voice which was my music-Speak to me !

For I have call'd on thee in the still night,

Startled the slumbering birds from the hush'd boughs,
And woke the mountain wolves, and made the caves
Acquainted with thy vainly echoed name,

Which answer'd me-many things answer'd me-
Spirits and men-but thou wert silent all.
Yet speak to me! I have outwatch'd the stars,
And gazed o'er heaven in vain in search of thee.
Speak to me! I have wander'd o'er the earth,
And never found thy likeness-Speak to me!
Look on the fiends around-they feel for me:
fear them not, and feel for thee alone-
Speak to me! though it be in wrath ;-but say-

PHAN. Farewell!
MAN.

PHAN. Manfred !.
NEM.

Say, shall we meet again?

One word for mercy! Say, thou lovest me.
[The Spirit of ASTARTE disappears.
She's gone, and will not be recall'd." P. 50-52.

The last act, though in many passages very beautifully written, seems to us less powerful. It passes altogether in Manfred's castle, and is chiefly occupied in two long conversations between him and a holy abbot, who comes to exhort and absolve him, and whose counsel he repels with the most reverent gentleness, and but few bursts of dignity and pride. The following passages are full of poetry and feeling :

"Ay-father! I have had those earthly visions
And noble aspirations in my youth,

To make my own the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations; and to rise
I knew not whither-it might be to fall;
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract,

Which having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Even in the foaming strength of its abyss,
(Which casts up misty columns that become
Clouds raining from the re-ascended skies),
Lies low but mighty still.-But this is past,
My thoughts mistook themselves.

ABBOT. And why not live and act with other men?
MAN. Because my nature was averse from life;
And yet not cruel; for I would not make,
But find a desolation:-like the wind,

The red-hot breath of the most lone Simoom,

Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er

The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast,

And revels o'er their wild and arid waves,

And seeketh not, so that it is not sought,

But being met is deadly; such hath been

The course of my existence; but there came

Things in my path which are no more." P. 59, 60.

There is also a fine address to the setting sun-and a singular miscellaneous soliloquy, in which one of the author's Roman recollections is brought in, we must say, somewhat unnaturally :

"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 Coliseum'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 bay'd beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,