And the poor child?

That hour

LADY ELLINOR.-To me 'twas known.

WALTER.

LADY ELLINOR.

Was to a far secluded home conveyed.

WALTER.-An outcast, punished for no fault of his.

LADY ELLINOR.-Your father fondly supplicated for you.
But at that hour, enamour'd as he was,

He could deny her nothing.

WALTER.

And my mother?

LADY ELLINOR.-The parting from her child nigh broke her heart;
But she subdued the mother's tenderness,

LADY ELLINOR.-Honour's her idol; life's a trifle to her,

Compared with her fair fame. The very night
Before your birth, a-blaze with jewellery
She shone, the bright sultana of the masque.
On the next eve she at the banquet sat,
The courteous hostess of a hundred guests,

Till, nature failing to support her courage,

The attendants bore her fainting to the chamber.

Walter receives this tale with less emotion than might be expected; inquires eagerly after his father, and asks after his brothers and sisters. He is told that his father considers him dead, and that his brothers and sisters all one by one perished. He then requests a likeness of his mother-a description of her—a picture. Lady Ellinor says she was like her, and then turns a conversation, too affecting and dangerous to be prolonged, to Walter's future fortunes, and informs him that his mother is studying to restore him to the state from which she cast him; but Walter is the child of nature, has imbibed the gentle philosophy of his father's disposition, and expresses his satisfaction in his present sphere.

Oh! tell her, lady,

Pomp, riches, rank are valueless to me;
My care is higher than such gauds as those :
I'd not, for all the advancement in the world,
Exchange the freedom of my country life.

What are the splendours of your courtly pageants?
I'm sure they are poor to what we may behold
Here thro' the beauties of the changeful day,
From its grey dawning to its glowing eve.
Where is the joy of scraping wealth together
From desks and counters in the murky town,
Compared with that of seeing in the fields

God's liberal bounties springing from the earth?
Or what's the satisfaction rank may yield

That's equal to a peaceful loving home?

Lady Ellinor hints to him that his unaspiring mind and love of rural tranquillity and content is owing to some attachment to a Phillis or Delia.

With wreathed crook, and silken-fleeced flock,
To sing her carols to your shepherd's pipe

Beneath the woodbines at your cottage door.

And she informs him that with his mother's consent these nuptials may not be," you cannot know her heart;" when Walter naturally bursts out,

Could she, who loved so madly, ruin mine?

And now we must give Lady Ellinor's explanation at full length.

It must not, cannot be. The hour may come-
When the world's less to her than now it is,
Her youth quite gone, her waning beauty faded,
When pride, the love of praise, and vanity,
Fly the chill blasts which issue from the grave,
And leave the aged breast to worthier tenants,-
That she may force herself to brook her shame,
Do a late justice to the child she has wronged,
And implore pardon from her injured husband.
But no, not yet. In sickness or in sorrow
Such thoughts have strongly urged her, and oft times
Could hardly be repressed. The day will come,
I feel it must-not yet-still come it will-
That dreadful revelation must be made,
And all its torturing consequences suffered-
The crimson ignominy; the world's scorn;
The pity of the good; but that were little ;
The loathed familiarity of those,

Who, with their blighted names, now keep aloof,
But then will freely greet her as their own;
Your father's keen reproaches for the years
Of comfort in his child abstracted from him ;-
All might be borne; but I could not endure
To see my son with humble blood allied,

Or hear that yeoman's daughter call me mother.
WALTER.-Your blood! you mother!

LADY ELLINOR.-I am self-betrayed.

And here we think this scene would have ended with more effect than it does at present. From the opening of the third act it appears that Lady Ellinor had forbidden Walter to continue his attachment to Mary; but he persists in his purpose of remaining faithful to his engagements.

Their hard, imperious will

May make me wretched; it shan't make me great.
I'll not be torn from lowly liberty,

I'll not be manacled with courtly forms,

I'll not be hemmed around by fine appointments,
I'll not be always watched by bowing lacqueys, &c.

Mary says all on the occasion that an amiable and trustful maid ought to say-" We'll love and wait and hope." George also returns to bid them farewell, behaves with admirable temper and feeling, shake hands with Walter, leaves Mary, in case he dies when away, all his little property, and even wishes them to name their first child after him. Old Empson now comes in, who has been ignorant of all the late discoveries, and is eager for the fulfilment of the marriage. The Puritan Vicar however interposes, who informs him that he is commanded, as a tenant of Sir Charles, to order them to move no further in his purpose. This moves the old man's spleen a little, and he mentions the obligations the family are under to him, among which is the following:

When Sir Charles at Naseby

Lay fallen, with little hope to rise again,
I tore him from the Roundhead ruffian's grasp,
And by a wound, whose scar records the act,
Preserved his life at th' hazard of my own, &c.

He then finds that Sir Charles bears no part in a proceeding which is indeed guarded from his knowledge; he determines to see him, and takes Mary with him; in the meantime Lady Ellinor has an interview with her son in the public avenue leading to Ashby Hall; and makes the following proposition:

In the French court my influence can do much;
For you I've used it. There is a rich abbey,
Whose spires and towers may afar be seen
Glistening in whiteness 'gainst the dark blue sky,
And it stands nobly 'mid a wide domain
Of fields and vineyards on a rising ground,
Beside the silver Loire in fair Touraine :

It waits but your consent to call you lord.

But he refuses to change his faith; and in the middle of an argument, getting rather warm on the lady's side, Sir Charles suddenly appears close to them, and expresses his surprise at his lady's sudden interest in Walter and his fortunes.

But by what secret motive prompted,

Beyond all rightful limit, far extending
Such influence as our ancient lordship yields,
You've sought, as the good Empson counsels me,
To separate and blight two gentle hearts,

I would, in no vain, curious spirit, ask;
And deem a candid answer is my due.

The Lady urges the inequality of the match, and its consequent impropriety. Sir Charles maintains the higher ground, that virtue is the true nobility.

Though his descent from monarchs were derived,
They'd find him proudly mated.

And this topic is debated, though rather at too great a length, between them, till the Lady's opposition evokes a full exposition of Sir Charles's views in the following speech:

I hold that honours honourably won,
Titles and coronets, renown and station,
Afford the purest stimulants to action,
Which men, untouched by heavenward desires,
Regardless of their everlasting crown,

And cent'ring in this world their sum of good,

Can raise their hopes, or bend their efforts to.

They far exalt fame's ardent votary

Above the miserable herd whose lives

Are wasted on the grovelling quest of gain,

Or dissipate on sensualities;

The noble name, acquired by noble deeds,

Lives the memorial of past excellence,

And, potent in the virtues it embalms,

Excites the aspiring soul, which yearns for fame,

To emulate the achievements it rewards.

But glittering orders and proud appellations

Are but as stigmas when the unworthy wears them;
And to degenerate from a father's greatness,
To soil the badge of honour with foul acts,
To shame by vice the rank by virtue won,
To have the state which speaks a gentleman,
Yet want the generous, humble, kindly spirit
Imported in the name, stamps a reproach
On the base scion of a noble stock,

Which sinks him so much lower than the people,
As were the heights above from which he fell.

This open declaration, in which the virtues of the heart and the honour of the character are so raised above the splendour of rank and titles of society, begets some suspicion and alarm in Lady Ellinor's mind that Sir

Charles has some particular meaning applicable to her in what he says; and this leads to the full disclosure of the guilty secret, which we must give in those winged words which the poet himself has chosen.

SIR CHARLES.

Think you then, and say,

Which is the nobly, which the basely born,

Good Empson's daughter, though of lowly race,
Whose birth was hallowed by a parent's blessing,

Whose childhood throve beneath their brightening hopes,
Whose youthful loveliness is all their pride,

Or he, whose parents, whatsoe'er their rank,
Dread in their son the witness of their shame,

And only may his filial duty challenge

By publication of their own disgrace?

LADY ELLINOR.-Have you no recollection of the past?
Charles, this is cruel! Every word you speak,
Suggestive of a world of bitter thoughts,

Strikes to my heart a pang of keen reproach.
SIR CHARLES.-Whence springs this strong emotion?
WALTER.-
Pray forbear!

No longer urge our cause against her will;
Let it not discord breed beneath you twain.
Oh! sacrifice our loves-sever us quite,-
What are our hopes, our happiness, our lives,
That they should cost the treasure of her tears?
LADY ELLINOR.-My noble-hearted boy!
SIR CHARLES.-

How say you, lad!
So vehement a suitor 'gainst yourself?

What mystery is here? Speak, Ellinor!

Speak, I entreat you! Let me see your face!

Those features! Boy-wife-why are you silent both?
Heavens can it be? Have I been trifled with?

Say, is my thought the image of the truth?

In mercy tell me-but one word to allay

This trembling agony of painful hope

That youth

LADY ELLINOR.-
SIR CHARLES.-

LADY ELLINOR.

Oh, Charles !

Is he?

He is our son.

Sir Charles communicates therefore to Empson that he has discovered in Walter a relation; yet that, notwithstanding his brightened prospects, he will make no alteration in their course of life or desires, but make them happy in the way they have chosen. He then joins their hands, and, on Walter owning his preference to a country life, Sir Charles thus at once unfolds his views, and concludes the drama in a very poetical and picturesque manner.

Your choice is wisely made, and shall be prospered.

There is a fertile wide demesne of mine,

Which shall to you and to your gentle Mary

Be confirmed fully. 'Tis an ancient seat,

A venerable patrimonial hall,

And nobly stands at Aber by the sea,

Hard by the coast-but oh! not such a coast
As in the bleak North or the barren East
Mocks at the labour of the husbandman,
Opposing to the lashing of the waves
A wild and desolate sterility;
But a rich tract, where to the very verge

Of the blue ocean's tide the corn-fields stretch,

And flocks and herds the flowery meadows browze;
While the firm oak and dusky elm, secure

From the rude touch of all ungenial blasts,

Lift up their heads unscathed, and spread their branches
Widely around in undiminished growth.

There were my boyish haunts,-I love them yet;
And there shall be, with you and with your children,
The frequent home of my declining life.

It cheers me in anticipation now

To think upon our summer-evenings there;
As in some natural arbour we repose,

And look across the Menai's sparkling straits,
Where with its satellite isle, fair Anglesea,
Rests on a plain of waters, which, beyond,
Blend with the distant sky; while, to the east,
Huge Penmaenmawr, and mountains further still,
That girdle in old Conway's quiet bay,
Bask in the full light of the setting sun;
And Bangor's hallowed towers and solemn woods
Rise in deep shadow toward the glowing west.
MARY.-We'll be so happy there!

WALTER.

Will we not, Mary?
Our tenants for our friends; our villagers
The humble family we'll live to serve :
In useful innocence we'll spend our days,
Above the world, its censure or applause.

So ends this little domestic or familiar tragedy, representing nature and truth under a poetical form, with less depth in the delineation of passion than the loftier tragedy, yet conveying its mitigated impressions with greater ease and lighter colouring. The story is not a mere imitation of the prosaic reality of the world, but dignified by ideality, and admitting picturesque associations and figures. The dramatic progress is slower than in the higher tragedy, but not less effective; and what is wanted in intensity of passion is compensated by the truth of the picture, and the readiness with which it excites sympathy, by being more on a level with our own feelings and situation. Perhaps it is to this class of fiction, whether in prose or poetry, that we recur with most pleasure; for there are accents that come from the poet's lyre, too deeply plaintive to bear frequent renewal, while those works will be most uniformly popular that, while they moderately affect the passions, at the same time seek to divert the fancy and exercise the taste. Nonnullas credo esse materias, quæ continuum desiderent affectum; nec tamen minus artis aut usus hi leniores habent.

MR. URBAN, Charterhouse, May 8. YOUR Correspondent, MR. J. ALLIES, who requests information respecting John Bunyan, will probably have learned before seeing your next number that another splendid edition has just been edited by Lewis Pocock, esq. F.S.A., who has laid the first edition, with many other early ones, under such ample contribution as probably to settle every really important bibliographical question for the future.

But a new era, even in the fame of Bunyan, having as it were set in with the editorship of Southey, perhaps others of your readers besides J. A. may thank me for requesting a little of your space in order to do justice to the high principle displayed by the laureate in the execution of the task which he undertook at my request. It is a subject which perhaps no one but myself can speak of on which there will be but one opinion,--and can be no mistake. Mr. Southey was