janissaries was extinguished the last spark of eastern literature and genius they fell with Paleologus on the ramparts of the city. Turkish despotism is like the blight of heaven, which withers all beneath its influence; virtue and science and freedom all perish together wherever its fatal and destructive fury is known to prevail the first act of the barbarian Mahomet was the destruction of a work of art by a blow of his battle-axe, and his savage followers were found breaking the marble pavement of the fine church of St. Sophia, in pursuit, as they alledged, of hidden treasure beneath: while all beside has been progressive in Europe, Turkish ferocity and ignorance have stood still their knowledge does not extend beyond the mystified jargon of the fraudulent Koran, that code upon whose inspiration the fanatic Omar destroyed the Alexandrian library, and gave to the baths and furnaces of the African city those inestimable treasures of philosophy and science which the regrets of posterity have been unable to redeem. Should Greece, which has at length thrown off the yoke of the infidel, and raised its eross in the front of battle, succeed in the great and holy struggle, and the crescent be trampled to the earth, with the enfranchisement of her people and the achievement of their liberties, the reign of science and the Drama would again revive.

The Greeks are known to have a taste for luxury and refinement. The beautiful picture given by the first poet of our day of a Grecian festival, in one of its now lonely and desolate isles, is but a portrait, with that richness of colouring which immortal genius gives to every thing its fairy finger touches, of the manners and enjoyments of the retired and hapless Sciotes, before Turkish desolation had printed her shores with blood, and made a sepulchre of her once beauteous plains there luxury and refinement held their peaceful reign before the fell barharian burst upon them; the song of the poet resounded to the lyre, and the dance of her maidens spoke joy and happiness, until the spoiler came until her sons were cloven down by the scymitars of the ruthless moslems, and her daughters

dragged from amid the blood of their fathers to drug the markets of Constantinople, and stock the harems of their murderers throughout Asia! If in Greece and the eastern empire the Drama and Science fell with the extinction of freedom and independence, Rome and the western portion were visited by the same calamity in the swarm of barbarians, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Lombards, and others, who burst like a torrent on Italy and the surrounding countries, sweeping away in the inundation every trace of civilization before them along dark night of ignorance throughout Europe sueceeded. It was not until the middle ages that the Drama, which owed in Greece its origin to religion, avas indebted to the same cause for its revival in Europe. The monks, who then possessed the only limited share of learning in existence, anxious to impress the truths of religion on their hearers, or to break through the unvarying gloom of conventual dullness, brought forward dramatic pieces illustrative of the mysteries of religion-these moralities were the rude form in which the Drama re-appeared-like the Grecian representations to which they had a faint resemblance, they were exhibited in the open air, and their plots, if any they possessed, and their dialogue were founded on some miracle or mystery of the faith their authors professed, and were anxious to inculcate. In this way was early produced by St. Augustinela Drama called Christos Pascon, or, the Suffering Christ; and pieces of the same description by St. Gregory and others; but it was soon found, even in that age, by these indefatigable authors of conversion, that their exertions had failed, in dramatizing the scenes of the Bible, or even the legends of their saints they took from their sanctity and elevation; to form dialogues for representation they were obliged to mingle colloquial language, and every day occurrence with the sublimest records of their religion and the deepest suffering of their holiest martyrs; they found that what they had rendered familiar was not esteemed, and that what was venerated when wrapped in awful mystery was disregarded the moment it appeared

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At the era of the Reformation, which created so momentous change throughout Europe and in England in particular, when men's minds were heated by all the virulence of controversy, and every department of literature was seized on and exhausted in pouring out the stores of acrimony and contention, the Drama, among the rest, was one of those engines seized on by the reformers, and its thunders sought to be turned against those who had revived it. Bayle and others appeared for the first time in that singular department of literary controversy; their comedies, as they were termed, framed from the Bible, and proceeding from the Book of Genesis down to the very period of Gospel revelation, were clothed in the dark garments of Calvinistic theology, and presented to audiences who, with pious patience, sat out the representation through all the stages from man's temptation and original sin down to his redemption by an Almighty Sufferer. In their progress were exhibited characters which it would now be deemed blasphemous to attempt to personify, and impious to bring forward in any scenic representation. It is strange to reflect that even in such an age such subjects and characters could be selected for dramatic exhibition. It is true that these sorts of plays were then oftener brought forward in the palaces of bishops and the halls of colleges than in regular theatres; like the mysteries and moralities which preceded them, they have been defended on the ground that they taught the great truths of religion to men who had not, or could not then read the Bible; but it was impossible the sublime truths of holy writ could be respected in that garb. Incidents from the Old Testament of Jewish history, in themselves most licentious, were brought forward, which had been handed down by the sacred writers, not as examples to follow, but as instances of individual wickedness visited by the wrath of the Almighty, and a warning to all others to avoid; tales such as these

arrayed in dramaties garb served only to inflame, in place of serving the great cause of religion and morality, they taught only impiety and grossness; and the sacred names attached to them, in place of consecrating, increase and aggravate the profanation. In many of these plays, as in the Greek tragedies, which they seemed in a great degree to copy, religion and morality were completely passive; the deities and personages brought forward »are often made to suggest and cover the foulest crimes, while their indignation seldom appears excited by the violation of great moral duties; all the excitement attendant on the influence of the passions or the distinction of character is necessarily withdrawn. It is not so much the agitation of the human mind, and the consequences resulting from it, that we are called on to witness, as the agency of a divinity and superior beings; predestination and fate bind every link of the Drama, the fates of the various personages and agents are decided, and almost seen from the commencement of the piece, and leave nothing to anxiety or conjecture. But though these Dramas, from the ignorance of the age, prevailed for a while, though audiences assembled to witness the attributes of the Deity, or his covenant with mankind, made the subject of theatrical exhibition, or sat to be delighted with the repetition of their own opinions, or confirmed in their doctrines by the records of martyrs and confessors, as men gradually became more enlightened these religious performances gave way, nature and genius assumed a better garb, and appeared in all the originality of native force and colouring; the dark and adventitious drapery fell from the tragic muse, gorgeous tragedy at length appeared," and came sweeping by in her own sceptred pall," and the Drama was restored to her legitimate rights and purpose, that of delighting and instructing by the living representation of the passions, enriched by all the splendour of poetry, and chastened by the accompaniment of moral instruction.

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The first rude effort of the English Drama now remembered, is the piece called “Gammer Gurton's

its darkest passions, and its deepest aspirations, seemed known and open before him. His was the powerful wand of the magician, which, after subduing and exhausting all that was buman, brought the beings and spirits of another world to add awe and terror to his matchless descriptions. At one moment he conducts us through flowers and scenes of fairy witchery: at another, we tread in gloom and horror, with demons and smoking cauldrons around. Here is all the lightness and beauty, the sky and colouring of the enchanting Claude; there, the lurid terrors of Lutherbourg, or the startling bandits, dark woods and overhanging rocks of the terrible Salvator. Less educated than Jonson, and without those accumulated stores of knowledge, which Milton, with equal powers of diction, drew on in a succeeding age, he has yet surpassed them, as he has every other poet and writer, in the beauty of his imagery, and the matchless strength and eloquence of his language; his feelings and passions all spring fresh and bursting from the human heart; no writer has ever yet drawn his pictures of love with half the truth and beauty given to them by Shakspeare. In Romeo, as in the artless Juliet, it is poured forth warm and unstudied, with all the ardency and attachment of youthful feeling. It rises to the height and rapture of cherished possession, or sinks to the depths, in exile and privation, of unutterable despair and woe. In Othello, the noble, unsuspecting Moor, it burns, when roused, with all the fierceness of an African sun, scorching in the excited rage of furious jealousy, and leaving all bare and desert around it, it rises to sublimest confidence and love, or changes to the fury of ungoverned hate, It is like the flashing of the volcano, that terrifies, while it lightens. The genius of this great Dramatist is as varied as it is splendid; through all the great productions with which he has adorned his country, his characters are all different and unlike; all marked, all natural, all striking ; no one resembles or imitates the other; they are as dissimilar as if sketched by a different hand. The dark and excited ambition of Macbeth is not

that of the more daring Richard; and both are different from the gloomy John. The rich and transcendant cololouring of Falstaff attaches to no character beside. The powers of this immortal Poet stand single and alone; they have, in past ages, triumphed over those of every other writer; they stand pre-emi nent throughout the civilized world, and will, probably, while intellect maintains its sway and genius is worshipped, preserve their glorious ascendancy to the latest posterity. While, in every other department of literature, the most successful progress has been made, and every exertion used to stimulate and gratify the appetite for improvement; while history has, in England, to boast her profoundest labours and researches, and poetry has been enriched with all that genius could bring with it to diversy or adorn. the Drama still rests its fame and character on the early productions of the great masters, and the efforts of all others have only served to establish and consolidate the triumphs of Shakspeare.

The French stage has been opposed to the English; and the ge nius of Racine placed in competition with that of our immortal Bard. No comparison can be more unequal; the laws and management of both stages are not more different than the bursts of mighty mind and condensed passion in Shak speare, and the tame but classical productions of the elegant and equable Racine. The genius of Shakspeare was full to overflowing; he could not confine its superabundant fertility within the bounds of Racine, The number of characters appearing on the stage in any French play never exceeds twelve: several of the historical pieces of Shakspeare have from thirty to forty, exclusive of the plebeians, soldiers, attendants, and others, with which he delights to crowd his scenes. This difference arises, perhaps, as much from su perior powers, as any difference of taste in the author. Shakspeare took his rules from nature, and not from Aristotle or Bossu; he saw that, in every-day life, great events are generally brought about by a variety of agents, with each distinct parts and characters. His Dramas

present great panoramas of real existence, which are never seen in the reduced characters and formal dialogue of the French stage. Great genius, unquestionably, prevails throughout the writings of Racine and Corneille; and several of their plays, Athalie, Andromaque, Titus, Bajazet, Semiramide, and others, are classical and very beautiful productions; but they have all that fault which attaches to every thing on the French stage:-they are full of affected sentiment, but, for the greater part, devoid of all real passion. Founded on the principle of the Greek tragedy, with the strict preservation of the unities of time, place, and action, heroes declaim, in speeches of fifty lines, on love, on passion, and duty; and heroines reply, in an equal number of verses. Every thing is stated with the utmost minuteness, and every conflicting argument brought forward, that can forbid, justify, or excuse. In these plays, it is not a victory of passion or feeling, but a conquest of words. The heroines all rant, while the heroes are tamer, and only sigh and whine; and she who exceeds her lover in length of declamation, as well as in argument, can never hope to yield, or be conquered. Love is almost always the passion which occupies the French Drama; and to it is owing the superior interest which females are permitted to assume; but it is not that love, that ardent, all-pervading and consuming passion, so exquisitely drawn by Shakspeare, which takes unrivalled possession of the human heart, and pours forth its fulness in all the depth of feeling and intensity of solicitude. The love of the French poets is selfish and glaring; a physical passion, whose incitement is appetite, and fruition its great object. Fate and destiny are constantly appealed to, and accused as the cause of their misfortunes, and the parents of all their woes. There is no real virtue, and little moral in any of their plays. Chance usurps the place of the Deity; and a kind of court honour is substituted for real morality and religion. Yet by this school of authors was the chair of criticism usurped, as if exelusively their's; their productions were held forth as the only pictures

of what the Drama ought to be, and, with an assumption more suited to their vanity than their real merits, they declared every theatre in Europe barbarous but their own.

The puritans were from the com-* mencement opposed to the entertainments of the stage, and the progress of the Drama in England; the unsocial gloom of their religion, and the morbid austerity of their manners proscribed every thing, either elegant or social; we find one of them proposing to secretary Walsingham, in 1586, to levy a tax from the receipts of the theatres for the support of the poor, that, as he stated, "Ex hoc malo preveniat aliquod bonum.” This tax, now amounting to one-tenth of the produce, is levied by the government on the French theatres, acting from a different principle on the suggestion, perhaps, of the English puritan. This party, which rose with the Reformation, and first ventured to shew any decided opposition in the lower house of parliament during the reign of Elizabeth, was gradually gaining ground during the two succeeding reigns, and at length, under the semblance of justice and religion, overturned the government in the blood of the monarch. During the sway of the fanatic Cromwell and his party the Drama was suppressed, and its representation proscribed; the independents, who declaimed against popish tyranny and monastic gloom, covered the country with a darker despotism, and with a gloom tenfold more oppressive; soldiers were constantly employed to hunt the actors off the stage, and the motto was then common, of " Enter, red-coat; exit, hat and cloak." With the death of Cromwell, and the fall of the Commonwealth, the freedom of the stage was restored and the Drama again revived. But if gloom and fanaticism prevailed during the influence of Cromwell, with the return of monarchy the tide of immorality and licentiousness overflowed both the court and capital. Charles in his exile is described as having been "poor, scandalous, and merry," and the same license which the king had indulged with his followers he introduced on his restoration into England. The manners of the duke of Buckingham, of Lord Rochester,