Peopled with busy transitory groups,

peace is to be granted. Artevelde addresses,

He can do "what is needful." It is admirable; everything that is said and done is admirable; but an involuntary suspicion at times creeps into the mind, that such a man as Philip Van Artevelde never lived, or could live. No man could move along such a line of enterprise with such a weight of reflection on all the springs of action. We see the calm statesman at the head of a tumultuary movement; and the meditative man, to whom revenge is the poorest of our passions, striking a blow from which an old warrior might shrink. Could a man be really impelled along a path of life like this by passions that are admitted, indeed, into the bosom, but watched like prisoners? The suspicion, we say, creeps involuntarily into the mind; but we will not entertain it-we will not yield to it. That the reflective and energetic char: acters are, in certain degrees, combined together, we all know; and who shall say within what degrees only this is possible? And why may not an ideal perfection of this kind be portrayed as well as an ideal patriot, or an ideal monk, or an ideal warrior? We throw the suspicion aside, and continue our analysis.

There is a passage which is often quoted for its great beauty: we quote it also for its great appropriateness. Philip Van Artevelde is master of the city; he is contemplating it at night-time from the tower of St. Nicholas. The reflection here put into the mouth of the anxious captain brings back to us, in the midst of war and the cares of government, the meditative man :—

"There lies a sleeping city. God of dreams!
What an unreal and fantastic world
Is going on below!

Within the sweep of yon encircling wall
How many a large creation of the night,
Wide wilderness and mountain, rock and sea,

The famous scene, which has for its place the summit of this tower, between Artevelde and Van Den Bosch, is fresh in the recollection of every reader: we must pass it by, and the admirable and pathetic description of the famine that is raging in Ghent, and proceed to the last act of this part of the drama. Artevelde has stimulated the citizens to make one brave effort more—to sally from the walls, and meet the Earl in battle before Bruges. He has arranged in order of battle his lean and famine-stricken, but desperate little army. He knows the extreme peril in which they stand: no food in the camp; fearful odds to be encountered; yet the only hope lying in immediate battle. He does not delude himself for a moment; he sees the danger clear, and entertains it with a certain sarcastic levity. He does not hope, but he acts as if he did. He is not a man given to.hope, but he has a tempered despondency, which sits with him at the council-board, and rides with him to the field, and which he compels to do the services of hope.

ers,

Put thou thy muzzle to yon tub of wine."

The battle is fought and a victory won. Justice is executed with stern and considerate resolve on the villains of the piece, and we leave Van Artevelde triumphant in his great contest, and happy in the love of Adriana.

The subordinate characters who are introduced into this first part of the drama, we have no space to examine minutely. The canvas is well filled, though the chief figure stands forward with due prominence. Adriana is all that an amiable and loving woman should be. The lighter-hearted Clara is intended as a sort of contrast and relief. Her levity and wit are not always graceful; they are not so in the early scene where she jests with the page afterwards, when in presence of her lover, she has a fitter and more genial subject for her playful wit, and succeeds much better. In the course of the drama, when the famine is raging in Ghent, she appears as the true sister of Philip Van Artevelde. At her first introduction she is somewhat too hoydenish for the mistress of the noble D'Arlon. D'Arlon is all that a knight should be, and Gilbert Matthew is a consummate villain.

Between the first and second parts is a poem in rhyme, called "The Lay of Elena." This introduces us to the lady who is to be the heroine of the second part of the drama. All the information it gives might, we think, have been better conveyed in a few lines of blank verse, added to that vindication of herself which Elena pours forth in the first act, when Sir Fleureant of Heurlée comes to reclaim her on the part of the Duke of Bourbon. This poem is no favorite of ours; but the worst compliment we would pay it implies, in one point of view, a certain fitness and propriety-we were glad to return to the blank verse of our author, in which we find both more music and more pathos than in these rhymes.

If we are tempted to suspect, whilst reading the first part of this drama, that the character of Philip Van Artevelde combines in a quite ideal perfection the man of thought with the man of action, we at all events cannot accuse the author, in this second part, of representing an ideal or superhuman happiness as the result of this perfect combination. It is truthful sad-colored destiny that he portrays. The gloomy passionate sunset of life has been a favorite subject with poets; but what other author has chosen the cloudVOL XXV. NO. I.

a very

and the sun setting behind cold and dark clouds? It was a bold attempt. It has been successfully achieved. But no amount of talent legitimately expended on it could make this second part as attractive as the first. When the heroic man has accomplished his heroic action, life assumes to him, more than to any other, a most ordinary aspect: his later years bring dwarfish hopes and projects, or none at all; they bring desires no longer "gay," and welcomed only for such poor life as they may have in them. Philip Van Artevelde is now the Regent of Flanders, and, like other regents, has to hold his own. Adriana he has lost; her place is supplied by one still fair but faded, and who, though she deserved a better fate, must still be described as lately the mistress of the Duke of Bourbon. It is the hero still, but he has descended into the commonplace of courts and politics.

That it is the same Philip Van Artevelde we are in company with, the manner in which he enters into this new love will abundantly testify. He has been describing to Elena his former wife, Adriana. The description is very beautiful and touching. He then proceeds with his wooing thus:

"Artev.

Well, well-she's gone,
And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief
Are transitory things no less than joy,
And though they leave us not the men we were,
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here
Upon the early blossoms of his life
And its first verdure, having not the less
A living root, drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its powers:
And surely as man's health and strength are
whole,

His appetites regerminate, his heart
Shoot up renewed. What blank I found before
Reopens, and his objects and desires

mne,

Artex. Nay, sweetest, why these tears?
Elena. No, let me go-I cannot tell--no-no;
I want to be alone.
Oh! Artevelde, for God's love let me go! [Exit.
Arter. (after a pause.) The night is far advanc-
ed upon the morrow.

—Yes, I have wasted half a summer's night.
Was it well spent? Successfully it was.
How little flattering is a woman's love!
Worth to the heart, come how it may, a world;
Worth to men's measures of their own deserts,
If weighed in wisdom's balance, merely nothing.
The few hours left are precious-who is there?
Ho! Nieuverkerchen!-when we think upon it,
How little flattering is a woman's love!
Given commonly to whosoe'er is nearest
And propped with most advantage; outward grace
Nor inward light is needful; day by day
Men wanting both are mated with the best
And loftiest of God's feminine creation.
Ho! Nieuverkerchen!-what, then, do we sleep?
Are none of you awake?-and as for me,
The world says Philip is a famous man-
What is there woman will not love, so taught?

Ho! Ellert! by your leave though, you must wake.

(Enter an officer.)

Have me a gallows built upon the mount, And let Van Kortz be hung at break of day."

What then remains

But in the cause of nature to stand forth,
And turn this frame of things the right side up?
For this the hour is come, the sword is drawn,
And tell your masters vainly they resist."

We regret to be compelled to garble in our extract so fine a passage of writing. Meanwhile our patriot Regent sends Father John to England to solicit aid-most assuredly not to overthrow feudalism, but to support the Regent against France. His ambition is dragging, willingly or unwillingly, in the old rut of politics. When Father John returns from this embassy he is scandalized at the union formed between Artevelde and Elena. Here, too, is another sad descent. Our hero has to hear rebuke, and, with a half-confession, submit to be told by the good friar of his "sins." He answers bravely, yet with a consciousness that he stands not where he

did, and cannot challenge the same respect from the friar that he could formerly have done.

"Artev.

You, Father John, I blame not, nor myself will justify; But call my weakness what you will, the time Is past for reparation. Now to cast off The partner of my sin were further sin ;

"Bear in mind

Against what rule my father and myself
Have been insurgent: whoin did we supplant?
There was a time, so ancient records tell,
There were communities, scarce known by name
In these degenerate days, but once far famed,
Where liberty and justice, hand in hand,
Ordered the common weal; where great men
grew

Up to their natural eminence, and none,
Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great.
But now, I ask,

Where is there on God's earth that polity
Which it is not, by consequence converse,
A treason against nature to uphold?

Whom may we now call free? whom great ? whom wise?

Whom innocent?-the free are only they
Whom power makes free to execute all ills
Their hearts imagine; they alone are great
Whose passions nurse them from their cradles up
In luxury and lewdness,-whom to see
Is to despise, whose aspects put to scorn
Their station's eminence.

And make their murmur-rave and fret and fear, Suspect, admonish-they but waste their rage, Their wits, their words, their counsel: here I stand,

Upon the deep foundations of my faith

To this fair outcast plighted; and the storm
That princes from their palaces shake out,
Though it should turn and head me, should not
strain

The seeming silken texture of this tie."

The decisive battle approaches, and is fought. This time it is lost. Our hero does not even fall in the field; an assassin stabs him in the back. The career of Artevelde ends thus; and that public cause with which his life was connected has at the same time an inglorious termination: "the wheel has come full circle."

The catastrophe is brought about by Sir Fleureant of Heurlée. This man's character undergoes, in the course of the drama, a complete transformation. We do not say that the change is unnatural, or that it is not accounted for; but the circumstances which bring it about are only vaguely and incidentally narrated, so that the reader is not prepared for this change. A gay, thoughtless, reckless young knight, who rather gains upon us at his first introduction, is converted into a dark, revengeful assassin. It would, we think, have improved the effect of the plot, if we had been able to trace out more distinctly the workings of the mind of one who was destined to take so prominent a part in the drama.

The character of Lestovet is admirably sustained, and is manifestly a favorite with the author. But we must now break away from Philip Van Artevelde, to notice the other dramas of Mr. Taylor. Edwin the Fair next claims our attention. Here also we shall make no quotations merely for the sake of their beauty; and we shall limit ourselves to an analysis of the principal character, Dunstan, on which, perhaps, a word or two of explanation may not be superflu

ous.

Let us suppose a dramatic writer sitting down before such a character as this of Dunstan, and contemplating the various aspects it assumes, with the view of selecting one for the subject of his portraiture. In the first place, he is aware that, although, as a historical student, he may, and perhaps must, continue to doubt as to the real character of this man-how much is to be given to pride, to folly, to fanaticism, to genuine piety, or to the love of power-yet that, the moment he assumes the office of dramatic poet, he must throw all doubt entirely aside. The student of history may hesitate to the last; the poet is presumed to have from the beginning the clearest insight into the recesses of the mind, and the most unquestionable authority for all that he asserts. A sort of mimic omniscience is ascribed to the poet. Has he not been gifted, from of old, with an inspiration, by means of which he sees the whole character and every thought of his

| hero, and depicts and reveals them to the world? To him doubt would be fatal. If he carries into his drama the spirit of historical criticism, he will raise the same spirit in his reader, and all faith in the imaginary creation he offers them is gone for ever. Manifest an error as this may be, we think we could mention some instances, both in the drama and the novel, in which it has been committed.

But such a character as Dunstan's is left uncertain in the light of history, and our dramatist has to choose between uncertainties. He will be guided in his selection partly by what he esteems the preponderating weight of evidence, and partly, and perhaps still more, by the superior fitness of any one phase of the character for the purpose he has in view, or the development of his own peculiar powers. In this case, three interpretations present themselves. The first, which has little historical or moral probability, and offers little attraction to the artist, is, that Dunstan was a hypocrite, seeking by show of piety to compass some ambitious end, or win the applause of the vulgar. Undoubted hypocrites history assuredly presents us with-as where the ecclesiastical magnate degenerates into the merely secular prince. There have been luxurious and criminal popes and cardinals, intriguing bishops and lordly abbots, whom the most charitable of men, and the most pious of Catholics, must pronounce to have been utterly insincere in their professions of piety. But a hypocrite who starves and scourges himself who digs a damp hole in the earth, and lives in it-seems to us a mere creature of the imagination. Such men, at all events, either begin or end with fanaticism. The second and more usual interpretation is, that Dunstan was a veritable enthusiast, and a genuine churchman after the order of Hildebrand, capable, perhaps, of practising deceit or cruelty for his great purpose, but entirely devoted to that purpose--one of those men who sincerely believe that the salvation of the world and the predominance of their order are inseparably combined. There would be no error in supposing a certain mixture of pride and ambition. Nor, in following this interpretation, would there be any great violation of probability in attributing to Dunstan, though he lived in so rude an age, all those arguments by which the philosopherpriest is accustomed to uphold the domination of his order. The thinking men of every age more nearly resemble each other in these great lines of thought and argument, than