pathos, the deepest grief, the most passionate love as they "The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclined, "No Then she breaks forth into praises of the blameless vestal's lot, and laments the unhappy passion which has made her's so far different. In vain she endeavours to expel the image; it continually returns: in her dreams in her prayers the face of Abelard is ever present, and concludes with the prayer that if ever there is a bard who has like her loved in vain that he may sing their unhappy misfortunes! Καυχητης. (To be Continued.) A DRAMA. “ Οὐκ ἔστιν ἀδικοῦντα καὶ ἐπιορκοῦντα καὶ ψευδόμενον δύναμιν βεβαίαν κτήσασθαι.”Demosthenes. It is impossible to acquire a solid power by injustice, perjury, and falsehood.-Bohn's copious notes to ditto. Scene.-The shop of a certain upholsterer, &c. in Rugby. UPHOLSTERER.-Pressing engagements-called away from Rugby, Wanted at Leamington for to make a contract, Finish to-day sir. 1st VICTIM.-So you said yesterday-sturdily you swore it. 2nd VICTIM.-So you told me too-last Monday fortnight. 3rd VICTIM.-Where are my curtains? breaker of engage ments. I'll go to Cropper's. UPHOLSTERER.—Would that destruction would alight on Who breaks engagements? mind what you are at sir, Pay me my bill sir! 3rd VICTIM.-I pay thy little bill, I'll see thee hanged first. Wretch whom no sense of right can rouse to action! Perjured deceiver! worst of all the faithless Tradesmen of Rugby! (Exeunt to Cropper's. -putting it down in the bill.) E. Ir limping vengeance rarely fails to overtake the guilty, the present generation seems determined that, however long delayed, due honour shall at last be done to the departed great and good, who for ages past have been covered with unmerited obloquy. Thus we have seen the clouds of prejudice removed by the hand of the philosophical historian, from the chaste and devout Henry VIII. She whom we have been accustomed to call "Bloody Mary," shines forth in the pages of Miss Strickland as "the tender and the delicate of women," whose very nature recoiled from an act of necessary severity. The brave Richard III. is not only proved to have been an enlightened statesman, an accomplished orator, and a conscientious defender of right and equity, but even his bodily deformities are now discovered to have been a base invention of the envious Lancastrians. He was, not only figuratively, but literally, an upright man. In a similar manner an ingenious writer has demonstrated EE that we have entirely misunderstood the character of Sir John Falstaff; that it was far from the intention of Shakespeare to represent him as a sensualist and a coward. On the contrary, if we read the record aright, we shall find that his assumed "acute sense of danger" was mere waggery; that a notorious coward never would have been entrusted with a command at Shrewsbury, or have " led," not driven, "his ragamuffins into the thickest of the fight, where they were "well peppered;" or have been credited when he declared that he, in single combat, had slain the redoubted Percy with his own hand. All these things are as they should be, and we doubt not that, in due time, we shall find that King John, Caliban, and Thersites, though they may have had their amiable weaknesses, were, on the whole, no worse than their contemporaries, if indeed they were not, in some respects at least, superior to them. To us it has long been a matter of surprise, that no redeeming hand has been outstretched to rescue from undeserved odium another celebrated character of antiquity, one with whom we have been familiar from our earliest days, and whose name has been always associated in our minds with unpleasant ideas of harshness, and unmerited suffering-we mean Abdallah, the stern and uncompromising Oriental Prince, who is more popularly known to us as the "Blue Beard" of our childhood. His imperfections are pretty much the same as are vulgarly attributed to our English Sovereigns, Henry VIII. and Mary I. Like the first he is reported to have had a plurality of wives, and to have put some of them to death; like the second, to have gloated in the blood of his victims. We know, however, how unjust have been our prejudices in these two cases: how both the repetition of the mar 66 riage tie on Henry VIII, and the execution of his queens, were justified by considerations of state polity: and how utterly foreign to the nature of Mary was any act of severity. Is it too much to ask of our readers that in the case of Abdallah they will suspend their judgments, and at least allow of a fair and impartial consideration of the testimony against him? Let them remember that Mr. Froude, when he commenced the history of Henry VIII., brought with him, to the examination of the records, the inherited impression from which he had neither any thought nor any expectation that he should be disabused. That he found it melted between his hands," and that in the end he admits that the following character of him, written by Ulpian Fulwell, in the reign of Elizabeth, "resembles the true image far more closely than the extravagant conception which floats in the modern belief." To write at large of all his worthiness and incomparable acts would fill a "volume and were too great a charge. But he was a prince of singular prudence, of passing stout courage, of invincible fortitude, of dexterity wonderful. He was a springing well of eloquence, a rare spectacle of humanity; of civility and good nature an absolute president, a special pattern of clemency and moderation, a worthy example of regal justice, a bottomless spring of largess and benignity. "He was to the world an ornament, to England a treasure, to his friends a comfort, to his foes a terror, to his faithful and loving subjects a tender father, to innocents a sure protector, to wilful malefactors a sharp scourge, to his common weal and good people a quiet haven and anchor of safeguard, to the disturbers of the same a rock of extermination. In heinous and intolerable crimes |