ments." In behalf of all crowned heads, that have been, are, and are to be, we protest against such caricatures of dignity. If our theatres are so republican that a kingly character must be converted into buffoonery, then in the name of mercy, let us call kings by another epithet, that of president, or governor, or even justice of the peace, but let us have their parts filled by those who can form some conception of the character. Mr. Jervis is an excellent manager of scenery and machinery, and deserves and shall receive all credit at our hands for this, but we object, and ever shall object to the manager's allotment of parts, if he intends to give Mr. J. that of the stately Cymbeline, whenever the play of that name is performed. It is downright murder, and we shall not look on and see it committed without bringing an indictment before the grand jury of common On the wasted home of their fated line :- Spirits of ages dead and gone! Ye who once triumphed where wreaths were won, Thou, whose banner wearied the breeze That urged thy bark o'er distant seas, To spread the British Lion's reign In the spicy isles of the Indian main,— And thou who led'st lerne's host To win the field where thy life was lost; Thou, whose stirring war-cry ran Ever the loudest on battle's van; With a broken sword and a crimsoned plume- When the tree was strong and the bird soared high! Or if it be that ye roam afar In the fields of space from star to star, Whether ye come in frowning form, Wrapped in the cloud and borne by the storm, Or clad in the beams of the summer moon I will not shrink from each awful brow, THE LOVER'S LAST DIRECTIONS.* The Lover's Last Directions is a remark able specimen of Cephalaniote superstitions : the second line is interpolated by the translator, as supplying a sort of assignable reason for dictating proceedings so peculiar : "Come quick when told that I am sick Then, dearest give my withered lips When four young friends support my corse; Throw stones against that mournful group, Clip every tress that was thy pride, And when they lay me in the church, As fluttering captives tear Their plumage, robb'd of all their young, And when the burial chant is hush'd Gaze on thy lover's grave, and feel, THE LOVERS. "A beauteous girl lay sick with love, Three comrades sit around her couch, The third who really loved her friend, 'Your loves were merely common men, * Remaic Songs. Translated by Mr. Sheridan. 'Dearest! since thou canst feel his worth, 'Bring him, and grow more dear!' "Ah! thou wouldst woo him for thyself, Then leave the mountain heights behind, She threaded many a sloping dell, And drain'd the joyous grape, Adorn awhile our joyous groupe, 4 My lovely stranger maid?' • What! more? when thou already hast 'So many fair or brown? And dost thou never think of her, • Which dost thou niean, sweet moralist! "That tall and graceful fair, That roving Eagle will be bound The horseman struck his throbbing brow; On a Tomb-stone in an Irish Country Church-yard. A little spirit slumbers here, Who to one heart was very dear. GENTLEMEN." As for gentlemen," says Sir Thomas Smith, (temp. Edward VI.) "they be made dog cheap in this kingdom; for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studies in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, and, to be short, who can live idly, and without manual la Whose eyes shower beams upon the ground bour, and will bear the port, charge, and • Whose smile sheds roses there?" 'Tis she, indeed, and well thy words Convey a lover's praise; Then how couldst thou forget that smile, . That glances humid rays?" My eyes meet hers-to make them weep Partridges pair'd with hawks, The words of alter'd love,- Her stately lover sate beneath, Like lightnings all th' embroidery shone, Oh! shall I call him "beauteous vine !" No! thus I bail him ;-silver staff! countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called master, and shall be taken for a gentleman." JACOB'S LADDER.-In a little book which has just been published at Paris, deprecating the continuance of flogging as a punishment, and characterizing it as a relic of ancient barbarism, the author (Count Lanjuinais) quotes the following curious and forcible passage from St. Bernard, in support of his ridicule of those who are always for adhering to the practices of old times, however absurd or censurable: "God alone, because he is perfect, can never improve. Far from me be the men who say we will not be better than our fathers.' Jacob saw angels ascending and descending the mysterious ladder which united heaven and earth; but did he see any of them stop and sit down? It is impossible to be stationary. Here below nothing remains in the same state. We must either ascend or'descend; he who stops on the way, falls!" PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. JAMES G. BROOKS, Editor and Proprietor, No. 4 Wall-street, New-York. Subscriptions received by G. & C. Carvill, 127 Broadway-where communications may be left, or transmitted through the post-office to the editor. Terms-Four dollars per annum, payable in advance J. SEYMOUR, printer, 49 John-street. time, the spirit of the age, and the habits and tastes of the public, had, perhaps, an effect in directing his attention to dramatic LITERARY. Report of an adjudged law-case, not to be works; that the spirit of chivalry, then in its found in the books. Shakespeare vs. The Author of Waverley. "I can call spirits from the vasty deep." height, made the people delight in tournaments, public shows, and theatrical spectacles: whereas now the sentiments of the public had changed, and their amusements THIS day came on, before the Lord Chief were diverted into other channels. They Commissioner, Time, a trial, in which still retain their taste for the spirit of such Shakespeare was pursuer, and the Author of works, but their habits have become more Waverley defender. As the case excited domestic, more retired and sedentary, and considerable interest in the literary world, their minds less enthusiastic, stirring, and the court was unusually crowded. On the chivalrous: they now prefer reading in their bench, beside the Judge, we observed closets such works as the novels in question Homer, Sophocles, Eschylus, and the-where the dialogues are so interspersed laughter-loving Aristophanes. The Earls of with description, as to bring the scene in a Essex and Southampton, the munificent pleasing manner before the fancy-to witpatrons of the bard of Avon, were present, nessing all the pomp and circumstance, and and seemed to interest themselves much in the action and expression of a mimic reprethe proceedings. The jury was composed sentation. That, under these circumstances, partly of the gentlemen of former days, and the Author of Waverley had but adapted his partly of those of the present. Counsel for productions to the prevailing taste; and that the pursuer, Lord Chancellor Bacon, &c. ; it is probable, had he written in Shakesfor the defender, Dr. Dryasdust, Messrs. peare's time, his pieces would have assumed Gifford, Jeffrey, and the other celebrated a similar form to his. critics of the day. Among the various personages who crowded, or, we may say, literally crammed the court, we observed, in a corner, the Author of the Curiosities of Literature, busily engaged taking notes, from whose papers the following account of the proceedings has been chiefly taken. The points at issue were: Whether was the pursuer or defender the greater genius? And whether the defender, by his productions, had not innovated upon the fame of the pursuer? Bacon rose to open the case for the pursuer. The objection was over-ruled, and Lord He felt considerable diffidence, he said, considering the high merits of the subject, to appear before such a learned and venerable assembly as the champion of his celebrated client in the present case, more especially, as his pursuits and studies might seem to have lain in a different tract. "But I consider, my Lord," he continued, "that the man who unfortunately has not a relish for, or he who lets other occupations entirely An objection was made to the trial going alienate his taste from such productions, is forward, on the ground that the parties did deprived of many of the most delightful and not come before the court on an equal foot- exhilarating pleasures of a refined mind. I ing; in respect that the one was a writer of reflect with singular complacency on the dramatic works, and the other of novels, or many times, when, unbending my mind prose tales and histories; and that there- from severer studies, I have luxuriated on fore a comparison could not properly be the vivid sallies of imagination, the touchdrawn between the two. But it was argued, ing pathos, the poignant wit, and pure mothat the two species of composition bore a rality, contained in the volumes of my illusclose resemblance to each other. That both trious client. I need scarcely enlarge on depicted natural incidents and manners, and the fame of this celebrated author; he has both dealt in the passions, and feelings, and received the united and enthusiastic admirafoibles of humanity. That, in Shakespeare's tion of his own countrymen, and of all those of other countries who are capable of approaching his excellencies. It has been beautifully observed by one of his admirers, that if it should so happen that the race of men became extinct, a being of another species would have a sufficient idea of what human nature was, from Shakespeare's works alone. Every shade of character,--every amiable propensity,-every dark, gloomy, and turbulent passion, is portrayed with such singular truth and minuteness that it was almost needless to call any witnesses on the part of his client, although hosts of them were in attendance, concluded a learned and eloquent speech, by craving from the jury a verdict in his favour. The counsel for the defender now rose. When the question was first agitated, he said, it was not with the view of making invidious comparisons. His client had not the presumption to attempt to be thought to excel the great master-spirit of his age, Shakespeare. The present discussion was forced upon him, and he hoped it would not be considered as arrogance on his part if he attempted to defend his client. Comparisons of all kinds, but especially of literary merit, were often very vague and inconclusive. Of two persons attempting the same walk, one might excel in qualifications of one kind, and one in another, and it was a matter of much nicety to adjust the balance between them. The noble and learned counsel on the other side, with much candour, had admitted, that in what must be considered the essentials of genius, the author of Waverley was little or nowise inferior to his great prototype-in imaginative power, in felicity of description, and in depth of feeling. That he had not portrayed many of the passions and feelings, which are most remarkable, and most prevalent in humanity, may perhaps be owing to the circumstance that Shakespeare Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil'd after him in vain! Thus has his name floated down the stream of public opinion, emblazoned by the applauding voice of successive ages,-without a rival, or even an approach of a competitor; till at last one has arisen, who, similarly gifted in many respects, treads close in his path, and in the eyes of many seems to proceed with equal foot-steps. Far be it from me to attempt to underrate the merits of the defender. I admire and honour his genius; but still that genius may be great, without being the greatest; he may shine a star of the first magnitude, without rivalling the sun in his splendour. In fertility and vigour of imagination, in felicity of painting to the life, in simple and natural pathos, and almost in humour and wit, he is little, if at all, inferior to his rival. He paints a variety of characters with true con-lived before him. The great minds of the sistency and originality; so distinctly are days that are past have seized upon the most they brought out, that we seem to recognise striking and most important subjects, and them as individuals, and in time come to have left little to their successors but imitareckon them in the list of our acquaintances. tion and amplification. There is no farther So far as he depicts, he does so with life, and room to paint the workings of ambition, the pictures please and amuse us. But we leading on to guilt and cruelty, after the in vain look for those awfully-deep portrai- characters of Macbeth and King Richard. tures of humanity, those sympathetic deline- Groundless jealousy, revenge, and the love ations of feeling, and gradual risings, insidi- of malice, purely for its own sake, are already ous changes, and tempests and whirlwinds' depicted in Othello and Iago,-the melanof passion, coming so closely home to men's choly wreck of a noble and sensitive mind business and bosoms, which are to be found in Hamlet,-and youthful passion in the in Shakespeare. If we come to consider loves of Romeo and Juliet. It may perhaps the language in which the respective au- be said, that, striking out new paths, and thors clothe their ideas and descriptions, we seizing on incidents not obvious to the comwill find an immense superiority on the side mon eye, and therefore not suspected to exof the dramatist. There is an indescribable ist, is a principal characteristic of genius. charm in the flow and harmony of measured But human nature, though diversified, is not lines, which much enhances the sentiments inexhaustible, the general properties, and they express; together with a dignity and conciseness of expression, which prose can never equal, and never approach. Shakespeare's volumes teem with passages of beauty, in which are crowded and concentrated maxims, reflections, and turns of expression, which have become incorporated with our very thoughts, and which we borrow like a second language, on all occasions, either of seriousness or levity. His works can bear to be perused again and again, and always with renewed or additional pleasure." The illustrious counsel, after observing primitive passions and affections have already been sufficiently portrayed. The author of Waverley then, to be original, had to take these general passions of our nature, and represent them when under peculiar circumstances, situations, and states of civilization; as is exemplified in the Covenanters, under the sway of religious enthusiasm, the Celts in a semi-barbarous state, &c. These characters, then, being peculiar, and confined to a sect or nation, though they may not be so generally or individually interesting, display not the less art and power in their construction. In his historical characters, the Author of Waverley will bear an equal comparison with Shakespeare, in his truth of painting, and power of illustrating and amplifying the conceptions of history. In pathos, the history and trial of Effie Deans, the catastrophe of the Bride of Lammermoor, and several other passages, vie with the finest scenes of Shakespeare. The ludicrous humour of Bailie Jarvie has few counterparts in the pages of the other; and the cavalier, Dugald Dalgetty, need not be ashamed to shake hands with the sackloving Sir John Falstaff. Rebecca in Ivanhoe, and the sisterly affection of Minna and Brenda in the Pirate, equal the most lovely creations of Shakespeare. In short, there would be no end to enumerating his various beauties; and we shall now proceed to bring forward proofs of the universal admiration in which the works of the defender are held. Here a motley crowd of witnesses were examined, consisting of all ranks, degrees, ages, and professions,-old maids, bachelors, grave doctors, and philosophers-striplings and young misses, who all bore unequivocal testimony of the pleasure they had derived from the author's works. After these, Voltaire, and some others of his countrymen, his disciples, were brought forward, in order to give their opinion against the dramas of Shakespeare. But Voltaire's evidence was so contradictory, and so plainly showed that he .was unacquainted with the spirit, and prejudiced against the plan of the author's works, as to render his testimony of no weight. Here the pleadings closed, and the venerable Judge summed up the evidence in a clear and masterly manner. He left the decision entirely to the impartial verdict of the jury; and if they should give it in favour of the pursuer, in his opinion, it would rather be an honour than a disappointment for the Author of Waverley to be thought worthy of competing with the immortal Shakespeare. The jury, after retiring for some time, gave a verdict in favour of the pursuer, on both issues. SONNET-To Esilda. Gone! gone for ever!-'twas a glorious dream, By the dread power of passion's charmed rod, Alas, alas, I cannot choose but love him. I have known altered for the tear That I will risk Love with me. I have known the sweetest sleep All my heart can stoop to bear, Yet I love, and O! how well 0, THE CELL OF DEATH. L. E. L. John Vartic, an accomplished and interesting young man, was executed for forgery, Nov. 11, 1817. After condemnation, he wrote upon the walls of his cell the following lines: "Thou helpless wretch, whom justice calls |