questioned concerning his son. Thus the popular operation of his opinions, and the outlines of his early biography, are unaffectedly brought

out.

Scene 2. A convent of nuns at Wittenberg is exhibited. They are seen in the chapel, through a grate, performing their devotions; and a miserere, accompanied by an organ, is sung in chorus. The chancellor of Saxony, and other attendants, arrive, to announce the sequestration of the holy property, and the dismissal of the nuns, on a pension, into private life. Interesting contrasts of character are displayed between the grief of the elderly and the subdued joy of the younger nuns. While the formal process is going on, a mob of youths break into the holy precincts, and more than one snatches his beloved from imprisonment. The dignified indignation of Catherine Bore overawes the rudest. An officer, who was in love with her is vainly a suitor; and she reproves him for his attachment to Luther.

Scene 3. The college-square at Wittenberg is displayed. Students are assembled to witness the burning of the pope's bull by Luther. The daring character of this step is painted by the alarm of Melanchthon, by the hesitation of the people, and by the intrusive protest of the disbanded nuns, who are marched past at the time. Luther makes his speech, and burns the bull. Cathe rine Bore feels her abhorrence overcome by an involuntary veneration.

Act II. Scene 1. The famulus, or apprentice-student, of Luther, by name Theobald, is waiting in Luther's anti-room, and is visited by Melanchthon, whose cautious, timid, scrupulous virtue is accurately portrayed. Luther is locked within his study. His father and mother come from Freiberg to visit him. The door is burst open. He is found half entranced, from want of food, and from excess of literary labour. He has VOL. V.

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been translating psalms into rhyme; the door is spotted with ink; and, on being questioned, he relates the story of his throwing an inkstand at the celebrated apparition of the devil. Much nature, much historick fidelity, and much philosophy, are exhibited in this delineation. Melanchthon informs Luther of the citation to Worms, and advises him not to go, lest he should be burnt alive. The father and mother concur in the dissuasion: but the noble firmness of Luther prevails. This scene is too long: but it contains affecting displays of character.

Scene 2. The disbanded nuns are again produced, for little purpose; unless to reveal the progress of Catherine's attachment, who determines, in the dress of a pilgrim, to follow Luther to Worms.

Act III. Scene 1. A hall in the imperial palace exhibits the assembled majesty of the German empire; the electors, the knights, the cardinals, the bishops, the emperour Charles V. and his fool, Bossu. The debate turns on the protestant troubles; the several characters are brought forwards in exact proportion to their historick importance; and to each his individual learning is assigned with solicitous precision: but we have too much of the emperour's fool.

Scene 2. Luther has arrived at Worms, accompanied by Melanchthon. The cardinal Aleander practises with him, and offers preferment if he will retract: but Luther remains firm, and wanders through the streets, singing with a chorus of the people his own psalms. The emperour passes on horseback, and, being curious to see Luther, slackens his pace. While he is gazing, the sceptre drops from his hand; and this emblematick or ominous incident is well managed by the poet. The dialogue is affectedly insipid, while the page picks up the sceptre, and the emperour desires the elector of Saxony to carry it for

him. But Luther, looking calmly and silently at the incident, and continuing his psalmody, excites an indescribable thrill, arising from a recollection of the mass of depending events, which reveals the use and the place of omens in dramatick historiography.

Act IV. Scene 1. Luther is called before the diet, is exhorted to retract, and refuses. When he has retired, a deliberation commences whether he shall be burnt for heresy. The votes are divided: but the emperour's casting vote decides in favour of Luther, who retires with the acclamations of the people.

Scene 2. A forest near Worms. Here Luther is benighted, with his famulus; and here Catherine Bore, in her pilgrim's dress, with the fair novice who accompanies her, is benighted also. Certain soldiers attend as an escort. The parties meet, and club their suppers, spread themselves on the ground, and sing in concert. The spectacle may be imagined to be picturesque; and the soldier's bugle, with the voices of the performers, alternately sounding, to be very melodious: yet the dialogue itself is vile and ludicrous, and abolishes all that reverence for Luther and Catherine, which had previously been excited. After having fallen in love, they fall asleep; and their dreams are exhibited in the air, in pleasing illuminated machines. Theobald and the fair novice also fall in love, as well as their master and mistress.

In the fifth act, still grosser absurdities occur. The fair novice dies, in order to exhibit a funeral at

the convent, and to reintroduce the chorus of nuns, who are allowed to reunite on this occasion. During the service, protestant iconoclasts rush in, tear down the pictures, and carry off the candlesticks; and thus the reformation, hitherto so important, is degraded into a church-robbery, hostile to the fine arts! An opportunity is seized for exhibiting Luther in lay-apparel, when he makes his offer, and is accepted by Catherine Bore; occasion is also taken to kill off two personages, now become supernumerary, the boywidower Theobald, and the discarded lover of Catherine; and thus the tragedy terminates.

The merits of this poem must be sought, first, in the author's happy portraiture of character and manners, and in ethick discrimination; secondly, in his wise choice of the interviews, so as to teach a large portion of historick truth, with a moderate number of agitating scenes; thirdly, in decorative contrivance, an opportunity being skilfully afforded for various and magnificent scenery and pageantry; yet in this department of art, the law of climax is not sufficiently observed; and fourthly, in historick fidelity.-Its faults will be found; first, in the trailing and sentimental style of the dialogue; secondly, in exuberance of personage, incident, anecdote, and parade; thirdly, in repetitions of situation, such as that of the nuns at worship; and fourthly, in the decaying character of the interest, which, from being originally of the heroick, becomes finally of the comick kind.

Mademoiselle de Bussy and Mademoiselle de Brion, one aged 15, and the other 19, had both accompanied their mothers to a prison. They were not prisoners, and might have gone out; but they preferred to share their captivity, and the decree ordering the expulsion of the nobility from Paris, forced them to part from them. They shed tears, and every day, in the country where they breathed pure air, they were heard to regret the insalubrity of that horrid abode, out of which they had been violently driven away.

Madame Grimoard, now Madame Potier, showed also a most affecting anxiety for her mother, Madame Lachabeaussiere. She had been sent to another prison. She begged, though she was pregnant, to be carried to Port Libre, to accompany her mother and take care of her; but she found her in close confinement, and treated with the greatest cruelty. She was so shocked at it, that at intervals her mind was deranged. She neglected her dress, and in her delirium, at which every heart was moved, she stood for some time on a spot, looking around her without seeing any body. Sighs heaved her bosom, and her face and body were distorted with convulsions. Then she arose suddenly, darted through the passa

ges and sat down on the stairs, near the door of the dungeon where her mother was. There she listened a long while, and when she heard nothing, she sighed, shed tears, and in a low tone said sorrowfully: 0 my mother, my fond, my unfortunate mother! When she heard her walk or move, she conversed with her, and to prolong the dire pleasure of such an intercourse, she remained for several hours on the landing place. She was not satisfied with talking; she carried, every day, to her mother, some of her own victuals, which was giving her life, as they sometimes forgot to feed the unfortunate woman. But when she came to request the turnkeys to open the dungeon to her, how many brutal refusals, disgusting interrogations, and indecent jokes, had she not to endure to obtain the favour? She disregarded them, and suffered every thing, in order to carry food to her mother, and to embrace her for a few moments. It seemed as if maternal anxiety were wholly transfused into the bosom of this affectionate daughter!

The same praise is due to Mademoiselle Delleglan. Her father, who was ordered to be removed from a dungeon in Lyons, to the Conciergerie, was setting out for Paris.

She had not left him; she asked leave to travel in the same coach with him; she could not obtain it; but does the heart acknowledge any obstacles? Although her constitution was very weak, she walked all the way, following the cart upon which her father was, the whole journey of more than 100 leagues, and never losing sight of him, but to prepare his victuals, or to fetch a blanket for him to sleep on, when he arrived at the different prisons on the roads. She never ceased to accompany him, and to supply all his wants, till he reached the Conciergerie; when she was separated from him. As she had been used to inspire the jailers with compassion, she did not despair of being able to disarm the oppressors. For three months she applied every morning to the most powerful members of the committee of publick safety, and at last prevailed on them to release her father. She set off with him for Lyons, glorying in having delivered him; but Heaven did not allow her to reap the fruit of her exertions. She was taken ill on the road, being exhausted by fatigue, and lost her own life, after having saved that of her father.

Mademoiselle de la Rochefoucauld displayed no less courage in behalf of her father. She had been sentenced with him, in the Vendean war; but she contrived his escape. She hid him in the house of a workman, who had been their servant, and concealed herself somewhere else. Thus they lived, free from the persecutors; but as their property had been confiscated, and pity was easily tired, their resources were soon exhausted. Mile. de la Rochefoucauld was informed that her father was nearly perishing for want. Being reduced to the same extre

mity, and unable to assist him, she devoted herself for him. A republican general happened to pass through the town where she had retired. She informs him, in a most affecting letter, of the lamentable situation of her father, and offers to appear and undergo the execution of the sentence pronounced against her, provided he engages immediately to assist the expiring old man. The warriour hastens to her, not as an enemy, but as a protector.* He gave assistance to the father; saved the daughter; and after the 9th of Thermidor, he had them reinstated in their property, by obtaining the revision of their trial.

The action of the young Mlle. Bois-Berenger is no less admirable, and, perhaps, still more affecting. Her father, mother, and sister, had been served with a warrant of accusation. She alone appeared to have been forgotten by the murderers of her family. How many tears did this sad distinction cost her? In her despair she exclaimed: I am then doomed to survive you! We shall not die together! She tore her hair, she embraced, successively, her father, her mother, and sister, and bitterly repeated: We shall not then die together! The wished for warrant against her comes; no more grief, no more tears; transported with joy, she embraces again her parents, exclaiming: We shall die together! It seemed as if she had in her hands their liberty and her own. She put on a handsome dress, as if she was going to an entertainment, and with her own hands cut off the locks of her charming hair. When they left the Conciergerie, she was pressing in her arms her unfortunate mother, whose dejection was her only affliction; and she supported her

sinking heart till they were on the scaffold. "Be comforted," said she, "you do not leave the least regret behind; your whole family goes with you, and you will soon receive. the reward of your virtue."

With the same fortitude Mlle. de Malesey, whose graces equalled her beauty, acted towards her father when he was condemned. She constantly attended him; she comforted him till he received the fatal blow, and then willingly laid her own head under the same axe.

There were many women whom humanity alone inspired with this noble contempt of life, which others manifested from attachment to a sacred affinity.

Some time after the 31st of May, citizen Lanjuinais, an outlaw, went to Rennes, to shelter himself in the house of his mother, who had no other servant at that time than an old chambermaid. He thought it necessary to conceal the truth from the latter; but one day reading in the newspapers that Guadet had been executed at Bordeaux, and that the same proscription attached to those of his friends who had received him, and even to the servants who had not made known his retreat, Lanjuinais perceives the danger to which his presence might expose his mother's servant. He, therefore, resolves, at the risk of his own life, to guard her against it. He reveals his situation to her; and warning her of what she has to apprehend, recommends her to go away, and to be silent. Her answer is, that she will never leave him while he is in danger; and that she cares not for death, if she must lose him. In vain does he remonstrate. She earnestly solicits the happiness to stay with her master to the last moment. Lanjuinais, deeply affected, yielded, and contrived, with the help of this woman's dexterity, to stay there till the overthrow of Robespierre; when the safety of her mistress's son was the reward of her virtuous obstinacy.

Mary, a servant in one of the gaols in Bordeaux, inspired two young men with confidence, by her kind behaviour towards those who were detained there. They applied to her to make their escape, and she agreed to facilitate it. When they were going away, they offered her an assignat of 500 livres each, as a token of their gratitude. She felt affronted, and said: "You do not deserve my assistance, since you esteem me so little as to think I am prompted by motives of vile interest." They observed, in vain, that the offer was made simply to enable her to fly, without being exposed to want, if she was suspected of having been privy to their escape; but they soon perceived they must speak no more of money. They therefore yielded, kissed her, and departed.

Mad. Boyer, a milliner in Marseilles, was brought before the commission, to give evidence on the trial of a culprit who had actually committed the revolutionary crime which he was charged with. Thinking she might save him, she deposed in his favour, and lost her life for this generous perjury.

In Brest, a man unknown to Mad. Ruvilly, entered her house, to ask a shelter against proscription. He was 80 years old. Endowed with a tender heart, she made no inquiry, and did not consider the danger connected with his visit. He was unhappy; that was sufficient; she readily hid him, and paid him every attention. Two days after, the old man came to take his leave of her. Mad. Ruvilly, who delicately had refrained from putting any question to him, shows some astonishment, He confesses that he is a priest, and on that account only, devoted to proscription; but he is fearful lest a longer stay might bring it upon her also: "Allow me," says he, “by going away, to preserve you from the danger you are exposed to, for having received me, and to spare myself the grief of having brought ruin upon