they are Christianly crushed, and the black confessor has crept into their consciences and spoken, and they feel that they are only poor worms, that they die dependent on the grace of a higher God, and that they in due time for their earthly evil doings must be boiled and roasted in hell.

Although the outer stamp of heathendom still prevails in Titus Andronicus, still the character of the later Christian time begins to show itself in this piece, and the perversion in moral and civic relations which it displays is already quite Byzantine. The play certainly belongs to Shakespeare's earliest productions, though many critics deny it to him altogether; for there is in it that cruelty, that cutting predilection for the repulsive, a Titanic struggle with divine powers, such as we are wont to find in the first works of great poets. The hero, in opposition to his utterly demoralised surroundings, is a real Roman, a relic of the stern and hard old time. Did such men then still exist? It is possible, for Nature loves to preserve examples of all the creatures whose kind is perishing or undergoing change, though it be in petrifactions, such as we find on mountain-tops. Titus Andronicus is such a petrified Roman, and his fossil virtue is a real curiosity in the time of the latest Cæsars.

The disgrace and mutilation of his daughter Lavinia belongs to the most horrible scenes to be

found in any author. The history of Philomela, in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," is not by far so awful, for the very hands of the wretched Roman maiden are hacked off lest she should betray the prime movers of the dreadful piece of wickedness. As the father by his stern manliness, so the daughter by her grand feminine dignity, reminds us of the more moral past; she dreads not death but dishonour; and deeply touching are the words with which she implores mercy of her enemy, the Empress Tamora, when the sons of the latter will defile her person :—

""Tis present death I beg; and one thing more,
That womanhood denies my tongue to tell :

O, keep me from their worse than killing lust,
And tumble me into some loathsome pit,
Where never man's eyes may behold my body:
Do this, and be a charitable murderer."1

In this virginal purity Lavinia forms the fullest contrast to the Empress Tamora; and here, as in most of his dramas, Shakespeare places two entirely different types of woman together, and renders their characters clearer by the contrast. This we have already seen in Antony and Cleopatra, where our dark, unbridled, vain and ardent Egyptian comes forth more statuesquely by the white, cold, moral, arch-prosaic and domestic Octavia,

1 Titus Andronicus, act ii. sc. 3.

And yet that Tamora is a fine figure, and I think it is an injustice that the English graver has not traced her portrait in this Gallery of Shakespearean ladies. She is a magnificently majestic woman, an enchanting and imperial figure, on whose brow are the marks of a fallen deity, in her eyes a world-devouring lust, splendidly vicious, panting with thirst for red blood. Pitying and far-seeing as our poet ever is, he has beforehand justified, in the first scene where Tamora appears, all the horrors which she at a later time inflicted on Andronicus.1 For this grim Roman, unmoved by her most agonised mother's prayers, suffers her son to be put to death before her eyes; and as soon as she sees in the wooing favour of the young Emperor the rays of hope of future vengeance, there roll forth from her lips the exultant and darkly foreboding words:"I'll find a day to massacre them all,

And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son's life;
And make them know what 'tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets, and beg for grace in vain." 2

1 This sympathy with Tamora and her vindication are not creditable to Heine. It is difficult to understand how the sacrifice of Alarbus, in accordance with the custom of the times, justifies the outraging and mutilation of Lavinia. The traces of divinity in Tamora are indeed very faint.—Translator. 2 Titus Andronicus, act i. sc. 2.

As her cruelty is excused by the excess of sufferings which she endured, so the harlot-like looseness with which she abandons herself to a disgusting negro is to a degree ennobled by the romantic poetry which is manifested in it. Yes, that scene in which the Empress, having left her cortège during a hunt, finds herself alone in the wood with her beloved black, belongs to the most terribly sweet magic pictures of romantic poetry

"My lovely Aaron, wherefore look'st thou sad,
When everything doth make a gleeful boast?
The birds chaunt melody on every bush ;
The snake lies rolled in the cheerful sun;
The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind,
And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground:
Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,
And, whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds,
Replying shrilly to the well-tuned horns,

As if a double hunt were heard at once,

Let us sit down and mark their yelling noise;
And, after conflict, such as was suppos'd
The wandering prince and Dido once enjoy'd,
When with a happy storm they were surpris'd,
And curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave,—
We may, each wreathed in the other's arms,
Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber;
Whiles hounds, and horns, and sweet melodious birds,
Be unto us, as is a nurse's song

Of lullaby, to bring her babe to sleep."*

* Titus Andronicus, act ii. sc. 3.

But while the gleams of passion flash from the eyes of the beautiful Empress and play on the black form of the negro, like decoy lights or curling flames, he thinks of far more serious thingson the execution of the most infamous intrigues, and his answer forms the rudest contrast to the impassioned appeal of Tamora.

CONSTANCE.

[KING JOHN.]

IT was in the year 1827 after the birth of Christ that I gradually went to sleep in the theatre in Berlin during the first representation of a new tragedy by Herr E. Raupach.

For the highly cultured public which does not go to the theatre, and only reads that which is strictly literature, I must here remark that the Herr Raupach referred to is a very useful man, who supplies tragedies and comedies, and provides the stage of Berlin every month with a new masterpiece. The Berlin stage is admirable, and one especially useful for Hegelian philosophers who wish to refresh themselves by repose in the evening after hard work during the heat of the day. The soul reinvigorates