goria: one by one beautiful veils were torn off, and the soul fell back upon its own naked self. What did this inner search reveal? Heights of goodness, reaching up unto God; depths of wickedness, falling down to the devil; a fierce struggle, shaking the mind by its intensity; fine, clear intuitions, piercing even to the knowledge of God; dull bluntnesses, hindering when the spirit-sword had almost cut its way to the goal. Out of this analysis of the facts of man's soul grew a morbid development of his mind. Among all these discordant elements could there be any harmony? And, more, did not the continual violation of truth and good, discernible in the world, tend to show that there was no allgood or all-truth? Back, back the reasoners were driven, till face to face they were with their own souls; and, oh! the utter horribleness of that; for within ourselves we find no peace, only a perpetual uproar of discords, hinting at capabilities of harmony, but not yet in harmony. Listen to the dirge of a mind so tossed about:

"We are puppets, man in his pride, and beauty fair in her bower; Do we move ourselves, or are mov'd by an unseen hand at a game That pushes us off the board and others ever succeed?

The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well practis'd in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirl'd into folly and vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire and admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day, like the sultan of old, in a garden of spice.
For the drift of the Maker is dark, an Isis hid by the veil.
Who knows the ways of the world, how God will bring them about?”

The valley of the shadow of death had darkened around Maud's lover, whoever we were; God pity all who walk therein. Then, faith and trust are almost dying out; then, as he says of himself,

"A morbid hate and horror have grown

Of a world in which I have hardly mixt"

then God seems falling from his pedestal, and the soul's despairing cry is, "If thou be God, let not the waters prevail against me!"

This morbidness is the characteristic of this age; men and women pass by us, who daily drink of the bitter cup filled from the charnel-house of hypochondria-hypochondria, which is but the final result of morbidness. What shall

make whole a human being thus diseased? "A course of natural science," say the chemist and astronomer, "will restore peace to his soul, by showing him the exquisite harmony in the motions of invisible atoms and ponderous spheres; also, the unwavering affinities in the elements of material existences. Surely, an investigation of these facts will calm him." "A thorough knowledge of both the inductive and the deductive method," says the metaphysician, "will show him his errors and how to overcome them ; for he shall then see clearly the distinction between the known and the unknown; also, the grounds on which all belief should be logically founded." Ye be blind leaders of the blind; great as those means are, they are not great enough. Sisters! brothers! lay bare your hearts one to another; draw tenderly near to each other, for it is only throbbing, human love that shall break the spell. Yes, a love-whether between man and man, or man and woman, or woman and woman—but a love, that in strength and glory shall be a type of God's, will lead us back repentant, wearied children to the bosom of our Great Lover. Understand, however, all words have their own proper significations, which significations should not be distorted or violated any more than the characteristics of human beings should be; therefore, by love do not suppose that sentimentality, or passion degraded into lust, is intended. Far from us all be either idiocy or sensuality.

Let us see how Maud exorcised, by slow degrees, the spirit of bitterness and selfishness from the heart of her knight. Here is a simple, child-like acknowledgment of the fact. He speaks of her brother

And, again

"Peace, angry spirit, and let him be!
Has not his sister smil'd on me?"

"I have climb'd nearer out of lonely hell."

Won from that living death, life becomes doubly fresh and glowing. More, still, he knows that Maud loves him. There is no need of enlarging on that topic; you are referred to any quantity of yellow-covered publications for edification as to the orthodox manifestations of so-called love; this one piece of information is volunteered, that not one out of a hundred know what love is; perhaps, because we have never had a chance-perhaps, because our souls are not great

enough. Howsoever that may be, this was a pure fire, burning out all dross of selfishness, so that he

"Would die

To save from some slight shame one simple girl.

Not die, but live a life of truest breath,

And teach true life to fight with mortai wrongs."

It developed reverence and gratefulness also, so that he

says:

"I dream of her beauty with tender dread,

From the delicate Arab arch of her feet

To the grace that, bright and light as the crest
Of a peacock, sits on her shining head.

And she knows it not-oh! if she knew it,

To know her beauty night half undo it.

I know it, the one bright thing to save
My yet young life in the wilds of time,
Perhaps from madness, perhaps from crime,
Perhaps from a selfish grave."

Yet Maud has hidden God by her presence. All beauties have become vassals to her alone; the roses, the pimpernels, the acacia, and the violets, when the March wind, blowing their leaves, unveils the dewey blue of their eyes, all are prophetic of Maud alone.

The high-priestess, Suffering, robed in violet vestments, sits enthroned over the world; her left hand presses the brow of humanity; her right points up to the glory of God, breaking through clouds. Not capriciously or unjustly does she use her power, but wisely, her clear eyes seeing the faculties and capacities of each individual, and also the means for the development of those faculties and capacities. Each human soul knows her aspect sooner or later, nor could these two escape. They were parted. The story is told vaguely: Maud met her lover in the garden, her brother came with the "babe-faced lad" and "heap'd on her terms of disgrace," the lover retorted, the brother struck him, being angered, they had recourse to the

till there

"Christless code

That must have life for a blow,"

"rang a cry for a brother's blood.

It will ring in my heart and my ears till I die, till I die!"

Away on the Breton strand we next see the hero, but of Maud he knows nothing. Long days of agony and delirium

and weary longing follow, while still, over all, ring clear notes of unselfishness and reverent love for his "bird with the shining head;" still his prayer is,

"Let me and my passionate love go by,

But speak to her all things holy and high,
Whatever happen to me!"

Then comes the grand victor-song, swelling full and glorious, like the triumphal march of Beethoven's C minor symphony:

"It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,' said I

(For I cleav'd to a cause which I felt to be pure and true),

'It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye,

That old hysterical mock-disease should die.'

And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath

With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry,

Till I saw the dreary phantom arise and fly

Far into the North and battle and seas of death.

Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims

Of a land that has lost for a little her love of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs, of shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;

And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll'd!
Though many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims.
Yet God's just doom shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,

And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,

And the heart of a people beat with one desire,

For the long, long canker of peace is over and done."

"I have conquered! I have conquered!" chant musician and poet alike; "down, petty complaints; on, soul! to the warfare for thy race."

Clear eyes have traced for us the cycles of the slowlyrevolving double stars; strong hands have hewn out a path through the labyrinth of earth's bosom, laying open the hieroglyphics by the way; here the prophet heart of a poet has laid bare to us a soul that, in a great measure, is the type of the age. But shall we look with failing hope upon this tendency, to be found in science, in art, in religion? Not so; the strength which, uncontrolled, leads to morbidness, can, when controlled, God helping us, conquer it. By dint of earnest, truthful action, we shall yet "beat our music out."

ART. V.-1. Œuvres complétes de Molière, édition variorum, &c. Par CHARLES LOUANDRE. 3 vols. 12mo. Paris: 1858.

2. Euvres de Molière, avec un Commentaire, un Discours Préliminaire, et un Vie de Molière. Par M. AUGER, de l'Académie Française. 9 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1819-1827.

3. Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Molière. Par J. TASCHEREAU. 8vo. Paris: 1825.

4. Recit de la Cérémonie de l'Inauguration de la Fontaine Molière, 15 Janvier, 1844. 8vo. Paris: 1844.

No intellectual productions are more extensively borrowed than French comedies. They are deemed lawful plunder by all nations of Europe; and by none more than by the English and ourselves. Nor is this the result of any passing whim; it has been the same for more than two centuries. But the reverse is true of French tragedies. Many of the latter, too, have, indeed, been translated; but scarcely any of them have succeeded. The French people are, proverbially, the most mercurial in Europe. None are gayer, more sprightly, more easily pleased. So exuberant is their vivacity, that the English and Germans, if not ourselves, found upon it the charge of levity and thoughtlessness. But the truth is, that those who do so, let them belong to what country they will, are thoughtless themselves. Otherwise they would understand, that what amuses people, so different from each other in their tastes and temperaments as the Germans, Italians, Danes, Swedes, English, Spaniards, &c., must have its foundation in human nature itself. In short, it must be genuine wit or humor that elicits a smile alike from gay and grave. The best proof of this universality is to be found in the freedom with which the dramatists of all nations borrow, as we have said, from the comic drama of France. A mere catalogue of the French comedies, which have been "adapted" to the stages of other countries, would occupy more space than we intend to devote to our whole article; not to mention the hundreds of comic pieces, the chief materials of which have been drawn from the same source. And what French comedies in general are to the rest of Europe, the comedies of Molière are to the French people.

By this we do not mean that Molière is less known abroad than other comic dramatists. The reverse is the fact. No other dramatist of any country is so well known; not ex