The meeting between Charles and Amelia when he returns unknown, is one of the most thrilling scenes in the whole of the German drama. The soul of Amelia is subdued by a presence which she cannot comprehend; she parts with the ring which Charles had given her to one who is apparently a stranger to her. Her heart seems to be sorrowfully conscious of its frailty without the power of redeeming itself. How firmly does she say to the stranger, when the remembrance of Charles rushes upon her mind, and almost overwhelms her: "Here, where you now stand, has he stood a thousand times, and at his side, I, who, when at his side, forgot both heaven and earth. Here, here his eye wandered over the lovely charms of nature, he seemed to feel how grateful was the sight, and she appeared to dress herself more gaily while her prince admired her. Here he would listen to the celestial music of the nightingale. Here he would pluck fresh roses for his loved Amelia. Here, here, he pressed me to the heart, and glued his lips to mine." But the finest scene of the tragedy is the one in which Moor is stretched at length at the side of a hill, with his robbers idling or sleeping around him. The sun is setting in the fulness of his glory, and the air is still. Moor leans his head on his hand, and gazes intently and mournfully on the beautiful orb which is retiring before him. He sinks into reflection. One or two of the robbers marvel at his words and looks, and endeavour to rouse him from his thoughts. But no, he had watched the setting sun in the innocent hours of his childhood, and now the past comes slowly and sorrowfully back upon his mind. He dwells hopelessly on the remembrance of the purity of his childish days: he gazes again at the setting sun, and exclaims, "Thus worthy of admiration dies a hero! When I was a boy, my favourite thought was that I would live and die like yonder glorious orb! it was a boyish thought. There was a time when I could not sleep if I had forgotten my evening prayer!" By degrees his mind passes to a consciousness of his present despairing state; and nothing can be finer than his wish: "Oh! that I could return into my mother's womb!— Oh, that I could be born a peasant! I would labour till the blood rolled from my temples to buy the luxury of a noon-day's slumber, the rapture of one solitary tear!" Schiller, though after the age of five-and-twenty, he wrote with greater purity and severity, never produced any dramatic work equal to the Robbers, in spirit, mystery, and passion. His tragedies on the life and death of Wallenstein are very beautiful, but he kept too close to history to afford much theatrical effect. M. Schlegel ought to have spoken in better terms of the Robbers, as a powerfully poetical drama. Schiller, more than any other German dramatist, throws an interest over a "situation terminated in respect of its being an event, but which still exists in the capacity of suffering." shall conclude with one more extract from Madame de Stael's Work on Germany, which immediately relates to this fine power of an author.-"More of poetry, more of sensibility, more of nicety in the expressions, are necessary to create emotions during the repose of action, than while it excites an always-increasing anxiety: when fact keeps us in suspence, words are hardly remarked; but when all is silent excepting grief, when there is no more change from without, and the interest attaches itself slowly to what passes in the mind, a shade of affectation, a word out of place, would strike like a false note, in a simple and melancholy tune. Nothing then escapes by the sound, and all speaks directly to the heart.” January 26th, 1819. HILLARY DAVID HETHERINGTON FOR THE POCKET MAGAZINE. MARY. A FRAGMENT. "THE sun rises, but not for me, for my sun is set for ever. The rose has no fragrance for me; for I have lost all sense of its sweets; while the dew-drop is on its leaf, it resembles me, for the tear is ever on my cheek." "Alas! alas!" said Mary, lifting up her streaming eyes to heaven, "when will sorrow yield its victim to the grave?" Thus she complained, and turning through the garden-gate, walked slowly across the down. The flocks released from their folds, were scattered over the verdure, but she saw them not; when she entered the coppice, the wood-lark began its song, but she heard it not; the grove was vocal with the music of every bird, but they sung not for her. "Here," said she, as she reclined on a seat at the foot of a spreading oak, "here Henry first explained the sufferings of his heart, which his eyes, his actions, and even his silence, had told long before; and here I first acknowledged that his pure and faithful passion was twin-sister to that which was the inmate of my breast. On the bark of this oak are the innocent traces of his affection; my name is there engraved by his hand. I saw him wound the tree to form the rural token of his love, and when he had done the work, I called him my shepherd. Alas! where is he now? on what distant shore does he lie? or is he entombed in some unfathomable gulph of the ocean? What must have been his pangs, when his last words were blessings on me! But his pangs were short, and mine endure; they are over, and mine still torment me. Ten long months have brought me no tidings of him. He is gone for ever from me. We loved; fortune smiled; friends approved; the altar was prepared, and Hymen was lighting his torch, when honour called. Stern, rigid, inflexible honour issued its summons, and Henry obeyed it. He left me, he said, to return more worthy of me. Alas! he went to return no more. What a fabric of happiness is 'sunk in ruin! Ye fair! ye smiling prospects are ye gone for ever? Alas! ye are vanished from me, and I am desolate." Mary left the wood, and with slow footsteps ascended the hill. The ocean presented its azure expanse before her,and she cast her eyes to the distant sails that whitened in the sun. "Prosperous gales," cried she, "bear you on; ye happy mariners, your vessels dance upon the waves, and your prows will reach the port to which you are destined! But my poor heart is agitated by one eternal storm, and there is no haven of rest for me but the tomb." On a sudden she descended to the shore; the surges were responsive to her sighs; she listened to their melancholy murmurs, which were in unison with them. As she stood she saw a body floating on the waters, and ere she felt the full force of her rising apprehensions, the wave bore it to her feet—she shrieked, and sunk down upon it! The shepherds who had watched her steps found her embracing the corpse; herself embraced by the icy hand of death. On the senseless body of her Henry she expired. Fate forbade the blissful union of life; but in death they were united together. Sympathetic friendship erected a memorial of them on the sands. Where round the mournful bridal monument And the rough sailor passing drops a tear. W. CORFIELD. FOR THE POCKET MAGAZINE. A FRAGMENT. "I RETURNED," said he, "a few days since, from a short excursion into the country, and paid my earliest visit to the house of my friend Darnton, partly because I am always happiest there, and partly that I might inquire after the health of the lovely and interesting young Emily, his daughter, who had been slightly indisposed before I left town. As usual I knocked rather loudly at the door, with the briskness that bespeaks the elevation of our spirits at finding ourselves about to recommence a pleasant intimacy. During the interval which passed between the demand for admittance being made and granted, my thoughts were employed in imagining all the relations which I should have to make of pleasures and novelties felt and seen during my jaunt. "Well, Mary," said I, as the servant opened the door, in a tone of voice that seemed to mean, and would have added, " here I am again!" Rubbing my hands together, I was passing on with even more than my usual speed and hilarity, to wards the parlour, where I already pictured to myself the family sitting round their comfortable fire, and all running to welcome the return of their old friend, after an unwonted absence of a week; when Mary gently staid me, and holding up her finger said in a subdued voice, hush! Tears and sobs accompanied the poor girl's interdiction, and seemed to read me the lesson of sorrow which I had soon to learn. "And how," said I," does my charming favourite:" (the half formed apprehension was already a herald of the truth)" Ah sir, 'tis sadly with us since you were here. Two days ago my dear young lady's illness, which had grown more and more since you went away, took a bad turn, and- Mary could proceed no further, her face told the story. She was no more Dead!-Yes, Emily was dead. The young, the inno cent, the precious, the delight of her sisters, the darling of her parents' heart, the joy of all her acquaintance, had died a few hours before I arrived: cut off in the early morning of life, beautiful and gentle as the softening tints that adorn the dawn of nature's day. I went instinctively to the parlour: there all was gloomy and silent, and desolate, and forlorn; every trifling familiar remembrancer put on the features of grief. Upon a small table, which her taste had ornamented, lay the little work-box that I had given her at her last, her sixteenth birth day, never to be touched again by her innocent hands. Here was her music, her lute, her books, her favourite dog that looked up wistfully in my face, and with tremulous moan appeared to be wondering at his solitude, and my held caress." Poor Florio!" said I, patting his head, "she was better than this world deserved!" 'twas all I could: I was unable to support the hundred memories of her winning ways, that rushed upon my overflowing heart: I burst into tears. The rigid will smile that my tears flowed more plentifully, when on taking out my handkerchief, I remembered that Emily had marked the letters of my name on it with her hair. Let them smile on: I envy them not! with "Nor I either," exclaimed Harnett, who perceived that the company had caught the moody infection from our melancholy friend: we are no stoics to force philosophy beyond the feelings of nature. Prithee go |