OFF. Assure yourself 'twas a concerted strata- Just as the Abbey steeple toll'd the knell, gem. Montgomery's been at Holyrood for months, Boys of the belt, who aid their master's pleasures, SER. Go up, then, to the tower. You've younger limbs than mine-there shall you find him Lounging and snoring, like a lazy cur [The OFFICER goes up to the Tower, and OFF. There's no one in the house, this little maid Excepted ISA. OFF. (detaining her.) You shall, when you have told to me distinctly Where are the guests who slept up there last night. ISA. Why, there is the old man, he stands beside you, The merry old man, with the glistening hair; SER. ISA. After you went last night, my father Grew moody, and refused to doff his clothes, Or go to bed, as sometimes he will do When there is aught to chafe him. Until past If this unhappy wretch have Heaven's permission midnight, He wander'd to and fro, then call'd the stranger, And you've seen Or heard naught of them since? ISA. Seen surely nothing, and I cannot think That they have lot or share in what I heard. I heard my mother praying, for the corpse-lights Were dancing on the waves; and at one o'clock, To die by mortal hands. AUCH. Where is he?-where's MacLellan? PHI. In the deepBoth in the deep, and what's immortal of them Gone to the judgment-seat, where we must meet them. AUCH. MacLellan dead, and Quentin too?-So be it To all that menace ill to Auchindrane, Have in this pallid gloom a ghastliness, As you have heard old Knox and Wishart preach, Erect, as if he trode the waves which bear him. AUCH. Thou speakest phrensy, when sense is most required. PHI. Hear me yet more!-I say I did the deed With all the coolness of a practised hunter When dealing with a stag. I struck him over board, And with MacLellan's aid I held his head AUCH. It was enchantment!—Did you strike at it ? PHI. Once and again. But blows avail'd no more Than on a wreath of smoke, where they may break The column for a moment, which unites And is entire again. Thus the dead body Sunk down before my oar, but rose unharm'd, And dogg'd us closer still, as in defiance. AUCH. 'Twas Hell's own work!— PHI. MacLellan then grew restive And desperate in his fear, blasphemed aloud, Cursing us both as authors of his ruin. Myself was wellnigh frantic while pursued By this dead shape, upon whose ghastly features The changeful moonbeam spread a grisly light; And, baited thus, I took the nearest way1 To ensure his silence, and to quell his noise; 1 2 "This man's brow, like to a title leaf, 2d King Henry IV. * This passage was probably suggested by a striking one in Southey's Life of Nelson, touching the corpse of the Neapolitan Prince Caraccioli, executed on board the Foudroyant, then the great British Admiral's flag-ship, in the bay of Naples, in 1799. The circumstances of Caraccioli's trial and death form, it is almost needless to observe, the most unpleasant chapter in Lord Nelson's history: "The body," says Southey, "was carried out to a considerable distance and sunk in the bay, with three doubleheaded shot, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, tied to its legs. Between two or three weeks afterwards, when the King (of Naples) was on board the Foudroyant, a Neapolitan fisherman came to the ship, and solemnly declared, that Caraccioli had risen from the bottom of the sea, and was com ing as fast as he could to Naples, swimming half out of the water. Such an account was listened to like a tale of idle credulity. The day being fair, Nelson, to please the King, stood out to sea; but the ship had not proceeded far before a body was distinctly seen, upright in the water, and approaching them. It was recognized, indeed, to be the corpse of Caraccioli, which had risen and floated, while the great weights attached to the legs kept the body in a position like that of a living man. A fact so extraordinary astonished the King, and perhaps excited some feelings of superstitions fear, akin to regret. He gave permission for the body to be taken on shore, and receive Christian burial.”—Life of Nelson, chap. vi. 4 MS." And, baited by my slave, I used my dagger." Not prone and weltering like a drowned corpse, FOURTH VIL. [By degrees all the Dancers break off THIRD VIL. Perhaps it is some wretch who needs assistance; Jasper, make in and see. Had placed her hands upon the murder'd body, His gaping wounds,' that erst were soak'd with brine, Burst forth with blood as ruddy as the cloud PEA. What of that? SER. Nothing that can affect the innocent child, But murder's guilt attaching to her father, Since the blood musters in the victim's veins At the approach of what holds lease from him Of all that parents can transmit to children. And here comes one to whom I'll vouch the circumstance. The EARL OF DUNBAR enters with Soldiers and others, having AUCHINDRANE and PHILIP prisoners. DUN. Fetter the young ruffian and his trait'rous father! [They are made secure. AUCH. "Twas a lord spoke it-I have known a knight, Within a flight-shot square, will teach you how in Sir George of Home, who had not dared to say so. war We look upon the corpse when life has left it. [He goes to the back scene, and seems at tempting to turn the body, which has come ashore with its face downwards. Will none of you come aid to turn the body? ISA. You're cowards all.—I'll help thee, good old man. [She goes to aid the SERGEANT with the body, and presently gives a cry, and faints. HILDEBRAND comes forward. All crowd round him; he speaks with an expression of horror. DUN. 'Tis Heaven, not I, decides upon your guilt. A harmless youth is traced within your power, Sleeps in your Ranger's house-his friend at midnight Is spirited away. Then lights are seen, ger wears The sanguine livery of recent slaughter: SER. 'Tis Quentin Blane! Poor youth, his gloomy All this, and other proofs corroborative, Call on us briefly to pronounce the doom AUCH. If my house perish, Heaven's will be done! Of a bless'd saint, the morals of an anchorite, best parts of Waverley.' The verse, too, is more rough, natural, and nervous, than that of Halidon Hill;' but, noble as the effort was, it was eclipsed so much by his splendid romances, that the public still complained that he had not done his best, and that his genius was not dramatic."-ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.--Athenæum, 14th Dec. 1833. ADVERTISEMENT. made any attempt to gain the honor of the buskin The German taste also, caricatured by a number THIS attempt at dramatic composition was exe- of imitators who, incapable of copying the sublimcuted nearly thirty years since, when the magnifi- ity of the great masters of the school, supplied its cent works of Goethe and Schiller were for the place by extravagance and bombast, fell into disfirst time made known to the British public, and repute, and received a coup de grace from the joint received, as many now alive must remember, with efforts of the late lamented Mr. Canning and Mr. universal enthusiasm. What we admire we usually Frere. The effect of their singularly happy piece attempt to imitate; and the author, not trusting of ridicule called “The Rovers," a mock play which to his own efforts, borrowed the substance of the appeared in the Anti-Jacobin, was, that the Gerstory and a part of the diction from a dramatic man school, with its beauties and its defects, passed romance called "Der Heilige Vehmé" (the Secret completely out of fashion, and the following scenes Tribunal), which fills the sixth volume of the "Sawere consigned to neglect and obscurity. Very gen der Vorzeit" (Tales of Antiquity), by Beit lately, however, the writer chanced to look them Weber. The drama must be termed rather a rifa- over with feelings very different from those of the cimento of the original than a translation, since the adventurous period of his literary life during which whole is compressed, and the incidents and dia- they had been written, and yet with such as perlogue occasionally much varied. The imitator is haps a reformed libertine might regard the illeignorant of the real name of his ingenious contem-gitimate production of an early amour. There is porary, and has been informed that of Beit Weber is fictitious.' The late Mr. John Kemble at one time had some desire to bring out the play at Drury-Lane, then adorned by himself and his matchless sister, who were to have supported the characters of the unhappy son and mother: but great objections ap|peared to this proposal. There was danger that the main-spring of the story,--the binding engage!ments formed by members of the secret tribunal,might not be sufficiently felt by an English audience, to whom the nature of that singularly mysterious institution was unknown from early association. There was also, according to Mr. Kemble's experienced opinion, too much blood, too much of the dire catastrophe of Tom Thumb, when all die on the stage. It was, besides, esteemed perilous to place the fifth act and the parade and show of the secret conclave, at the mercy of underlings and scene-shifters, who, by a ridiculous motion, gesture, or accent, might turn what should be grave into farce. The author, or rather the translator, willingly acquiesced in this reasoning, and never afterwards 1 George Wächter, who published various works under the pseudonym of Veit Weber, was born in 1763, and died in 1837. -ED. something to be ashamed of, certainly; but, after all, paternal vanity whispers that the child has a resemblance to the father. To this it need only be added, that there are in existence so many manuscript copies of the following play, that if it should not find its way to the public sooner, it is certain to do so when the author can no more have any opportunity of correcting the press, and consequently at greater disadvantage than at present. Being of too small a size or consequence for a separate publication, the piece is sent as a contribution to the Keepsake, where its demerits may be hidden amid the beauties of more valuable articles." ABBOTSFORD, 1st April, 1829. DRAMATIS PERSONE MEN. RUDIGER, Baron of Aspen, an old German warrior. 2 See Life of Scott, vol. ii. pages 18, 20, 72; ii. 2; ix. 208. RODERIC, Count of Maltingen, chief of a department of the Invisible Tribunal, and the hereditary enemy of the family of Aspen. eric. and more, since that cursed fall! Neither hunting, nor feasting, nor lance-breaking for me! And my sons-George enters cold and reserved, as if he WILLIAM, Baron of Wolfstein, ally of Count Rod had the weight of the empire on his shoulders, utters by syllables a cold "How is it with you?" and shuts himself up for days in his solitary chamberHenry, my cheerful Henry BERTRAM OF EBERSDORF, brother to the former husband of the Baroness of Aspen, disguised as a minstrel. ISA. Surely, he at least RUD. Even he forsakes me, and skips up the tower staircase like lightning to join your fair ward, Gertrude, on the battlements. I cannot blame him; for, by my knightly faith, were I in his place, I think even these bruised bones would hardly keep me from her side. Still, however, here I must sit alone. ISA. Not alone, dear husband. Heaven knows what I would do to soften your confinement. RUD. Tell me not of that, lady. When I first ISABELLA, formerly married to Arnolf of Ebersdorf, knew thee, Isabella, the fair maid of Arnheim was now wife of Rudiger. GERTRUDE, Isabella's niece, betrothed to Henry. Soldiers, Judges of the Invisible Tribunal, &c. &c. Scene. The Castle of Ebersdorf in Bavaria, the ruins of Griefenhaus, and the adjacent country. The House of Aspen. ACT I-SCENE I. An ancient Gothic chamber in the Castle of Ebersdorf. Spears, crossbows, and arms, with the horns of buffaloes and of deer, are hung round the wall. An antique buffet with beakers and stone bottles. RUDIGER, Baron of Aspen, and his lady, ISABELLA, are discovered sitting at a large oaken table. RUD. A plague upon that roan horse! Had he not stumbled with me at the ford after our last skirmish, I had been now with my sons. And yonder the boys are, hardly three miles off, battling with Count Roderic, and their father must lie here like a worm-eaten manuscript in a convent library! Out.upon it! Out upon it! Is it not hard that a warrior, who has travelled so many leagues to display the cross on the walls of Zion, should be now unable to lift a spear before his own castle gate! the joy of her companions, and breathed life whereever she came. Thy father married thee to Arnolf of Ebersdorf-not much with thy will, 'tis true(she hides her face.) Nay-forgive me, Isabellabut that is over-he died, and the ties between us, which thy marriage had broken, were renewedbut the sunshine of my Isabella's light heart returned no more. ISA. (weeping.) Beloved Rudiger, you search my very soul! Why will you recall past times-days of spring that can never return? Do I not love thee more than ever wife loved husband? RUD. (stretches out his arms-she embraces him.) And therefore art thou ever my beloved Isabella. But still, is it not true? Has not thy cheerfuluess vanished since thou hast become Lady of Aspen? Dost thou repent of thy love to Rudiger? Is. Alas! no! never! never! RUD. Then why dost thou herd with monks and priests, and leave thy old knight alone, when, for the first time in his stormy life, he has rested for weeks within the walls of his castle? Hast thou committed a crime from which Rudiger's love cannot absolve thee? ISA. O many! many! RUD. Then be this kiss thy penance. And tell me, Isabella, hast thou not founded a convent, and endowed it with the best of thy late husband's lands? Ay, and with a vineyard which I could have prized as well as the sleek monks. Dost thou not daily distribute alms to twenty pilgrims? Dost thou not cause ten masses to be sung each night for the repose of thy late husband's soul? ISA. It will not know repose. RUD. Well, well-God's peace be with Arnolf ISA. Dear husband, your anxiety retards your of Ebersdorf; the mention of him makes thee ever recovery. RUD. May be so; but not less than your silence and melancholy! Here have I sate this month, sad, though so many years have passed since his death. ISA. But at present, dear husband, have I not |