"O, great master! I am young!" "I tell thee, thou unfortunate knave, leave clinging to my feet. Come, time flies; the whole theatre waits; hark to their clamours! they are impatient for their sports. Come, thou who was so bold and haughty in the portico, let us see thy bearing on the arena. See the huge beast has actually laid himself down as far from us as he can get. By Mercury! I believe ye are afraid of each other. Come out with him to the arena. 39 "For the love of Jupiter !" cried Codrus, clinging to the centurion who had seized him to lead him forth. "And hark thee!" cried the emperor, "when thou art fairly out upon the arena, shrink not thou close to my feet here, or thou art gone. I cannot shoot down; take thy place quietly in the centre; dost hear? Smite the knave till he answer." As Codrus felt the blow he seemed to gather in his courage. "Emperor, " he cried, "allow me a weapon?" "No!" By the god Hermes! would the desperate knave smite his emperor. Hurl him forth, I say!" And Codrus was literally flung upon the arena. He sprang to his feet, and clasped his hands together. One look he cast around. The huge monster was two hundred feet distant, and he had not yet seen his human victim. Codrus remained motionless. Once again he looked around upon the mighty circle of his fellow-creatures, piled up one above another, a stupendous wall of faces, and all waiting to enjoy the sight of a lion tearing his flesh and crunching his bones. A small arrow from Commodus, sent, not to injure, but to arouse the beast, caused him to start and roar, and then he beheld, as he turned, this unarmed, helpless stripling totally in his power. At the sight, he shook his shaggy mane, -he lashed his huge sides with his tail -his eyes kindled like burning coals. He stepped slowly at first, with a deep awful growl, as if he suspected either that his victim was armed, or that some wall of bars or net-work shielded him from his fury. Step by step he approachedhis taily moved more swiftly, with the quick excited joy of a cat springing upon a mouse-his growl deepened to a roar. "Now, Commodus!" shrieked Codrus. A low laugh of the emperor was heard through the whole concave. On and on, step by step, stalked the gigantic beast. His mighty jaws were extended he tore the ground with his foot-he shook the very foundations of the amphitheatre with his yet more tremendous roar; glowing faces leaned forward over the balconies, and frequent murmurs of intense delight broke from lips beautiful as rosebuds. "Oh, gods! oh, Commodus!" screamed the now husky voice of Codrus as the lion drew nearer, and he stood motionless; for terror had paralyzed his limbs, and turned him to marble. 66 Oh, Commodus! thine arrow! thine arrow! He will spring! he will spring!" and, as his voice failed him, the wretch sank prostrate on his side and elbow. "Not yet! not yet!" murmured the sweet voice of a Roman lady-a great critic in the elegant amusements of the day. At this instant arose a shout, sudden and deafening. The arrow of the emperor had sped to its mark, and quivered in the broad chest of the beast; but the latter, no more heeding it than a flake of down, had sprung with mighty roar upon his prey; already his claws and hairy jaws were encrimsoned-the head of poor Codrus had disappeared - his limbs were torn from his trunk, and his bowels and gore had left broad marks on the snowy sand. A more successful arrow now laid the lion quivering on his back-rolling, tearing and biting the ground. A third stretched him motionless in death; and, in a few moments more, slaves had borne off the two carcasses, and had respread the white sand, so as to leave no trace of the event. "Peace to the last of the Antonines!" cried the shrill voice from the gallery; and general laughter, and a peal of goodnatured applause, rewarded the humour of the unseen speaker, and announced the hearty gratification which the spectators had derived from their morning sports. One other gladiator was turned in to another lion, but the beast fell before the first arrow of the emperor; and as if satisfied with thus redeeming his skill, the entertainments were closed. The amphitheatre had disgorged its thousands, the last of the long train of the emperor had disappeared in the palace, and Commodus prepared to enjoy his voluptuous repose, after a luxurious repast. He dismissed all his attendants, and remained alone, with his favourite Marcia. "Well, my Commodus," cried the girl, "this day thou hast outdone thyself. Posterity will read of it with more pleasure than the whole reigns of other emperors." "Flatterer-beautiful flatterer!" "What is it, oh Commodus, that makes my worship of thee grow ever more and more strong-more burning? Thou hast occupied all my imagination. Even when I look abroad on nature; on the heavens filled with fleecy clouds; on the mountains capped with silver snow; on the broad, green fields and flowing rivers; I say, only to myself, these are his; these belong to Commodus!" "Sweet child; fervid and tender girl; thy lips-again. I do think, Marcia, if I love any thing on earth childishly, it is thee." She drew closer to him, and laid her cheek on his bosom. "Let me whipe the moisture from thy brow. Ah, how godlike thou seemest to me, Commodus. Oh, who, but thou, was ever born to be an emperor ?" "Beautiful, fragile girl; when thus I press thee in my arms, Marcia, thou awakenest in me something gentlesomething boyish!" "Love, love, Commodus. Is it not love? And yet how canst thou, with the world upon thy ahoulders, have time to love a lowly flower like me?" "Tush! tush! let me kiss those tears; but, since these dewdrops, my pretty Marcia, copious though they be, are not enough to quench my thirst, reach me yon goblet. My lips are dry. Fill it up, girl." She knelt affectionately, and lifted the goblet to his lips. He drained it at a draught. "Ha! how it spreads its deep joy through my veins! Immortal wine! I bless the great gods for such a gift!" "Thou art weary." "I am." "Thine eyes are heavy. Let my bosom be thy pillow." The despot of the world extended himself in the lap of his best friend. She laid her blue-veined hand upon his fore. head. She kissed his closed eyelids. Soothed by her blandishments, the monarch slept. When his heavy breathing announced the consummation of his slumber, Marcia slowly and cautiously arose, and disengaged herself from his arms. His head sank down upon the couch. The girl stood by him a mo ment, in an attitude of intense emotion. She bent her head toward him. Stupefied by his banquet, he lay, with unbraced limbs and relaxed features, like a dead body. Her face had undergone a change; her eyes glared; her lips were half apart, as if afraid even of her own breath. Then pale and trembling, she glided noiselessly to a door, which she softly opened. Three figures entered, Lætus, Eclectus, and one other. The last was the slave who had been cast to the second lion of the amphitheatre. "Did he take the draught?" demanded Lætus. "Every drop." "But, lest he should wake, and, perhaps, in his desperation, sacrifice us to his fury, I have brought one of his friends with me." He smiled, and pointed to the slave. Marcia looked a moment at her sleeping lover, and then, in a low voice, said, "Is the slave strong?" The gladiator replied by exhibiting his brawny and muscular arms. "Quick, then, in the name of Jupiter! Lætus-the door. Eclectus-his feet. I will hold his head. Now, slave! for thy life! Ha! gods! he wakes.” A moment rolled on.-There was a struggle as of an ox bound and under the the knee of the butcher. No voice broke the profound stillness.—A blackened and distorted face hung from the crimson couch,-In a secret recess of an adjoining room, a sack, with a heavy burden, that might have been sand or clay, was flung, heedlessly, into a corner. -For one instant, though it knew it not, the earth was free. LAUGHTER. F. When we laugh, we experience a sensation of delight and a sense of superiority -sometimes real, sometimes imaginary. The character may, in a measure, be discovered by the idea or the object which chiefly excites our laughter. The malevolent laugh from pleasure in the misfortunes of their neighbours; - the benevolent, from sympathetic mirth ;the intellectual, from a keen insight into the ridiculous;-and the foolish, from an excess of folly. LETTER FROM DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. (Now first published). [The following has been sent us from a much valued contributor, and we think that the pleasing conceit therein, cannot but amuse our readers:1 "From Dr. Darwin, to Miss Seward's Cat. "Litchfield Vicarage, Nov. 8th, 1780. "Dear Miss Pussy, "As I sat the other day basking myself in the sun in the Dean's Walk, and saw you in your stately window, washing your beautiful round face and elegant brinded ears with your velvet paws, and whisking about with graceful sinuosity your meandering tail, that treacherous hedgehog, Cupid, concealed himself behind your tabby beauties, and shot one of his too well-aimed quills and pierced -O cruel Imp !-my fluttering heart. "Ever since that fatal hour have I watched day and night, in my balcony, hoping that the stillness of the starlight evening might induce you to take the air on the leads of your house. Many serenades have I sung under your window, and with the sound of my shrill voice made the whole vicarage re-echo through all its winding lanes and dirty alleys. "All heard me, but my cruel fair one! -she, wrapt in fur, sat purring with contented insensibility, or slept with untroubled dreams! "Though I cannot boast the shining tortoise-shell that clothes my fair ⚫brinded charmer; though I cannot boast those delicate varieties of melody, with .which you sometimes ravish the ear of night, and stay the listening stars! Though you sleep hourly, lulled on the lap of the favourite of the Muses; or patted by those fair fingers, every day with her permission dip your white whiskers in delicious cream!-Nor am I utterly destitute of all advantages of birth and beauty; derived from Persian kings, my white fur still retains the splendour and softness of their ermin. This morning as I sat upon the Doctor's tea-table, and saw my reflected features in the slop-basin, my long white whiskers, ivory teeth, and topaz eyes;-and sure the slop-basin does not flatter me, which shews the azure flowers upon its border beauteous than they are. You know not, my dear Miss Pussy, the value of the heart you slight. New milk have I in flowing streams, and mice pent up in Such as adorn Love's stateliest queen, She might have been the Queen of love, Or some sweet-lipped attendant Grace, Sent out to find a wandering dove, Deep in the forest's shadiest place. The whispering gale in wanton play, Amid her auburn hair did twineNow o'er some ringlet it would stray, And wave it like an amorous vine. And then her lips seemed made to kiss; Like flowers with which the bees are fed, That all their dewy sweets dismiss, Then fold their bells of blue and red, Beneath her spanning eyebrows lay Such orbs as stream with soul and mind; Such glances as do never stray, But they a willing captive find. That cheers all Nature by his rays, When silence bids the waves be mute, She heard the warder's watchful note, And silently undid the boat, Then shot across the narrow flood; But hark! the warder's trumpet sounded, A FEW OF THE INCONVENI- PEARE ACTED. less, that is no good reason why a poor plodder in the stubble should be discouraged. Let him gather together as he best may what others have passed by, and see that it be sound and wholesome -neither blighted nor mildewed; let those laugh that have little better to do at his unostentatious handful. In speaking of the inconveniences of seeing Shakspeare acted, let us pass by, in quiet resignation, the more purely imaginative of his plays-his Tempest," and "Midsummer Night's Dream." These wild and delicate pieces of fancy were never intended for the hard handling and business calculations of stage managers and their underlings. A summer's day would be all too short to detail the strange wrong, the mutilation, the degradation they suffer on the stage. They should be for the hours of privacy alone; and even then, a man should not trust himself to read some of the passages in the latter play (or dream) aloud; they are of too fine a texture for the harsh human voice, and should be imbibed and conveyed to the senses by the eye alone. But to hear them in a theatre ! To have them remorsely bellowed forth from the foot-lamps by the lumps of clay who do the scavenger work of the drama, is absolutely terrible! It is worse than assassinating Handel or Mozart with a bagpipe, or playing Hadyn's symphonies on a hurdy-gurdy! And yet, what will not mortals attempt? The most of us have actually heard a IN the mass of miscellaneous reading stage Bottom issue such directions as that is constantly meeting the eye and these to some silly, fat, flobby child in passing from the memory, you occasion- white or green-" Monsieur Cobweb; ally meet with a remark or odd saying good monsieur, get your weapons in of an adhesive quality like a bur, "it your hand, and kill me a red-hipped will stick." It is long ago since the fol- humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and lowing came in my way; so long, indeed, good monsieur, bring me the honeythat I have forgotten the precise form bag. Do not fret yourself too much in of words in which the meaning was the action, monsieur; and good moncouched, but the purport of the sentence sieur, have a care that the honey-bag was-" that Shakspeare lost by repre- break not; I would be loth to have you sentation in the same proportion that overflown with a honey-bag, signior;" others gained by it;-that the one was while Moth, Peas-blossom, Mustardlike a spruce apprentice set off by his seed, and the other elves who Sunday clothes the other like Apollo "Creep into acorn cups and hide them there," tricked out by a tailor." I dare say the have been represented by the brothers and same thought has struck many a man sisters of Cobweb, the juvenile produce after reading or seeing Shakspeare, and and property of some industrious matron been illustrated by many men in many connected with the establishment. This modes before this time; still, let the is as bad as Snout, the joiner, representreapers and gleaners go ever so carefully ing the wall. And with all our vaunted over the field, there are always some few improvements in stage decoration, how stray ears to be picked up by a straggler much worse off was the poor Athenian -patches, remnants of the bounteous company for their lion, and wall, and harvest that has already been gathered moonshine, than the unfortunate modern in by the first in the field. Neverthe-scene-painter or property-man, who is called upon by the text to furnish a bank "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, No! there are scenes and materials Let us pass to the common acting plays-Macbeth. You are sitting by the fire on a winter's evening, "wrapped" in the perusal of this masterpiece of nature's masterpiece, preparatory to visiting the theatre to see it played. In your mind's eye you perceive the "blasted heath," the scene of Macbeth's temptation, sterile and wild, covered with masses of primeval and "herbless granite," and untenanted save by the lonely plover or shy and solitary moorcook. Beside some rude cairn are clustered the weird sisters, "posters of the sea and land," recounting their exploits, and holding devilish consultation; in the distance is the army of Macbeth. There is a bleak and gloomy grandeur in the picture you have drawn, and you hasten to the theatre to have it realized. Does not your enthusiasm receive a shock? Before you is some old, confined "wood-scene" used on all occasions, with Macbeth and Banquo, the three beldames, and divers ill-drilled supernumeraries, huddled together in most unseemly proximity; while the hags, "so wither'd and so wild in their attire," are generally represented (for what reason managers only know) by three low comedians, for the most part hearty, plump, oleaginous personages, with whom all sorts of odd, out-of-the-way associations are connected, in patched red and tartan petticoats, and stationed in the full glare of the gaslamps! True, some of this cannot be remedied; but much of it might, were a tithe part of the money and attention directed towards it that are wasted on some gaud or pantomime; and much that is now vulgar, common-place and ridiculous, might, by the aid of a little liberality and common-sense, be rendered grand and impressive. But the managers think that Shakspeare may be used and abused after any fashion; that he has stamina for any thing; and they think right, though they act wrong. Scenery, machinery, dresses and decorations," however, may be amended, "that's comfort yet;" but alas! what mental millwright-what skilful machinist, will put in order and wind up the talking machines that "do" the subordinate parts about the theatre to the true Shaksperian pitch, and set them a-going for the night! Is the schoolmaster yet abroad ordained to shed a ray of light upon their benighted understandings concerning the meaning of the author, or make them sensible of the simple but important fact, that blank verse is not prose, and ought to be spoken differently? Here it is where our great dramatic poet principally suffers. The exuberant genius of Shakspeare could not stoop to petty calculations. It never entered into his thoughts what unimaginable pieces of mortality would, in after times, give utterance to the glorious poetry that is scattered indiscriminately over his pages. Small occasion had he to play the niggard, and carefully apportion out his sweet fancies and rare conceits to those who would be likely to give the most effect in the representation; and hence it is that the "Goodmen Dulls" of the theatre-the honest plodding gentlemen with small salaries and corresponding capacities, who, in other authors, have language admirably adapted to their modes of thinking and expression put into their mouths, have frequently, when doing their work in subordinate characters in Shakspeare, to utter passages redolent with beauty, which they do in a way that very satisfactorily shows these "imperfect speakers" have little occasion to thank the gods for having made them "poetical." Of all Shakspeare's characters there are not any so systematically ill-used as these same witches in Macbeth. It has been thought by many who know something of the matter, that there are a wildness and sublimity in the character and attributes of those malignant hags, that are perfectly inapproachable by any one below Shakspeare's calibre. And, be it noted, they are not only of wondrous import of themselves, but the mainspring of all the principal events in the great drama to which they belong. The talent and intellect of the greatest ornaments the stage has produced, would not be misapplied in endeavouring to give an adequate idea of these strange and fantastical creations. Yet what are they at |