and in the enthusiasm of her joy asks them, "Why shout ye not his welcome?" whereupon her father observes

"Dearest girl,

This is no scene for thee; go to thy chamber,
I'll come to thee ere long."

[Exit CLEMANTHE!

He then sends away his brother sages, and after pouring a little flattery into the ear of Ion, he tells him, what he knew before, that Clemanthe loves him. Ion treats the matter very coolly, and assures the father that he will not spurn her, but in words that we doubt much whether Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, with all his ingenuity, could found upon them an action for a breach of promise of marriage. In fact, Ion is the most frigid lover that ever appeared on or off the stage. After a long and tedious scene, in which Ctesiphon relates an insult offered to his father by Adrastus, and babbles much about revenge, which he was not able to accomplish, Ion attempts to palliate the deed, in a dissertation upon tyranny in general, which he shews to be the result rather of the vanity of the multitude, than of the vicious disposition of the ruler. The argument is curious, to say the least of it, and is rich in the jargon of the "nice memory" school:

"If the rich pageantry of thoughts must fade
All unsubstantial as the regal hues

Of eve which purpled them, our cunning frailty
Must robe a living image with their pomp,
And wreathe a diadem around its brow,
In which our sunny fantasies may live
Empearl'd, and gleam, in fatal splendor, far
On after ages. We must look within

For that which makes us slaves;-on sympathies
Which find no kindred objects in the plain
Of common life-affections that aspire
In air too thin-and fancy's dewy film

Floating for rest; for even such delicate threads,
Gather'd by fate's engrossing hand, supply

The eternal spindle whence she weaves the bond

Of cable strength in which our nature struggles !”—p. 48.

Sunny fantasies empearled and gleaming far on after ages, sympathies of an exalted kind, affections aspiring in air too thin, and fancy's dewy film floating about for rest, are all so many delicate threads gathered by the hand of fate, and these threads supply the spindle (we always thought it was the spindle that supplied the thread), whence she weares the bond of cable in which our nature struggles! Wherefore it is demonstrated, that if an absolute monarch knocks an old man down, the son of the insulted

patriarch ought to forgive the crime! Ctesiphon very justly replies

"Go talk to others if thou wilt."

The council assembles. Agenor, in a long speech upon the plague, in which the effects of the pestilence are minutely described, calls upon the king to repent, and pray to the Gods for mercy. To this Adrastus replies in another harangue, in which he talks of many things of grasping his sceptre more firmly than ever-of becoming more stern-of peopling the few hours of empire that still remain to him

"With more lustrous joys than flush'd

In the serene procession of its greatness,

Which look'd perpetual, as the flowing course
Of human things!"

He then breaks out into the following strain :-
"Have ye beheld a pine

That clasp'd the mountain summit with a root
As firm as its rough marble, and, apart
From the huge shade of undistinguish'd trees,
Lifted its head as in delight to share
The evening glories of the sky, and taste
The wanton dalliance of the heavenly breeze
That no ignoble vapour from the vale
Could mingle with-smit by the flaming marl,
And lighted for destruction? How it stood

One glorious moment, fringed and wreathed with fire
Which show'd the inward graces of its shape,
Uncumber'd now, and midst its topmost boughs
That young Ambition's airy fancies made
Their giddy nest, leap'd sportive;—never clad
By liberal summer in a pomp so rich

As waited on its downfall, while it took

The storm-cloud roll'd behind it for a curtain
To gird its splendours round, and made the blast

Its minister to whirl its flashing shreds

Aloft towards heaven, or to the startled depths
Of forests that afar might share its doom!
So shall the royalty of Argos pass

In festal blaze to darkness!"-pp. 51, 52.

If Adrastus be admitted to have by this time become of unsound mind, the author, it cannot be denied, has put into his mouth language and ideas well suited to such a state of intellectual existence. If we can suppose the king to be still in his senses, then certainly the author raves in a flow of unmeaning bombast, which Rowe himself, had he been alive, would have in vain panted to imitate.

The oracle of Apollo is disclosed to the king by Phocion:"Argos ne'er shall find release

Till her monarch's race shall cease."

Adrastus bids them all defiance, and departs. The young men, Ctesiphon, Phocion, and Ion, agree to meet again in the evening, and the second act ends with a parody of the dagger scene in Macbeth. We naturally expect that the third act will open with the meeting of the parties who were resolved on the death of the tyrant. Instead of this, we have a scene between Ion and Clemanthe, in which the action of the piece, at its most interesting moment, is stayed by a series of speeches conceived in the worst taste, and clothed in language which might be cited as the very model of a false and vicious style. It is followed by a soliloquy of Ion in the same vein. The conspirators at length assemble the lots are drawn-Ion is appointed by the fates to slay the king. Meantime a communication, made to Clemanthe's father from a stranger, informs the audience that Ion is in truth the son of Adrastus. The remainder of the tale may be summed up in a sentence. There is a long and painful scene-painful for its excessive puerility, between the tyrant and his son; while the latter hesitates to strike the fatal blow, which the former invites and even implores, so well has he been schooled by one of Ion's lectures, Medon rushes in to disclose to both their real relationship. Upon this they retire together: Ctesiphon pursues them, and the reeking dagger which he displays on his return, shews that the deed is done. The tragedy really ends here in the middle of the fourth act, with the death of Adrastus. The elevation of Ion to the throne, and his suicide, in order to accomplish the oracle, occupy the remaining scenes, and altogether destroy the unity of the composition. Thus, we have here a tragedy broken into two distinct stories-languid in action-inculcating no moral-exhibiting no leading hero or heroine-written in a style which good taste must severely condemn-fraught with poetical conceits of which a schoolboy ought to be ashamed; and yet most of our quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily critics, have lauded it to the skies and four overflowing houses have applauded it to the echo!

These observations upon " Ion" have been wrung from us by an imperative sense of the duty which we owe to the literature of the age. Professing as we do to be ranked amongst its guardians, we could not silently admit such a work as this to be enrolled among the legitimate specimens of our drama, seeing that it possesses no merit to entitle it to any such distinction. On the contrary, we hold, and we fancy that we have fairly proved, it to be of a school of writing which is most objectionable in its character,

whether we look to its artificial train of thought, or to its conventional and diseased peculiarities of diction. For Mr. Talfourd personally we entertain the highest respect. He is one of the ornaments of a profession in which he has succeeded by the force of his talents, which are of a very distinguished order. His poli tical sentiments accord entirely with our own, and if justice had allowed us to give his tragedy praise, we should have joined in the general chorus with unfeigned satisfaction. But the example set by his "Ion" to other writers-the view which it presented to foreign nations of our living drama-forbade us from withholding the opinions which we had formed upon it, and which we have expressed, we hope, without inflicting pain on a mind destined to triumphs much higher than those he could have expected in a theatre.

ART. VI. De la Poésie chrétienne dans son Principe, dans sa Matière, et dans ses Formes, par A. F. Rio.-Forme de l'Art, seconde partie. Paris. 1836.

ONE

NE of the most remarkable features of the present age is the universal reaction of that spirit of scepticism, which characterised the principal productions of the eighteenth century, particularly in France. Out of the general chaos of its conflicting doctrines, Christianity rises, like the phoenix from its ashes, resplendent in the beauty of eternal youth. At the very moment its implacable enemies were preparing to celebrate its complete destruction, Philosophy, History, and Science, after having completed the vast circle of critical investigation, find themselves at the very point from which they started; after having painfully and laboriously threaded the complicated and interminable labyrinths of doubt, and after a vast expenditure of genius and erudition we are brought back to the humiliating conclusion of the wise man of old, "that there is nothing new under the sun.” We are forced at last to acknowledge that the philosophy of the schools, although encumbered by certain verbal forms, was an engine of stupendous power in the analysis and synthesis of sciences, whereby we arrive at that sublime unity which governs and upholds things of themselves fluctuating and contingent. It is a circumstance not a little remarkable, that amongst the books belonging to Hume (the Aristotle of the sceptical philosophy) was found after his death a copy of the Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas, filled with marginal notes, and bearing other marks of the profound attention with which he had explored this great arsenal of scholastic learning.

It by no means enters into our purpose at present to establish a parallel between the philosophy of the middle ages, and that of the nineteenth century, if indeed the nineteenth century can be said to possess a philosophy; for we scarcely dare apply so great a word to the sensualism of Edinburgh, the Eclecticism of the modern French school, or to the vapourish pantheism of Germany. We hesitate not however in avowing it as our opinion, that these three schools have arrived at the last phase of their respective doctrines, and that they have before them but one possible solution, the philosophy of Revelation. The school of Edinburgh has indeed ever been essentially Christian in its doctrines, but not so in its method; as for the French and German Philosophy, Cousin and Schelling who may be considered as its most illustrious representatives, if they are not Christians, the obstacle lies in their logic, and not in their principles.

In the department of history, the brilliant lessons of Guizot, and in Germany the more profound and dispassionate criticisms of several Protestant authors, such as Müller, Wilken, and Raumer, have dissipated for ever the foolish and malevolent calumnies which Voltaire and his proselytes heaped with bitter zeal upon the most eminent personages of the feudal ages, enveloping in one reprobation, their customs, their laws and their institutions.

Nor has science wanted a champion to break the thraldom under which she was so long weighed down. The immortal Cuvier, in his public lectures, rendered most honourable testimony to scholastic learning, hesitating not to attribute all the discoveries of modern science to the method which it adopted. To Cuvier belongs the honour of having in an age of materialism, spiritualized the natural sciences, by having proclaimed the supremacy of form over matter, establishing upon its real basis the philosophical doctrine of identity. The very important discoveries of this great naturalist, in geology and comparative anatomy, were made, as were the discoveries of Kepler, and of Newton (and in a word all the great discoveries of all great men) by a simultaneous employment of the analytical and synthetical methods. For, since by a law of the human mind, every experiment is made under the influence of some theory, or at least of a hypothesis, we may thereby learn how important it is to use with caution that high prerogative of the human mind, by which we apply to science the test of doubt, decomposing by a long patient analysis those compound formulas, by which we arrived rapidly at its theory. Even Bacon, who is justly considered as the father of experimental philosophy, was fully aware of the dangers of analysis; for in speaking of the extreme difficulty of his method, he gives as a reason, the great caution