From The National Review.
MR. HENRY TAYLOR'S NEW DRAMA.

St. Clement's Eve: a Play. By Henry
Taylor, author of " Philip von Artevelde."
Chapman and Hall, 1862.

Charles VI. of France, at the early part of the fifteenth century, when the country was torn and devastated by the quarrels and private wars of the two great princes of the land, the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy; the one the brother, the other the cousin, of the king. The monarch himself, eminently amiable, well-intentioned, and beloved, was powerless to restrain his nobles or protect his people, in consequence of the frequent attacks of insanity to which he was subject, and which neither physicians nor exorcists had been able to cure. A terrible picture of the state of the unhappy country under such a régime is drawn by a Hermit, who is introduced at the council-board during one of the lucid intervals enjoyed by the king, to deliver a message with which he says that God had charged him. The rough and fierce Duke of Burgundy bids him beware of giving offence. The Hermit replies :—

"What God commands, How smacks it of offence? But dire offence There were if fear of man should choke God's word.

WE ought to have reviewed this poem in our last number, and at one time had intended to do so, but were withheld by the consideration, that we had nothing to say regarding it that was not eulogistic, and that unmixed eulogy, however sincere and well deserved, is dull writing, and duller reading. But St. Clement's Eve is far too meritorious a production to be passed over without notice; and hitherto it has not received that attention from critics which its very unusual excellences ought to have secured. It will never attain the popularity of Philip von Artevelde, for it has no salient character of surpassing interest and matchless grandeur like his, nor are the events of which it treats at all parallel in importance or attractiveness. It is, too, both shorter and slighter in texture; and compared even with the author's second drama, Edwin the Fair, it lacks both vari-Nigh forty days I sped from town to town, I heard and saw, and I am here to speak. ety and stir. But it is far more free from defects and weak places than either; it bears the impress of a purer taste, more finished skill and a mellower and maturer mind. The workmanship, too, seems to us absolutely faultless, and such as only a lifetime of conscientious and fastidious labor could have achieved. It bespeaks an artist who has never, even in moments of fatigue and relaxed exertion, allowed any slipshod or slovenly composition to pass from his pen. The mingled dignity and sweetness of the diction bespeak a student who has drank deep at the rich fountains of our earlier and nobler writers, and the harmony of the verse is almost monotonously perfect. The tone of sentiment and morals which pervades the poem is throughout pure and noble, though very simple; there are no perplexing questionings, no subtle problems either of feeling or of thought; the passions dealt with are those of ordinary men in rude and violent ages; and the story derives its chief interest from that sad and touching conflict between woman's virtue and woman's love which is of all times, and which, though ever recurring, is ever new.

Hamlet to hamlet, and from grange to grange,
And wheresoe'er I set my foot, behold!
The foot of war had been before, and there
Whence ruffian hands had snatched the beasts
Did nothing grow; and in the fruitless fields,

The subject seems to us meagre and illchosen. The scene is laid in the reign of

of draught,
Women and children to the plough were yoked.
The very sheep had learned the ways of war,
And soon as from the citadel rang out
The larum-peal, flocked to the city gates.
And trith was none by day, for none durst forth;
But, wronging the night season, which God gave
Was labor and a spur. 1 journeyed on,
To minister sweet forgetfulness and rest,
And near a burning village in a wood
Were huddled, 'neath a drift of blood-stained
snow,

I

The houseless villagers. I journeyed on,
And as I passed a convent, at the gate
Were famished peasants, hustling each the other,
Half-fed by famished nuns. I journeyed on,
And 'twixt a hamlet and a church, the road
Was black with biers, for famine-fever raged.
journeyed on: a trumpet's brazen clang.
Died in the distance; at my side I heard
A child's weak wail, that on its mother's breast
Drooped its thin face and died;-then pealed to
The mother's funeral cry, 'My child is dead!
For lack of food; he hungered unto death.
A soldier ate his food, and what was left
He trampled in the mire. My child is dead!
Hear me, O God! a soldier killed my child!
See to that soldier's quittance-blood for blood!
Visit him, God, with thy divine revenge!'
The woman ceased; but voices in the air,

Heaven

Yea, and in me, a thousand voices cried,
Visit him, God, with thy divine revenge!'
Then they, too, ceased, and sterner still the
voice,

Slow and sepulchral, that the word took up:
'Him, God, but not him only, nor him most;
Look thou to them that breed the men of blood,
That breed and feed the murderers of the realm.
Look thou to them that, hither and thither tost
Between their quarrels and their pleasures,
laugh

At torments that they taste not; bid them learn
That there are torments terribler than these,
Whereof it is thy will that they shall taste,
So they repent not, in the belly of Hell!''

Home to your wife, go home;
Your heart betrays itself and truth and me.
You know not love, speaking of love for two.
I knew not love till now, and love and shame
Have flung themselves upon me both at once.
One will be with me till my death, I know;
The other not an hour. Oh, brave and true
And loyal as you are, from deadly wrong
You rescued me, now rescue me from shame;
For shame it is to hear you speak of love,
And shame it is to answer you with tears
That seem like softness; but my trust is this,
That in myself I trust not, nor in you,-
Save only if you trust yourself no more,
And fly from sin."

It had been resolved, as a last hope of redeeming the king from the thraldom of those evil spirits who were supposed to cause his malady, to try the efficacy of a famous relic, the tears of St. Mary Magdalene sprinkled on the forehead of the ma

The most moving scenes and incidents of the story arise out of the rescue, by the chivalrous, cultivated, and seductive Duke of Orleans, from outrage and abduction of a young novice named Iolande, who was residing in the Convent of the Celestins, which the duke himself had founded. A mutual affection springs up between the niac by a spotless maiden, "whom no sin duke and his protégée, and he has several interviews with her in the convent,-she knowing him only as a knight who had befriended and saved her. In one of these he avows his love, and the scene which ensues seems to us exquisitely natural and touching.

nor thought of sin had violated." Iolande, whose purity and spiritual enthusiasm had won her the respect of all, was fixed upon for this task; and she, full of holy aspiration, and conscious of no wrong, deemed she might undertake it, and by prayer and religious preparation labored to fit herself for the signal privilege. But the spell failed,-the king became madder than ever; and both Iolande herself and her ghostly adviser, Robert the Hermit, attributed the failure to the influence of an earthly passion, which had stained and dimmed the purity of her soul. She is in despair; and the Duke of Orleans endeavors to comfort and re-assure her, and declares that now in her sorrow he cannot bear to leave her.

"DUKE OF orleans.

"Look not back;

"Tis that way darkness lies. God's will it was That thou shouldst faithfully strive, yet strive in

vain,

To bring the afflicted succor. That is past.
Come forth then from the past; come bravely
forth,

And bid it get behind thee. We will fly
To fields where Nature consecrates the joys
Of liberty and love. With thee to rove
Through field and pathless forest, or to lie
By sunlit fountain or by garrulous brook,
And pour love's hoarded treasures in thy lap,
Bright as the fountain, endless as the stream,
Wild as the forest glades,-oh, what were this
But to foretaste the joys of Paradise,
And by a sweet obliviousness forget

Unutterably wretched and abased,
But knowing there is yet a further fall.
Oh, spare me! save me! make me not a prey!
For I am wounded almost unto death,
And cannot fly.

"6 DUKE OF ORLEANS.

'Enough, O Iolande!
Thy spirit in its weakest hour is strong,
And rules us both; and where thy spirit rules
Is sanctity supreme; and Passion's self
Is in thy presence purified and purged
From earthly stain, and ministers to grace.
No word nor wish shall henceforth violate
That sacred precinct."

The drama is interspersed with lighter characters and gayer scenes, which are full

That Earth hath unblest hours and dim abodes, of taste and playfulness, and relieve the

Where Pain and Sorrow dwell.

gravity of the deeper portions. Such are Flos and her dream, the advice of the duke's jester to a gay gallant of the duke's court, and a short madrigal by the duke's minstrel But we are in no mood to quote these now. Mr. Taylor is evidently in the full zenith of his powers; and we can only hope that his next choice may fall upon a richer subject

and more modern times.

they are so in the same sense in which the entireness of our human existence-our active converse with the material world from morning to night of every day-is also a violation of nature.

THE phrase "a violation of nature," artfully put forward by infidels, and most inconsider ately adopted or repeated by Christian writers, mystifies what is very clear. Miracles are always attributed to a certain cause-not to no cause-not to a cause that is foreign to the uni- In a word, is the universe a vast machine of verse; they are not a breaking in upon order in mindless sequences, eternally fated, and thereany sense other than that in which the will of fore exclusive of whatever gives room for conman in every moment of every man's conscious ceptions of moral and religious relations? Mirexistence, is a breaking in upon the order of acies can have no place in a universe thus ruled nature. In this sense all the world is a scene by fate. Pantheism, atheism, has no room for of perpetual confusion; it is a chaos of "vio- the supernatural; for it has no room in the lences;" for wherever man comes in upon the world, either for man or God: it has no room material world, he comes in to turn aside its for man, such as he feels himself to be, free, recourse, or to interrupt, or to give a new direc-sponsible, and related to a moral government; tion to its order. The order of nature allows it has no room for God, thought of as we must the bird to wing itself from east to west, or think of him, or not think at all.-North British from tree to tree; but the shaft of the savage, Review. or the gun of the sportsman, brings its plumage to the dust. How obvious is this; and yet we hear it affirmed that the smallest imaginable intervention, disturbing the fated order of nature, linked as are its parts irrevocably from eternity, must issue, if it were possible, in breaking up the vast framework of the material universe. If only the free will of man be acknowledged, then this entire sophism comes down in worth less fragments. So long as we allow ourselves to speak as theists, then miracles which we attribute to the will, the purpose, the power of God, are not in any sense violations of nature; or

CIRCULAR PANORAMIC PRINTS.-Mr. Sutton proposes to make the panoramic lens avail able for producing photographic pictures including an angle of 90°, vertically as well as horizontally, by using glasses in the form of a segment of a sphere, instead of that of a cylin der now in use. The focus in such pictures would be perfect in every part except where an object happened to be nearer to the operator than ten or twelve yards, and which would rarely happen.-London Review.

NEW TALES BY HANS CHRISTIAN AN-
DERSEN.*

From The Spectator. us how Rudy's father and mother and uncle had all perished in the snow of the Alps and in the embrace of "Our Lady of the Ice." THE many admirers of Hans Andersen in The picturesque name has a household interEngland will be glad to hear that he has est to Andersen, who heard it first from his lately published a little volume of new tales, own father, predicting his death from a chill which will, doubtless, in due course of time in the Danish fogs. But the Erl King's be translated. They are worth reading, but daughter, whose kiss is death, does not bear they are not equal to his earlier efforts. to be metamorphosed into a weird ladyThere is the same naïf and pleasant style, half giantess, half sorceress-who floats up lighted up with touches of the old humor, over the cliffs on the north wind, and bears but the author has followed an unfortunate an angry grudge against the sons of men inspiration in turning his inimitable sketches who scale her rocks for eagles' eggs and of animal life into novellettes of veritable pierce her mountains for railways. She men and women. It is the old blunder, looks out scornfully through her veil of mist which his autobiography exhibits in almost on the first train. "They are amusing themevery page, of mistaking a playful and cre- selves, the gentlemen, down there-the powative fancy for imagination. We regret the ers of thought," said our Lady of the Ice; error almost more than we wonder at it; "but the powers of nature will prevail in Hans Andersen has a strange power of the end;" and she laughed, she sang, till skimming the surface of deep thought, which it rang again in the valleys. "There fell an he has not unnaturally confounded with phil- avalanche," said the people below. Between osophical insight, much as he has mistaken "Our Lady" and Rudy is a wager of life quick and manifold perceptions for wide and death; for Rudy, when a child, has been sympathies. He is at home with children snatched as if by a miracle from her emand animals precisely because he is unable brace. More than once she seems to reclaim to understand strong passion or the prob- him; always her own cold touch and the lems of genuine speculation; and if he can strokes of her sisters, the powers of dizzimake a china image talk like a man it is at ness, fail against the steady foot and eye of the price of appreciating men and women the stout-hearted mountain climber. Even like china images; they have color and form, when he scales the eagle's nest, on a jutting and even movement, but we feel that they brow of icy cliff, and guarded by the furious have not life. He speaks himself of the mother bird, his courage and skill carry him powerful influence Heine has exercised on through. He wins the rich reward an Enghim, but he does himself injustice if he sup- lishman has promised for the eaglets, and is poses that he has copied more than a certain able to claim the hand of Babette, the milbizarre trick of style from the thoughtful ler's daughter. After a little jealous quarGerma poet. After all, we have no reason rel with his betrothed, all seems to be to complain when M. Andersen has done so smoothed over, and the lovers start for Gemuch so well. Even his failures are re- neva that the marriage ceremony may be deemed by touches which no one but him- performed. They stop on the way at Chillon self could have imagined, and the execution and the catastrophe happens. The story almost atones for the faulty composition of would be almost without a plot, if our Lady his sketches. of the Ice were not introduced; and the half supernatural machinery only serves to lengthen and perplex a tale of real life. The descriptions of Alpine climbing and the conversation of the two cats at the mill are the best part of the story. The history of Rudy's first visit, when the miller turns him out of doors as too poor, is full of genuine humor. The parlor-cat is the first to speak. "Do you know, you from the kitchen, the miller knows everything? That was a rare ending it had. Rudy came here towards evening,

The first of the "New Tales" is founded on the true story of two Swiss lovers who went the day before their marriage to a little island near Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva. Their boat drifted away from its moorings, and the young man was drowned before his betrothed's eyes in trying to bring it back. From this incident Hans Andersen works back to the history of their lives. He tells * Nye Eventyr og Historier af H. C. Andersen. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel

and he and Babette had a lot to whisper I, too, perched on a stalk like the flowers," and tattle about; they stood in the passage said the swallow. "It is not altogether just outside the,miller's room. I lay at their pleasant, but it is like being married; one feet, but they had no eyes or thoughts for is fixed fast; " and he comforted himself with me. I will go at once in to your father,' this. "That is poor comfort," said the said Rudy, that is acting honorably.' flowers in pots in the windows. "But 'Shall I follow you?' said Babette, that flowers in pots cannot be quite trusted," will give you courage.' 'I have courage thought the swallow; "they are too much enough,' said Rudy; but if you are there, about with men." he must be good-humored, whether he likes it or not.' And so they went in. Rudy trod heavily on my tail. Rudy is very awkward. I mewed; but neither he nor Babette had any ears to listen with. They opened the door, and both went in, I first; but I sprang up on the back of a chair; I could not conceive how Rudy would kick out. But the miller kicked out; that was a jolly row; ' out at the doors, up on the mountains to the chamois; Rudy may now aim at them, and not at our little Babette.' And Babette said good-by to him as demurely as a little kitten that cannot see its mother." Pity a man who can write like this should mistake his genuine knowledge of cats for sympathy with human sorrows and love!

The third story, "Psyche," is the most ambitious of the series, and is more like a sketch by Hawthorne than like Andersen's earlier works. A young painter is living in Rome during the great days of the Renaissance, when Michael Angelo and Raphael were contemporaries. In spite of the times, in spite of Raphael's example, although his companions constantly urge him to enjoy life, and take "cakes and ale" like his fellows, the sculptor remains faithful to his better nature, and is kept from all uncleanness by a feeling for some unachieved, unknown ideal. Suddenly his dreams seem to be realized in the garden of a great Roman palace, where "the large white lallaes shoot up with their green fleshy leaves in the marA little short story, how the swallow would ble basin, where the clear water was plashhave a love, is a gem in its way. The un- ing." He sees a young girl, graceful and happy bird was fastidious. He first rejected pure as he has seen no woman yet, except the spring flowers, snowdrops, and cro- in a picture of Psyche by Raphael. He recuses; "they are too neat,-tidy girls, just turns home to breathe his new feeling into confirmed, though fresh enough." Like all his work, and a statue of Psyche grows gradyoung men, he was sweet upon ripe beau- ually under his hand, in which his friends see ties. So he flew to the anemones, but they that his genius has at last found play. Rome were too prudish; the violets were too ro- rings with the report of a new sculptor, and mantic, the tulips were too gorgeous, the among the visitors to his studio is the father daffodils too homely. He was on the point of the unconscious model. The prince is of courting the sweet-pea; but, on coming struck with the likeness to his daughter, and up, saw a pod hanging on a tendril close by. commissions the artist to execute it in mar"Who is that?" he asked. "That is my ble. The workman's task is at last done, sister," said the sweet-pea. "Then you will and the sculptor goes to announce the result look like that when you are older." The to his patron. Unhappily he is allowed to suitor was frightened and flew away. Au- see the young girl alone; there has been no tumn came, and it was time, if ever, to make thought of social "convenance" where the a choice. The swallow fixed on mint. "She difference of rank is insuperable; and the has no flower exactly, and yet is a flower artist in a moment of madness tells everyevery inch of her, and smells from the root thing and pleads for hope. "He knew not to the top." But the mint stood stiff and what he was saying; does the crater know still, and at last said, “Friendship, but really that it is vomiting glowing lava?" A look nothing more. I am old and you are old; of scorn and abhorrence, an indignant order we can very well live for one another, but to leave the room, end the interview. He marriage-no, do not let us play the fool in rushes half-frenzied to his studio, and is our old age." Winter comes, and the swal- about to shiver the statue to pieces, when a low lingering too long, is caught, stuffed, friend interferes, and hurries him off to a and put in a case as a curiosity. "Now am bacchanalian carouse in a tavern outside the