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STAUF. (to Walter Fuerst, with astonishment.) Who is the
youth ?
MELCH. (clings to him with a convulsive earnestness.) –
Bored out his eyes saidst thou?

FUERST. Alas, alas, for the poor youth!

STAUF.

His son? Merciful God!
MELCH.

Far, far away from him!

Who is it?

[Walter Fuerst answers by a sign.

And I must be

Both eyes bored out?

FUERST.. Command your sorrow! Bear it like a man!

MELCH. All for my fault,

- all for my wickedness!

Blind? Is it possible? really, wholly blind?
STAUF. 'Tis so.

The fount of vision is dried up;

On him the cheerful sun shall smile no more.
FUERST. O spare his anguish !

MELCH.

Never, never more!

[Presses his hands to his eyes, and, after a few moments' silence, turns from one to the other, and in a low voice, choked with tears, says

O what a noble gift of Heaven to man

Is the eye's light-all beings live on light.
Where that is, every creature basks in bliss
The very plant turns fondly to the sun;
And he must sit and grope about in gloom,
In everlasting night; for him no more

The ruddy heavens may glow, the flow'ret bloom;
For him no more the warm green meadow smile.
Death might be borne, -but sightless to live on,
There is a misery. Wherefore gaze on me

So piteously? I have two sound eyes,
And cannot give my poor blind father one,

No, not one glimmer of that sea of light,

Which on my eye in dazzling splendor pours.

STAUF. Would I might heal your anguish; but alas!

I must say that will widen still the wound.

The inhuman Vogt has robbed him of his all;
Nought under heaven is left him but his staff

Naked and blind he begs from door to door.

MELCH. Only a staff to the poor, blind old man!
Robbed of his all, and even denied the light,
The blessed light of the all-gilding sun,

A boon the meanest of God's creatures share!
Let me no longer hear of secrecy ;
No longer of delay. Faint-hearted wretch

And ingrate that I am, myself to save,
Nor think of thee, my father! thus to sit,
Tamely to sit, and see that dear, dear head
Left as a pawn in the vile tyrant's hands!
Begone, faint-hearted caution,

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nought, henceforth, But bloody retribution fill my thoughts!

I'll go like lightning- none shall hold me back
Confront the Vogt - demand my father's eyes
Single him out from all his servile train
My life shall be to me of small account,
So I may quench this burning agony

In the cold life-blood of the monster!

FUERST.

Stay!

The odds are fearful! In his lordly tower

On Sarnen's heights he sits, and laughs to scorn,

Through the thick walls, our threats and our assaults.
MELCH. And were yon dome of ice his dwelling place,
Sky-cleaving Schreckhorn, or the loftier heights
Where veiled in everlasting snows sits throned
The Jungfrau I would force my way to him;
With twenty youthful hearts, fired like my own,
I'd burst his castle-walls. And now, if none
Dare follow me, if every soul of you,

Trembling and quaking for your hearths and homes,
Bow down beneath the tyrant's yoke I'll summon
The herdsmen on the mountain-top, and there,

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There under Heaven's broad roof, where souls are free,
And hearts have not yet lost their native fire,

I'll utter in each ear the monstrous deed.

STAUF (to Walter Fuerst). Oppression 's at its height and shall we wait

Till the worst come?

MELCH.

The worst has come already.

What can be worse, when e'en the ball of sight
No more is safe within its hollow cell?

Are we defenceless? Why then were we taught
To bend the bow- to swing the battle axe?
Each living creature righteous Heaven has armed
For time of danger; the exhausted stag

With formidable antler bays the pack —

The chamois lures the huntsman to the steep-
And even the ox, the gentle friend of man,

That bows the monstrous might of his broad neck
Beneath the yoke so meekly- once provoked,
Flings up the earth, makes sharp his frightful horn,
And tosses high in air his howling foe.

FUERST. If the three Cantons felt as we three feel, Then haply something might be brought to pass. STAUF. When Uri calls and Unterwalden helps, Each Switzer will revere the old covenants.

ye

MELCH. In Unterwalden I have many friends,
And not a soul among them, but would leap
To hazard life and substance, would the rest
Swear to stand by him. 0 honored heads,
Sages and sires of this once happy land!
I stand between you here an untried youth.
My voice in council may not yet be heard.
Yet do not, sires! because I am but young,
Nor bear the lines of wisdom on my brow,
O do not scorn my counsel and my speech!
"T is not the heat of youthful blood impels me,
I feel the bitter sting of anguish deep,
Which might draw pity from the rugged rock.
You, too, are fathers, you have each a home,
And long to see your offspring rise and bloom
To be an honor to your hoary heads,
And close at last in death your aged eyes.
O then, while yet in body and estate
You have not suffered while your eye-balls yet
Roll fresh and bright within their hollow cells,
O be not, therefore, strangers to our wo.
Over your heads, too, hangs the tyrant's sword
You have drawn off the land from Austria,
None else was my unhappy father's crime-
Ours is a common guilt—a common doom."

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pp. 24-28.

The delineation of the hero is natural. Tell, the hardy son of the mountain, the unpretending friend of man, known to all by his true-heartedness, his bravery, and his kindly activity, dreams not, in his own honest, simple pursuits, of revolutions, nor of anything to lift him out of his endeared privacy. The true mountain air of virtue breathes through the whole character of the man. Innocent of all conscious patriotism, yet we always find him free, true, manly, and philanthropic. Wrongs, brought home to his own door, call him out, and unite him with the patriotic purpose, which had been sometime ripening in others, but which he had had no part in planning. What he did was pure Nature's act, not the fruit of thought or counsel.

"But whatsoe'er you do, bid me not come

Into your councils
To pause and ponder

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- 't is not in my soul

but when once you need

The firm resolve, the deed of daring - then,
Then summon Tell! Trust me, he 'll never fail."

The play is full of stirring incident. Without confusion a wonderful deal is compressed into it. The whole history of the period is here shortly told. The vision is complete; it takes entire possession of us, as we read. It is a living work of Art, not a mechanical copy. It has the integrity of nature; it shows us much, and convinces us of incalculably more. The first Act is a picture of the place and times, it naturalizes us in this little world, so pregnant with great events. The sufferings of the peasants, the wildest mountain-haunts sought out by tyranny, men meeting to tell each other what oppressions they have felt or seen, the story of Melchthal's father, in short, the vale of innocence, suddenly darkened over by man's tyranny, and the first movements of Nature to recover herself; it is a panorama, rather than a drama. The main action of the piece has not begun. As yet, Tell but appears incidentally as the providential deliverer of a countryman from danger.

The second Act contains the meeting of the confederates at Rütli. Tell is not with them. Here we are made acquainted with the historical and political condition of the three Cantons. And what strikes us most is the calm, serious, reverential spirit, in which they proceed to the work, not of overthrowing the laws, but of taking measures for securing to themselves their chartered rights. It is purely a moral revolution. It commands our respect. These are men, whom we can trust. It is no mob; no boys' restlessness; this mountain element is as con

servative, as it is free.

The third Act introduces us to the simple home of Tell; and charms us with that blessed domestic peace, so soon to be disturbed. Then comes Tell's intercourse with Gessler, the hat in the market-place at Altdorf, and the shooting of the apple from his son's head.

The fourth Act shows us the lake in its fury; Tell's daring escape from the boat in which Gessler is conveying him away to prison; and his bloody retribution upon the tyrant. His soliloquy, as he lies in wait for him, speaks out the whole man, and the whole history. We intended to quote it, but are prevented by our straitened limits.

The last Act is the general rising, the fulfilment of the revolution, which gives back Tell to his suffering family, and freedom to Switzerland.

But it was not our intention to analyze or to criticise the play; but rather to call attention to this excellent translation of it. We have seen another, which was published in England in 1829, and which has also great merits. We can hardly tell which of the two is the more literal; and yet in all the bolder passages and phrases, we must give the preference to this of Mr. Brooks. The other is on the whole more polished, perhaps more true throughout in point of euphony and rhythm. But this has the most strength and animation, we might say, the

most of the mountain air.

We are happy to understand that Mr. Brooks has also accomplished a version of Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," which will appear, if the success of "Tell" evince any demand for it. We trust it shall soon be forthcoming, so far as that is the condition.

J. S. D.

ART. VII.- The Christian Teacher; a Theological and Literary Journal. New [quarterly] Series. Nos. I. II. July, October, 1838. London. 8vo. pp. 202.

WE have had occasion heretofore to allude to this Journal, as a monthly Magazine under the care of the Rev. John R. Beard of Manchester, who, in a spirit of disinterested enterprise, set it on foot, and with great zeal conducted it for four years. It deserved a better support than it appears to have received. He was rewarded with thanks and honor for his labors, but, in regard to pecuniary compensation, seems to have been much in the predicament of one of our ministers in the country, who, on being told that the subscription for his salary fell short sixty dollars, observed that that was not creditable to the parish, and rather than its minister should be so treated, he would subscribe himself; and accordingly he made up the deficit from his own purse. So it seems that Mr. Beard took it on himself to pay the editor of the "Teacher" for his labors. Notwithstanding,

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