Glittering in the morning beam-thy domes Fit habitations for Rome's mightiest God, But oh! he doth not see Thy narrow alleys, and the wretchedness Carracci's contemplation of his daughter's loveliness is striking. 66 Why now thou smilest, and thy ruby lips Caracci, weary of power, yet dreading to lose it, not altogether destitute of virtue, yet too infirm to abjure vice, tries the fidelity of the assembled nobles, and finds them wavering; he then bursts out with a soliloquy on friendship; unquestionably misplaced in the lips of a traitor, but expressed with vigour and eloquence. "Worldly friendship! Fie, 'tis a bauble wherewithal to please That shineth for a moment, and then bursts, Written on sand, which one small wave wipes out Beneath the blushing rose. Beneath the smile Sweet as e'er lit the lips of angel-lies A leprous soul." Francis is a friar, and according to dramatic custom, the custom of all dramatists but Shakspeare, is a consummate rogue, hypocrite, voluptuary, and, to judge from the result of all his contrivance, a fool of no slight magnitude. After having perverted the father, he makes love to the daughter, and thus expounds his passion to himself. "Aye blue-eyed Isabel I love thee with as hot a flame as would "And sigh forth the while Prayers, soft entreaties, adjurations- The poet's object is to make the friar an abhorence through the whole play, and he has amply succeeded. But Isabel has other thoughts, and is dreaming of her lover Leontine, who had left her to attend the pilgrim duke. She sits in a balcony, sighs to the moon, and pines to her lover in these very poetic and lover-like strains. "Still evening most solicitously doth Husband the last faint glimmerings of day As thine lorn Isabel. Come sable night Covered with thy star be-spangled veil : (Where thy rose kirtled nymphs, who feel thy beams Have paid sweet reverence to the beauteous queen,) LEONTINE enters. Aye, there she sits,-the same bright beaming eyes, (Love might his torch enkindle with their fire!) The same hand That I have pressed so often to my heart Vowing eternal truth and constancy; The self same lips, whose soft and gentle words, My soul in transports. Awhile here unobserved. Let me gaze Those lips the roving bee would gladly take For the coy bud all blushing to be kist By rudely-amorous Zephyr. The incense fuming from the Indian Isles By the soft breath that wantons on those lips. Sweet! do thy thoughts now wander on the knight Leontine at last makes his way to his lady love, but his min strel disguise postpones the discovery, and indulges him with her confession. She asks, if among the band attendant on the duke, he had known Leontine. He replies, "I come to tell thee of his love! For oft when by our watch-fires we have sat, When clad in proof of harness, he hath led That, like a soft and silken curtained girl Lest even the wind should kiss her vermeill'd cheek, "How often Hath he not looked upon that beaming moon, "By all his anxious moments, sufferings, Which are to him as load-stars-he will come." Caracci gives a feast, at which Leontine and the Duke are present in disguise. The minstrels sing. "Why smile the fields of Italy And laugh her purple hills; And sportful plays the wanton sun Why mirthful rove her blue-eyed maids With dimpled cheeks as blushing deep Young love hath formed with azure wings These bowers where beauty roves; And peace has sped with silver feet Amaryllo and Cynthia, old friends, recognise each other after long discourse, and their language is mutually combustible. To Cynthia's question of her lover's constancy, he answers, that he will be "Constant as the bird "CYNTHIA. Of these extracts, but one opinion can be formed, and that is an acknowledgment of their richness, sweetness, and poetic feeling. The writer, who can go thus far, can go further, and it will be the fault either of his indolence, or of his diffidence, if he should not attain poetic distinction. But it is equally true, that the present poem contains obvious errors. The plot must be abandoned as indefensible, if it was the author's purpose to make it empassioned; for it has no material of passion; the characters are but imperfectly brought out, are naked of all individual traits, and might with more propriety have been simply designated as the usurper, the lover, the exile, &c. The versification is frequently incomplete, sometimes through defect of the common number of syllables, and still oftener through superfluity. Too much is said about Dian, and her nymphs, and her bow; and the author must learn to lean not quite so confidently on the broken reed of an exhausted mythology. But these are trivial errors; and altogether inadequate to extinguish the general merit of the poetry. The poem is accompanied by a large train of notes on the middle ages and other things, valuable for the purpose of showing industry, but beyond all hope of being read as matter of indulgence. Some very pretty minor poems follow. The author fights under false colours, and calls himself by the crusading style and title of Randolph Fitz-Eustace. In the commodity of good names, he has chosen romantically enough. We will not unclasp his helmet and develope him. Jahn's Biblical Archæology, translated from the Latin, with Additions and Corrections. By THOMAS C. UPHAM, A.M. Assistant Teacher of Hebrew and Greek in the Theol. Sem. Andover. 8vo. Pp. 548. Andover, (Massachusetts.) Flagg and Gould. 1823. THE subject of Biblical Antiquities is one of prominent importance to the student in Theology. If, in order to enter fully into the meaning, or correctly to apprehend the beauties of the ancient classics, it be necessary to be acquainted with the institutions of the Greeks and Romans, how much greater difficulties must be interposed in his way, who attempts to interpret the Scriptures without a competent knowledge of these topics! For, as the customs and manners of the Oriental people are widely different from those of the Western nations; as, further, their sacred rites differ most essentially from every thing with which we are acquainted; and as the Jews, in particular, in consequence of the simplicity of the Hebrew language, have drawn very numerous metaphors from the works of nature, from the ordinary occupations and arts of life, from their religion, and from things connected with it, as well as from their national history; there are many things recorded, both in the Old and New Testament, which must appear to Europeans either unintelligible or repulsive. "It is not, till we are able in imagination to place ourselves by the banks of Jordan, or on the plains and deserts, where the Hebrew shepherds wandered; till we can summon around us the cedar-crowned hills, where warriors fought and poets sang, with the circumstances of dress and manners and employments and feelings; it is not until we have some understanding of these things, that we are in a situation to follow the story of those warriors, or to be enrap |