been hard upon him, I think we may discover the key of his failure in Romeo's opening speech:

I see that thou art poor;

Hold, there is forty ducats.

There lies his weakness. Forty ducats! what stores of furnace, crucibles, or distillation jars would they not purchase! The gleam of those coins is fatal to him-the chink of those ducats drowns what might remain of a better nature, and yet there still lurks some pricks of conscience, some sense of moral reluctance to give that dram of poison. The sight of the handsome, noble youth with his pale face and wild looks, which tell a tale too well of sudden desperation, strikes a chord of pity in that shrivelled breast. He hesitates; but with what miserable, mean objections! No bold, manly refusal or no compromise like that which Friar Laurence gives to Juliet when asked for remedy and to assent to suicide; or he might have given a substitute for poison-some sleeping draught, such as good Dr. Cornelius gives the wicked queen in 'Cymbeline'; but, no, he merely stammers out:

Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua's law,

Is death to any he that utters them.

This wretched affected fear of Mantua's law Romeo soon brushes aside, for though it is true that with the pain of death we'd hourly die rather than die at once,' yet this poor subterfuge of the law which he has probably often evaded, and looked upon as framed by an unjust world, is but a staving off; he cannot keep his eyes from those ducats-he would fain be argued into thinking he was doing no wrong, and the impetuous Romeo urges at once the very points he wanted:

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Another chink of that coveted gold and his last faint resistance is over; here is one who puts the very reasoning into his mouth which he was wishing for; yes, here is a gallant, well-spoken youth rushing on to destruction. He would save him, but he falters out under his breath:

My poverty, but not my will, consents.

Wonderful line! which has passed into a household word from the force of its significance, from its appropriateness to nearly every

one's daily doings; the struggle of a weak man who is conscious of his responsibility before God, and yet acts against it, the corrupted mind committing treason against its own inclination; the washing of hands of Pilate, the way in which we cheat our better feelings; I would do right if I were rich,' is the cry today, as it was then, but we must forego doing right, quench our conscience and keep our gold, for:

My poverty, but not my will, consents.

This poor Apothecary in that one line has claimed kinship with most of us, for his weakness is but the too common lot of humanity, if we truly knocked at our bosoms to ask what lies there like to his fault. He turns to the door-the devil in him hath conquered-he fetches the phial, and, with a fearful glance round the deserted streets, pours the full loathsome directions into Romeo's

ears:

Put this in any liquid thing you will,

And drink it off; and if you had the strength
Of twenty men it would dispatch you straight.

Then he receives the price for which he has sold the peace of his soul and creeps off, his back more bent, his limbs tottering, and that scar furrowed deeper into his brow, with the guilt of a seared conscience which he will bear to his dying day-the accomplice of suicide-his knowledge of drugs prostituted to the worst passions of mankind. Even now he hears the first echo of that remorse ringing in his ears, with that parting rejoinder of

Romeo's:

There is thy gold; worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murders in this loathsome world,

Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.

And hollow sounds the mockery of that-

Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh !

We know the gold will bring no fatness-it will only be a curse to him, that is even now burning in his fingers, and will be hoarded up in his wretched fear, till at last it becomes hateful to his eyes, and will leave him tenfold more miserable than he was when he was at least innocent of direct complicity in a young man's death. For, however much we may suspect that he was the man referred to by Lady Capulet previously:

I will send to one in Mantua,

Who shall give him [Romeo] such an unaccustomed draught
That he will soon keep Tybalt company,

yet we may give him the benefit of the doubt. Mantua was suffering from a plethora of poisoners, and there were doubtless many more directly marked and fitter agents for the unscrupulous Capulets. But now he is a direct participator, with a thorough knowledge of what his soon-speeding gear' is intended for. We can almost hear his deep groan as he once more closes his door, with a last glance of remorse and compassion on the desperate Romeo; and if he hears soon of those two lovers found dead in the neighbouring city, at the tomb of the Capulets, well may we suppose that in anguish and fear of discovery he, too, may have taken a dose of the fatal compound, and ended his perverted life unpitied and forgotten. Requiescat! Perhaps more sinned against than sinning. But what a tragic epitome! what a hopeless, shuddering picture is there not put before us in the few moments that he is on the stage-only seven lines of speech, yet what a character to depict! Well may the rôle be given to a leading actor, for it requires the finest talents of artist and actor to give us a real picture of that nameless Apothecary, for to look the part is almost as important as to act it. Mr. Mead at the Lyceum was one of the best we have seen, but then he should have 'been given the stage.' Romeo must subordinate himself for the moment, for full play is a necessity, for every look or movement is of importance in such a character-part-one that shall make us hold our breath, and feel a pang of that awe which real tragedy is destined to awaken in every heart of poetic sympathy. As there is poetry and tragedy in the life of the ragged beggar that we brush by in every-day life, of a deeper, more ennobling kind than in our own highly artificial sphere; so from poor Peter and the Apothecary may we extract two lessons of true affection, and the dangers of morbid selfishness and engrossing greed, though it be for knowledge and pursuit of science. The loss of Juliet is as much a gain to Peter in elevating his nature as the gain of forty ducats is the ruin of the Apothecary.

202

SOME POLISH PORTRAITS.

To Germans the Polish Jew is chiefly a figure-head for ridiculous anecdotes. English people cannot even boast of this kind of familiarity with him as an excuse for contempt. They do not know that he is in Germany the commonest comparison for rascality and meanness, and a standing example of the unwashed. 'Every land has the Jews it deserves,' says the Gallician novelist, Karl Emil Franzos, and he mentions an English one whose goodness and charity are as immeasurable as his wealth and power. That a vestige of humanity is left in the Jews of Poland and Gallicia can only be accounted for by the proverbial toughness of the 'peculiar people.' In 'Moschko von Parma' the hero establishes his reputation for bravery by reminding a Polish captain that Jews are human beings. He pays dearly for his pluck, and finds out that he was mistaken after all. In that part of the world they are not considered human.

The region that separates civilised Europe from the steppes is the country of which Franzos writes. Not only in language and geographical position, but politically and socially, it is half Asiatic. Eastern barbarism and Western culture exist there side by side. There are neighbourhoods where men still live a 'natural' life, not of pastoral innocence but of animal degradation; and two leagues off a German university town is doing its good work. Luminaries of fast society in Paris and Baden fly from their debts and return to their ancestral states to practise cruelties which a day's journey westwards would procure for them a halter or penal servitude for life. The people of the soil are Ruthenes, a race so strong and vigorous that even Polish cruelty has not destroyed their elasticity. At every opportunity they are ready to rise and take revenge: as in 1848, when, instead of aiding their masters to rebel against Austria, they remained loyal to the emperor, who had given them certain valuable rights, and when the nobles who fell into their hands had their heads mown off with scythes.

Many illusions about the gentle and romantic Pole are dispelled by Franzos' sketches and stories. We gather from them that in Gallicia at least the Pole is a contemptible creature-a sluggard with the reins of authority given into his incapable hands, a brute

with the opportunities of a despot. Franzos says it is incomprehensible that all the official power of Gallicia should be given to Poles. Besides the Ruthenes, there is a large population of intelligent and wealthy Jews, and a colony of Germans. The Poles have earned the undying hatred of the peasants and the Jews by their barbarity and incompetence, and yet a shocking abuse of power is still permitted to them. The two volumes of sketches and stories, entitled 'From Semi-Asia' and From Don to Danube,' are a revelation of lawlessness and wickedness that would compare with a medieval chronicle.

Of course writers for the Polish press have with one consent taken up the cudgels against Franzos. He replies that he has no prejudices against Poland as a nation; he reminds them that when they are oppressed his eloquence is at their service, and that his object is not to blacken a people, but to bring into light deeds done in darkness. It is true that one of his most ghastly stories is a description of the treatment of Polish political prisoners by Russians. It is called Under Compulsion.' The writer travels from South Russia through Podolia to Bessarabia, and alights on his way at one of those inns managed by Jews with which his readers soon become familiar. A man dressed, excepting for a white shirt, like a peasant, comes in to sell wood carving. The horror with which he is regarded, and the fierce despair in his face, rouse the stranger's interest. He looks at the man's wares, and notices the carving of a house which, he discovers, is done from memory. It is a model of the worker's ancestral home in Lithuania, confiscated long since by the Russians, and now burnt down by them. A young Polish noble, leading a dreamy life amongst his books and near relations, he was arrested in 1848 and exiled to Siberiathat he might not become a revolutionist. After his health had been quite shattered by ten years' work in the mines, he and the other prisoners were told that they were to be pardoned; and a dwelling-place, a trade, and a wife allotted to each of them. The mines were full, and the steppes in need of colonisation. Eight months' march landed them in Mohilen. There a drunken and blasphemous priest christened them; for their conversion to the orthodox Greek Church was a condition of pardon. Then the young scoundrel, whose official duty it was to consult the prisoners' wishes with regard to their choice of a trade, appeared on the scene. He considered it a good joke to abuse their confidence to the utmost, and force them into such conditions of life as they