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THE WARNING.

BEWARE! The Israelite of old, who tore

The lion in his path-when, poor and blind, He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, Shorn of his noble strength, and forced to grind In prison, and at last fled forth to be

A pander to Philistine revelry—,

Upon the pillars of the temple laid

His desperate hands, and in its overthrow Destroyed himself, and with him those who made A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;

The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!

There is a poor, blind Sampson in this land,

Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

THE SPANISH STUDENT.

A PLAY IN THREE ACTS.

What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.

BURNS.

[The subject of the following Play is taken in part from the beautiful tale of Cervantes, La Gitanilla. To this source, however, I am indebted for the main incident only, the love of a Spanish student for a Gipsy girl, and the name of the heroine, Preciosa. I have not followed the story in any of its details.

In Spain this subject has been twice handled dramatically; first by Juan Perez de Montalvan, in La Gitanilla, and afterwards by Antonio de Solis y Rivadeneira, in La Gitanilla de Madrid.

The same subject has also been made use of by Thomas Middleton, an English gentleman of the seventeenth century. His play is called The Spanish Gipsy. The main plot is the same as in the Spanish pieces; but there runs through it a tragic underplot of the loves of Rodrigo and Dona Clara, which is taken from another tale of Cervantes, La Fuerza de la Sangre.

The reader who is acquainted with La Gitanilla of Cervantes, and the plays of Montalvan, Solis, and Middleton, will perceive that my treatment of the subject differs entirely from theirs.]

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THE SPANISH STUDENT.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-The COUNT OF LARA's chambers. Night. The COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking, and conversing with DON CARLOS.

LARA. You were not at the play to-night, Don Carlos;

How happened it?

DON CARLOS.

I had engagements elsewhere. Pray who was there?

LARA.

Why, all the town and court.
The house was crowded; and the busy fans
Among the gayly dressed and perfumed ladies
Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers.
There was the Countess of Medina Celi;
The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover,
Her Lindo Don Diego; Dona Sol,

And Dona Serafina, and her cousins.
DON CARLOS.-What was the play?
LARA.-

It was a dull affair;
One of those comedies in which you see,
As Lope says,15 the history of the world
Brought down from Genesis to the Day of
Judgment.

There were three duels fought in the first act,
Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds,
Laying their hands upon their hearts, and
saying,

"O, I am dead!" a lover in a closet,

An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,
A Dona Inez with a black mantilla,

Followed at twilight by an unknown lover, Who looks intently where he knows she is not! DON CARLOS.-Of course the Preciosa danced tonight?

LARA. And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.

I think the girl extremely beautiful.

DON CARLOS. Almost beyond the privilege of woman!

I saw her in the Prado yesterday.

Her step was royal,-queen-like,-and her faco
As beauteous as a saint's in Paradise.

LARA.-May not a saint fall from her Paradise,
And be no more a saint?

DON CARLOS.

Why do you ask? LARA. Because I have heard it said this angel fell, And, though she is a virgin outwardly, Within she is a sinner; like those panels Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary On the outside, and on the inside Venus! DON CARLOS.-You do her wrong; indeed you do her wrong!

She is as virtuous as she is fair.

LARA. How credulous you are! Why, look you, friend,

There's not a virtuous woman in Madrid,
In this whole city! And would you persuade

me

That a mere dancing-girl, who shows herself
Nightly, half-naked, on the stage, for money,
And with voluptuous motions fires the blood
Of inconsiderate youth, is to be held

A model for her virtue?

DON CARLOS.

She is a Gipsy girl.

LARA.

The easier.

You forget

And therefore won

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