from hanging themselves when they cannot desert, and for a moment consoles them for the stick, black bread, fetters, and the insolence of aristocratic officers. Is this the office he has given me? I shall have plenty of work in it, but I will do my best."-Lettres Particulières; Lettre 2d. Our posts and boards are up, &c. The Theatre is evidently by this only a temporary erection, for the use of an itinerating company. When ere 'tis four, and yet in open day. The performances at the German theatres commence at an earlier hour than in our playhouses. The opening of a box-door will in summer time let a stream of sunshine into the pit, a rather novel appearance to an Englishman, who rarely sees the interior of a theatre till darkness has set in. As in some famine's sharp distress The mob throngs round a Baker's door. An illustration drawn probably from the accounts of the bakers' queues, during the French revolution; when the purchasers of bread were served in rotation, and gathered outside the doors of the bakers in anxious and famishing numbers. What is it climbs Olympus' height, Shelley claims even higher powers for the true poet; in a beautiful passage on the influence of the poetic spirit, he says-" Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." THE PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN. FREQUENTLY as poets have made use of the music of the spheres, they have never drawn from it a strain of more surpassing beauty and sublimity, than the song of the archangels with which this prologue opens. I speak, of course, of the original, to which all translations appear weak and inadequate; though in most of them the sense has been preserved, yet all of the beauty that depends on language, the material of the poet, is necessarily lost, or but imperfectly imitated. The archangels gazing on the sun and stars, as they roll through illimitable space, and listening to their eternal harmony, describe the angels themselves as deriving power and strength from a spectacle which it is not permitted to mortality to behold; if the soul of man is strengthened and ennobled by all that carries it out of, and beyond the sphere to which his mortal nature confines it, then the mere reading this glorious hymn, if read with a capacity for feeling its sublimity, effects in us what the near view of suns and spheres in their splendour and majesty may be supposed to effect in angelic natures; our minds are raised, strengthened, ennobled, and we feel conscious of powers to do, to feel, and to enjoy, that cannot on this earth be called into their full activity. Their hour is not yet come. To awaken this better soul within us, is the chief office of the poet, and it is his almost exclusively. The idea of the first verse is probably to be found in that text of the Scripture which speaks of the time" When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The similarity to the prologue in its main incident-the permission given to the tempter-to the first chapter of Job, has frequently been pointed out by commentators. There seems to have been, from the earliest ages of which we have any record, a natural tendency to connect the idea of music with the motion of the spheres; philosophers have accounted for it by a natural relation which seems to exist between regularity and harmony; but poets have interpreted more literally, and in countless instances have wedded the visible beauty of motion with the audible beauty of sound. One sublime example has already been quoted from the Scriptures (a great part of which is the purest and most exalted poetry the earth possesses), and from profane, or rather, (as we dislike this word when applied to the high priests of intellect,) from secular poets, the instances in which this union has been alluded to are numberless. If anything of excelling beauty is quoted on any subject, it will be found that it has been said by Shakspeare; the lines, therefore, in which he has expressed this idea will probably occur to every one : "See how the floor of Heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold! There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim ; Such harmony is in immortal souls, But while this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." Goethe represents the sun as pouring forth his song amid the chorus of each "kindred star," and Shakspeare imagines every orb to be "quiring to the young-eyed cherubim," who in the same manner may be supposed to render back the song. No poet has more frequently referred to this celestial harmony than Shelley, and numerous passages might be quoted from him, but one will suffice "Ione. Even whilst we speak New notes arise. What is that awful sound? Panthea. 'Tis the deep music of the rolling world Eolian modulations. Ione. Listen too, How every pause is filled with under notes, Clear, silver, icy, keen, awakening tones, Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air, And gaze upon themselves within the sea." The passage in Milton's "Ode on the Nativity," in which he speaks of "Such music (as 'tis said) Before was never made, But when of old the sons of morning sung," will occur to every reader. In Allan Cunningham's "Lives of the British Painters," in his biography of William Blake, an engraver and poet of genius, whom genius did not save from poverty nor talents from neglect, he gives some specimens of his verse; in one of his short poems he addresses the Muses, whom he supposes have deserted the earth, and the opening stanza contains the idea of the "ancient melody" of the sun : "Whether on Ida's shady brow, Or in the chambers of the East, That heavenly ray, He reason calls, but uses so that he Grows the most brutish of the brutes to be. The same sentiment, and almost in the very words of Mephistopheles, was used by Sir William Molesworth, in his speech at the "Peace meeting," at Leeds, in November last; "Are we," said the honourable baronet, "are we rational beings? Do we vaunt our superiority over the brute creation, and attribute our superiority to our intelligence, and power of calculating consequences? And yet do we only employ the prerogatives of reason to live in a more bestial manner than any beast." Know that of all the spirits who deny, The jesting scoffer is the least offending. "Jesting scoffer" in this passage does not completely express the meaning of der schalk in the original; it was formerly a term applied to a Jester or Court Fool; but as this is not exactly the character of Mephistopheles, the word required some qualification, and the term "scoffer" may be fairly used, as it would imply the possession of some degree of malignity; at present the word schalk is used in Germany in a very vague and indefinite sense. There is probably something of contempt expressed in the use of such a term by the Lord, to Mephistopheles, as describing one who, though denying, is too impotent effectually to oppose, and who by venting his enmity in scoffs and sneers, may even become an instrument of good, by waking in man a more lively activity. Jesting Fool! such spirits as thou art, are the least hateful to me." FAUST'S STUDY. The opening soliloquy of Manfred has been compared with the opening of this scene, but there is not much resemblance between them. Faust asks from the world of spirits higher and fuller knowledge than that which the learning of this earth can give; Manfred demands from supernatural agency only" self-oblivion "—a craven's prayer. Poverty and neglect are additional bitters in the cup of Faust, but Manfred possesses wealth, and rank, and honours. Faust looks back with regret on a life spent in acquiring useless knowledge; but the retrospect of Manfred is darkened by the memory of crimes, vague, indeed, and unnamed, but which we may suppose to be of the deepest guiltiness. There is no reason to imagine that the life of Faust, up to the period of his meeting with the Tempter, was different to that led by many of the devoted schoolmen of the middle ages, full of self-sacrifice and self-denial. Except in a deep sense of the beautiful in nature, which is common to both, the characters of Manfred and Faust have but little resemblance to each other. The "Faustus" of Christopher Marlowe has furnished Goethe with several hints for his chief character, though our old dramatist has made his scholar more according to the vulgar idea of a sorcerer than the German poet. Burns up the heart within my breast. Mr. Boileau, in his remarks on Hayward's Faust, doubts if " burns up the heart" would be English! Coleridge can answer him : "Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns; And till my ghastly tale is told, My heart within me burns.”—Ancient Mariner. Then I have neither goods nor gold. I think it is Shelley who has a passage resembling this:- Nor peace within, nor calm around, Smiling, who live and call life, pleasure; To me this cup is dealt in quite a different measure." Shelley, though not compelled to write for his bread, seems to have had a keen perception of the ills of poverty; he has a fine passage on this subject in his Rosalind and Helen ; "Thou know'st what a thing is poverty Among the fallen on evil days; 'Tis crime and fear and infamy Foul self-contempt, which drowns in sneers Inscribed by Nostradamus' hand. The person alluded to under the name of Nostradamus, was born in 1503, at St. Remy in Provence; his real name was Michael Notre Dame. After studying medicine he became what is described by the undignified title of quack, and also addicted himself to astrology. He enjoyed considerable reputation, and was employed and patronised by Henry II., and Charles IX., of France. He was the author of a book of prophecies, which seem to have been as celebrated in France as those of Thomas the Rhymer in Scotland. The work was under the prohibition of the court of Rome even so late as 1781, as it contained some predictions of the decay of the papal power. Nostradamus died in 1565. The book in which Faust contemplates the mysterious sign, doubtless derived additional value from being " inscribed by Nostradamus' hand," and not the work of a copyist. In the German Conversations Lexicon, there is a fuller account of this personage. The Sign of the Macrocosm. This is supposed to be a sign or hieroglyphic of the universe, or the whole of nature; the second sign-that of the Microcosm, which Faust confesses he is more capable of comprehending, represents the earth or the world, and the power which he summons in a visible shape, is its spirit. The whole scene is emblematical of the impo |