as to overshadow each other; the struggle of the action is, to a large extent, a battle in the dark; and the reader's interest partakes, therefore, of a certain breathless and supernatural awe. It is not,

however, when the nerves of feeling are strung to a degree of extraordinary tenseness that we can appreciate the average motives of men—or trace out the threads of the web woven by human beings, as they move by a natural instinct through the concentric circles of domestic, social, and political life. To learn this lesson we must observe the course of action and of passion developing themselves, by a process more leisurely and relaxed. It is thus that we shall recognise in man a being who, as an individual indeed, is invested with a freedom which renders his desires and designs inscrutable, but who at the same time, as a social being, is subject to a Law that moves in him without his consciousness, and by virtue of which Society becomes capable of possessing a natural history of its own. In Tragedy the general law is often lost in that disproportionate development of individual Will which is necessary for the resistance of overwhelming circumstance: in the wider and less tempestuous expanse of the Historic Drama, we have opportunity and patience to follow out the working of the general law as it influences the actions even of men whose motives appear most different. The great idea of all high Tragedy includes to a large degree what it was pre-eminently in the Greek—viz. that of Fate: what, then, is the idea of the Historic

Drama? It is a very different idea-that, namely, of Providence: we trace the circle all round, and, observing the converging lines to point to one spot, we find the solution of the complex system of actions and reactions in the words Διος δ ἔτελείετο βουλή. We acknowledge a Power from above, not a hand from the shades-a Providence, not oppressing and subduing man, but working with his strivings while it works beyond them; and thus, while it unconsciously vindicates the ways of God, the Historic Drama instructs us likewise in the philosophic lore of nature and of man.

Dunstan, Wulfstan, Leolf, and Athulf, are characters of primary importance in this drama; and Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, though age has deprived him of the keener part of his intellect, and Dunstan's predominant power of that weight which would otherwise belong to his vehement and uncompromising temper, remains, on the whole, a considerable person from his past energies and present station. Clarenbald, the chancellor, may be described in a few words: -orderly, upright, versed in affairs, and efficient. The young king, though, from youthful precipitance not equal to the needs of the time, is worthy of his throne, brave as well as gentle, single-hearted and royal-minded, and exciting a deeper interest as we become acquainted with his strength through his trials. The queen-mother is the darkest of all the figures introduced, and has least to redeem her: malignant, wrong-headed, and narrow-hearted; blundering on with a paralytic obliquity of mind; her religion a fear;

Of a very

her maternal love an animal instinct. different order is Wulfstan the Wise:- -a recluse and a philosopher; subtle of intellect, yet simple as a child; a mind rather than a man; searching all things for their inner laws, and scarcely noticing their outward effects; seeing through all objects, and therefore seeing them not; drawing his manifold wisdom from the springs of intuitive and discursive reason, and yet, with amusing and not unnatural perverseness, fancying his especial gifts to be knowledge of the world, and skill in the conduct of business: by the very largeness of his being, exempted from the agitations of life, like a ship which lies along too great an expanse of waves to feel their shocks; yet prompt in sympathy as well as daring where need is, and at a word of kindness moistening his visionary eyes with dews that rise from no Olympian spring. This character could hardly have belonged to the age illustrated here; but it is deeply conceived, and beautifully set forth. Very exquisite too is the sketch of the Princess Ethilda, though it is too slightly drawn to be generally appreciated. She is one of those beings whom in real life we love without exactly knowing why, or caring to know-innocent, devout, solicitous, yet trusting, and adding the gracefulness of her illustrious descent to that of her youth and sex. She has in a singular degree that charm which consists in the absence of selfasserting or disproportionate qualities; and we grow to understand her not a little through the impression she makes on others. The scholar, the minstrel, the

soldier, all love her; and even the queen-mother does not hate her. Earl Athulf is described by Wulfstan—

As one whose courage high and humour gay
Cover a vein of caution: his true heart,
Intrepid though it be, not blind to danger,
But through imagination's optic glass
Discerning, yea, and magnifying it may be,
What still he dares.

prompt for enterprise

By reason of his boldness, and yet apt
For composition, owing to that vein

Of fancy which enhances, prudence which wards
Contingencies of peril.1

This character seems drawn mostly from observation,—that of Dunstan from reflection and imaginative induction. Leolf, more than all the rest, bears the impress of that poetic sympathy on the part of the author which is so essential to the vividness of the

picture as well as to its accuracy. He is thus pre

sented to us as he paces the seashore near his castle at Hastings

Leolf.

Here again I stand,

Again and on the solitary shore

Old ocean plays as on an instrument,

Making that ancient music, when not known?
That ancient music, only not so old

As He who parted ocean from dry land,
And saw that it was good. Upon mine ear,

As in the season of susceptive youth,

The mellow murmur falls-but finds the sense
Dulled by distemper; shall I say—by time?
Enough in action has my life been spent
Through the past decade, to rebate the edge
Of early sensibility. The sun

1 P. 137.

Rides high, and on the thoroughfares of life
I find myself a man in middle age,

Busy and hard to please. The sun shall soon
Dip westerly, but oh! how little like

Are life's two twilights! Would the last were first,
And the first last! that so we might be soothed

Upon the thoroughfares of busy life

Beneath the noon-day sun, with hope of joy

Fresh as the morn,—with hope of breaking lights,
Illuminated mists and spangled lawns,

And woodland orisons and unfolding flowers,
As things in expectation.-Weak of faith!
Is not the course of earthly outlook, thus
Reversed from Hope, an argument to Hope-
That she was licensed to the heart of man
For other than for earthly contemplations,
In that observatory domiciled

For survey of the stars? The night descends,
They sparkle out.

Known rather by his misfortunes than his actions, King Edwin, though sufficient to supply the whole interest of a romantic poem, could hardly have held, except nominally, the chief and central place in the plot of a Tragedy. But the periods of history most fit for a historical drama are not always those in which the conspicuous sufferer is also the great man. Thus much Shakespeare's Richard the Second proves. A personal interest does not suffice where a social and political problem has to be solved. Strange escapes, sudden exaltations, unforeseen calamities, these will never appeal in vain to the sympathies of the most careless reader; but such events, if they involve no moral lesson, yield no field for the highest art of the historical dramatist. He requires one of those periods of social fermentation during which the national ener