runs almost to the end of the work, other stories arise of a similar character. The Spaniard, flying from the Inquisition, finds shelter in the terrible hiding place of a Jew, who gives him a manuscript to read, containing another narrative of the Stranger's wanderings. This narrative is, in its course, interrupted by two other parenthetical stories, which the Stranger himself tells to the father of one of his intended victims. The first narrative, which includes all the rest, is never completed at all; but the work concludes with an actual visit of the wanderer to his descendant and the Spaniard, and his final disappearance from the earth. This arrangement, which it is difficult even clearly to explain, is unfavourable to the interest of the whole; but its defect is of the less consequence, as the tale rather claims to be regarded as an exhibition of power than attempts to create any feeling of its reality in the reader. The general idea of a being in human shape, who lives from genera tion to generation, bears a resemblance to St. Leon; but the feelings excited by the two works have nothing in common. The novel of Godwin is a piece of genuine humanity; - for the hero, though immortal, has all the loves, passions, and desires of his species; and these are seen more clearly, as well as in a more awful light, in the loneliness to which his destiny condemns him. The style too of the writers entirely differs that of Godwin being as simply majestic as that of Maturin is wild, excur sive, and fanciful.

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We cannot give a minute analysis of the various processes by which Melmoth endeavours to seduce his victims. Suffice it to say, that Stanton is assailed amidst the horrors of a madhouse the Spaniard in the cells of the Inquisition one of the objects of temptation amidst a starving family-another by the side of a lover sunk into idiocy-and the last, a most beautiful girl, whom the Stranger had married, and who had borne him a child, in the dungeon when her infant is about to be taken from her for ever. All the tales are full of terrible pictures, which exhibit a power like that of Salvator. In the first tale, there is a view of a receptacle for lunatics most appalling, and yet, amidst its terrors, displaying traits of nature which are really and tearfully affecting. The Spaniard's story includes a short tale of the punishment of two lovers detected in a convent, who were closed up in a

small recess, and there left to perish. It is told by the wretch who watched from choice at the outside, and heard the progress of their agony in language which we shudder to recal. The tale of the lady who marries the fiend, sets q out very beautifully with a description of a forsaken Indian isle, where the girl had been left in infancy, and had grown up in utter solitude, but amidst Nature's choicest luxuries. All the rest, however, is too revolting to be dwelt on. A picture of starvation in the story of Walberg is also frightful. One of its incidents is a son snatching food from his father, who is half unconsciously devour.. ing more than his portion; after which, we are told that the father rose from his seat, and with horrid unnatural force, tores the untasted meal from his grand-chil dren's lips, and swallowed it himself, while his swelled and toothless mouth grinned at them in mockery at once infantine and malicious!" But we will endeavour to select from the work passages which our readers may peruse with almost unmingled pleasure. The following description of a storm in which two lovers are stricken dead amidst some magnificent ruins in Spain, ap-i pears to us of singularly rich colouring

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ties that had passed away, the ruins of Ros "The magnificent remains of two dynas

man palaces, and of Moorish fortresses, were around and above him; the dark and heavy thunder-clouds that advanced slowly, seemed like the shrouds of these spectres of departed greatness; they approached, but did not yet overwhelm or conceal them, as if nature herself was for once awed by the power of man; and far below, the lovely vals ley of Valencia blushed and burned in all the glory of sunset, like a bride receiving the last glowing kiss of the bridegroom be fore the approach of night. Stanton gazed around. The difference between the archi tecture of the Roman and Moorish ruins struck him. Among the former are the remains of a theatre, and something like a public place; the latter present only the remains of fortresses, embattled, castellated, and fortified from top to bottom, nonva loop-hole for pleasure to get in by, the loop-holes were only for arrows; all denoted military power and despotic subjugation l'outrance. The contrast might have pleased in the reflection, that though the ancient a philosopher, and he might have indulged Greeks and Romans were savages, (as Dr Johnson says all people who want a press must be, and he says truly), yet they were wonderful savages for their time, for they alone have left traces of their taste for pleasure in the countries they conquered, in their superb theatres, temples, (which were

also dedicated to pleasure one way or another), and baths, while other conquering bands of savages never left any thing behind them but traces of their rage for power. So thought Stanton, as he still saw strongly defined, though darkened by the darkening clouds, the huge skeleton of a Roman amphitheatre, its arched and gigantic colonnades now admitting a gleam of light, and now commingling with the purple thundercloud; and now the solid and heavy mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable walls,-the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an old Christian, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark the distinction between them and the baptised Moors. -All this was forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before him,-light struggling with darkness,-and darkness menacing a light still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is Va victis, shatter to atoms the remains of a Roman tower;-the rifted stones rolled down the hill, and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and, awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a physical enemy, to bid it do its worst,' and feel that its worst will perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility. Singular contrast! The relics of art for ever decaying, the productions of nature for ever renewed.-(Alas! for what purpose are they renewed, better than to mock at the perishable monuments which men try in vain to rival them by.) The pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year. Stanton was thinking thus, when all power of thought was suspended, by seeing two persons bearing between them the body of a young, and apparently very lovely girl, who had been struck dead by the lightning. Stanton ap

NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 83.

proached, and heard the voices of the bearers repeating, There is none who will mourn for her! There is none who will mourn for her!' said other voices, as two more bore in their arms the blasted and blackened figure of what had once been a man, comely and graceful; there is not one to mourn for her now! They were lovers, and he had been consumed by the flash that had destroyed her, while in the act of endeavouring to defend her. As they were about to remove the bodies, a person approached with a calmness of step and demeanour, as if he were alone unconscious of danger, and incapable of fear; and after looking on them for some time, burst into a laugh so loud, wild, and protracted, that the peasants, starting with as much horror at the sound as at that of the storm, hurried away, bearing the corse with them."

We think the view of the London theatres in 1677, which we are about to extract, an admirable sketch of old manners. It half excites a fear, considering the subject of the tale, that the author did not come honestly by his knowledge. Our readers, we are sure, will regret that a man who can paint thus from the gayest scenes of "this bright and breathing world," should descend to narrate the vagaries of fiends :

"The London theatres, then presented a spectacle which ought for ever to put to silence the foolish outcry against progressive deterioration of morals,-foolish even from the pen of Juvenal, and still more so from the lips of a modern Puritan, Vice is always nearly on an average: the only difference in life worth tracing, is that of manners; and there we have manifestly the advantage of our ancestors. Hypocrisy is said to be the homage that vice pays to virtue,-decorum is the outward expression of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the Second's reign.-A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under their liveries,) surrounding the sedan of a popular actress*, whom they were to carry off vi et armis, as she entered it at the end of the play. At the other side waited the glass coach of a woman of fashion, who waited to take Kynaston (the Adonis of the

day), in his female dress, to the park after the play was over, and exhibit him in all the luxurious splendour of effeminate beauty, (heightened by theatrical dress), for which he was so distinguished.

Plays being then performed at four o'clock, allowed ample time for the evening drive, and the midnight assignation, when the parties met by torch-light, masked, in St. James's park, and verified the title of Wycherley's play, "Love in a Wood." The boxes, as Stanton looked round him, were filled with females, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well testified in the paintings of Lely, and the pages of Grammont, might save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether it was fit for persons of honour and reputation to appear at; but in spite of this precaution, at certain passages (which occurred about every second sentence) they were compelled to spread out their fans, or play with the still cherished love-lock, which Prynne himself had not been able to write

down.

The men in the boxes were composed of two distinct classes, the men of wit and pleasure about town,' distinguished by their Flanders lace cravats, soiled with snuff, their diamond rings, the pretended gift of a royal mistress, (n'importe whether the Duchess of Portsmouth or Nell Gwynne); their uncombed wigs, whose curls descended to their waists, and the loud and careless tone in which they abused Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and quoted Sedley and Rochester; the other class were the lovers, the gentle squires of dames,' equally conspicuous for their white fringed gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of "Oh Jesu!" or the softer, but equally unmeaning one of "I beseech you, Madam," or, "Madam, I burn +." One circumstance sufficiently extraordinary marked the manners of the day; females had not then found their proper level in life; they were alternately adored as goddesses, and assailed as prostitutes; and the man who, this moment, addressed his mistress in lan guage borrowed from Orondates worshipping Cassandra, in the next accosted her with ribaldry that might put to the blush the piazzas of Covent Garden ‡.

Vide Pope, (copying from Donne). "Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu, Jesu." + Vide the Old Bachelor, whose Araminta, wearied by the repetition of these phrases, forbids her lover to address her in any sen-, tence commencing with them.

Vide any old play you may have the patience to peruse; or, instar omnium, read the courtly loves of Rodolphil and Melantha. Palamede and Doratice, in Dryden's Marriage à la Mode.

The pit presented a more various spectacle. There were the critics armed cap-apee from Aristotle and Bossu; these men dined at twelve, dictated at a coffee-house till four, then called to the boy to brush their shoes, and strode to the theatre, where, till the curtain rose, they sat hushed in grim repose, and expecting their evening prey. There were the templars, spruce, pert, and loquacious; and here and there a sober citizen, doffing his steeple-crowned hat, and hiding his little band under the folds of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into these " tents of Kedar." There were females, too, but all in vizard masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah's in Tristram Shandy, served to conceal them from the "young bubbles" they were in quest of, and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed the doors. In the galleries were the happy souls who waited for the fulfilment of Dryden's promise in one of his prologues+; nò matter to them whether it were the ghost of Almanzor's mother in her dripping shroud, or that of Laius, who, according to the stage directions, rises in his chariot, armed with the ghosts of his three murdered attendants behind him;-a joke that did not escape l'Abbé le Blanc †, in his recipe for writing an English tragedy. Some, indeed, from time to time called out for the " burning of the Pope;" but though

"Space was obedient to the boundless piece,

Which oped in Mexico and closed in Greece,”

it was not always possible to indulge them in this laudable amusement, as the scene of the popular plays was generally laid in Africa or Spain; Sir Robert Howard, Elkanah Settle, and John Dryden, all agreeing jects for their principal plays. Among this in their choice of Spanish and Moorish subfashion masked, enjoying in secrecy the li joyous group were seated several women of patronise, and verifying Gay's characteristic centiousness which they dared not openly description, though it was written, many years later,

"Mobbed in the gallery Laura sits secure,

And laughs at jests that turn the box demure.”* + Stanton gazed on all this with the look of one who could not be moved to smile at any thing." He turned to the stage; the play was Alexander, then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed by Hart, whose god-like ardour in making love, is said almost to have compelled the audience to believe that they be-,

held the son of Ammon.'

"It was on the night of the 29th November 17, that this extraordinary circumstance took place-extraordinary from the well-known precautions adopted by the vigilance of the holy office against such an accident, and also from the very small quantity of fuel consumed within its walls. On the first intimation that the fire was spreading rapidly, and threatened danger, the prisoners were ordered to be brought from their cells, and guarded in a court of the prison, I must acknowledge we were treated with great humanity and consideration. We were conducted deliberately from our cells, placed each of us between two guards, who did us no violence, nor used harsh language, but assured us, from time to time, that if the danger became imuninent, we would be permitted every fair opportunity to effect our escape. It was a subject worthy of the pencil of Salvator Rosa, or of Murillo, to sketch us as we stood. Our dismal garbs and squalid looks, contrasted with the equally dark, but imposing and authoritative looks of the guards and officials, all displayed by the light of torches, which burned, or appeared to burn, fainter and fainter, as the flames rose and roared in triumph above the towers of the Inquisition. The heavens were all on fire-and the torches, held no longer in firm hands, gave a tremulous and pallid light. It seemed to me like a wildly painted picture of the last day. God appeared descending in the light that enveloped the skies-and we stood pale and shuddering in the light below.

Among the group of prisoners, there were fathers and sons, who perhaps had been inmates of adjacent cells for years, without being conscious of each other's vicinity or existence-but they did not dare to recognize each other. Was not this like the day of judgement, where similar mortal relations may meet under different classes of the sheep and goats, without presuming to acknowledge the strayed one amid the flock of a different shepherd? There were also parents and children who did recognize and stretch out their wasted arms to each other, though feeling they must never meet,-some of them condemned to the flames, some to imprisonment, and some to the official duties of the Inquisition, as a mitigation of their sentence, and was not this like the day of judgement, where parent and child may be allotted different destinations, and the arms that would attest the last proof of mortal affection, are expanded in vain over the gulph of eternity? Behind and around us

stood the officials and guards of the Inquisition, all watching and intent on the progress of the flames, but fearless of the result with regard to themselves. Such may the doom of the Almighty, and know the be the feeling of those spirits who watch destination of those they are appointed to watch. And is not this like the day of judgement? Far, far above us the flames burst out in volumes, in solid masses of fire, spiring up to the burning heavens. The towers of the Inquisition shrunk into cinders

that tremendous monument of the power, and crime, and gloom of the human mind, was wasting like a scroll in the fire. Will it not be thus also at the day of judgement? Assistance was slowly brought-Spaniards are very indolent-the engines played imperfectly-the danger increased the fire blazed higher and higher-the persons employed to work the engines, paralyzed by terror, fell to the ground, and called on every saint they could think of, to arrest the progress of the flames. Their exclamations were so loud and earnest, that really the saints must have been deaf, or must have felt a particular predilection for a conflagration, not to attend to them. However it was, the fire went on. Every bell in Madrid rang out.-Orders were issued to every Alcaide to be had.-The king of Spain himself (after a hard day's shooting) attended in person. The churches were all lit up, and thousands of the devout supplicated on their knees by torch-light, or whatever light they could get, that the reprobate souls confined in the Inquisition might feel the fires that were consuming its walls, as merely a slight foretaste of the fires that glowed for them for ever and ever. The fire went on, doing its dreadful work, and heeding kings and priests no more than if they were firemen. I am convinced twenty able men, accustomed to such business, could have quenched the fire; but when our workmen should have played their engines, they were all on their knees.

The flames at last began to descend into the court. Then commenced a scene of horror indescribable. The wretches who had been doomed to the flames imagined their hour was come. Idiots from long confinement, and submissive as the holy office could require, they became delirious as they saw the flames approaching, and shrieked audibly," Spare me-spare me-put me to as little torture as you can." Others, kneeling to the approaching flames, invoked them as saints. They dreamt they saw the visions they had worshipped-the holy angels, and even the blessed virgin, descending in flames to receive their souls as parting from the stake; and they howled out their allelujahs half in horror, half in hope.

The passion of the late king of Spain for field sports was well known.