from the bare circumstance that nature has cast her in a different mould; yet this mould, as we learn from her private history, has ever been replete, much to her credit, with the warmest filial affection. In this character, therefore, it is herself, not the actress, that speaks.

JANE SHORE.

One of the most popular tragedies on the British stage was the next subject of Miss O'Neill's attractions. It is a private story, interwoven with our general history, and it claims an interest from its truth, from the unfortunate end of the heroine, the victim of cruel punishment, and from the traditionary barbarity of the Prince, Richard the IIId, who inflicted it. The remembrance also of it is kept alive in the metropolis by the very name of the female being continued to the supposed place--Shoreditch, where she perished.

This story has been wrought by Rowe into a tragedy of considerable merit, and may be consi

dered, if not actually his first, at least his best received production, having kept constant possession of the stage from its first appearance. It is said by the author himself to be written in imitation of Shakspeare. In what respect this is the case, no critic has been able to discover, and the author perhaps pleased himself with this idea. This tragedy, however, contains many admirable passages, expressed with all the rich glowing language for which Rowe is so deservedly distinguished. The character of the heroine here is that of the penitent and repentant wife, a character in the delineation of which Miss O'Neill cannot fail to carry the palm from Mrs. Siddons, from natural feeling and constitutional softness.

The portrait of her grief in the opening scene, on the mentioning of Antwerp, gives a fine display of sorrow, contrition, and shame.

"Alas! at Antwerp!-Oh, forgive my tears! They fall for my offences-and must fall

Long, long ere they shall wash my stains away.

You knew, perhaps-Oh grief! Oh shame!-my hus

band."

"Oh, that my soul had known no joy but him!

That I had lived within his guiltless arms,

And dying slept in innocence beside him!

But now his dust abhors the fellowship,

And scorns to mix with mine."

Another passage equally fine is, where she treats Alicia's praise with scorn:

"Name him no more!

He was the bane and ruin of my peace.

This anguish and these tears, these are the legacies

His fatal love has left me.

Thou wilt see me,

Believe me, my Alicia, thou wilt see me,
Ere yet a few short days pass o'er my head,
Abandon'd to the very utmost wretchedness.
The hand of power has seiz'd almost the whole
Of what was left for needy life's support;

Shortly thou wilt behold me poor, and kneeling
Before thy charitable door for bread."

And the conclusion of this act presents one of the most moral sentiments, in rich, flowing language, which has been spoken with rapture by every great actress, and to which Miss O'Neill does ample justice, in the interest and exquisite pathos she gives them.

"Such is the fate unhappy women find,

And such the curse entailed upon our kind,
That man, the lawless libertine may rove,
Free and unquestion'd, through the wilds of love;
While woman, sense and nature's easy fool:
If poor weak woman swerve from virtue's rule;
If, strongly charmed, she leave the thorny way,
And in the softer paths of pleasure stray,
Ruin ensues, reproach and endless shame,
And one false step entirely damns her fame;
In vain with tears the loss she may deplore,
In vain look back on what she was before;
She sets, like stars that fall, to rise no more."

These sentiments of Rowe may be considered as the standard English opinion on the subject of female frailty, contrasted with the modern school of Kotzebue, as inferred by his portrait of Mrs. Haller in the Stranger, on which we formerly commented. If this is the opinion of this country towards frail fair ones in a single state, how much stronger does it fall to be, where the unfortunate female is a mother and a wife.

The scene between Jane Shore and Lord Hastings displays a fine mixture of penitence and dignity, of outraged feeling sensible of injury, and conscious

of the insult, yet overpowered by shame, as she ventures to complain, how pathetic when she repeats,

"Nor turn your eyes this way, where sin and misery,
Like loathsome weeds, have over-run the soil,

And the destroyer, Shame, has laid all waste."

The scene betwixt her and the protector is highly animated. Her eagerness to become an instrument of good, her feeling and gratitude to the memory of her royal friend; her surprise to find Hastings the defender of the rights of unprotected and infant royalty; the warm tribute of respect she pays him on that account in spite of the dangers suspending over her from the threats of the tyrant, present some of the finest traits of virtuous indignation and pathetic feeling that have been witnessed at any time on the stage. The manner in which she says

"Stand by, and see his children robb'd of right?"

was dignified and impressive. Her after repetition of it in these elegant flowing lines are no less of a piece.

"Oh, that my tongue had ev'ry grace of speech, Great and commanding as the breath of kings,