ard. Though of low extraction, he holds it quite as important to him, as to the man of princely rank, that he should maintain his honour. This is more to him than the life of any man; and he makes it a point of honour to slay the duke.

'I must ransom

The honour of my word-it lies in pledge

And he must die.'

We have said that the Duke of Friedland has more human feeling than the King of France; he has a stronger hold on our kindliness. As a father, he is all tenderness—but his pride is excessive. Louis's affection towards his daughter Joan is frozen by what in ordinary life would have had a different effect, by her deformity; and besides, the solitary state of his situation naturally blunts the feelings of the parent. Pride and ambition, however, constitute Wallenstein what the circumstances of his station and political necessity make of Louis. If not a king, he is kingly; and upon the altar of his ambition he is ready to immolate his daughter's happiness. Though of rank and ancestry, of noble disposition and manners, and his dearest friend besides, he rejects the idea of consorting Thekla with Max Piccolomini, because, forsooth, the lover is a subject:

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My son-in-law

I will seek out among the thrones of Europe;' and disdains, like a soft-hearted father,' to

Couple together in good peasant fashion,
The pair that chance to suit each other's liking.'

Nevertheless his daughter is to him

⚫ the jewel

Which he has treasured long, his last and noblest ;' and, even in his pride, the excess of his paternal tenderness breaks

out

It is my purpose not to let her from me,

For less than a king's sceptre.'

Thus it is that the most opposite passions may be amalgamated, and of such discordant elements may the unity of individual spirit be composed.

Louis appears to be equally without pride as affection. He has none of the marks of royalty-he affects the vulgar and the sordid. However political in his liberality, we give the duke credit for generosity—he is agitated with patriotic emotions, is incapable of suspicion, and reposes unlimited confidence in the fidelity of his dependents, and feels even in his revolt a lingering affection for the emperor, and tender remembrances of the attentions with which he had been honoured. Both he and Louis pride themselves on superior cunning, a fatal propensity that too often returns the

poisoned

poisoned chalice to our own lips.' Its possessors attain such perfection in the art of deception that at last they deceive themselves. Like Satan, their master, they may be proved the greatest of fools for all their cunning. But the plans of Louis are not adopted without the advice of his barber and astrologer. Wallenstein is his own counsellor. He makes no one the intendant of his secret purposes -but is sufficient to himself. Forsaken and deserted, he preserves the calmness of his temper, and his confidence in himself increases in proportion as he is thrown back on his own resources. There is much of the latter quality in the conduct of Louis also, when made prisoner by the Duke of Burgundy. Both are remarkable for presence of mind in the hour of peril, and their eloquence is equal to every occasion, and ready for every emergency.

The points of resemblance between these great men originate in the essential elements of character and intellect; the differences result from circumstance and situation. The want of pride in the demeanour of Louis was only apparent:-those born to hereditary power are, in their manners and language, unlike a 'fire-new noble,' such as Wallenstein: their garments sit with graceful ease upon them, for they have worn them long. The latter has a consciousness that he is making an unwonted claim on the respect of those whom he addresses, which is equally awkward to them who give and him who receives-for the same reason, that both are unaccustomed to the duty and the honour. The sense of strangeness is not soon got over, and the old feelings return, with claims as stubborn as unwelcome. Like grief, indeed, this will be worn down by time; but that time never came to Wallenstein. Louis could easily afford to divest himself of the appearance of pride: he might chuse to forget his dignity, satisfied that no one else could dare to do so; and that if any did, he always had the power of bringing them back to their senses. It was of continual importance to Wallenstein that he should seem of importance. He had to create opinion, and must show a good one of himself, before he could expect that it should be entertained by others. Once well seated in power, the philosophic calmness by which he is eminently distinguished would have enabled him to be careless enough of external observances, and superior to conventional distinctions. In whatever rank of life he had been placed, he would have shown himself above it. And this superiority of spirit manifests itself in different modes, according to circumstances. It acts upon the principle of contrariety: otherwise, indeed, it could not well be distinguished; in lower stations, by an assumption of dignity and a demand on the esteem of others that they are always somewhat reluctant to render; in the highest rank, by neglect and contempt even of the dignity that had been the chief object of ambition: for hope still main

tains her peculiar privileges, and the value of the things hoped for' decreases as we approach them.

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But the widest difference between the characters of Louis and Wallenstein is seen in the greater degree of decision manifested in the conduct of the former. Louis is all action; Wallenstein is all procrastination. The monarch plunges into peril by his precipitancy-the rebel chief loses his life by his delay. The one seizes the moment that is indeed sublime and weighty;' 'the transient and rapid pause, in their confluence, time enough for him.' The other suffers the single threads long woven by prosperous fortune, in one potent web instinct with destiny, to unravel of themselves.' He waits upon the stars and on their hours, till the earthly hour escapes him.' This remarkable difference is readily resolvable into the circumstances by which each was surrounded. Louis has no feelings of solitary weakness—no compunctious visitings of conscience. Strong in numbers and possession, seated on an ancient consecrated throne, the power that he exercises is 'founded in old custom,' and

'By a thousand strong and stringy roots

Fixed to the people's pious nursery faith.'

He therefore has no reluctance to enter into action, no fear of the want of sympathy, no dread of censure, no apprehension of desertion. He has

'the right

And sacred will; the many guard it for him,' Wallenstein stood alone. He had forsaken the high road of duty, the old broadtrodden road. Wronged, and insulted, and restored to command solely on account of his abilities, he was not disposed to wear his faculties meekly. He felt their use and importance too strongly. He was tempted by free-will, and the power to do or not to do. It was possible for him to revenge himself for his first dismission from office, and to seize upon a rank equal to that of his capricious employer. He too might be a king. With this dream he fed his heart.

Was it criminal

To make the fancy minister to hope?
To fill the air with petty toys of air,

And clutch fantastic sceptres moving toward me?'

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dallied with a devil.' He and thought that it would

But with all this he had not decided. He had never honestly confessed his object to himself. He only kept the road of duty close beside him, be to regain it. But before he was aware he was transplanted he knew not whither. The stern on-look of necessity' compelled him; and though not without a shudder, his 'human hand grasped the mysterious urn of destiny.' This play terminates

easy

without

without an apophthegm-many of our old plays have this ornament; the exode of the Grecian tragedy sometimes only consisted of the moral; the same sentence serving Euripides for several of his tragedies. To this drama might have been added the following passage from the Epistle of St. James, on which Milton founded his famous allegory of Sin and Death. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then, when Lust hath conceived it bringeth forth Sin; and Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth Death.'

The indecision of Wallenstein arose from the peculiarity of his political situation. In all other respects, he was a man of brave resolution. He feared no strife of strength with strength'

His irresolution arose from fear of another and more metaphysical kind, which he describes in the following beautiful passage:

It is a foe invisible

The which I fear-a fearful enemy,
Which in the human heart opposes me,

By its inward fear alone made fearful to me;
Not that, which, full of life, instinct with power,
Makes known its present being, that is not
The true, the perilously formidable.

O no! it is the common, the quite common,
The thing of an eternal yesterday,

What ever was, and evermore returns,
Sterling to-morrow, for to-day 'twas sterling!
For of the wholly common is man made,
And custom is his nurse! Woe then to them
Who lay irreverent hands upon his old
House furniture, the dear inheritance

From his forefathers. For time consecrates;

And what is grey with age becomes religion.'

From what has been written it will be seen, that Wallenstein is in every way proper for the hero of a tragedy. His character is just sufficiently elevated and admirable to impress us with a sense of greatness and worthiness; but it is not so perfect as to outrage our moral feelings with the infelicity of his fate. The circumstances of his assassination, and the dim presentiments of his mind that are its harbingers, are as touching and as thrilling as any thing within our dramatic experience. The passions of pity and terror are appealed to by the proper means, and most successfully excited. In addition to the ground of preference already mentioned, Louis was induced to trust in Quentin Durward by the discovery, on the casting

casting of his horoscope, that this unfriended youth had his destiny under the same constellation with his own. The same reason is also adduced by Wallenstein for his confidence in Octavio

'Sixteen campaigns I have made with that old warrior,
Besides, I have his horoscope,

We both are born beneath like stars.'

But it is not in this old warrior that we are to look for a counterpart of Quentin Durward ;-but in his son Max Piccolomini, of whom we have as yet said little. Quentin Durward differs somewhat from the general run of that author's heroes. He is not so passive as Waverley and Redgauntlet, and most of the rest. He has at any rate a re-action on the fortunes of the other characters, and a latent resistance that is of consequence to the event; and here he agrees with Max Piccolomini. Both are meant to be made the blind instruments of others--both have a sense of honour and rectitude-both are cautious in the business of life, and of unimpeachable fidelity-and both, by force of their virtues, controvert the designs of the cunning and the interested, and overturn the purposes of those who would practise on their simplicity and inexperience. But here all resemblance ends. The conduct of Quentin Durward leads to a fortunate issue. Max is inextricably involved in the web of destiny, and sacrifices himself in the heroism of his affection; and the lady of his love follows soon after to thedeep quiet' of the young warrior's grave. Max is a more poetical, a gentler being than Quentin Durward. The latter is a good honest youth, but has no very refined preferences either for peace or war. His archetype in other respects, differs from him in this. He feels painfully that the toil of war had robbed him

of his youth,—

• Left him a heart unsouled and solitary,

A spirit uninformed, unornamented:"

and understands that this mere bustling nothingness cannot be the sole felicity.' With what enthusiasm he contemplates the 'Day thrice lovely, when at length the soldier

Returns home into life; when he becomes

A fellow-man among his fellow-men!'

The colours are unfurled, the cavalcade

Marshals, and now the buzz is hushed, and hark!

Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home!

The caps
and helmets are all garlanded

With green boughs, the last plundering of the fields.
The city gates fly open of themselves-

They need no longer the petard to tear them;
The ramparts are all filled with men and women,
With peaceful men and women, that send onwards

Kisses