Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848 - Various

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avoids), or it becomes one of the saddest platitudes in the world. Your savage can support prolonged ennui, and delights in excitement approaching to madness; your civilised man can tolerate neither one nor the other. Now your tragedy deals largely in both. It knows no medium. Every body has felt that, whether owing to the actor or the poet, the moment the interest of the piece is no longer at its height, it becomes intolerable. You are to be either moved beyond all self-control, which is not very desirable, or you are to sit in lamentable sufferance. In short, you are to be driven out of your senses, one way or the other. Depend upon it, it is a species of amusement which, however associated with great names – though Garrick acted, and Dr Johnson looked on – is destined, like the bull-fights of Spain, or the gladiatorial combats of old Rome, to fall before the advancing spirit of civilisation.

      But to Mrs Hemans' Vespers of Palermo. It was not the natural bent of genius which led her to the selection of the dramatic form; and when we become thoroughly acquainted with her temperament, and the feelings she loved to indulge, we are rather surprised that she performed the task she undertook with so much spirit, and so large a measure of success, than that she falls short in some parts of her performance. Nothing can be better conceived, or more admirably sustained, than the character of Raimond de Procida. The elder Procida, and the dark revengeful Montalba, are not so successfully treated. We feel that she has designed these figures with sufficient propriety, but she has not animated them; she could not draw from within those fierce emotions which were to infuse life into them. The effort to sympathise, even in imagination, with such characters, was a violence to her nature. The noble and virtuous heroism of the younger Procida was, on the contrary, no other than the overflow of her own genuine feeling. Few modern dramas present more spirit-stirring scenes, than those in which Raimond takes the leading part. Two of those we would particularly mention – one when, on joining the patriot-conspirators, and learning the mode in which they intended to free their country, he refuses, even for so great an object, to stain his soul with assassination and murder; and the other, where, towards the close of the piece, he is imprisoned by the more successful conspirators – is condemned to die for imputed treachery to their cause, and hears that the battle for his country, for which his spirit had so longed, is going forward. We cannot refrain from making a quotation from both these parts of the drama. We shall take the liberty of omitting some lines, in order to compress our extracts.

      The conspirators have met, and proclaimed their intended scheme —

      Sicilians. Be it so!

      If one amongst us stay the avenging steel

      For love or pity, be his doom as theirs!

      Pledge we our faith to this.

      Raim. (rushing forward indignantly.) Our faith to this!

      No! I but dreamt I heard it: Can it be?

      My countrymen, my father! – Is it thus

      That freedom should be won? – Awake! – awake

      To loftier thoughts! – Lift up, exultingly,

      On the crowned heights, and to the sweeping winds,

      Your glorious banner! – Let your trumpet's blast

      Make the tombs thrill with echoes! Call aloud,

      Proclaim from all your hills, the land shall bear

      The stranger's yoke no longer! – What is he

      Who carries on his practised lip a smile,

      Beneath his vest a dagger, which but waits

      Till the heart bounds with joy, to still its beatings?

      That which our nature's instinct doth recoil from,

      And our blood curdle at – ay, yours and mine —

      A murderer! Heard ye? – Shall that name with ours

      Go down to after days?

      Mont. I tell thee, youth,

      Our souls are parched with agonising thirst,

      Which must be quenched though death were in the draught:

      We must have vengeance, for our foes have left

      No other joy unblighted.

      Pro. O, my son!

      The time has passed for such high dreams as thine:

      Thou knowest not whom we deal with. We must meet

      Falsehood with wiles, and insult with revenge.

      And, for our names – whate'er the deeds by which

      We burst our bondage – is it not enough

      That, in the chronicle of days to come,

      We, through a bright "For ever," shall be called

      The men who saved their country.

      Raim. Many a land

      Hath bowed beneath the yoke, and then arisen,

      As a strong lion rending silken bonds,

      And on the open field, before high heaven,

      Won such majestic vengeance as hath made

      Its name a power on earth.

      Mon. Away! when thou dost stand

      On this fair earth as doth a blasted tree,

      Which the warm sun revives not, then return

      Strong in thy desolation; but till then,

      Thou art not for our purpose; – we have need

      Of more unshrinking hearts.

      Raim. Montalba! know,

      I shrink from crime alone. Oh! if my voice

      Might yet have power among you, I would say,

      Associates, leaders, be avenged! but yet

      As knights, as warriors!

      Mon. Peace! Have we not borne

      Th'indelible taint of contumely and chains?

      We are not knights and warriors: Our bright crests

      Have been defiled and trampled to the earth.

      Boy! we are slaves – and our revenge shall be

      Deep as a slave's disgrace.

      Raim. Why, then, farewell:

      I leave you to your counsels. What proud hopes

      This hour hath blighted! – yet, whate'er betide,

      It is a noble privilege to look up

      Fearless in heaven's bright face – and this is mine,

      And shall be still. [Exit.

      Our other extract is from a later scene in the drama, which we think very happily conceived. Raimond, accused of treachery, and condemned to die by his own father, is in chains and in prison. The day of his execution has arrived, but the Sicilians are called on to give battle before their gates; he is left alone, respited, or rather forgotten, for the present. His alternation of feeling, as he at first attempts to respond to the consolations of the priest Anselmo, and then, on hearing of the battle that is being fought for his country, breaks out into all that ardent love of glory, which was the main passion of his soul, is very admirably expressed.

      Ans. But thou, my son!

      Is thy young spirit mastered, and prepared

      For nature's fearful and mysterious change?

      Raim. Ay, father! of my brief remaining task

      The least part is to die! And yet the cup

      Of life still mantled brightly to my lips,

      Crowned with that sparkling bubble, whose proud name

      Is – glory! Oh! my soul from boyhood's morn

      Hath nursed such mighty

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