Rev. Henry Hart Milman.

FAZIO.

Description of BARTOLO, the Miser.

FAZIO, BIANCA (his Wife).

Fazio. Dost thou know, Bianca,

Our neighbour, old Bartolo?

Bianca. Oh, yes, yes!

That yellow wretch, that looks as he were stained
With watching his own gold; every one knows him,
Enough to loathe him. Not a friend hath he,
Nor kindred nor familiar; not a slave,
Not a lean serving-wench: nothing e'er entered
But his spare self within his jealous doors,
Except a wandering rat; and that, they say,
Was famine-struck, and died there.—What of him?
Faz. Yet he, Bianca, he is of our rich ones:
There's not a galiot on the sea, but bears

A venture of Bartolo's; not an acre,
Nay, not a villa of our proudest princes,

But he hath cramped it with a mortgage; he,
He only stocks our prisons with his debtors.
I saw him creeping home last night: he shuddered
As he unlocked his door, and looked around
As if he thought that every breath of wind

Were some keen thief: and when he locked him in
I heard the grating key turn twenty times,
Το try if all were safe. I looked again

From our high window by mere chance, and saw
The motion of his scanty, moping lantern;

And, where his wind-rent lattice was ill stuffed

With tattered remnants of a money-bag,
Through cobwebs and thick dust I spied his face,
Like some dry, wither-boned anatomy,
Through a huge chest-lid, jealously and scantily
Uplifted, peering upon coin and jewels,
Ingots and wedges, and broad bars of gold,

Upon whose lustre the wan light shone muddily,
As though the New World had outrun the Spaniard,
And emptied all its mines in that coarse hovel.
His ferret eyes gloated as wanton o'er them,
As a gross Satyr on a sleeping Nymph!

And then, as he heard something like a sound,
He clapped the lid to, and blew out the lantern.
And I, Bianca, hurried to thy arms,

And thanked my God that I had braver riches.

BARTOLO, attacked and wounded by Robbers, flies to the House of FA 10 for assistance, where he dies. FAZIO, under the temptation of Gold, goes to the Miser's Dwelling, secures the whole of his Wealth, and buries the Body of BARTOLO in his Garden.

The Street near FAZIO's Door.-FAZIO, with BARTOLO'S Gold and Jewels.

Fazio. My steps were ever to this door, as though They trod on beds of perfume and of down.

The winged birds were not by half so light,

When through the lazy twilight air they wheel
Home to their brooding mates.
But now,

methinks,

The heavy earth doth cling around my feet.
I move as every separate limb were gyved
With its particular weight of manac!:
The moonlight, that was wont to seem so soft,
So balmy to the slow-respired breath,

Icily, shiveringly cold falls on me.

The marble pillars, that soared stately up,
As though to prop the azure vault of heaven,
Hang o'er me with a dull and dizzy weight.
The stones whereon I tread do grimly speak,
Forbidding echoes, ay, with human voices :
Unbodied arms pluck at me as I pass,

And socketless, pale eyes look glaring on me.
But I have passed them: and methinks this weight
Might strain more sturdy sinews than mine own.

Howbeit, thank God, 'tis safe! Thank God !-for what?
That a poor honest man's grown a rich villain.

Poetry perverted to unworthy Uses.

Oh, my lord, 'tis the curse and brand of poesy,
That it must trim its fetterless, free plumes

To the gross fancies of the humorsome age;
That it must stoop from its bold heights to court
Liquorish opinion, whose aye wavering breath
Is to it as the precious air of life.

Oh! in a capering, chambering, wanton land,
The lozel's song alone gains audience—
Fine loving ditties, sweet to sickliness;
The languishing and luscious touch alone
Of all the full harp's ecstasies, can detain
The palled and pampered ear of Italy.
But, my lord, we have deeper mysteries

For the initiate.-Hark !-it bursts-it flows!

[Exit.

FAZIO, condemned to Death for the supposed Murder of BARTOLO, is visited by his Friend PHILARIO on the morning of his Execution.

FAZIO and РHILARIO.

Faz. I thank thee: 'twas a melancholy hymn,

But soft and soothing as the gale of eve―

The gale whose flower-sweet breath no more shall

me.

Oh, what a gentle ministrant is Music

To Piety-to mild, to penitent Piety!
Oh, it gives plumage to the tardy prayer

That lingers in our lazy earthly air,

And melts with it to heaven.— -To die: 'tis dreary;

To die a villain's death, that's yet a pang.

But it must down: I have so steeped my soul

In the bitter ashes of true penitence,

That they have put on a delicious savour,

And all is halcyon quiet, all within.—
Bianca!-where is she?-why comes she not?
Yet I do almost wish her not to come,
Lest she again enamour me of life.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.

RICHELIEU.

RICHELIEU's Devotion to France.

I LOVE my native land—

Not as Venetian, Englisher, or Swiss,

But as a noble and a priest of France;

All things for France-lo, my eternal maxim ! 'The vital axle of the restless wheels

That bear me on! With her I have entwined

My passions and my fate-my crimes, my virtues-
Hated and loved, and schemed, and shed men's blood,
As the calm crafts of Tuscan sages teach

Those who would make their country great. Beyond

The map of France, my heart can travel not,
But fills that limit to the farthest verge;
And while I live-Richelieu and France are one.
We priests, to whom the Church forbids in youth
The plighted one-to manhood's toil denies
The soother helpmate-from our withered age
Shuts the sweet blossoms of the second spring
That smiles in the name Father-we are yet
Not holier than humanity, and must
Fulfil humanity's condition-Love!
Debarred the actual, we but breathe a life
To chill the marble of the ideal. Thus,
In the unseen and abstract Majesty,
My France-my country, I have bodied forth
A thing to love. What are these robes of state,
This pomp, this palace? perishable bawbles!
In this world two things only are immortal-
Fame and a people!

RICHELIEU vindicates his Acts as Minister.

Adrien de Mauprat, men have called me cruel; I am not; I am just! I found France rent asunder,— The rich men despots, and the poor banditti ;Sloth in the mart, and schism within the temple; Brawls festering to rebellion; and weak laws Rotting away with rust in antique sheathsI have re-created France; and from the ashes Of the old feudal and decrepit carcase, Civilization on her luminous wings

Soars-phoenix-like, to Jove !-what was my art? Genius, some say,--some fortune,—witchcraft, some. Not so; my art was JUSTICE!—