er, every laborer, every carpenter, mason, sewing-woman, every worker in this country, every consumer, in fact, except the few who derive a profit from these petted occupations, is robbed daily and hourly, and their earnings are put into the pocket of the favored few. In a great number of instances the effect of these protective duties is the grievous oppression of the poor. The duties imposed on foreign coal cause great misery in all our large towns on the Atlantic coast through the dearness of fuel. The duties on iron, which have made it enormously dear, bear heavily on all classes. All kinds of clothing have become oppressively dear through the effect of protective duties. Paper, the great vehicle of knowledge, has been exorbitantly enhanced in price by the same means without bringing a dollar into the treasury of the nation. Formerly books were published here more cheaply than in Great Britian. Now that country produces cheap books, while we produce dear ones; a result of this tax on knowledge, from which only the paper makers derive any advantage. In all these instances our country is unhappily imitating the policy which Great Britain pursued so long in the instance of its Corn Laws, which after a long struggle between the people and the aristocracy were not long since abrogated, greatly to the benefit of the people and even of the landowners themselves; for it is one of the results of the protective system that it keeps back improvements and tempts the favored classes to rest contented with imperfect, unskillful, and costly methods of production. One plea of the few who are favored by protective duties is that these duties protect the labor of this country against the pauper labor of Europe. It is a false plea. For it is plain that it is the interest of the very men who advance it, to get labor as cheap as they can. Moreover, these very men are themselves constantly importing working-people from Europe. It is a false plea again, because the laborer in this country needs no one's protection. The American laborer can protect himself against everything but the revenue laws which make goods dear. He is protected against inadequate wages by the abundance of free land, ready for his occupation. We should never have heard of the pauper labor of Europe, had the workers there had free lands at hand in their own respective countries, such as we fortunately have. The most powerful bond of Union between the different parts of this great country extending from Ocean to Ocean, holding us | together forever, not only by the forms of law, but by mutual attachment and the feeling that we are in all respects one people, is impartial legislation; legisiation which shall not seek to enrich one portion of the country at the expense of others. Regarding it, therefore, as a most unworthy and groundless imputation upon our countrymen to insist that their ingenuity, skill and diligence, cannot, without the help of protective duties, keep pace with the ingenuity, skill and diligence of any other nation in the world, and holding, moreover, that protective duties are unjust and oppressive to the many, enervating to the industry of the few for whom they are imposed, and inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty and the rights of man, the American Free Trade League trusts that Congress will see the propriety and expediency of renouncing entirely, in any laws for the raising of revenue through a customs tariff, the wasteful and mischievous fallacy of Protection. President. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD, Corresponding Secretary. CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED. Recording Secretary. Treasurer. WILLIAM B. SCOTT, CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED, LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-NO. 1131.-3 FEBRUARY, 1866. cess. It From The North British Review. they have dealt with the humours, not the The Poetical Works of Henry Taylor, D. heart of man, and aimed but to combine a C. L. 3 vols. Chapman and Hall, 1864. skilful plot with a brilliant, superficial sketch of society. Such was the comedy of THE wealth of the present century in Sheridan, whose works are perhaps the Poetry generally has often been contrasted happiest specimens of the style to which with its comparative poverty in the Drama. they belong. But the Shakspearean comeIn most Continental countries the serious dy was another order of composition. drama has long fallen to a low ebb; and among differed from his tragedy in the absence of ourselves the number of dramatic aspirants a sad catastrophe; but in spite of the gay has been more remarkable than their suc- scenes with which they are so delightfully There has, however, been one con- varied, such plays as the Merchant of Venice, spicuous exception. Philip van Artevelde The Tempest, and As You Like It, are as full at once achieved for its author a place in of serious purpose as Shakspeare's tragedies English literature. It appeared under the themselves. It is not with wit and manners, title of A Dramatic Romance: the public but with character and poetry, that they was not intimidated by the challange of deal. Those trifles on the surface of soci"Two Parts;" and repeated editions prove ety with which they sport so buoyantly do that it had in it that which holds its own. not hinder them from descending into the If the theme was a large one, the handling heart of the humanities. In them joy and was large too; and a style of classical sorrow are allowed to alternate their voices, severity, no less than an abundance of such as they do in the long dispute of human practical thought as is gleaned from the life, although the brighter genius has the fields of experience, showed that the author last word. It is from the imagination and had not grudged that conscientious labour the reason that all genuine poetry springs, which spares labour to the reader. Mr. the imagination claiming in it that first Taylor has now republished this work, with place, which in philosophical inquiry she four other plays, and his minor poems, in a concedes to the more masculine power. revised and complete edition. Of these, The higher drama is thus competent to Isaak Comnenus and Edwin the Fair have measure itself with the whole of human been before the world long enough to take life. There is a music in human laughter their place. We shall break new ground, as well as in sighs, of which reason alone confining our remarks to his two more can discern the law; and there is a depth recent dramas, and his minor poems. They in the humourous which the imagination are destined, unless we are mistaken, to alone can fathom. Ages before a Shakas high a place as his earlier works occupy; speare had been raised up to prove the but we shall be equally frank in our ex- truth of the assertion, the great critic pressions of approval and disapproval. We of antiquity had affirmed, that the intellect shall conclude with some observations on capable of the highest greatness in tragedy the comparative merits and characters of our must be competent in comedy no less. earlier and our later drama, and on the relation in which the author of Philip van Artevelde stands to both. The two dramas are entitled A Sicilian Summer, and St. Clement's Eve. A Sicilian Summer is as bright and musical as the southern clime it illustrates, and it is full of that wisdom which is never wiser than in its sportive moods. It is not, however, every reader who will appreciate A Sicilian Summer occupies a peculiar it. Strength touches all: but strength reposition, both in Mr. Taylor's poetry and in fined into grace addresses itself to a select modern literature. Since the earlier part circle. Tragic passion, be it remembered, of the seventeenth century we have had challenges the personal as well as the but few comedies after the genuine Shak- imaginative sensibilities; and as such it Our modern comedies affects not only a better class, but many spearean model. have been comedies of wit and manners: likewise who, if they sometimes respond to THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1461. what is truly great, yet as frequently burst into raptures at the clumsiest appeals. It is far otherwise with those passages of a finer grain those delicate hair-strokes of felicitous thought and finished expression, which to be apprehended at all must be fully appreciated. By many poetry is liked best for the accidents with which the noblest poetry is most willing to dispense. In its innost essence it reveals itself but to As an illustration of Silisco's character, we shall make an extract from the second "Silisco. Off with these viands and this Feasting is not festivity: it cloys Aretina. What ditty would you please to Silisco. Choose thou, Ruggiero. See now, if that knave... Conrado. Sir, this is Malvoisie And Muscadel, a ducat by the flask. And better it went to enrich a beggar's blood I have not heard her songs. Thou sang'st me once Aretina. I think, my Lord, 'twas this. Aretina sings I'm a bird that's free I wander whither I will Oh fluttering heart, be still, Oh fluttering heart, be still. blind, Aretina. My heart, my Lord, would Yet must my eyes be something worse than prize a gift of yours, Were it a pebble from the brook. Silisco. What ho! Are not the players in attendance? Ah! Was sold last winter for a thousand crowns. 3d Girl. In some things; but in others He's liker to a patriarch than a prince. 1st Girl. I think that he takes us for He's so respectful. And see the thing that is not, if the hand worse Than I, who know, or think I know, their She gives her words the mastery, and flush'd The reader will have discovered that the prodigal is neither a sensualist nor a mere trifler. His nature has strength and movement in it, and it is only the edge of the wave that breaks into froth and loses itself. Yet his heedlessness tends to worse than the loss of his lands, as is intimated by the re ply of Fra Martino to a friend who has found it impossible to refuse him aid in his difficulties: "Give thou to no man, if thou wish him well, We shall next introduce our readers to the heroine of the play, and to Fiordeliza. They are coming from Procida, and Silisco waits on the sea-shore with Ruggiero, to receive them. The friends converse of their expected guests : The young Countess lands, and Silisco's Been parted from my side beyond the breadth The cloud, the mist; across the vale of life I know this world is richer than I thought To return to our analysis of the story: "Ruggiero. In the soft fullness of a rounded ises success. In good time his ship re-ap grace, Noble of stature, with an inward life Silisco. Call you this Ruggiero. pears in the offing. All day long it is watched from the harbour tower by one of the Jews. Then its treacherous captain, Spadone, executes his plot. About sunset, Writs are immediately sent out by the Jews the good ship Maddalena suddenly sinks. against Silisco, who flies for refuge to the catacombs on the seaside. Spadone has alHis two acready lodged his booty there. complices watch for him in a boat outside; but on the appearance of Ruggiero, who is walking on the shore, they take to their oars. Spadone commits his booty to his mistress Aretina, and leaves her, with directions to send him word as soon as he can safely return. In an agony of terror at the crime of which she has just heard, Aretina meets Silisco, and is on the point of telling him all she has learned, when Spadone, who has | lurked near them, stabs her. He endeavours to kill Silisco also; but after a short combat, falls covered with wounds. Silisco, not knowing with whom he has been en- | rhythmical than that of verse. At last, word gaged, drags him out of the cave, leaves him at the door of Gerbetto, the king's physician, who lives on the beach, and again secretes himself. Ruggiero learns soon after from the lips of a half-drowned sailor, sole survivor of the Maddalena's crew, the villany by which the rest have been destroyed. His eye has already been attracted by the signs of guilty terror with which the mate and boatswain fled at his approach; he leaps into a boat, and with the help of the rescued sailor gives them chase. Rosalba finds herself thus deserted by her lover, and loses in his ruin all hope of a changed intention on the part of her father. She still resists the marriage with Count Ugo, till assured by Gerbetto, on the word of the dying Spadone, that Silisco had been faithless to her, and had induced Aretina to be false also. She then consents to wed Count Ugo. Silisco lies hid on the lands of Malespina, which have now passed into Ugo's hands. He is there joined by Ruggiero, who, after giving chase for a night and day to the fugitives, saw them go down at sea, as he supposed, with Silisco's lost treasures, and had then himself languished in fever for months on the coast of Calabria. Ruggiero resolves to make an effort to prevent the marriage; but it has already taken place before his tired horse can bear him to Palermo. The evening, however, of the marriage-day is kept with mask and pageant. Ruggiero attends the festival, and removing his mask, arraigns the bride for her falsehood. Her reply brings out the statement made by the dying Spadone respecting Aretina, which Ruggiero at once confutes, revealing the crime of Spadone, of which Silisco's ruin had been the conseIn the midst of the grief of the quence. bride, and her father's anger, the aged bridegroom displays a magnanimity for which none had given him credit. He declares that he can never recognize as valid an engagement contracted under such circumstances, and that the calamity which has befallen them is the punishment of his own sin. On the death of his first wife, he had vowed to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. Upon that pilgrimage he goes forth at once, and alone. Rosalba, quitting the court, takes refuge in the castle of Malespina. There she lives in a seclusion, partaken only by her friend Fiordeliza. The maiden solitude of the friends is a charming idyll of rural life, rich in fancy, quaint in humour, and set forth chiefly in that finer more and delicate prose, the cadence of which is hardly less is sent to her by her father that he who in His of unfounded jealousies, stands forth at the same moment, and with Gerbetto's aid refutes the charges that had been brought against him, receiving from the king pardon and restitution, and from Fiordeliza a gift that he values yet more. There are many dramatic writers whose powers are rendered nugatory by the want of one great gift - a light hand. The gift may seem a slight one, but its absence soon proves its importance. As a specimen of it we will quote the following: -- "Fiordeliza. Let me alone, I say; I will He indeed! If the Colossus came from Rhodes and ask'd me. Perhaps I might. Rosalba. Come, Fiordeliza, come; I think, if truth were spoken, 'tis not much |
