country only as a resting-place till some active foreign duty turns up, and then he undertakes it with the same coolness that a reaper goes to the harvest-field. He is a fine pictu resque character, too, the common soldier. He goes through his toiling eventful life under suns that scorch like a blastfurnace, in infectious swamps, or on bleaching plains; and in the twilight of existence he creeps home, mayhap both maimed and rheumatic in all his joints, to die in a hospital. His career, indeed, is jestingly summed up by the Clown in "Pericles."—"What would you have me do? go to the wars, would you? where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money in the end to buy him a wooden one." The English common soldier has not a chance of the highest advancement in his profession; and this, if an injustice, at all events renders him an object of additional interest and sympathy; and perhaps it is well for him that it should be so, for he has no inducement to be envious of his comrades in rank. A gap that is made by death in his order does not advance him. He is disinterested; and another attractive feature in his character is, that he is devoid of meanness. My heart aches when I contemplate a common soldier, because I feel that there is a fellow-creature, most probably possessing many of my own sympathies for his species, whose eyes would fill with tears at a tale of noble sorrow; and who, nevertheless, commits a whole life of mistake in contributing to the cause of that sorrow. May the fulfilment of that time speedily arrive-and it must arrive, or Christianity is an institution of this world-when every brother, of every clime and colour, shall "sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and no man shall make him afraid." The scene alluded to in this play is the vivid conversation of Tullus Aufidius's soldiers when the banished Coriolanus comes to claim the protection of his enemy's hearth. There is not a more characteristic dialogue in the whole drama; or, of its class, in any other of the poet's dramas, while there are several touches of nature and of human action fully worthy of the prominent parts. Here is an abridgment of the whole scene, (the 5th of the 4th Act,) containing that portion only in which the soldiers are engaged : "Scene-A Hall in Tullus Aufidius's House-Music withinEnter a Servant. "2d Serv. Where's Cotus? My master calls for him. Cotus! "Enter CORIOLANUS. [Exit. "Cor. A goodly house. The feast smells well; but I appear not like a guest. "Re-enter Ist SERVANT. "1st Serv. What would you have, friend? Whence are you? Here's no place for you:-pray go to the door. "Cor. [Aside.] I have deserved no better entertainment in being Coriolanus. "Re-enter 2d SERVANT. "2d Serv. Whence are you, sir? Has the Porter his eyes in his head that he gives entrance to such companions? Pray, get you out. "Cor. Away! "1st Serv. Away? Get you away. "Cor. Now, thou art troublesome. "2d Serv. Are you so brave? I'll have you talked with anon. "Enter 3d SERVANT. The first meets him. "3d Serv. What fellow's this? "Ist Serv. A strange one as ever I looked on; I cannot get him out of the house. Prithee, call my master to him. "3d Serv. What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you, avoid the house. "Cor. Let me but stand; I will not hurt your hearth. 3d Serv. A marvellous poor one. "Cor. True; so I am. "3d Serv. Pray you, 'poor gentleman,' take up some other station; here's no place for you. Pray you, avoid. Come. "Cor. Follow your function; go, and batten on cold bits. [Pushes him away. Prithee, tell my master "3d Serv. What, will you not? what a strange guest he has here. "2d Serv. And I shall. "3d Serv. Where dwellest thou? "Cor. Under the canopy. "3d Serv. Under the canopy! "Cor. Ay. "3d Serv. Where's that? "Cor. I' the city of the kites and crows. "3d Serv. I' the city of kites and crows? is! Then thou dwellest with daws, too? "Cor. No; I serve not thy master. and prat'st. Serve with thy trencher. [Exit. What an ass it * Thou prat'st, Hence! [Beats him away. "Enter AUFIDIUS and 2d SERVANT. "Auf. Where is this fellow? "2d Serv. Here, sir. I'd have beaten him like a dog, but for disturbing the lords within. Auf. Whence com'st thou? What would'st thou? Thy name? "Cor. A name unmusical to the Volscians' ears, and harsh in sound to thine. Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face Cor. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces, Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may He then relates the circumstance of his banishment, and willingness to join issue with his old enemy to lay waste his native country. The two, hand in hand, go in, and the servants advance :— "Ist Serv. Here's a strange alteration! "2d Serv. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me; his clothes made a false report of him. "Ist Serv. What an arm he has ! He turned me about with his finger and thumb, as one would set up a top. "2d Serv. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in him. He had, sir, a kind of face, methought,—I cannot tell how to term it. ་ "1st Serv. He had so; looking, as it were,-would I were hanged, but I thought there was more in him than I could think. "2d Serv. So did I, I'll be sworn. He is simply the rarest man i' the world. "Ist Serv. I think he is; but a greater soldier than he, you wot one. "2d Serv. Who? my master? "Ist Serv. Nay, it's no matter for that. "2d Serv. Worth six on him. "Ist Serv. Nay, not so neither; but I take him to be the greater soldier. "2d Serv. 'Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that. For the defence of a town our general is excellent. "1st Serv. Ay, and for an assault too. "Re-enter 3d SERVANT. "3d Serv. Oh, slaves! I can tell you news; news, you rascals! "Ist Serv. What-what-what? Let's partake. "3d Serv. I would not be a Roman of all nations: I had as lief be a condemned man. "1st and 2d Serv. Wherefore? Wherefore? "3d Serv. Why, here's he that was wont to thwack our general-Caius Marcius. "1st Serv. Why do you say 'thwack our general?' "3d Serv. I do not say thwack our general; but he was always good enough for him. "2d Serv. Come, we are fellows and friends: he was ever too hard for him; I have heard him say so himself. "Ist Serv. He was too hard for him directly, to say the truth on't before Corioli, he scotched him and notched him like a carbonado. "2d Serv. An he had been cannibally given, he might have broiled and eaten him too. "Ist Serv. But, more of thy news. "3d Serv. Why, he's so made on here within, as if he were son and heir to Mars: set at upper end o' the table; no question asked him by any of the senators, but they stand bald before him. Our general himself makes a mistress of him; sanctifies himself with's hand, and turns up the white o' the eye to his discourse. But the bottom o' the news is, our general is cut i' the middle, and but one half of what he was yesterday; for the other has half, by the grant and entreaty of the whole table. He'll go, he says, and sowle the Porter of Rome gates by the ears. He will mow down all before him, and leave his passage polled. "2d Serv. And he's as like to do it as any man I can imagine. "3d Serv. Do't!—he will do 't; for, look you, sir, he has as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it were, durst not-look you, sir-show themselves, as we term it,his friends, whilst he's in directitude. "Ist Serv. 'Directitude!' What's that? "3d Serv. But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again, and the man in blood, they will out of their burrows, like conies after rain, and revel all with him. "Ist Serv. But when goes this forward? 3d Serv. To-morrow; to-day; presently; you shall have the drum strike up this afternoon: 'tis, as it were, a parcel of their feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips. "2d Serv. Why, then, we shall have a stirring world again. |