than pity, as superior beings, and to take an interest in incidents which might have happened to themselves, sooner than in those remote from their own rank and habits. It is for this reason that Eschylus censures Euripides, for introducing his kings in rags, as if they were more to be compassionated than other men.

Πρῶτον μέν τις βασιλεύονας ῥάκιαμπισχων, ἵν ̓ ἐλεεινοὶ
Τοῖς ανθρώποις φαίνον εἶναι.

Some will, perhaps, imagine that it is in the power of the poet to excite our sympathy in too powerful a degree, because at the representation of certain scenes, the spectators are frequently affected so as to make them shriek out with terror. But this is not sympathy; it is horror, it is disgust, and is only witnessed when some act is committed on the stage so cruel and bloody, as to make it impossible to contemplate it even in idea without horror.

Nec pueros coram populo Medea trucidet,
Aut humana palàm coquat exta nefarius Atreus.
Hor. Ars Poet. l. 185.

It is for this reason, also, that many fine German dramas cannot be brought on the English stage, such as the Robbers of Schiller, and the Adelaide of Wulfingen, by Kotzebue; they are too horrible to be read without violent emotions, and Horace will tell you what an immense difference there is in point of effect between a relation and a representation.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,

Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.

Ars Poet. l. 180.

I shall conclude these desultory remarks, strung together at random, without order or connection, by observing what little foundation there is for the general outcry in the literary world, against the prevalence of German dramas on our stage. Did they not possess uncommon merit, they would not meet with such general approbation. Fashion has but a partial influence, but they have drawn tears from an audience in a barn as well as in a theatre royal; they have been welcomed with plaudits in every little market town in the three kingdoms, as well as in the metropolis. Nature speaks but one language; she is alike intelligible to the peasant, and the man of letters; the tradesman, and the man of fashion. While the Muse of Germany shall continue to produce such plays as the Stranger and Lovers Vows*, who will not rejoice that translation is able to naturalize her efforts in our language.

* I speak of these plays only, as adapted to our stage by the elegant pens of Mr. Thompson and Mrs. Inchbald.

MELANCHOLY HOURS.

[No. I.]

-There is a mood

(I sing not to the vacant and the young)
There is a kindly mood of Melancholy,

That wings the soul and points her to the skies.

DYER.

PHILOSOPHERS have divested themselves of their natural apathy, and poets have risen above themselves, in descanting on the pleasures of Melancholy. There is no mind so gross, no understanding so uncultivated, as to be incapable, at certain moments, and amid certain combinations, of feeling that sublime influence upon the spirits, which steals the soul from the petty anxieties of the world,

"And fits it to hold converse with the Gods."

I must confess, if such there be who never felt the divine abstraction, I envy them not their insensibility. For my own part, it is from the indulgence of this soothing power, that I derive the most exquisite of gratifications. At the calm hour of moonlight, amid all the sublime serenity, the dead stillness of the night; or when the howling storm rages in the heavens, the rain pelts on my roof, and the winds whistle through the

crannies of my apartment, I feel the divine mood of melancholy upon me; I imagine myself placed upon an eminence, above the crowds who pant below in the dusty tracks of wealth and honour. The black catalogue of crimes and of vice; the sad tissue of wretchedness and woe, passes in review before me, and I look down upon man with an eye of pity and commiseration. Though the scenes which I survey be mournful, and the ideas they excite equally sombre; though the tears gush as I contemplate them, and my heart feels heavy with the sorrowful emotions they inspire, yet are they not unaccompanied with sensations of the purest and most ecstatic bliss.

It is to the spectator alone that melancholy is for bidding; in herself she is soft and interesting, and capable of affording pure and unalloyed delight. Ask the lover why he muses by the side of the purling brook, or plunges into the deep gloom of the forest? Ask the unfortunate, why he seeks the still shades of solitude? or the man who feels the pangs of disappointed ambition, why he retires into the silent walks of seclusion? and he will tell you, that he derives a pleasure therefrom, which nothing else can impart. It is the delight of melancholy; but the melancholy of these beings is as far removed from that of the philosopher, as are the narrow and contracted complaints of selfishness, from the mournful regrets of expansive philanthrophy; as are the desponding intervals of insanity, from the occasional depressions of benevolent sensibility.

The man who has attained that calm equanimity which qualifies him to look down upon the petty evils of life with indifference; who can so far conquer the weakness of nature, as to consider the sufferings of the individual of little moment, when put in competition with the welfare of the community, is alone the true philosopher. His melancholy is not excited by the retrospect of his own misfortunes; it has its rise from the contemplation of the miseries incident to life, and the evils which obtrude themselves upon society, and interrupt the harmony of nature. It would be arrogating too much merit to myself, to assert that I have a just claim to the title of a philosopher, as it is here defined; or to say that the speculations of my melancholy hours are equally disinterested: be this as it may, I have determined to present my solitary effusions to the public: they will at least have the merit of novelty to recommend them, and may possibly, in some measure, be instrumental in the melioration of the human heart, or the correction of false prepossessions. This is the height of my ambition: this once attained, and my end will be fully accomplished. One thing I can safely promise, though far from being the coinages of a heart at ease, they will contain neither the querulous captiousness of misfortune, nor the bitter taunts of misanthrophy. Society is a chain of which I am merely a link; all men are my associates in error, and though some may have gone farther in the ways of guilt than myself, yet it is not in me to sit in judgment upon them: it is mine to treat them rather in pity than in anger, to lament their