fight, or on the open gallows and the wheel. One of these is your destiny. (Exeunt all but SPIEGELBERG.) SPIE. (looking after him.) Your catalogue hath a gap. You have left out poison. SCENE III.-Moor's Castle. Amelia's Chamber. FRANCIS and AMELIA. FRAN. You turn away, Amelia. whom his father hath cursed? Do I deserve less than him AMEL. Away!—Ha, the loving kind-hearted father, who gives his son a prey to wolves and monsters! He comforts himself with sweet and costly wine, and nurses his rotten limbs in cushions of cedar, while his great, noble son starves! Shame on ye, ye monsters! shame on ye, ye dragons' souls, ye scandals of humanity!his only son ! FRAN. I thought he had two? AMEL. Yes, he deserves to have sons like you. On his deathbed will he in vain stretch out his withered hand for his Charles, and shuddering draw it back, when he touches the ice-cold hand of his Francis. Oh, it is sweet, it is sweet beyond all price, to be cursed by thy father! Say, Francis, dear brotherly soul! what must one do if one would be cursed by him? FRAN. You rave, my love; you are to be pitied. AMEL. Oh, I pray thee, dost thou pity thy brother?—No, monster, you hate him! you hate me also! FRAN. I love thee as myself, Amelia. my life. AMEL. If you love me, can you refuse me one request? FRAN. None, none! if it is not more than AMEL. Oh, if it is so! A request that you can so easily, so willingly perform.—(Proudly,) Hate me! I must turn red as fire for shame, if I think on Charles, and then think, thou dost not hate me. Do you promise me this ?-Now go, and leave me ; I would be alone. FRAN. Dearest dreamer! how I wonder at thy soft loving heart, (touching her breast.) Here, here Charles reigns like a god in his temple; Charles stands before thee waking; Charles rules in thy dreams; the whole creation seems to thee to melt into the one, to reflect the one, to echo the one. AMEL. (moved.) Yes, truly; I confess it. In spite of you, barbarian, I will confess it before all the world-I love him! FRAN. Monster, wretch! So to reward this love! To forget it! AMEL. (starting.) What, forget me? FRAN. Had you not put a ring upon his finger ?—a diamond ring, for a pledge of thy truth? Truly, now, how can a youth withstand the charms of a courtesan? Who will blame him if he had nothing else left to give away-and did she not pay him for it with usury with her endearments, her embraces? AMEL. My ring to a courtesan ? FRAN. Fie, fie! it is shameful. But if that were all! A ring, however costly it may be, can be obtained from any Jew-perhaps the working of it did not please him; perhaps he has changed it for a more beautiful one. AMEL. (passionately.) But my ring-I say, my ring? FRAN. No other, Amelia. Ha! such a jewel, and on my finger-and from Amelia!-death itself should not have torn it hence. Is it not so, Amelia? Not the costliness of the diamond, not the skill of the impression-love makes its worth. Dearest child, you weep! Woe to him who hath pressed these costly tears from eyes so heavenly—ah! and if thou shouldest know all, shouldest see him, see him in that form? AMEL. Monster! how? in what form? FRAN. Still, still, good soul; ask me not! (half aside.) If at least he had only a veil, to hide himself from the eyes of the world! but there, it looks horribly through his leaden eyes;-it betrays itself in the deadly-pale and shrunken countenance ;—it stammers in the half, untuned voice ;—it proclaims itself fearfully loud from the trembling, tottering skeleton ;-it has eaten through the innermost marrow of the bones, and breaks the manly strength of youth. You have seen that wretched man, Amelia, who died in our hospital. Recall that man to thy mind, and Charles stands before thee! His kisses are pestilence and his lips poison. Does his mere AMEL. (strikes him.) Shameless slanderer! FRAN. Are you horrified at this Charles? picture disgust thee? Go, stare at him thyself,—thy beautiful, angelic, divine Charles! Go, suck in his balsamic breath, and let the ambrosial airs that exhale from his throat send thee to the grave. The mere breath of his mouth will blight thee. [AMELIA turns her face away. What delight in the em What an effervescence of love! brace! But is it not wrong to condemn a man for the sake of his sick body? Even in the most wretched cripple, a soul, great and worthy of love, may shine as a ruby out of the mire (with a malicious laugh)-love may breathe even from blistered lips. Truly, if vice also shake the fortresses of the character,-if with modesty virtue also flies, as the perfume from the withered rose,if with the body the soul also is crippled AMEL. (springing up with joy.) Ha! Charles! Now I know thee again! thou art yet perfect! perfect! all was a lie! Know you not, villain, that it is impossible Charles should be thus? (FRANCIS stands for some time in thought, then turns quickly round to go.) Whither so quickly, fliest thou from thine own shame ? Let my FRAN. (covering his face.) Leave me, leave me! tears have their course. Tyrannical father, thus to give up the best of thy sons to misery, to shame. Leave me, Amelia! I will fall at his feet, and on my knees will I conjure him to lay upon me, upon me, his spoken curse-to cast out me-me-my bloodmy life—all— AMEL. (falls on his neck.) Brother of my Charles, best, dearest Francis ! FRAN. Oh, Amelia! how I love thee for this unshaken confidence in my brother! Pardon me, that I have dared to put thy love to this hard proof. How well hast thou answered my wishes! With these tears, these sighs, this holy indignation-also for me, for me!—our souls so harmonized! AMEL. Oh no, that they never did. FRAN. Ah, they sounded so harmoniously together, I ever thought we must be twins! and were there not this hateful difference of exterior, by which, alas, Charles must lose, we should be confounded together. You are, I often said to myself, a perfect Charles, his echo, his image. AMEL. (shaking her head.) No, no! by this chaste light of heaven! No vein of him, no spark of his feeling. FRAN. So alike in our dispositions-the rose was his dearest blossom-what flower was to me before the rose? He loved music unutterably, and ye are witnesses, ye stars! that ye have often heard me, in the dead stillness of the night, with my lute, when all around me lay buried in shadow and slumber;—and how can you yet doubt, Amelia? Since our loves so perfectly coincide, and since the love is the same, how can its children degenerate ? [AMELIA looks at him, wondering. It was a still, lovely evening, the last ere he departed for Leipsic, that he took me with him into that bower where you have so often sat together in dreams of love. We were long silent -at last he took my hand, and said lightly, and with tears: I leave Amelia, I know not-it misgives me, that it will be for ever. Leave her not, brother !-be her friend-her Charles-if Charles —never—return. (He throws himself down before her, and kisses her hand.) Never, never, never will he return, and I have sworn it by a sacred oath. AMEL. (springing back.) Traitor, now I catch thee! Even in this bower did he conjure me to love no other-if he should die— seest thou, how godless, how horrible-go from my sight! FRAN. You know me not, Amelia; indeed you know me not. AMEL. Oh, I know thee, henceforth I know thee and thou wouldest be like him? Would he have wept for me before thee? Before thee? Rather would he have written my name on the pillory! Go instantly! FRAN. You injure me. AMEL. Go, I say. Thou hast stolen from me a precious hour —may it be taken from thy life! FRAN. You hate me. AMEL. I despise thee; go! FRAN. (stamping with his foot.) Wait! so shalt thou tremble before me! Prefer a beggar to me !-(Exit, in a rage.) AMEL. Go, fool-now am I again with Charles. Beggar! said he? so hath the world turned round, beggars are kings, and kings are beggars! I would not change the rags that he wears for the purple of the anointed :-the look with which he begs must be a great, a royal look-a look that will annihilate the nobility, the pomp, the triumph of the great and the rich! Into the dust with ye, ye glittering trinkets! (Tears the pearls from her neck.) Be ye doomed to wear gold and silver and jewels, ye great and rich! Be ye doomed to carouse at luxurious tables! Be ye doomed to nurse your limbs on the soft pillows of luxury! Charles! Charles! if I were only worthy of thee (To be continued.) THE KING'S COLLEGE MAGAZINE. SEPTEMBER, 1841. CONTENTS. ELLERTON CASTLE; a Romance. By "FITZROY PIKE." CHAP. VI. Fortune, in unusual good humour, smiles upon every body-Edward anticipates a triumphant Career-And so do his Enemies PAGE 107 116 CHAP. VII. Edward Heringford appears in a new Character-And 121 126 127 129 134 THE ROBBERS; a Tragedy. (Translated from the German of Friedrich |