Hugo. Not so.- Thou hast decided well. The die is cast. After the departure of the females, there comes a fine soliloquy of Hugo, in which it is easy to see that his spirit is brooding upon the idea of immediate self-destruction; but the imitation of Hamlet is here too evident, and the poetry far far inferior. He is interrupted by Valeros-and there follows a scene which is, perhaps, the most daring in the tragedy, and which, although we have far transgressed our limits, we cannot resist giving entire. It is quite worthy of a Ford or a Web ster. HUGO, VALEROS. His sword at his side, and carrying another cantiously concealed under his cloak. Val. (Yet in the back-ground, and in a deep protracted tone.) OTTO! Hugo. (Who starts violently, and his knees tremble as he turns towards the door.) Oh, is it you? Val. (Coming forward.) Wherefore are you thus trembling! Hugo. Your voice! It seem'd almost that Val. (Half aside.) Indeed! Who Hugo. (Disquieted.) Then will you not retire To rest?-But you are armed!-And wherefore thus, At such an hour? Val. To arms a Spaniard still Resorts whene'er his name has been disgrac'd. Hugo. Be quiet-I know all. Hugo. For thy sake, And Bertha's, and Elvira's, I must forfeit In years? Val. This is no knightly tournament. Not strength but skill these weapons will require. Hugo. (Anxiously.) Can you not think? And Carlos, unrevenged, may not remain. Could'st thou but read my soul? Val. Well may the combat Hate, Hugo. (Feeling the rebuke.) Trade ?— Will thou not fight ?- Val. How!Thou bear'st the name Val. Coward and assassin !- Val. (Stations himself, and draws his sword.) At last!-Thou roused up Tiger, Unsheath thy sword!-Fall on have at my heart! Hugo. (After a short pause of recollection.) No!-cursed No!-curs'd for ever be this hand, if now, It bears the steel! (He breaks the sword, still in the scabbard, close over by the handle and throws both pieces behind him.) Go and may rust devour thee!Val. (Struggling with unconquerable rage.) Ha!-caitiff! if thou dar'st not risque the combat, Then die at once! (He suddenly takes his sword, and turns it in his hand like a dagger.) We cannot both survive! When Valeros is just about to stab Hugo, they are interrupted by Elvira -and another beautiful scene occurs which ends in the reconciliation of the father and the son-a reconciliation which is not the less deep and tender, because neither of the reconciled entertains any prospect of felicity either for himself or in the other. After this, the unhappy pair are left alone upon the scene, and we feel that the presence of any third individual would be a profanation of their retirement, and a needless insult to that love which even in guilt preserves something of its nobility. A deep stillness prevails for some minutes, during which Hugo sits on his chair, and prays with apparent tranquillity in silence. Elvira kneels by her harp opposite to him, and prays also earnestly, but without moving her lips. The clock strikes twelve; and the Anniversary of Guilt is at a close. A slight shuddering seizes Elvira-she rises slowly from prayer, and calmness is spread over her countenance. Hugo, when the clock has ceased striking, rises slowly from his chair and approaches Elvira. Hugo. The hour has call'd! Sweet wife, Now give me what thou hast, and I require! Elv. Softly! (She retires from him, and takes hold with her left hand of the harp, which rests on a chair; then adds resolutely, and with dignity.) To me, even as to thee, for ever Has come for parting, I shall boldy go Before thee through the dark and unknown path That leads to life eternal. She stabs herself; her knees faulter, the harp falls sliding from the chair to the ground, and she sinks down upon it, holding the dagger in her right hand. At this moment the whole persons of the drama rush in, alarmed by the noise of Hugo's fall-but we cannot quote any part of the heart-rending scene which follows. As soon as both have expired, Don Valeros draws the dagger from the wound of Hugo, and exclaims from which we have quoted so lavishly. Our readers may rest assured that it is executed with astonishing closeness to the original-and having said this much, we have said all that is necessary. The translator (who is, as we understand, Mr Gillies, the author of Childe Aharique,) has exhibited masterly skill in the management of our dramatic blank verse-but that is the least of his praises. He has shown himself to be not a skilful versifier merely but a genuine poet, for no man but a true poet can catch and give back again as he has done the fleeting and ethereal colours of poetry and passion. He has produced a work which is entitled to take its place as a fine English tragedy-the finest, we have no difficulty in saying, that has for many years been added to that part of our literature. Our readers will observe, that this translation has not as yet been published. The author has merely had a few dozens of copies printed for the use of his friends, and he has been so kind as to send us one of them. It is a very fine specimen of typography, one of the most elegant that ever issued from the press of Ballantyne. But we trust he will soon give the world a large edition. The encouragement this play must receive, will also, we hope, stimulate Mr Gillies to further efforts in the same style. What a fine field lies open for one who possesses, in such perfection as he does, the two richest languages in Europe-the Ger◄ man and the English. STANZAS. Composed in Sherewood Plantation. "The remembrance of youth is a sigh.”—Words of Ali. THERE is a moaning sound abroad- Up with the sun-a happy boy, As searching round, with eager foot, Ah! happy days like lightning fled !— Time alters all-alone I stand, RESTORATION OF THE PARTHENON IN THE NATIONAL MONUMENT. NOTWITHSTANDING that in a late Number of the Magazine we called the attention of our readers to the proposal of restoring the Parthenon in the National Monument for Scotland, we have no scruple in again adverting to the subject, being convinced that it is one in which a great portion of our readers take a lively interest, and that its importance is such as to demand a large share of the public attention. The embellishment of the metropolis, indeed, is becoming now a matter of national interest. From all quarters we find strangers flocking to our city, and vying with each other in praises of the grandeur of its situation, and the rising beauty of its edifices. Yet a few years of public spirit and exertion, such as those which have just terminated, and Edinburgh may vie with any metropolis in Europe in the splendour of its architectural embellishment. From what has been done in those years, indeed, we are disposed to augur most favourably of the future embellishment of the city. The Advocates' Library, with the great stair leading to it, will form one of the most splendid rooms in Europe-the celebrated gallery in the Colonna Palace at Rome not excepted. The vista of Waterloo Place, with some defects, presents a magnificent instance of architectural ornament, and does equal honour to the correct taste and sound discretion of the very eminent architect by whom it was designed. The University promises to throw into the shade every building in Britain in the exquisite beauty of its interior apartments; and the traveller who enters the great museum is transported to the regions of classical taste, and feels that the taste which formed the superb hall in Dioclesian's baths, and modelled the glorious dome of the Pantheon, yet lives in our northern regions; and that the same name, which is so honourably distinguished among the philosophers of the age, is destined to be associated also with the greatest triumphs and most splendid productions of art. The continuance of this taste, and the progressive improvement of our public edifices, is a subject of interest not merely to the citizens of this me VOL. VI. tropolis, but to the whole inhabitants of the empire. There is nothing which contributes so much to uphold the fortunes of a city, or to improve the taste of its inhabitants, as the existence of great models of art within its walls. To this day, travellers are attracted from the most parts of the world, by the beauty of the edifices which have survived the political decay of Athens. The cities of Florence and Naples owe almost all their present celebrity and prosperity to the magnificent models of art which they contain, and the Piazza St Marco of Venice upholds the fortunes of the city amidst the utter ruin of her commercial and political greatness. We are informed by Gibbon, that Rome itself, the mistress of the world, would have sunk under the accumulated disasters which followed the wars of Belisarius and Narses, and have been converted into a perfect desert, but for the sanctity of the tomb of St Peter, and the interest which the beautiful ruins with which it abounded created on the revival of the arts. The importance of such public edifices was well understood by Bonaparte ; and every body knows, that the great works which he executed in every part of the empire, but especially at Paris, contributed as much to establish his popularity as the lustre of his foreign conquests. Now, in the eventual desertion of this city by the higher ranks of the nobility and gentry who have hitherto made it their residence, and in the risk which it runs of degenerating into a provincial town, and ceasing to be eminent either in science or art, it is a matter of the last importance to establish some great and permanent objects of attraction, which may survive the fluctuating taste of fashion, and counterbalance the strong propensity which draws every thing that is distinguished, either in genius or manners, to our southern metropolis. Such an object Nature has given to her people, in the matchless beauty of its situation, and the admirable quality of the quarries by which the city is surrounded. These circumstances have given Edinburgh the means of obtaining architectural ornament to a degree infinitely beyond any other city in the empire, and if properly improved by S the public spirit and taste of the inhabitants, promise to combine with the eminence of its university in making it the northern capital of science and of art. But towards the attainment of this great and most desirable object, which we wish in the most earnest manner to press upon the attention of the leading men in the country, it is absolutely necessary that the great models of ancient art should be established amongst us, and that the public taste should be formed on those perfect edifices which the genius of ancient Greece has bequeathed to the succeeding generations of men. In this respect there is a wide difference, which has never been sufficiently at tended to, between the progress of literature or poetry and the improvement of art. In literature and science the works of ancient genius are in every body's hands, and the taste of succeeding generations is formed upon the incessant study and habitual influence of the most perfect works of former times. It is thus that Homer and Virgil laid the foundation of the immortal works of Milton and Tasso; and it is from the unceasing influence which their beauties have exercised upon succeeding times, that the present eminence of the age in poetry and eloquence has arisen. But, in the fine arts, the models of antiquity are fixed to one place, and their influence is wholly unfelt by nations a little removed from their vicinity. No art of printing there exists to perpetuate and multiply the glorious achievements of the human mind, or to imbue distant nations with the sublime ideas and perfect taste by which they were at first created: And if this is true in general of the fine arts, most of all is it true of architecture; for though the art of engraving can extend to a great degree the taste for painting, beyond the sphere of those who have seen the originals, yet it is matter of universal observation, that such copies give no conception of architectural beauty, or of the proportions on which it depends. Universally, therefore, in modern times, the revival of art, and the improvement of taste, have been in the neighbourhood of the remains of angient genius. It was from the study of the great statues of antiquity, that Raphael and Michael Angelo corrected the stiffness of their early manner, and brought the art of painting to perfection in the space of a single generation. It was in the same spot, and from the influence of the same causes, that the sublime conceptions of Dominichino and the Caraccis arose. Michael Angelo, we are told, boasted that he would build the Pantheon in the air; and in the dome of St Peters, there remains a monument of the force of his genius, chastened by the incessant study of that matchless edifice. The superb archi tecture of Sansuvino and Palladio is formed entirely on the study of the Colyseum of Rome; and the Piazza St Marco would not have stood aloof from every thing else in architectural beauty, had not the minds of its authors been imbued by the study of an cient symmetry. Nor is it to be forgotten, that the art of sculpture has been revived in modern times from the same causes; and that it is in Rome, amidst the remains of ancient art, that the genius of the north has been compelled to seek the spark by which the fire of Grecian genius could alone be rekindled. This is the real cause of that singu lar phenomenon in the present condition of mankind-that while England and France have outstripped all other nations in the career of knowledge, of eloquence, and of philosophy, and while there exists in this country far more wealth for the encouragement of art than ever was before accumulated in modern Europe-yet both na tions are so decidedly inferior to the Italians in the arts that address them. selves to the imagination; and that the same nation who justly pride them selves upon their acknowledged supe riority in every department of human genius, should still be compelled to borrow, from a people whom they despise, the rules and the models of the fine arts. The solution of this extraordinary problem, so unlike any thing else which we know of human affairs, is to be found in the absence of those models of ancient art, upon which the taste of modern Italy has been formed, and without which all the efforts of genius, like the wanderings of the Israelites who had lost their celestial guide, leads yet farther from the promised land. When we earnestly wish to impress upon the public attention, therefore, the propriety of selecting the Parthe non as the model for the National |