chase appeared to be drawing to a close. The trunk of the elephant was already stretched forward to grasp him, when he made a sudden turn; the elephant overshot his mark, and, for one moment, was at fault, apparently uncertain in which direction his victim had fled. The Doctor, seeing his advantage, began, with all diligence, to climb the tree behind which he had sheltered himself. He was already several feet from the ground, and his arm was outstretched to grasp a branch which would have raised him to a place of safety, when the elephant, catching a hasty glimpse of him, dashed at him with redoubled fury, twisted his trunk round his legs, hurled him to the ground, rushed upon him, as he lay, stunned and bleeding, and, kneeling down, drove at him, furiously, with his enormous tusks, burying them up to the very root. At this moment, Mansfield, who had followed the chase, dodging cautiously from tree to tree, in hopes that some lucky turn might give him a steady shot at the elephant's head, came in sight of the bloody scene. "The Lord have mercy on his soul, for he is beyond the aid of man !” exclaimed he, dropping the but-end of his rifle to the ground, and leaning against a tree, sick and giddy at the ghastly sight. The elephant rose from his knees, picked up the body of the unfortunate Doctor in his trunk, tossed it to a short distance, and stood gazing on his victim, with flaming eyes, as if gathering fresh breath, before he rushed at him again, to finish the work of death, by trampling him with his feet. By heavens you shall not complete your bloody work!" muttered Mansfield, grinding his teeth, and raising his rifle, with a steadiness of hand which never forsook him, even in the most desperate situations. The deadly bullet sped true to the mark, entering the eye, and burying itself in the brain of the elephant. The gigantic brute uttered one shrill scream of mingled rage and pain, and, sinking slowly to the ground, rolled over like a falling tower. Charles, followed by the Jaggardar, now came running to the scene of action, and, by way of making sure, discharged both barrels into the head of the elephant; but he moved not, Mansfield's shot had done the work effectually. "And so there is an end of poor Macphee," said Mansfield, casting a melancholy look on the breathless body of the poor Doctor, as it lay at his feet, covered with blood and dust. "I feel a sad remorse of conscience for having persuaded the poor fellow to join in a dangerous sport for which he was so ill adapted. But it is worse than useless to make vain lamentations now. Kamah, do you cut a few stout bamboos; we must prepare something in the shape of a litter to carry home the body." And Mansfield proceeded, instinctively, to re-load his rifle, whilst his proud lip quivered, and the unbidden tear started to his eye, for, with all his haughty exterior, he had the soft heart of a woman. Charles, completely overcome by the scene, threw himself at the root of a tree, and buried his face in his hands; and even the savage features of the Jaggardar were softened into something like pity as he stood, with folded arms, gazing on the work of destruction. 66 By Jove, he still breathes!" cried Mansfield, dashing his rifle to the ground, and flying to raise the head of the poor Doctor, as a faint groan reached his ear. "This is indeed miraculous !"—and hastily tearing open the jacket, he discovered, to his infinite joy, that, although his face was deadly pale, and his clothes smeared with blood and dirt, the Doctor's body was perfectly uninjured. It appeared that the elephant, blinded, probably, by the blood which flowed from the wounds in his forehead, had missed his aim, and instead of transfixing his victim, as he intended, had buried his tusks in the ground, on each side of his body, thus holding him down, as if within the prongs of an enormous pitchfork, and, of course, covering him with the blood, which flowed from his own wounds.* In short, the Doctor, in spite of his ghastly and bloodstained figure, had escaped with no other injury than being stunned and severely bruised by the first toss. A strong dose of brandy, which Mansfield poured down his throat, soon revived him, and so far restored his spirits that he was enabled to examine the head of his fallen enemy, and discovered, to his immeasurable satisfaction, that some straggling drops of the grit shot had actually taken effect. "Faith, Meg, my woman," said he, apostrophising the old fusee, which the Jaggardar had picked up and restored to him, " you have had a tight morning's work of it, and, by my troth, it will be long enough afore ye hae the like again, at least in my company. Captain, a wee drap mair out o' your bottle, if you please, for I feel a kind o' fainting about my heart. But, stout or faint, it will ne'er forget the gude turn you have done me this day; here is your health, and my blessing be upon you and your trusty weapon!" So saying, the Doctor gulped down his brandy, while the big tears of gratitude dimmed his eye, and, finding himself wonderfully refreshed, proceeded to limp off toward the camp, supported by his two young companions. KOONDAH. A WOMAN'S WARNING. To save me from heart-ache, mistakes to avert, is a general flirt !" What a crime! he'd rejoice at her mode of abusing, But does friendship or anger occasion her terror- Exclusive devotion to her he's refused! LOUISA H. SHERIDAN. * This extraordinary escape from a wild elephant is a fact, THE DRAMA OF ITALY. 99 66 "TRAGEDIES and comedies," says Frederick Schlegel, in his "Lectures on the History of Literature," are never written except in an age which has made considerable progress in refinement and knowledge." This is an aphorism which appears to us to approach so near to what the dialecticians call a self-evident proposition that there scarcely needs the authority of all experience to force us into the acceptance of it. Both tragedy and comedy are, in all their details-in the feelings which they delineate, in the manners which they describe, in the mode by which they carry on the action of the story, in the plot and in the dénouement-so completely removed from all that can be accessible to a barbarian's observation, that the idea of having recourse to either as an instrument wherewith to affect the passions of others could not possibly occur to him. Accordingly, it will be found that in all languages, and among every tribe of men of whose literature even a fragment has come down to us, the epic, the pastoral, the lyric, the devotional in poetry, were all well carried on towards their utmost degree of attainable perfection, ere by the dramatic the first feeble movements were made in advance. Among the Greeks, Homer and Hesiod had both sung long before Eschylus put in his claim to admiration. Of the Hindoo poetry, by far the most ancient is a species of pastoral. The Norsemen produced magnificent odes, yet there was no tragedy among them; and Ossian and the Welsh bards were lyrists. We might continue this illustration by a reference to the poetry of the Hebrews, of the Arabs, of the Saracens, and, indeed, of all the many sections into which the great family of mankind has been divided, were it necessary, but it is not. In the rise and progress of dramatic literature in Italy we find more than enough to bear us out in the view which we have taken of one of the most interesting subjects which has ever yet engaged the attention of the scholar; and to the consideration of that topic, wide enough in all conscience to satisfy either a magazine reader or a magazine writer, we shall for the present confine ourselves. It is a curious fact that though Italy suffered less and recovered sooner from the darkening influence of the Barbarian conquest than any other country in western Europe, she took a longer time to bring her drama to maturity than either France, or Spain, or Germany, or even England. Not that there ever was a period when Italy was destitute of what may perhaps be called dramatic literature. She clung fondly even in her day of deepest degradation to the thought of brighter years, and the memory of what Terence and Plautus had done was never absolutely blotted out. But nothing at all akin to tragedy and comedy, such as we find them moulded into form by Shakspeare among ourselves, or Molière in in France, ever became a portion of the literature of Italy till the middle of the eighteenth century. This is a very striking circumstance; yet is it capable of the most satisfactory demonstration, and the following sketch, if it serve no other purpose, will, at least, put the curious who may be inclined to doubt our authority in the way of satisfying themselves that it is deserving of their confidence. For the first two or three centuries after the conquest of their country July.-VOL. LIII. NO. CCXI. Z by the Goths and Lombards, the only species of literature which obtained any attention among the Italians was history. We make no mention, of course, of theology, for that, such as it was, always held its ground but history, and especially the history of the church, seems to have been the single subject to which for a long while the Italians paid any regard. One poet we do, indeed, find, during the reign of Theodoric, the ill-fated philosopher Boetius; but his muse attempted no higher flight than to describe the sorrows of her votary, and she found none to cultivate her favours after his murder. It was a dark and stormy agean age of continual warfare and suffering, which left leisure to none, save the inmates of cloisters, for the cultivation of their minds; and the tastes which the cloister encouraged were in no instance favourable to the development of powers more mercurial than patient and indefatigable industry. The course of events gradually brought back to Italy the repose of which she stood in need; and the genius of the people, not less than their prejudices, began immediately to display themselves. Poets arose in abundance. But, hating their conquerors, and despising their very language, out of which, however, their own was by this time formed, they confined themselves in all their productions, whether of prose or verse, to the Latin. For a brief space the charm of the Provençal minstrelsy overcame this prejudice. Troubadours arose in Italy as well as elsewhere, and lyres were strung to lighter measures than the stiffened cadence of the Latin tongue would admit; yet, strange to say, with the ideas of these warrior-bards, the Italians adopted also their language. The gay science, wherever cultivated in Italy, produced but a collection of Provençal lyrics. We have alluded to the extreme partiality of the Italians to their classical ancestry. Though their blood became of course thoroughly mixed, and a Lombard genealogy stared them in the face, there was not one of the noble families which omitted to trace their origin back to one of the patrician houses of old Rome. Moreover the love of shows and games, which they encouraged with the utmost eagerness, was by them represented as an heritage left to them by their Roman ancestors, and rude and ribald scenas were sedulously cultivated in memory of the pantomimes which Augustus encouraged, and Tiberias was not strong enough to abolish. Meanwhile, the clergy, in whose hands all the learning and a vast proportion of the wealth of Italy rested, were not behind their lay neighbours in the encouragement of this national taste. They got up Mysteries, in which sacred subjects were handled, and prophets and apostles, and even the Redeemer himself, were brought as actors on the stage, and exhibited them to the edification and delight of the people, almost always in the chancels of their churches. The first tragedian who, in any sense of the expression, deserves the name, of whom the annals of modern Italy make mention, is Albertino Messato. He flourished in the very beginning of the fourteenth century, and has left behind him two pieces, both written in Latin, and both composed strictly on the classical model. We refer especially to him as the framer of this species of literature in Italy, because, of the many farces that were enacted there, all were but the spontaneous efforts of improvisatores, while the Mysteries were without plan, or arrangement, or plot, and sought to accomplish little else than the gratification of the sense of sight. But Albertino Messato's was a flight of a loftier order, and it did not entirely fail. His "Death of Ezzelino, the Tyrant of Padua," is a close imitation of Seneca, having five acts and a chorus, which comes in at the close of each. Moreover, it has the merit of having dealt with a subject which was not only national in the strictest acceptation of the term, but familiar to the audience before whom the representation took place. It was well relished by the learned: but the learned were then a small, though a growing body, and it does not seem to have produced any strong effect upon what we may describe as the public taste. The Mysteries held their ground at Rome, Florence, and elsewhere, and "The Death of Ezzelino " sank gradually into disrepute. Something more than a century elapsed ere Gregorio Corraro, a noble Venetian, made another effort to bring back the taste for tragic representation. He was followed by Landevio of Vezzano, who, in Latin iambics, produced a piece entitled "De Captivitate Ducis Jacobi Tragædia," of which the famous Jacopo Picciunino was the hero. Both writers adhered to the classic model, rendering their tragedies little else than pieces of declamation: yet both, like Albertino Messato, made choice of familiar subjects. Even in this respect, however, they exerted no permanent influence over the national taste, The tide was now set strongly in favour of the ancients. Men, to be admired, must not only write in Latin, but write as if the age were that of the Ciceros and the Cæsars; till finally translations of Seneca and Plautus, and even of Eschylus and Sophocles, entirely superseded everything else. From time to time a poet would, indeed, adventure upon some plot which did not lie amid the worn-out mythology of other days; but even he never deviated a hair's-breadth from the machinery which would have been used, had the Fates, and Jupiter, and the Furies of the olden time, been still legitimate instruments wherewith to work upon the passions. While Tragedy thus lingered on the outermost threshold of the classical tastes, the progress of Comedy towards order was neither more rapid nor more brilliant. As has been said already, it aimed during the dark ages at no higher rank than mere pantomime, and was regarded, par excellence, as the sport of the people, to whom spectacle was much more attractive than the most brilliant wit. In process of time, however, that is to say, in the thirteenth century, the custom of improvising arose; and then all classes of persons affected to discover in this mimicry ample source of amusement. Next came the period of the revival of what was called a purer taste; when, in the fifteenth century, and early in the sixteenth, the classical comedy had its patrons. But these were to be found only among the scholars, the bishops, and clergy of the age. The people, and not a few of the lay nobles, adhered still to the mimes, whose gross indecencies passed current as amazing efforts of genius among men incapable of relishing a higher order of wit. At the same time it is fair to add that, about the close of the fifteenth century, the mimes took for a season much higher ground. Flaminio Scala, himself a comic performer, laid then the foundation of the regular Italian comedy, by introducing the practice of writing out the plot of each mime, and leaving to the actors no wider license than was necessary to aid in filling up the details. He carried his power of satire, however, to such an extent, that Charles Boromeo, Archbishop of Milan, fulminated a severe decree against him; and as the art was |