lege party. How, he demanded, can you effectually protect your witness from an action? You may You may commit the plaintiff, and his attorney or his counsel, but that does not put an end to the action. You may order the defendant not to plead, but the action goes on; the plaintiff obtains unhesitatingly judgment for want of a plea, and a writ of enquiry ensues, damages are assessed, and execution is levied. Nay, even if the Judges are imprisoned, still the action survives. Nothing can more plainly show how completely these boasted privileges are at the mercy of any who may choose to brave the Houses. Now, Lord Campbell is too good a lawyer not to feel the inconvenience of this dilemma in which the Houses are placed; and, accordingly, he brought in a bill for what he called remedying the evil, and supplying this glaring defect in the code of Privilege. But other champions of Privilege hold this proceeding of his Lordship in perfect abhorrence, and regard it as at once and for ever abandoning the whole of their claims and principles. So we shall hear no more of Lord Campbell's bill, and the argument which it was designed to meet must remain unanswered, as it is unanswerable.

Party politics are wholly foreign to this discussion. Both parties have sinned-both have suffered; yet the Whigs of former times could boast that Privilege was asserted by them in furtherance of popular rights-defying and resisting an unconstitutional system attempted by the Crown. Their denunciation and persecution of the Abhorrers, of James Duke of York, of the Earl of Danby, had this redeeming quality. If they could not always maintain the precise issues which they raised, their cause was the cause of liberty and justice. Since the Revolution, when their efforts were crowned by securing the dominion of the laws, and the independence of the judges, they opposed, with all their might, the imprisonment of Colepeper and of Paty; and the monstrous career of iniquity recorded under the title of Ashby v. White. With all the powers of argument, eloquence, and sarcasm, they exposed the proceedings by which Wilkes was hunted down. The only exception to this praise, is the ungenerous vote which consigned the two Judges to Newgate for having faithfully discharged their duty.

Considering the part which this Journal has taken during so many years in the discussion of public affairs, we have not felt ourselves justified in being silent when we have seen a great change introduced, which we believe to be most unfavourable to our free institutions, and to the general interests of liberty. Nor could we hesitate as to the part which we ought to take. Much might be added to what we have now advanced-many of our materials might be placed in different lights. But we were not idle

when the first ground for alarm was given; nor can we slumber now, when it has threatened a new and more practical danger. Sincerely believing that the moderation and good sense which now regulate public affairs have been diverted by particular circumstances from giving due weight to these important considerations, we trust that they will not be lost on our leading public men. Our earnest and sincere remonstrance would not have been thus urged, had we not been actuated by this conviction. If we had been required to state the worst consequences which the unlimited claim of Privilege could produce, we should have been disposed to say, It may even interpose to 'obstruct the free course of justice, and the due execution of the 'laws.' This consequence has ensued, but in a moment of haste and inflammation. Without any stretch of imagination, it may be multiplied indefinitely, and be found in a short time actively interfering with all the interests of every class. We do not, however, rest our argument on any examples-we rest on the general principle. M. Guizot does not warn against slavery by a specification of the calamities and crimes which it may engender; but denounces it in the general as ce mal des maux, cette iniquité des iniquités. So say we of Arbitrary Power, in all its forms, and under all its disguises.

ART. II.-1. Othello, Tragédie de Shakspeare; traduit par le Comte Alfred de Vigny. (Œuvres complètes, Vol. VI. Paris.) 2. Hamlet, Tragédie de Shakspeare; traduit par M. Léon de Wailly. (MS. Paris.)

3. Jules César, Tragédie de Shakspeare; traduit par M. Auguste Barbier. (MS. Paris.)

HOSE who were in Paris last winter, will not easily forget the sensation produced there by the representation of English Tragedy by English Actors. The Theatre presented a curious spectacle.

On the night on which we were present the House was crowded. At least half the audience held books in their hands, between which and the stage they managed to divide their attention. Some were incessantly occupied in interpreting what was going on to their less learned neighbours. Many appeared resolutely absorbed, and one might discern a considerable anxiety to look as if they understood all that passed, and to be moved by pity or by terror in the right place. Some, on the contrary,

'less works the words genius and glory. Now the glory and the genius of Shakspeare are no longer discussed. Nobody 'contests them; a greater question has arisen, viz.— Whether the dramatic system of Shakspeare is not better than that of • Voltaire ?'

M. Guizot's Essay was published in 1821, and doubtless contributed not a little to prepare the way for what was to come. It is curious and interesting to see how the candid, accurate, and conscientious appreciation of other conditions of moral and political life than those under which he lives, which is perhaps the most remarkable, though far from the most popular quality of the great statesman,-displays itself in the remarks of the critic. The historical sense, (historische sinn) as the Germans call it, shines like a light through the whole Essay. And this sense renders the mind apt for the reception and appreciation of all high and great manifestations of human thought, however new and unfamiliar.

But let us return to the conscientious translators of Shakspeare, -to the men who have devoted so much ability and labour to an enterprise in which even success promised so little recompense.

The dramatic revolution of Paris was anterior to the revolution of July. In 1828, M. Victor Hugo puplished his drama of Cromwell. The work was itself a protest against the constraints imposed on the French drama; and the preface contains an eloquent, though somewhat affected and fantastic plea in favour of innovation. This preface excited much and vehement discussion.

But the most active leader of the émeute against the ancien régime of the stage, was, strange to say, Count Alfred de Vigny instead of trusting to his own forces, he brought the might of Shakspeare himself to bear upon the contest. In the introduction to the sixth volume of his Euvres Complétes, containing his translations of Othello and the Merchant of Venice, published in 1839, he gives the following account of the matter:

'It is precisely ten years since I brought the Moor of Venice on the French stage. Ten years! The events of that time are almost historical. Ten years ! the duration of an empire and a few constitutions! The representation of this tragedy is, then, an event of sufficiently remote antiquity to permit me to speak of it as an impartial historian—a disinterested one, if ever such existed ;-for when I made the Moor storm the citadel of the Théâtre Français, the flag he planted upon it bore the arms of Shakspeare, and not mine. And yet I appeal to the witnesses who have survived that battle-if I had profaned a church the scandal would have been less. It was at a time when politics seemed laid to sleep. The truce afforded by a moderate ministry left only the field of letters open to warfare. The combatants rushed to it with fury, and the pub

lic of Paris seemed to be rehearsing, in these conflicts of the theatre, those which were shortly to follow. In October 1829, I wrote the Letter which is here prefixed to the Tragedy.' The Moor having once entered the citadel, threw open all its gates, and we know from those who, for the last ten years, have entered it, what new and original works were freely represented there, in spite of the superannuated power which had hitherto reigned. This translation [of Shakspeare] is the only one which has ever been acted on the French stage. In the same year I prepared the Merchant of Venice; but I kept it in my portfolio, such as it is here printed. In the midst of the difficulties of all kinds which opposed its production on the stage, the revolution of July broke out, and the noise of our feux d'artifice was drowned in that of the cannon.'—' Nevertheless, as nothing is lost in France, I have full confidence that a monument like that possessed by Germany will gradually be constructed a translation in verse, and fitted for representation, of all the works of Shakspeare. The first stone was laid with difficulty and toil in Othello, and it will remain where it is. I hope the stage itself will complete this work. Several of the masterpieces of Shakspeare have long been ready among us, translated into verse, and prepared by poets who unite to their fine talents a love of art sufficiently generous to make abnegation for a time of their own celebrity. Actors who may feel themselves great enough for such immortal parts, will know where to find Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet ; and from them, I think, will come the accomplishment of an attempt then made so courageously.'

We must also quote a few words from the Letter to Lord on the Representation of the 24th October 1829,' written at the time which follows this brief introduction, and to which M. de Vigny alludes in the foregoing passage :—

What I had to say to the public on the 24th October 1829, was this-There is a simple question to be resolved. It is as followsShall the French stage be opened or not to a modern tragedy, affording: 1st, In its conception, a wide picture of life, instead of a narrow picture of the catastrophe of an intrigue: 2d, In its composition, characters (not parts;) quiet scenes without dramatic action, mingled with comic and tragic scenes: 3d, In its execution, a style familiar, comic, tragic, and sometimes epic ?'

The author goes on to say, that an original or invented tragedy would not have had the requisite authority to sustain such an experiment. It was necessary to take a composition consecrated by the popular voice of ages. 'I give it, not as a model for our time, but as the representation of a foreign monument, ' raised in other times by the most potent hand that ever created 'for the stage.'

We cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of quoting some of M. de Vigny's just and ingenious remarks on the two great systems of dramatic composition:

Consider that in the expiring system every tragedy was a catastrophe, and a dénouement of an action already mature at the rising of the curtain, which held by a thread, and had only to fall again.__Here is the defect which strikes you, as it does all foreigners, in French tragedies-that parsimony of scenes and developments; those factitious delays; and then all at once that hurry to conclude; mingled with the fear, perceptible throughout, of falling short of matter to fill the five acts. Far from diminishing my admiration for the men who followed that system, this consideration heightens it; for every tragedy required a prodigious address, and a host of contrivances to disguise the misère to which they condemned themselves. It is not thus that the dramatic poet will proceed in future. In the first place, he will take in his wide grasp a long period of time, and will fill it with entire existences; he will create man, not as species, but as individual; the only means of interesting men. He will let his creatures live of their own life, and will only cast into their hearts those germs of passion by which great events are prepared; then, when the hour is come, and not till then, without letting us feel that his finger hastens on the event, he will show destiny entwining its victims in folds as large, as multiplied, as inextricable as those in which writhe Laocoon and his sons.' The following passage we will not spoil by translating :— Il fallait, dans des vestibules qui ne menaient à rien, des personnages n'allant nulle part, parlant de peu de chose, avec des idées indécises et des paroles vagues, un peu agités par des sentimens mitigés, des passions paisibles, et arrivant ainsi à une mort gracieuse ou à un soupir faux. O vaine fantasmagorie! Ombres d'hommes dans une ombre de nature! vides royaumes! Inania regna!'

These remarks M. de Vigny applies to the system, and the majority of its followers, not of course to the magnifiques exceptions.'

Nor are we to confound such a just recognition of the defects and entraves of the French drama, and such aspirations after a freer and wider poetical field, with the extravagancies of writers who fancied themselves imitators of Shakspeare, when they were outraging nature, sense, and decency.

The following passage is as just as it is amusing:

'I think it would not be difficult to prove that the power which kept us so long in this world of convention-that the muse of this secondary tragedy, was Politeness. She alone was capable of banishing true characters as coarse; simple language as trivial; the ideality of philosophy and of the passions as extravagance; poetry as bizarrerie.

Politeness, though a daughter of courts, always was, and always will be a leveller; she effaces and flattens every thing; neither too high nor too low is her motto. She does not hear nature, who cries from all parts to genius, in the words of Macbeth, "Come high or low."

'I do not think a foreigner can easily understand what a degree of falsehood our versifiers for the stage-I will not say poets-had reached.