depends on no other word.

But by prefixing if, I make the statement dependent-"If I touch:" my touching is now a supposition, and not a fact. If, it has been said, is gif (that is, give) in a contracted form. In full, therefore, the sentence would be "give (or suppose) that I touch." The latter form is a twofold sentence consisting of give and I touch. These two are united by that. In ordinary use, however, the two are blended together, and form "if I touch." Consequently, the form "if I touch" may be called elliptical as well as dependent.

In this instance the ellipsis takes place at the beginning. In the ensuing instance, namely, "If he touch," it takes place in the middle, that is, between he and touch; one of the words, may, can, shall, should, being left out, as, "If he may touch," "if he can touch," etc. I will transcribe an illustration from the Bible (compare 1 Sam. xx. 7; 2 Kings x. 6; Hosea viii. 7; John xv. 18).

"And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation: but if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him." (2 Sam. xv. 25, 26.)

Now observe that the two forms, "if I shall find" and "if he thus say," stand in precisely the same relation to the remainder of what the king said. Bearing the same relation, they have the same construction. Consequently, "if I shall find" and "if he say" are grammatically identical forms. The second form is therefore elliptical, the word shall being omitted. The two forms might indeed stand thus:

ELLIPTICAL FORM.

If I find
If he say

ΟΥ

FULL FORM.

If I shall find. If he shall say. The former is elliptical and dependent, and may be called elliptical-dependent; the latter is simply dependent.

There are certain verbs which enter into combination with (nearly) all other verbs, and entering into combination with other verbs, variously affect and alter their import. They are commonly called "Auxiliary verbs," because by their aid (in Latin auxilium) the other verbs are what is called " conjugated." They are be, have, do, shall, will, may, can, let, must, and probably ought and dare.

TO BE."

"6 PARADIGM OF THE VERB Principal Parts.-To be, being, am, was.

INDEPENDENT FORM.

Pres. Tense.

Sing. I am.

Thou art.

He is.

Plur. We are.

You are.
They are.

DEPENDENT

Past Tense. I was. Thou wast. He was. We were. You were. They were.

Pres. Tense. Sing. If I be.

If thou be. If he be. Plur. If we be.

If you be.
If they be.

FORM. Past Tense. If I were. If thou wert. If he were. If we were. If you were. If they were.

Indefinite form, to be; imperative form, be thou, be ye; present participle, being; past participle, been. The only forms that really belong to the verb to be, are be, being, am, art, is, was, wast, were, wert.

Be used to be employed where we now uso am, art, is, etc.; thus, I be, thou bees, ho bist, we be, you be, they be. Henco the form, commonly called a subjunctive mood, namely, "if I be," "if he be," etc.

I have given one indefinite form, namely, be in to be; as"To be contents his natural desire."-Pope.

In this instance the infinitive occupies the position of a noun substantive in the nominative case.

But being, which appears as a noun-as, our being's end and aim"-may also appear as an infinitive, that is, as a second indefinite form; as

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persons connected on one side or the other with the persecution. But the real subject of the play is the conflict of good and evil, and the triumph of good, not in the world, but over it. The real leaders of the conflict in Cæsarea are Angelo (an angel passing as the page of Dorothea) and Harpax (a demon disguised as the servant of Theophilus). The stage is crowded with murders, tortures, and every form of physical cruelty, to an extent that would be simply revolting if we missed the key-note of the whole. That key-note is the victory of Christian faith in and through pain and death, and virtue finding as its reward suffering in this world, happiness in another. Miracles are ordinary incidents of the play. Theophilus himself is at its close converted by the visit of an angelic messenger, bearing him a basket of fruits and flowers from the gardens of Paradise. It is difficult to conceive anything more entirely out of harmony with the whole tone of thought and feeling in England under James I. than the "Virgin Martyr." The play is as powerful as it is strange, and there is no doubt that it was a popular piece. Of tragedies, in the strictest sense of the term, there are a considerable number among Massinger's plays. The finest of these are probably "The Duke of Milan," "The Unnatural Combat," and "The Fatal Dowry ;" and we can hardly recommend to the student a better example of Massinger's powers in tragedy than the last-mentioned of these plays. It opens with several very powerful scenes, in which the hero, Charalois, is introduced in extreme distress, sacrificing his own liberty to save his father's corpse from his exacting creditors, and secure for it the common decencies of burial. He is rescued from his calamities, and his debts are paid by the noble and wealthy Rochfort, who crowns his favours by giving his daughter in marriage to Charalois. The infidelity of Beaumelle, the vengeance of her husband upon herself and her paramour, Novall, and the death of Charalois at the hands of Novall's friend, form the story of the play. Painful as that story is, the mode in which it is conducted is characteristic of Massinger. There is no tampering with the bounds of right and wrong; none even of that gross and animal character about the heroine's fall which we so often find in Fletcher's plays. The husband whom Beaumelle wrongs is not the husband of her choice, but a stranger imposed upon her by her father's will. The man for whom she sacrifices her honour is the man whom she had loved before marriage. Her repentance and her punishment are rapid and thorough. Nor is hers the only character in which similar principles are to be traced; the moral lessons of the play are in all cases clear and true. The following lines from the speech of Charalois to his judges, when arraigned before them for the death of his wife and her paramour, afford a good example of Massinger's style :

"Then I confess, my lords, that I stood bound,
When, with my friends, even hope itself had left me,
To this man's charity for my liberty.
Nor did his bounty end there, but began ;
For, after my enlargement, cherishing

The good he did, he made me master of
His only daughter and his whole estate-
Great ties of thankfulness, I must acknowledge.
Could any one fee'd by you press this further ?
But yet consider, my most honoured lords,
If to receive a favour make a servant,
And benefits are bonds to tie the taker
To the imperious will of him that gives,

There's none but slaves will receive courtesies,

Since they must fetter us to our dishonours.
Can it be called maguificence in a prince
To pour down riches with a liberal hand
Upon a poor man's wants, if that must bind him
To play the soothing parasite to his vices ?
Or any man, because he saved my hand,

Presume my head and heart are at his service?
Or did I stand engaged to buy my freedom

(When my captivity was honourable)

By making myself here, and fame hereafter,
Bond-slaves to men's scorn and calumnious tongues?
Had his fair daughter's mind been like her feature,
Or, for some little blemish, I had sought
For my content elsewhere, wasting on others
My body and her dower, my forehead then
Deserved the brand of base ingratitude;
But if obsequious usage, and fair warning

To keep her worth my love, could not preserve her
From being a whore-and yet no cunning one,

The former, I confess it; but with what
Base wrongs I was unwillingly drawn to it,
To my few words there are some other proofs
To witness thus for truth. When I was married-
For there I must begin-the slain Novall
Was to my wife, in way of our French courtship,
A most devoted servant; but yet aimed at
Nothing but means to quench his wanton heat,"
His heart being never warmed by lawful fires,

As mine was, lords; and though, on these presumptions,
Joined to the hate between his house and mine,

I might, with opportunity and ease,

Have found a way for my revenge; I did not.
But still he had the freedom as before,
When all was mine. And, told that he abused it
With some unseemly licence, by my friend-
My approved friend, Romont-I gave no credit
To the reporter, but reproved him for it,
As one uncourtly and malicious to him.
What could I more, my lords? Yet, after this,
He did continue in his first pursuit,

Hotter than ever, and at length obtained it.
But how it came to my most certain knowledge,
For the dignity of the court, and mine own honour,
I dare not say."

FORD

Somewhat similar to Massinger in the character of his genius was his contemporary, John Ford. He was born in 1586, of a respectable Devonshire family. In 1602 he became a member of the Middle Temple, but it does not appear that he ever actually joined the bar. It is clear, from the dedications prefixed by Ford to his various plays, that literature was not his sole pursuit in life, though what his other employments were cannot be certainly ascertained; and as he had wealthy and influential connections, being the grandson on his mother's side of Popham, the Chief Justice of England, it is probable that he never felt the burden of poverty under which most of his fellow-dramatists laboured. These circumstances, together with a sensitive and reserved disposition, are quite sufficient to explain the fact of Ford's having written comparatively few pieces for the stage. Those which he has left us are, however, abundantly sufficient to stamp him as a great dramatist. The bent of his genius is essentially tragic. In depicting blighted affections, disappointed ambition, in everything that appeals to our pity, he is masterly. In wit and humour he is wholly deficient. His language and versification have a peculiar power and beauty, and are admirably adapted for conveying those images of tenderness and pity in which he delighted. The plays

of Ford which will probably give the greatest pleasure to most readers are the historical play of "Perkin Warbeck," "The Broken Heart," and a play frightful in subject, but singularly powerful and noble in execution-" Annabella and Giovanni,” known also by several other names.

WEBSTER.

The genius of John Webster was one of the most striking in its character, even more than in its power, among all those that adorned the Elizabethan age. Of Webster's personal history we know nothing; the time or place of his birth or of his death, his parentage, the circumstances of his life, his social position and habits, cannot be ascertained. And this is especially disappointing in the case of one whose works are marked with so strong an individuality as Webster's. We merely know of him that he was a contemporary of Massinger, Ford, and the rest of the younger school of Elizabethan dramatists. There is little doubt that he was at times employed either to work with other dramatists in the composition of plays, or to improve upon the works of earlier authors, as well as producing plays wholly his own. The works of Webster which have come down to us are few; and though some others have been lost, there is no reason to suppose that he was ever a very voluminous writer.

Among all the Elizabethan dramatists there is no other who so strongly reminds us of Shakespeare as Webster, and none, probably, who in a certain department stands so nearly on a level with Shakespeare. Not that any one would be justified in comparing the two in respect of the general scope of their powers: Shakespeare's genius is, above all things, many sided; he is equally at home in gloom and in sunshine, in portraying the anguish of Lear or Othello, or the bright fairyland of the "Midsummer Night's Dream." The music of Webster is all in one key-a key of profound melancholy. His lightest mood is that expressed in his own words :

"I do love these ancient ruins.
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history;
And questionless, here in this open court,
Which now lies open to the injuries

Of stormy weather, some men lie interred

Loved the church so well, and gave so largely to it,
They thought it should have canopied their bones
Till Doomsday. But all things have their end:
Churches and cities, which have diseases like to men,
Must have like death that we have,"

But in pure tragedy Webster is a consummate master. He can ransack nature and the supernatural world, giving free play to a most active imagination and endless ingenuity, to accumulate images of horror; yet without ever overstepping the line dividing that whieh fascinates by its horror and sadness from that which disgusts, for with Webster the physical is always subordinate to the moral, the physical suffering a mere accessory to the mental anguish. He has a marvellous power of painting character from the true tragic point of view, character under the tension of passion, minds not only noble in suffering, but ennobled by suffering. And his style is in harmony with the subject which he chooses, always dignified and expressive, full of variety in its imagery, yet always in the same key of sadness.

her.

The greatest of Webster's works are "The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona," and "The Duchess of Malfi." The former of these is a very remarkable play, especially in the mode in which the character of Vittoria is conceived and worked out. "The Duchess of Malfi" is one of the most powerful plays in our language. The outlines of its story are simple. The widowed Duchess of Malfi is secretly married to her steward, Antonio, a husband, but for his birth, in every way worthy of This marriage comes to the knowledge of her two brothers, Duke Ferdinand and the Cardinal, two men whose characters-the coarse pride and passionate cruelty of the one, and the cold, selfish cunning of the other-are admirably contrasted. They determine to be avenged; they succeed in separating the husband and wife, banishing the husband, and seizing and imprisoning the wife. To her they apply every kind of mental torture which ingenuity could devise, and ultimately strangle her and her younger children in prison. Of this part of the play Charles Lamb well wrote:-" All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the duchess's death is ushered in are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance than the strange character of suffering when they seem to bring upon their victim is beyond the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not the inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she has become native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair; her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and of the souls in bale. What are Luke's iron crown, the brazen bull of Perillus, Proerustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may 'upon horror's head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they terrify babes with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity; their affrightments are without decorum." And the Nemesis which overtakes the guilty brothers is hardly less powerfully drawn than the sufferings of their victim. One brother, under the terrors of

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a guilty conscience, is smitten with that form of madness once so universally believed in-lycanthropy:

"In those that are possessed with 't, there o'erflows
Such melancholy humour, they imagine
Themselves to be transformed into wolves;

Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night,
And dig dead bodies up."

Both brothers ultimately fall by the hand of the man who had been the instrument of their crimes; while he, in turn, after aggravating the remorse which tormented him by accidentally killing Antonio, falls by the hand of the madman.

Our space does not allow us to illustrate this play by many quotations, and, of course, extracts would at best convey but little idea of its effect. Webster seems to have concentrated his power especially upon the character of the duchess, and her language is naturally the most characteristic of the author. What can be more pathetic than her protest against her brothers' tyrannical hostility to her marriage ?—

"The birds that live in the field,

On the wild benefit of nature, live

Happier than we: for they may choose their mates,
And carol their sweet pleasures to the spring."

In her height of misery she exclaims

"Oh, that it were possible we might

But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should know somewhat, I am sure,

I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle;

I am not mad yet to my cause of sorrow.

Th' heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur; yet I am not mad.

I am acquainted with sad misery,

As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar:
Necessity makes me suffer constantly,

And custom makes it easy."

THE MINOR DRAMATISTS.

The drama of the Elizabethan ages would be very insufficiently estimated if it were judged only by the greatness of its greatest men; it was no less conspicuous for the number of sible in such lessons as these to give any full account of the names of striking, though inferior merit. It would be imposdramatists of this class; but there are some whose names, at Middleton was a very prolific least, ought not to be passed by. writer, and his comedies especially are of great merit. The serious dramas of Marston are manly and vigorous. Decker must have been one of the most active writers of his day; but he wrote chiefly in conjunction with others, and there is hardly one of the better known Elizabethan dramatists with whom he was not at some time a coadjutor. Chapman, whom we have already mentioned as a poet and the translator of Homer, was in his own day not less popular as a dramatist. Tourneur, the least, and Heywood, almost the most, voluminous writers of the day, would have acquired higher fame in any age but that in which they lived.

The following is a brief specimen of Heywood's writing, he says of the sources from which he derived the plots of his selected from a prologue to one of his numerous plays. What plays, and the characters that figure in them, may be said of all the dramatists of the Elizabethan period :

"To give content to this most curious age,

The gods themselves we've brought down to the stage,
And figured them in planets; made even hell
Deliver up the furies, by no spell

Saving the Muse's rapture-further we
Have trafficked by their help; no history
We have left unrifled; our pens have been dipped
As well in opening each hid manuscript

As tracks more vulgar, whether read or sung

In our domestic or more foreign tongue :
Of fairies, elves, nymphs of the sea and land,
The lawns, the groves, no number can be scanned
Which we have not given feet to."

The last of the great race of dramatists was Shirley, who was born at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, lived through the whole period of the civil contests and the Commonwealth, and survived by some years the Restoration. We possess no less than forty of his plays; they are in no respect entitled to rank with the works of the great masters among whom Shirley's youth was passed.

LESSONS IN GEOLOGY.-XXI.

THE TRIASSIC GROUP (continued).

THE plants of the triassic period bear a strong analogy to the fauna of the lias and oolite above, chiefly consisting of ferns, cycads, and conifers, and in some localities at least the triassic forests must have been comparable to those of the carboniferous times; for near Richmond, in Virginia, there is a coal-field, some twenty-six miles long, belonging to the trias. The coal it yields is equal to that of our Newcastle coal-field. The bed is very thick, some of the chambers in the mine being 40 feet high. The Equisetum columnare, which is common in our English trias and oolite, is of very frequent occurrence in the Richmond beds, and is often in an upright position. The sketch we furnish of a triassic forest will give an idea of the flora of the period.

Although the trias yields with us no coal, yet it is valuable