exquisite fitness of the expression. Yet it first emblazoned in our banners, have been is exquisite notwithstanding! May is over the woods like morning; over the woods and "bosky dells," the leaping streams and hill-paths, the dark green lanes and cornfields, churches mantled with ivy that have outlived many generations, and baronial halls that have witnessed ancestral pageants sweeping, age after age, through their noble portals. And here, gentle reader, permit us to interpolate. Not only have we given you to gaze upon the lustrous beauty of these islands-the Princesses of our Blood-the Forms and Faces of the highest-born amongst us, whose innate dignity and pride of nature transcend the pomp of Lineage and Station, -but we have brought before you, as in a mirror such as that of the magicians of the East, in which they show each particular of the scene that appertains to the action they describe, the very places where that beauty sprang to life, the groined windows through which it first gazed upon the glorious skies, the colonnades through which it gamboled in its hours of sport the ancient chambers where former races, its progenitors, dwelt in the authority of their estate the towers, and parapets, and terraces teeming with feudal legends-the storied ruins of neglected neighbourhoods, which the pious hands of heirs have left unmolested—the lawns, and copses, gardens, fountains, statues, rivers, and forests, even to the timid deer, stealing through the trees-the sequestered hermitage, and the hoary well, mantled over with moss. These scenes, purely British, belonging to our annals as well as to our landscapes, mixed up with the grandest deeds of the past, and recalling heroic achievements that, for ever perpetuated in our lordly shields -we have reproduced in our costly series. The offering, were it an hundred fold more costly, would be unworthy of the high purpose it is designed to promote; the attachment of the affections of all classes to those who exercise a presiding and pervading influence in the country--not political, for that is not within our estimate, but a social, enlightening, and refining influence. We will prosecute this pleasant and wellrewarded purpose until its results become more palpable and complete; until the association of Power and ennobling Utility shall have been rendered more visible; and until the present poetry of a chivalrous race shall be felt by the contemporary age, as that age feels and recognises the poetry of its ancient state. The first of May warns us that our "perch of time" waits our coming. But we must have our "Song of the Month." Where shall we find one? Shall we rack and torture rhyme to manufacture one, and risk a thousand aches in the pursuit of conceits? Never, as the valiant man says in the melodrama. Here is our ditty ready at our hands, such as none of our poetasters can emulate-for it is Milton's. SONG ON MAY MORNING. Now the bright Morning-star, Day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire DRINKING SONG. COME, lads, fill your glasses, no stint in the measure,— Let fools range the world in their search after pleasure, CHORUS. With the flagon well fill'd, to the bottom we'll probe her; We are happy at being able to state that his Majesty continues in uninterrupted good health. We regret that we cannot make the same report of the Queen, who has been suffering from a severe cough and oppression of the chest; it gives us, how ever, much pleasure to state that, although her Majesty was not sufficiently well to hold a Drawing-room on the occasion of her Birthday, on the 27th, her Majesty's health is rapidly improving. His Majesty held a Levee on the 5th, 12th, and 26th. The Levee ordered for the 12th, and the Drawing-room for the 12th, were both postponed on account of the melancholy demise of Lady de Lisle. His Majesty held the first Drawing-room for the season on the 20th. H. R. H. the Priness Augusta represented her Majesty. The following Ladies were presented to the King and afterwards to the Princess Augusta :Bateman, Lady, on her elevation to the Peerage, by Lady Katharine Stewart. Beckett, Miss M., by Lady Anne Beckett. Brand, Mrs., on her marriage, by Lady Catherine Browne, Lady Louisa, by the Countess of Wicklow. Browne, Lady Elizabeth, by the Countess of Wicklow. Campbell, Mrs., of Islay, on her marriage, by Lady Charlotte Bury. Cartwright, Lady, by Lady Wheatley. Erskine, Miss Caroline, by her mother, Mrs. Erskine, Miss Selina, by her mother, Mrs. Erskine. Parke, Miss, by Lady Parke. Percy, Miss Louisa, by Countess Amherst. Plymouth, the Countess of, on coming to the title, by Mrs. General Vansittart. Pollen, Miss Laura, by her mother, Mrs. Pollen. Powell, Miss, by her mother, Mrs. Weyland Powell. Powerscourt, Viscountess, on her marriage, by Lady Howden. Riddell, Mrs., by Vicountess Howick. Colville, the Hon. Lady, by Lady Elizabeth Smythe, Hon. Miss, by the Duchess of Northum berland. Somerset, the Duchess of, on her marriage, by the Countess of Albemarle. Stanhope, Lady Wilhelmina, by Countess Stanhope. Stopford, Miss Henrietta, by her mother, Lady Stopford. Thesiger, Mrs., by Lady Yarde Buller. Towneley, Lady Caroline, on her marriage, by the Countess of Sefton. Waller, Mrs., on her marriage, by Lady Wheatley. Worsley, Lady, by the Countess of Verulam. Wynn, Miss Williams, by Lady Harriet Clive. REVIEW OF NEW WORKS. The Star of Seville. A Drama. In Five Acts. By Mrs. Butler, (late Miss Kemble). London, 1837. Too much praise seems to have spoiled Miss Kemble, whom we like to call by her old name, as that by which she is best known amongst us, and under which she won whatever laurels she wears. There are some people who love praise so well, that they are incapable of discriminating whether their flatterers are in earnest or in ridicule; and who, when they happen to be praised, as is sometimes the case, for merits which they really do not possess, implicitly act upon the immediate We believe Miss suggestions of their vanity. Kemble to be affected by this feeling to a very remarkable degree; and we believe, also, that it exercises so complete an influence over her that she is perfectly unconscious of it, which is always one of the peculiarities of fallacious tendencies indulged to excess. Indeed, she appears to be so little aware of her erroneous estimate of herself, and her readiness to be deceived by adulation, that she even professes to despise opinion, and permits no opportunity to escape in which she can We do not exhibit her contempt for criticism. allude to her foolish affectation of aversion towards persons connected with the public press, for she must be conscious that it is but affectation and there might be some reasonable apology for such aversion in an individual of a lofty and commanding intellect which Miss Kemble assuredly is not-but to the general tone of her writings, her flippant outrages of propriety, her scoffs and taunts upon the quiet and respectable points of ordinary decorum, her vapid levities, and ribald imitations of the pruriencies of past ages. We are entirely satisfied that these follies do not lie below the surface with Miss Kemble, that she really does not fully comprehend the extravagances she commits, and that, in fact, while her faults are, in appearance, very reprehensible, they are nothing more than the lip-indiscretions of a buoyant, self-willed, and thoughtless girl. ; But it is time that this heedlessness should be abandoned. The world will not continue to give Miss Kemble credit for her faults on the side of youth and inexperience. She has grown into a woman since she was last in England-she bas seen much of the world, and its passions, and conflicting interests, and sturdy prejudices in the interval; and it is expected that as she advances some tokens of improvement in her mode of thinking will become visible. Should it, however, be found that increase of years has brought no increase of judgment, and that she betrays in her maturity the same reckless indifference to the good estimation VOL. X.-NO. V.-MAY, 1837. of society which she exhibited in her girlhood, even those who are the most tender of her fame will cease to make allowances for her literary transgressions, and if they can no longer excuse will, at all events, cease to panegyrise her. Thus, from the topmost height of applause, she will drop into oblivion, unless it be that her fall will be attended with out-spoken condemnation. We are tempted to say so much-sparing much more that might be said-because we perceive in this drama, the last production of her muse, so many violations of good taste, and such allusions to things with which it is not pleasant to suppose a lady to be acquainted, that we are still compelled to observe in how small a measure Miss Kemble's notions of poetical propriety have been purified by experience. We might forgive, as one forgives the frowardness and random faults of a child, Miss Kemble's minute catalogue of all the petty events that happened to her at sea, what she eat and drank, what the gentlemen said and did, how much she hated them, and their vulgar ways, what sensations set her pulpitating, and what things made her sick; these, and a thousand such trifles, might be forgiven in the diary of a young and ardent aud spoiled actress going out to a strange country, after having received honours at home that might well have intoxicated her imagination. But since that time Miss Kemble has married, has mixed largely with society in a republic where false pretensions are speedily reduced to their true level, where there are no ovations for meretricious display, and where all matters, moral and personal, are fixed by a swift and insensible process at their actual valuepriced and labelled at once by the operation of public opinion. It was to be expected, therefore, that Miss Kemble would have come out of this rough ordeal a little wiser than she went into it; that she would have profited more or less, by the observations which it must have forced upon her mind; and that, at least, she would have corrected, or lost that exuberance of temperament which plunged her into such witless extravagance. We do not find in this play, and we notice the fact with regret, that any such change has been wrought upon her. So far as a play can testify to the condition of an indidual, the Star of Seville suggests even a more direct tendency to reprehensible excesses of expression than Miss Kemble has hitherto indulged. We still, hows ever, attribute this error to mis-judgment, and to the want of some authorative mind to lead her talents into a proper direction. We are unwilling to believe that she may not yet devote herself to literature in a healthier and worthier spirit. The faults to which we allude are to be found in the comic portions of the drama-the greater part of which is tarnished with a species of masked I I indelicacy, which has, no doubt, been derived from a perusal of the works of a former period, but which is entirely inappropriate to our times. Some roystering holiday apprentices, and May-flies, flaunt through these scenes, after the fashions of the loose gentlemen in our old comedies; their intrigues and bantering dialogues, their popinjay exploits, and surface vanities are described in the very language of the by-gone conventions of the stage, and if there were no other objection to them than that they are a resurrection rather than a creation, it would be sufficient to justify their exclusion from a piece, the interest of which is marred rather than relieved by their introduction. But we dismiss them to say a few words upon the drama, in which they appear like interlopers. The plot may be briefly summed up. The young King of Spain, Alphonso, in the course of a progress through his dominions, sees the fair Estrella in the balcony of her brother's house in Seville. Being a somewhat licentious lover of beauty, he contrives to steal into her apartment at night, but her brother suddenly comes upon him, reproaches him for his baseness, and finally strikes him, and forces him to make his retreat by leaping from the balcony into the street. The king cannot forgive this indignity, and resolves upon the death of the haughty nobleman. The person he fixes upon to execute this honourable office is Don Carlos, a high-spirited and virtuous lord, the intimate friend of Estrella's brother, and moreover the plighted lover of Estrella, their nuptials having been already appointed to take place on the following morning. Don Carlos, before he knows who the victim is, promises to perform the deed, and, when he hears that the unhappy man who has fallen under the king's displeasure is his intimate friend, he is too consistent a person, and has too high a sense of the obligation of an oath, not to fulfil his promise. He accordingly slays Don Pedro in the street, is taken up, tried, and condemned to death. Estrella loses her senses, but recovers them just before the execution, and dies on the scaffold beside her lover. The king, who is the real author of all this misery, escapes even without censure. Throughout this story there is a want of natural probability. The grief is not produced by such reasonable causes as are required to move our pity. Don Carlos is made to commit an act utterly repugnant to his feelings, and against the very grain of his position in men's eyes, that the play may wind up with appalling misery. The contrivance is so artificial, that it fails to excite sympathy or compassion; and the abuse of poetical justice in the catastrophe is fatal to its dramatic and moral truth. Of the work as a composition, but very little need be said. It is the fruit of a fancy heated by old plays. The tournure of the style, and multitudes of bits of passages, are derived from the writers of the age of Elizabeth. We do not mean to say that Miss Kemble has done this knowingly; but it is not the less injurious to her reputation that she did it without knowing what she was doing. The amount of originality in the piece is much in the same proportion that the solids bore to the sack, in the hostess's bill against Falstaff. But it is not merely in tone and manner that this play is deficient in originality: it is open to a much more serious charge than that of mere imitation. We confess that we touch upon this part of the subject with regret, since the exposure of direct plagiary, which it renders unavoidable, is calculated for ever to cast suspicion upon any similar production which proceeds from this clever but very reckless lady. The incident upon which the main plot hinges, or rather the plot itself, with very slight alterations, is derived, without acknowledgment, from one of the numerous dramas of Lope de Vega. We have not access at the moment to the original play, but we have before us a German version of it, by Baron von Sedlitz, published at Stuttgard in 1830, entitled, "Der Stern von Sevilla," which, it may be necessary to inform some of our readers, is the very same title as that adopted by Miss Kemble "The Star of Seville." This piece, which is called a Trauerspiel, or tragedy, contains characters exactly equivalent to those employed by Miss Kemble; and the fact that she derived the whole subject from this tragedy is established, not merely by the complete agreement of the plot, but by the transference into her play of some of the very names, which, by a very clumsy expedient, to avoid, we presume, too palpable a similarity, she has transposed in one instance from one character to another. In "Der Stern von Sevilla," the king is called Sancho der Tapfere-in Miss Kemble's play he is called Alphonso. In the former, the king's confidant is called Don Arias-in the latter, the confidant, advanced to the relationship of cousin, is also called Don Arias. The heroine is called Estrella in both. The brother, in Miss Kemble's play, is Don Pedro de Roella and in Lope de Vega's drama, the lover is Don Sancho Ortiz de las Roellas; and there is a lord called Don Pedro ; so that the brother in the new version bears a name which is compounded from those of two characters in the old play. The adoption of the same names is a conclusive proof that the identity, for such it is, of the plot is not one of those extraordinary coincidences which have so very rarely occurred in literature. It is just possible that Miss Kemble might have invented a story which should throughout all its scenes be a precise counterpart of a story invented by Lope de Vega, two hundred and fifty years ago; but it would be an absurd stretch of credulity to suppose that they should both place the scene in Spain, select the same names for the heroine and other characters, and give to both their plays the same title. All these particulars could not agree by accident-what then are we to conclude ? In this German translation of the original, the king, instead of seeing Estrella in a balcony as he passes by, meets her in the public ball-room in Seville, where her beauty eclipses that of all the ladies by whom she is surrounded-which surpass ing brightness acquires for her the fanciful designation of the Star. But the hint of the balcony is nevertheless derived from Lope de Vega. Arias, the king's confidant, is employed to contrive means for the king to visit the lady at night, and he succeeds in corrupting a servant, who promises to appear in the balcony with a light in her hand, as a signal, at the appointed hour. When the time arrives, the servant is ready, but Don Bustos, Estrella's brother, suddenly intercepts her. At this moment the king arrives in a mask, and is treated by Don Bustos exactly in the same way that he is treated by the Don Pedro of Miss Kemble's play. His majesty makes his escape, after suffering a proper share of indignity, and Bustos rushes through a side door, and, in his fury, slays the servant. This incident is omitted by Miss Kemble. Bothplays now proceed pari passu. The king commissions Ortiz, the lover of Estrella, who, as in Miss Kemble's version, is to be married on the following morning, to kill the man who, by offering insult to his royal master, has committed treason. And here we may observe that the difficulty of reconciling the revolting facility of the Spanish nobleman to probability is got over much better in the old play than in the new one: the arguments are stronger and more elaborate, and the motives are somewhat heightened and even dignified. Ortiz accepts the office, and proceeds to its fulfilment, which he carries into effect as nearly as possible after the same manner as his English shadow. Now follow other parallel scenes. Estrella sits in her chamber with her tiring woman, awaiting the coming of Ortiz, when the dead body of her brother is brought in exactly as Miss Kemble has it; but Lope de Vega has treated this incident with much greater truth and pathos. Instead of suddenly terminating it with a stage shriek and swoon, to form a tableau, as Miss Kemble has done, he makes Estrella break out into the most touching lamentations, and call upon Ortiz, the only friend now left to her in the world, to avenge the death of him he loved so well, desiring the attendants at the same time to send for him, and describing with intense feeling the affliction which this heavy news will bring to him. From this point the plays diverge to different catastrophes; that of the old play being hardly reconcilable to our stage, and that of Miss Kemble's being more consonant with our dramatic usages, although it is notwithstanding very imperfect and unsatisfactory. This slight outline will be sufficient to shew the source from whence the play is evidently taken. The dialogue is not that of Lope de Vega, except in substance; but it is not the more original on that account, as it is so completely impressed with the character of our early drama, as to betray the inspiration out of the fullness of which it was writ THE first point of distrust that will strike the reader on opening this work, is the impossibility of doing justice, within a single volume, to the reign of Henry VIII., one of the most momentous in the whole range of English history. A perusal of the work must convince the reader that his doubts of the practicability of such an attempt were but too well founded. If we say that Mr. Tytler has accomplished as much within the compass he allotted to his task as any writer could fairly be expected to do, we dismiss all the eulogy to which the publication can honestly lay claim. With the exception of snatches from the correspondence of Henry VIII., embraced in a volume of State Papers published in 1830, the price of which is so high as to place it beyond the reach of the public generally, we have not discovered any thing in this biography with which every reader of history was not previously familiar. The great change in our ecclesiastical institutions brought about by the Reformation, and the equally extensive change in the state of society produced by the introduction of classical literature into England, after it had been locked up by the monks in the middle ages, are the two grand features of the reign in an historical point of view; subsidiary to which, are the foreign policy of the country, which, partly in consequence of the conduct of Henry himself, and partly arising from other circumstances, underwent some considerable modifications-the influence and actions of the antagonist statesmen by whom the unprincipled monarch was surrounded-the proceedings of Henry himself and the numerous personal details connected with one of the most profligate and corrupt courts in Europe. These are the materials of the book. It is needless to say that they are dwarfed into such narrow bounds as to exclude every thing in the shape of examination or tests of conflicting statements, and to compel the author, in all cases, to arrive as rapidly as he could at his conclusions. We believe Mr. Tytler intended to be very impartial in this narrative; but, of what value is his impartiality, when he really has not room to display it? A race-horse might as well be expected to show off his paces in a tennis-court as an historian his impartiality, or the knowledge upon which that impartiality is brought to bear in such a stunted book as this. But, as far as his limits have per |