For liberty! Go seek
Earth's loftiest heights, and ocean's deepest caves;
Go where the sea-snake and the eagle dwell,
'Midst mighty elements,--where nature is.
And man is not, and ye may see afar,
Impalpable as a rainbow on the clouds.
The glorious vision! Liberty! I dream'd
Of such a goddess once--dream'd that yon slaves
Were Romans, such as rul'd the world, and I
Their tribune--vain and idle dream! Take back
The symbol and the power.
We can well imagine the effect which Mr. Young gives to some of these
eloquent passages. They are full of poetical and dramatic fire. Indeed,
we know of no professor of the histrionic art who could give so accurate
an embodiment of Rienzi--as Mr. Young, the most chaste and discreet, if
not the most impassioned, actor on the British stage. Again, we can
conceive the force of these lines in the manly tones of Mr. Cooper:
I know no father, save the valiant dead
Who lives behind a rampart of his slain
In warlike rest. I bend before no king,
Save the dread Majesty of heaven, Thy foe,
Thy mortal foe, Rienzi.
In reprinting _Rienzi_, we suggest a larger size; we fear people in
a second row of either circle of boxes, will find the type of the
present edition too small; besides, they do not want to be checking
the performers, or to be puzzled with "stage directions."
* * * * *