Bel.

But not by thee. [They fight; BELESES is wounded and disarmed. Sar. (raising his sword to despatch him, exclaims)

Now call upon thy planets, will they shoot
From the sky to preserve their seer and credit?
[A party of Rebels enter and rescue BELESES.
They assail the King, who, in turn,
is
cued by a Party of his Soldiers, who drive
the Rebels off.

The villain was a prophet after all.
Upon them-ho! there-victory is ours.

res

Again the love-fit's on him, and all's lost,
Unless we turn his thoughts.

(Aloud.) But pray thee, sire, Think of your wound-you said even now 't was painful.

Sar. That's true, too; but I must not think of it. Sal. I have look'd to all things needful, and will Receive reports of progress made in such [now Order, as I had given, and then return

To hear your further pleasure.
Sar.

Sal. (in retiring.) Myrrha!

Myr.

Sal.

Be it so.

Prince!

You have shown a soul to-night,

Which, were he not my sister's lord--But now

I have no time: thou lovest the king?
Myr.
Sardanapalus.

Sal.

I love

But wouldst have him king still?

Myr. I would not have him less than what he

should be.

Sal. Well then, to have him king, and yours, and He should or should not be ; to have him live, [all Let him not sink back into luxury.

You have more power upon his spirit than
Wisdom within these walls, or fierce rebellion
Raging without: look well that he relapse not.

Myr. There needed not the voice of Salemenes
To urge me on to this: I will not fail.
All that a woman's weakness can-
Sal.

Is power
Omnipotent o'er such a heart as his :
Exert it wisely.
Sar.

[Exit SALEMENES. Myrrha! what, at whispers

With my stern brother? I shall soon be jealous.(1) Myr. (smiling.) You have cause, sire; for on the earth there breathes not

A man more worthy of a woman's love-
A soldier's trust-a subject's reverence-
A king's esteem-the whole world's admiration! (2)
Sar. Praise him, but not so warmly. I must not
Hear those sweet lips grow eloquent in aught

transient effect which their whispers produce on Sardanapalus is well imagined." Heber.-E.

(2) In the MS.

admiration

A king's esteem-the whole world's veneration reverence."-E,

And gave them to me as a realm to share
From you and with you! I would not so purchase
The empire of eternity. Hence-hence-
Old hunter of the earliest brutes! and ye,
Who hunted fellow-creatures as if brutes!
Once bloody mortals-and now bloodier idols,
If your priests lie not! And thou, ghastly beldame!
Dripping with dusky gore, and trampling on
The carcasses of Inde-away! away!

Where am I? Where the spectres? Wherc-▬
No-that

Is no false phantom: I should know it 'midst
All that the dead dare gloomily raise up
From their black gulf to daunt the living. Myrrha !
Myr. Alas! thou art pale, and on thy brow the
drops

Gather like night-dew. My beloved, hush-
Calm thee. Thy speech seems of another world,
And thou art lord of this. Be of good cheer;
All will go well.

For then we are happiest, as it may be, we [less
Are happiest of all within the realni
Of thy stern, silent, and unwakening twin.
Again he moves-again the play of pain
Shoots o'er his features, as the sudden gust
Crisps the reluctant lake that lay so calm(1)
Beneath the mountain shadow; or the blast
Ruffles the autumn leaves, that drooping cling
Faintly and motionless to their loved boughs.
I must awake him—yet not yet: who knows
From what I rouse him? It seems pain; but if

I quicken him to heavier pain? The fever

Of this tumultuous night, the grief too of

Sar.

Thy hand-so-'tis thy hand;

"Crisps the unswelling wave," etc.-E.

(2) "The fourth act opens with Myrrha watching over the slumbers of Sardanapalus. He wakens and tells a horrid dream, which we do not much admire, except that part of it which describes the form of his warlike ancestress Semiramis, with whom, and the rest of his regal predecessors, he had fancied himself at a ghostly banquet." Heber.

(5) "The general tone of Myrrha's character (in perfect consistency with the manners of her age and nation, and with her own elevated but pure and feminine spirit) is that of a devout worshipper of her country's gods. She reproves, with dignity, the impious flattery of the Assyrian courtiers and the libertine scoffs of the king. She does not forget, while preparing for death, that libation which was the latest and most solemn act of Grecian piety; and she, more particularly, expresses her belief in a future state of existence. Yet this very Myrrha, when Sardanapalus is agitated by his evil dream, and by the natural doubt as to what worse visions death may bring, is made to console him, in the strain of his

close?

Myr. I know no evil death can show, which life Has not already shown to those who live Embodied longest. If there be indeed.

A shore where mind survives, 't will be as mind,

own Epicurean philosophy, with the doctrine that death is really nothing, except

Unto the timid, who anticipate That which may never be,'

and with the insinuation that all which remains of the dead is the dust we tread upon.' We do not wish to ask, we do not like to conjecture, whose sentiments these are, but they are certainly not the sentiments of an ancient Grecian heroine. They are not the sentiments which Myrrha might have learned from the heroes of her native land, or from the poems whence those heroes derived their heroism, their contempt of death, and their love of virtue.'. Myrrha would rather have told her lover of those happy islands where the benevolent and the brave reposed after the toils of their mortal existence; of that venerable society of departed warriors and sages, to which, if he renounced his sloth and lived for his people and for glory, he might yet expect admission. She would have told him of that joy with which his warlike ancestors would move along their meads of asphodel, when the news reached them of their descendant's prowess; she would have anticipated those songs which denied that 'Harmonius was dead,'

Myr. And was: the ancestor of heroes, too,

And thine no less.

Sar. Ay, Myrrha, but the woman, The female who remain'd, she flew upon me, And burnt my lips up with her noisome kisses; And, flinging down the goblets on each hand. Methought their poisons flow'd around us, till Each form'd a hideous river. Still she clung: The other phantoms, like a row of statues, Stood dull as in our temples, but she still Embraced me, while I shrunk from her, as if, In lieu of her remote descendant, I

Sal. That slave deserves her freedom.
Sar.

That slave deserves to share a throne.
Sal.

Your patience—

ing

Buried, and raised again-consumed by worms,
Purged by the flames, and wither'd in the air!
I can fix nothing further of my thoughts,
Save that I long'd for thee, and sought for thee,
In all these agonies,-and woke and found thee.
Myr. So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,
Here and hereafter, if the last may be.

But think not of these things-the mere creations
Of late events, acting upon a frame
Unused to toil, yet over-wrought by toil
Such as might try the sternest.

Sr.

I am better.

Now that I see thee once more, what was seen Seems nothing.

Sal.

Enter SALEMENES.

Is the king so soon awake ?

Sar. Yes, brother, and I would I had not slept; For all the predecessors of our line

Rose up methought, to drag me down to them.
My father was amongst them, too; but he,
I know not why, kept from me, leaving me
Between the hunter-founder of our race,
And her, the homicide and husband-killer,
Whom you call glorious.

Sal.
So I term you also,
Now you have shown a spirit like to hers.
By day-break I propose that we set forth,
And charge once more the rebel crew, who still
Keep gathering head, repulsed, but not quite quell'd.
Sar. How wears the night?
Sal.

There yet remain some hours Of darkness; use them for your further rest. Sar. No, not to-night, if 't is not gone: methought I pass'd hours in that vision.

I come to speak with you. Sar.

How! of the queen ?

Sal.

But you can feel! At least, I trust so: in a word, the queen Requests to see you ere you part-for ever.

Sar. Unto what end? what purpose? I will grant Aught-all that she can ask—but such a meeting. Sal. You know, or ought to know, enough of women,

Since you have studied them so steadily,
That what they ask in aught that touches on
The heart, is dearer to their feelings or
Their fancy, than the whole external world.
I think as you do of my sister's wish;
But 't was her wish-she is my sister-you
Her husband-will you grant it?
Scr.
But let her come.

Sal.

Sar.

I go.

'T will be useless:

[Exit SALEMENES. We have lived asunder Too long to meet again-and now to meet! Have I not cares enow, and pangs enow,

Nineveh on the Euphrates instead of the Tigris, in opposition not only to the uniform tradition of the East, but to the express assertions of Herodotus, Pliny, and Ptolemy." Heber.