them available in establishing a diagnosis, it is necessary to refer them to some seat or organ. Dr. Spillan, in a very judicious and well-written preface which he has prefixed to this work, very happily illustrates the inadequacy of mere symptoms in directing the treatment of disease-he instances in the case of Ascites or Abdominal Dropsy; here the watery effusion is not the disease; it is but a symptom, and the organic change of which it is a symptom, may be seated in the heart or liver, or peritoneum, or in the kidneys; hence the necessity of diligently examining all these organs. With respect to the style of the translation it is smooth and elegant, and altogether free from the stiffness and Germanisms with which translations from the German so frequently abound. Dr. S. has annexed very copious and valuable Notes to his translation. We are not singular in stating that the profession stands deeply indebted to Dr. S., for presenting them with this excellent work in an English dress. Hannibal in Bithynia, a Dramatic Poem, by Henry Gally Knight, Esq., M.P. Second Edition. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1839. There is something very pleasing in this little drama. We call it little; because, though in five acts, and four times as many scenes, they are so brief, as to bring the whole piece within the limits of a Greciau tragedy as to length. Space hereby is only afforded to the simple announcement of a few incidents, and to some poetical diction in the treatment; but to no minute developement of character, or enlarged evolution of circumstance. King Prusias is the delight of the Bithynian cooks, and his courtiers share the luxury of their prince, careless of the foreign warfare in which the country is engaged. In this state of the Bithynian court, the celebrated Hannibal having been sent adrift by Antiochus, king of Syria, arrives. He is kept waiting without by the insolent swarm; but on Zeno, the philosopher, desiring to see a man so famous, that he may observe his mind and dissect its properties, he is admitted. The Carthaginian warrior and exile, with a few followers enters, high in rage. CLEON. "Kept in the sun! but I forget myself- HANNIBAL. Sleeps he? then wake him. Wake Bithynia's king! HANNIBAL. My name is Hannibal,-the Carthagenian- CLEON. HANNIBAL. PAMPHILO. All-seeing Gods! Who make me thus your sport, at least be pleased Cleon! only remark This a great man!" And how ill-fashioned ! King Prusias looks on him with other eyes, and the renowned exile accordingly finds a temporary home in the Bithynian court, wherein at length, he exerts such an influence, that Antenor, the whilom premier becomes jealous, as well he may, for he is a man of crooked policy, and contracts with the Romans, and other powers, for his own advantage; procuring the defeat of the Bithynian troops, that the enemies of his country may offer peace on their own terms. The demand made is the cession of a province. Hannibal glows with indignation at such a monstrous proposition. We wish we had space for the scene, but we have not. At length, by the stratagems of Antenor, notwithstanding his services to Bithynia, Hannibal is shuffled out of the king's favour. Finding himself about to be delivered into the hands of the Romans, he takes poison. There are parts of this play that would act effectively; but on the whole, it wants weight and extent. The writing is too elegant for the stage, where concision and energy are the two chief requisites. The style of Addison's Cato is the very worst for dramatic purposes. This is however, a pleasing book for the boudoir. THE GREEN ROOM. HAYMARKET THEATRE. MISS ELLEN TREE and Mr. Macready have divided the honours between them at this theatre. The former has appeared in As You Like It; Twelfth Night; and some minor pieces, with sufficient eclat. We cannot avoid bestowing the greatest praise on Mr. Webster's management, however much we might be disposed to measure its amount; for the attraction of his house is entirely due to the legitimate drama and legitimate acting. His success reads to all managers a great moral lesson. It is not spectacle - nor expensive scenery that the public require but good plays and good performers in small theatres will do the business. Mr. Macready's Iago, and Mr. Phelps' Othello, presented a treat on one of the Mondays, which we regret was not repeated. The latter gentleman's performance in Jaques was also very chaste. The part of Shylock, by Mr. Macready, announced for the last night of this month, will be a novelty from which we anticipate much gratification. So far so good. But more is yet required. Encouragement is yet wanted for dramatic authorship. There is genius of this kind in abundance; and we will not cease crying aloud, until it is brought out of the hiding-place in which it lies buried. We recommend Mr. Webster to take this seriously to heart. That manager who would sincerely set about doing justice to the latent talent just indicated, would secure both fortune and honour. We are sure of it; it is as yet an untried path--but on which might be not only successfully but triumphantly trod. The prize at the goal is worthy-press forward to it, all candidates for theatrical renown! . STRAND THEATRE. This theatre has certainly been conducted with remarkable tact and talent through the last campaign. A perpetual succession of the most piquant and amusing pieces has been presented to the toil-harassed, money-getting, money-spending cockneys. In good faith, the wear and tear of life in London during the day demands something remarkably sparkling in evening theatricals by way of amende. The manager seems to have been thoroughly aware of this; and his dramatic bill of fare has been sufficiently spicy to raise the brightest expectations of increased success in a nobler field of action, and one more worthy of him. "THE Beautiful has vanished, and returns not." Let the Muse of Hemans be called the Beautiful, for such was the nature of her Genius, and may well therefore be the name. The Beautiful ! And what if we were to add another to the thousand essays on the Beautiful and Sublime, or on either? The world would laugh-and yet, after all, perhaps, unwisely-seeing that we have something to say concerning the Beautiful, but not now. No! For Sorrow now makes Beauty still more beautiful, because of that which has departed; and fair eyes are looking at yonder bright Star, and ladye-lips are asking-Is that the Soul of Hemans? And well they may-her "soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!" Indeed, for many years, the life of Felicia Hemans was spent in uninterrupted domestic privacy, deprived almost of all intercourse with the world, and employed in composition, reading, and the study of languages. She had no personal acquaintance until very lately, with contemporary poets or poetlings, critics or criticasters, or with literateurs of high or low degree. Her poems were for the most part produced in solitude, and distant from the exciting influences of society. "She," says one of her biographers, "experienced nothing of the fostering partiality of coteries;" and he rightly rejoices in the circumstance, that the degree of attention with which her productions were received owed nothing to undue or empirical means "none such were employed in her favour to influence popular suffrage." Her verses were simply published in some periodical, or along with some musical accompaniment, and the world found them after many days, having selected them from the mass of similar compositions by inferior writers. A friendly critic tells us, that the whole structure of her mind was poetical, and the most trifling occurrence of the moment,-a word spoken-a tone heard-a circumstance of daily life-frequently formed a germ of what, in her active imagination, was woven into a beautiful and perfect composition. "Yet," he rightly adds, and the fact is of great importance in estimating her merits, "it should be remembered, that, instead of trusting to her natural powers of thought and fancy, she was, through the whole period of her literary career, an ardent and unwearied student. From a course of extensive reading, she enlarged her comprehension with much that was soul-stirring and noble-with much that was gentle and refined: and if * The Works of Mrs. Hemans; with a Memoir of her Life, by her Sister. In six vols. WM. BLACKWOOD and SONS, Edinburgh. 1839. 3 s N. S.-VOL. II. she has not often ventured,-as Wordsworth, Crabbe, and Wilson have so powerfully done--to descend to the delineation of what is homely in life and manners, it evidently arose from no arrogance of intellect, but simply from such themes being incompatible with the system which she formed for herself, and resolved to follow out in her writings." These sentences express in many words what the poet laureate stated in few, when in an article in the Quarterly, he parenthetically mentioned "the acquired power of Mrs. Hemans." Her talent was indeed of gradual growth-her mind was not originative, but reflective. She was circled with glory, indeed, but it resembled that of the moon. An "Orb of Song" she was, but not a mighty original, like the divine Milton, on whom Wordsworth's "Wanderer" gazed among the hills. Enough for her, that "She walked in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; Which heaven to gaudy day denies." There were, accordingly, stages of developement, arising from the progress of her studies, in the mental character of the Poetess; and it is, therefore, into certain correspondent epochs that both her life and poetry became divided. We have already expressed our opinion of the life prefixed to the volumes before us. Mr. Chorley's "Memorials of Mrs. Hemans," which were published three years ago, have also been sufficiently noticed for praise or blame by critics, both Romanist and Protestant. We are glad to be relieved from dwelling on the faults, affectations, or partialities of either biographer, as we wish to proceed purely in the pursuit of excellences, and not of defects; the latter may be well left to the acumen of inferior reviewers, and suit now neither the occasion, nor our inclination. Praise is comely; and only those critics have come down to posterity with the poets they loved who had eye and heart for their beauties, and generosity to vindicate what seemed blemishes to all but them. Praise is comely and is still more fitting when offered as incense not merely to Poet but to Poetess-not simply to Song but to Beauty. With Woman began all that is poetical in the world, or at any rate with that creative Love, whence Adam conceived the fair form of Eve, and to which, in the trance of desire, he gave wondrous birth. Therefore it became that Woman was love-like, resembling the Affection which was indeed but objectively expressed in her. : "Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like"— And Eve, tending her flowers in the garden of Eden, saw with peculiar joy, how " they at her coming sprung, And touched by her fair tendance gladlier grew.” Each flower of slender stalk, whose head though gay Hung drooping unsustained: them she upstays From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh." Such a Flower, thus solitary and unpropped, though wandering in the Paradise of her own imaginings, was Mrs. Hemans for a long period of her existence. As Felicia Dorothea Browne,* Mr. Chorley would fain have us believe that she at least might repose on ancestral memories, and was visited with influences from such in childhood, whence that infant instinct in her for the Beautiful which, in the summer of her days, ripened into imagination, and reason, and art. Nay, he tells us that she herself attested the reality of certain mysterious feelings and aspirations, of which she meditated the analysis in a work to be called "Recollections of a Poet's Childhood," at the time when her labours were bidden to cease for ever. Thus completing the circle: and making Death acquainted with springtide hopes-hopes blighted ere the tree that bore them-blighted even when they seemed to prosper most. For if we want to know what disappointment is, in its bitterest form, we must know what the world calls success-then it is we learn how much the utmost point of performance falls short of early promise. Early indications of the poetic temperament the girl must have shewn, since at the age of eleven years she had produced a volume of verses, which in the course of four years was followed by two others. In her nineteenth year, she was married to Captain Hemans, of the Fourth Regiment; but this union was of brief duration. Shortly before the birth of a fifth son, a protracted separation commenced. Captain Hemans' health had been undermined by the vicissitudes of a military life; more particularly by the hardships he had endured in the disastrous retreat upon Corunna, and by the fever which proved fatal to many of our troops in the Walcheren expedition. Indeed to such an extent was this breaking up, as to render it necessary for him, a few years after his marriage, to exchange his native climate for the milder sky of Italy. Mrs. Hemans, whose literary pursuits rendered it advisable for her not to leave England, remained with her family, now removed to Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph, in North Wales. Thus was she left" fairest unsupported flower," with no "prop" but the heavenly Muse, by whose aid she sung in no mean numbers the Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy; in the success of which poem we recollect that William Gifford was much interested, and took care that a favorable review should appear in the Quarterly. Another poem, Modern Greece, was also produced in this seclusion. These efforts, we are told, "were favoraby noticed by Lord Byron; and attracted the admiration of Shelley. Bishop Heber, and other judicious and intelligent counsellers, cheered her on by their approbation: the reputation, which, through years of silent study and exertion, she had, no doubt, sometimes with brightened and sometimes with doubtful hopes, looked forward to as a sufficient great reward, was at length unequivocally and unreluctantly accorded to her by the world; and probably this was the happiest period of her life." That these essays were deserving of high encouragement cannot be * She was born in Duke-street, Liverpool, 25 Sept. 1794. |