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till driven out in 1706 by the allied forces of England, Holland, and Germany under the command of the Duke of Marlborough; it was given over to the house of Austria, and Antwerp was garrisoned by a body of Dutch soldiers. Again, in 1746, the French seize upon it, and the Austrians retake it in 1748.

Provoked by the efforts of their German rulers to curb the overweening power of the priesthood, and to correct some of the abuses of the Church, the Belgians raise the standard of rebellion in 1790, and declare themselves independent. But after a short and severe struggle in and about this city, the whole country is again subjugated to the Austrian power in the following year.

The century closes with the great French Revolution, which, like a devouring fire, sweeps across the frontiers and involves all the Belgian provinces in one common conflagration. In 1792 it is occupied by the French republican troops, but they are driven out by the Austrians in the following year. Again in 1794 the French take possession of the whole country, and hold it for the republic. The churches, abbeys, convents, and other public and ecclesiastical buildings are ravaged and despoiled of their statuary, pictures, and beautiful ornaments in their mad rage against whatever is held to be sacred in religion or in their thirst for plunder. The river, which had been closed for one hundred and fifty years in the interests of Holland, is now opened, and Antwerp is, after so long a time, once more permitted to resume and recover, if possible, her lost traffic.

Napoleon Bonaparte now takes the helm and brings order out of confusion. He restores the desolated churches of Antwerp; demolishes many of its old and decaying buildings; erects new and substantial edifices in their place; lays out public squares; does much to improve the city generally, and especially to revive its maritime interests. He is quick to perceive the superior advantages of this port. He determines to make it the great naval station of his empire. He locates here his ship-yard. He constructs, at an enormous expense, the beautiful and solid quays that line the river, and the commodious docks, of which the city may well be proud.

But in the midst of his ambitious schemes the scepter is wrested from his grasp, and the allied forces of Europe administer upon his estate.

Antwerp is taken, after a blockade of four months and a bombardment of three days, and with the Belgian provinces is forcibly united to Holland. And once again, after a separation of three centuries, the whole seventeen provinces of the Netherlands are united under one government. But the union is not now, as formerly,

one of their own choice, but by the will of their conquerors.

The political and ecclesiastical training of these two sections has been so different during this long interval-the people of Belgium and Holland have been drawn so far apart in their tastes, their habits of life, and especially in their religion, by the diverse influences to which they have been exposed-that there is little congeniality of feeling or harmony between them. After a brief and unsatisfactory union of some fifteen years, the Belgians rebel against their Dutch rulers in 1830, and assisted by the French, with whom in their tastes, their religion, and in their language-especially that of the ruling classes—they are in closer sympathy, they easily gain their independence and become a separate nation.

This is the beginning of the kingdom of Belgium. But Antwerp remains two years longer in possession of the Dutch troops, who hold her strong fortress and keep the city in subjection. But after a tremendous bombardment, during which twenty thousand shells and shot are thrown into the fortress and town, they capitulate, and the city is given over to the new kingdom of Belgium.

Since that time the general history of Antwerp has been that of improvement and progress.

It has become already one of the modern, as it was formerly one of the mediæval, art-centers of the world. Hundreds of pupils from all parts of Europe and America flock hither to study the works of Rubens, Matsys, Vandyck, and of other great masters of painting who have rendered this city famous the world over by their genius, and to receive instruction from their successors; and thousands annually visit it expressly to gaze upon their masterpieces, which adorn the walls of the private and public museums of the city, and are a perpetual source of revenue to the churches that cherish them.

The flags of all nations are again seen in her harbor. The capacity of the broad, deep-flowing Scheldt that connects her with the sea is almost unlimited. Her spacious docks have been several times enlarged, but are yet too small for her increasing commerce. Other enlargements are still in progress toward completion, and still others yet more extensive are projected. The old walls that encompassed the city in the time of her ancient glory have been found too contracted for her modern growth, and have been removed and the moat filled in, and magnificent boulevards now occupy their place. A new wall, rivaling in strength and beauty that of any other city in the world, by which the area of the city proper is enlarged fourfold, has recently been

demoralized and impoverished by their numerous fête-days, in which honest labor is suspended and their hard-earned wages are wasted in dissipation, as will always be the case where holy days and holidays are unnecessarily multiplied. The Lord's Day is perhaps the most unprofitable of them all. It is devoted very largely to puppet-shows, horseracing, military parades, ecclesiastical processions, and priestly tomfooleries. The laboring classes very generally are hardly expected to recover from their Sunday dissipation sufficiently to be good for more than half a day's labor on Monday. The magnificent church edifices, filled with the choicest works of art for which the city is so famous, seem to our Protestant eyes to be little better than pagan temples and shrines for the accommodation of their idols and the multitudes of idol-worshipers bowing before them.

completed. Public parks, till recently unknown, lot is a hard one, indeed. The people are greatly are laid out and add greatly to the attractiveness of the city within the fortifications. New streets are cut; many that were narrow and crooked have been straightened and made wider, and the wretched cobble-stones, rendered smooth and slippery by long use, with which not merely the roadways but also the sidewalks have been universally paved from time immemorial, are rapidly giving place to what is now everywhere called the "Belgian pavement." Costly edifices in the modern style of art are going up on every side, and, what is more, the American tramway, that republican innovation, long resisted, has been introduced, and street-cars, running regularly to and fro along the principal streets and boulevards, are taking the place of the old lumbering one-horse hacks. It is to be hoped even that measures will be taken ere long to introduce from a distance pure water into the city, which is now greatly needed by its one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and by the ships that visit the port.

Indeed, there are but few cities anywhere, perhaps none, that have a more hopeful outlook and are making more rapid and substantial progress in material things than Antwerp.

But hitherto these material improvements have come rather from without than from within. They have been forced upon her by the necessities of her position. In all that pertains to her intellectual, social, and moral life, Antwerp is far behind most of her sister cities of Europe. The masses are still ignorant, superstitious, and bigoted. The more intelligent are skeptical and irreligious. Drunkenness, licentiousness, and the kindred vices which are too prevalent in all the larger cities of Europe, not to speak of other countries, and especially in the seaports, are still more prevalent here. The marriage rite is hedged about by so many legal restrictions and vexatious stipulations and provisos as often to discourage honest lovers, and concubinage too often takes the place of legal marriage. Woman has no redress at law against her betrayer. Her status is low, and among the poorer classes her

But material and moral prosperity are closely allied; one can not long be maintained without the other. Antwerp is feeling the force of the better influences that are brought to bear upon her from all sides. The much-needed work of reform can not long be held back. She needs better leaders in politics and better guides in religion than she has been wont to have. Let her municipal government, which, in striking contrast with the free and liberal government of the state, has hitherto been controlled by Ultramontane bigotry and fear of progress, pass into more liberal hands, as it is likely soon to do, and those severe and repressive laws and regulations that still linger to obstruct her communal and maritime interests give place to a more generous policy; let the people have purer and simpler forms of worship, more in accordance with the spirit and precepts of the gospel, and more instruction in its truths, and less of pantomime and scenic display; let the Word of God be freely circulated and its teachings be better known, and there is nothing to hinder this old city, with a history so unique, a position so commanding, and with natural advantages unsurpassed, from taking her place in all things among the foremost cities of the world.

J. H. PETTINGell.

THO

OTWA Y.

HOMAS OTWAY was born at Trotton, in Sussex, on the 3d of March, 1651. His father, the Reverend Humphrey Otway, was vicar of Wolbeding, a parish near Midhurst. The boy was educated at Wickenham School, near Winchester. Of his parents and of his early life we know no more than may be gleaned from one of his poems, "The Poet's Complaint of his Muse," which is, to a certain degree, autobiographical:

My father was (a thing now rare)

Loyal and brave; my mother chaste and fair. The pledge of marriage vows was only I :

Alone I lived, their much-loved, fondled boy; They gave me generous education; high

They strove to raise my mind, and with it grew their joy."

In 1669 he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, as a commoner; and, although it is evident that he did not acquire any amount of solid learning, his wit and quick intelligence made some mark there. To again quote his own

words:

"The sages that instructed me in arts

And knowledge, oft would praise my parts,
And cheer my parents' longing hearts.
When I was called to a dispute,
My fellow pupils oft stood mute,
Yet never envy did disjoin

Their hearts from me, nor pride distemper mine.
Thus my first years in happiness I past,
Nor any bitter cup did taste."

He was intended for the Church, but his inclinations could never have led him that way; he wrote verses which were highly praised by my Lord Falkland and other jeunesse dorée of the university—it would be a thousand pities that so much wit and such great abilities should be wasted upon some dull Boeotian parish in preaching to a scanty congregation of clodhoppers and snoring farmers for the mere hope of a preferment which might never come-London is the only place for a man of parts: there genius is appreciated, honored by the noblest; wit is the passport to all society, even the King's. We may suppose that such were the counsels and temptations poured into the ears of the country parson's son by his butterfly friends, and to which he was an eager, trusting listener; and in 1671, in company with some of these roisterers, no doubt, he quitted college without having taken any honors, and set out to seek his fortune in the great me

tropolis. The life into which he plunged is best described in his own words:

"I missed the brave and wise, and in their stead On every sort of vanity I fed.

Gay coxcombs, cowards, knaves, and prating fools, Bullies of o'ergrown bulk and little souls, Gamesters, half-wits, and spendthrifts (such as

think

Mischievous midnight frolics, bred by drink,
Are gallantry and wit,

Because to their lewd understandings fit)

Were those wherewith two years, at least, were

spent,

To all these fulsome follies most incorrigibly bent."

Yet not altogether in riotous debauchery were those two years passed, for soon after his arrival in London he threw one cast for Fortune-and

failed. It is not surprising that a youth of vivid and poetic temperament, and one who was seeking some pleasant road to fame and fortune, should have been at once irresistibly attracted by the theatre. The stage was then at the height of its restored popularity: such actors as Hart, Mohun, and Burt, who had fought and bled for their King during the Great Rebellion-as Betterton, Kynaston, Lacy, who lived on terms of familiar intercourse with court and sovereign, had raised their profession to a dignity such as it had not worn even in the palmy days of Elizabeth. What career, then, could offer more delightful temptations to a young adventurer than the stage?

To be the interpreter of great poets, to see hundreds hanging breathless upon his lips, to sway and move a vast audience to tears or rage or laughter at his will, and to retire from the scene with enthusiastic plaudits thundering upon his ears; to have noble and beautiful women enamored of him, to be the boon companion of dukes and earls, and perhaps even of royalty itself-such a prospect was enough to turn the head of any raw young fellow fresh from the country. So, fully determined to be a Hart or a Mohun or a Kynaston, young Otway sought an opening at one of the theatres.

It was the famous dramatist and novelist, Mrs. Aphra Behn, to whom he had obtained an introduction, and who was probably taken by the wit and sprightliness of his conversation and manners, who undertook to open the magic portals and procure him a début. And it was to be at Lincoln's Inn Fields, in her own new tragicomedy of "The Forced Marriage." The King

was the character he was cast to play. Although, in theatrical phrase, it was a responsible part, it was of little dramatic importance, and appeared in only three scenes. But it was an old man, which rendered its impersonation doubly difficult to a youthful novice. Downes, the Lincoln's Inn Fields prompter, has described the scene of Otway's first and only appearance, of which he was an eye-witness. It was a very painful one; the sight of the audience deprived him of all nerve, memory forsook him, he muttered a few inaudible words, trembled and fell into such an agony of fright that he was compelled to leave the stage-upon which he never again entered in the capacity of actor.

This failure must have been a terrible blow to the young fellow, but he did his best to drown the memory of his misfortunes in the company of the coxcombs, knaves, and gamesters into which he had fallen, until in the midst of these orgies he received the news of his good father's death:

"From thence, sad discontent, uneasy fears,

And anxious doubts of what I had to do Grew with succeeding years.

The world was wide, but whither should I go? I, whose blooming hopes all withered were, Who'd little fortune and a deal of care."

And now it was that he first turned his thoughts to literature as a profession—and with the same ardent hopes of brilliant success as he had indulged in when he was bent upon the stage. If he could not be a Hart or a Betterton, how much grander would it be to be a Dryden! After the allegorical fashion of the time, he describes how, while he lies pondering over his future career, the Muse appears to him with a crown of laurel upon her head, which she tells

him shall be his :

"... and each part of her did shine With jewels and with gold.

Numberless to be told;

pleted; for he says, "I must confess I had often a titillation for poetry, but never durst venture on my Muse till I got her into a corner in the country," etc. He offered the play to the Duke's company, now removed to their splendid new theatre in Dorset Gardens, and of which Betterton was the director and leading actor. It was accepted, and produced in the year 1675.

When Otway began to write for the stage Dryden was in the height of his fame as a dramatic writer, and the so-called heroic drama, although it had received its death-blow from Buckingham's witty burlesque of "The Rehearsal," produced in 1672, as yet showed scarcely any sign of decline. An untried author could not, even if he had desired, have ventured to oppose his first production to the fashion of the time, and "Alcibiades" was written in rhymes and with all the bombastic, exaggerated sentiments then in vogue. It is a feeble, insipid work, without the slightest indication of genius, and not even so grand an actor as Betterton could render it a success.

"Don

Yet it could not have been wholly a failure, or it must have contained some promise to which change of taste now renders us insensible, for in the following year his second tragedy, Carlos," was brought out at the same theatre, fulfilled, for his work was pronounced the first and one of our young adventurer's dreams was heroic tragedy of the age. Its success was prodigious, and Betterton afterward told Booth that for years it was a more popular play and drew works, "The Orphan" or "Venice Preserved.” more money than either of its author's greatest It is so impossible for modern taste to reconcile itself to the idea of men and women speaking in heroic verse that it can not be considered capable of judging the merits per se of such a work as

"Don Carlos." In moments of the most intense passion and agony the characters express themselves in the long, elaborate similes of epic poetry and in harmonious rhymes; there is no touch of

... these riches all, my darling, shall be nature in the language from beginning to end,

thine,

Riches which poet never had before.

She promised me to raise my fortune and my name
By royal favor and by endless fame;

But never told

How hard they were to get, how difficult to hold."

Although there are no proofs to that effect, we may very well suppose that on receiving tidings of his father's death Otway went back to Sussex, and remained there for a time; and that it was in the rural quietude of his desolated home that these cogitations and visions occurred to him. From the preface it is evident that his first dramatic work, "Alcibiades," was composed in the country, and brought to London com

and the artificial cadences so nauseate the ear that it becomes insensible to occasional touches of power and pathos, and to fine pieces of declamation which would be striking in a mere narrative poem. The plot is drawn from the same source as that of Schiller's great tragedy, the Abbé St. Réal's “Nouvelle Historique" of Don Carlos. The characters of the King, Queen, Carlos, Ruy Gomez, and the Princess Eboli are drawn by no weak pen, and some of the scenes must have produced a fine effect upon the stage. Here already, in several situations of real tragic power, we have indications of that admirable dramatic instinct and that knowledge of stageeffect which shine so conspicuously in his later

plays. But it would not be interesting to dwell longer upon a production which, unless fashion in taste should greatly change, can never again be read without weariness.

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Not altogether, however, to its intrinsic merits must we ascribe the first success at least of "Don Carlos." It was the time of Rochester's quarrel with Dryden, and the reprobate wit was looking about for rivals to the great poet, whom he might render formidable through his patronage. John Crowne was one of these; so also was Otway. 'Don Carlos" is dedicated to the Earl of Rochester, who, for the reason above mentioned, worked hard to secure its success. There was not a happier or more hopeful man in London than our young poet, with his pocket full of money, his head intoxicated by universal praise, his fortunes under the protection of the King's powerful favorite, and he the boon companion of all the noble and dissolute wits of the time. His hopes soared high, and the future lay before him as one long vista of pleasure, wealth, and triumph. But such brightness was of short duration; the clouds which were in a few years to envelop him in the darkest night of sorrow and misery were already beginning to gather, taking the form of an infatuated love for a cruel, bad woman.

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A secondary part in " Alcibiades," Draxilla, the confidante, was played by a young actress, then in her seventeenth year, named Elizabeth Barry. She had made her first appearance upon the stage about two years previously, but had evinced so little capacity for the histrionic art that experts confidently pronounced she could never succeed. But about the same time that he extended his patronage to our poet Rochester cast his libertine eyes upon young Mistress Barry, who, in opposition to every one's opinion, he vowed he could, within six months, tutor into one of the finest actresses in England. After bestowing immense pains upon her instruction, he brought her out in 1673 or 1674, as the Queen of Hungary, in Lord Orrery's tragedy of Mustapha," and she acquitted herself in a manner which astonished every one who remembered her previous failures. Not for several years yet, however, was she to fulfill her tutor's prediction. There were Mrs. Betterton and other elder actresses in the way who monopolized all the great parts of tragedy and comedy. From the evidence of letters from which I shall presently have occasion to quote, it is quite certain that Otway knew and loved her before her intimacy with Rochester commenced. Antony Aston, who, however, has seldom a word of praise for any one, tells us she was not handsome, her mouth opening most on the right side. He describes her as middle-sized, with darkish hair

and eyebrows, light eyes, and was indifferent plump. Ramble, in Gildon's "Comparison of the Two Stages," says: "I do think that person is the finest woman in the world upon the stage, and the ugliest off on't." The portrait I have seen of her represents a woman of large and somewhat masculine features, but decidedly handsome. Be that as it may, however, Otway conceived for her a consuming passion, that devoured him body and soul, that robbed him of all peace, and drove him into every excess which promised oblivion of his desires. And not even the knowledge of her worthlessness could weaken his infatuation. It was for her he wrote two of the most exquisite female creations of English tragedy, and it was her acting as Monimia and Belvidera, and as Isabella in Southerne's "Fatal Marriage," that, says old Downes, "gained her the name of famous Mrs. Barry both at court and city." She was at once the inspiration and bane of his genius. But for this mad, hopeless passion, the beautiful love-scenes of "The Orphan " and "Venice Preserved" might have never been written. The pen with which he wrote was dipped into his own heart, to portray his own emotions; he was Don Carlos, Castalio, and by their lips he uttered the passionate agony of his soul, and appealed to her under the names of Elizabeth and Monimia.

"'Tis heaven to have thee, and without thee hell!" exclaims Castalio, and the hell of negation was to be Otway's doom through life.

And yet it was to him a strange, torturing pleasure to minister to the genius of this cold, mercenary woman, who treated his idolatry with scorn and ridicule; to behold her embodying the exquisite conceptions of his fancy, drawing tears from thousands by the passion born of his own anguish-which she could behold dry-eyed and unmoved; then he would return to his lonely lodging and pass a sleepless night in all the torments of despairing love; or else, not daring to face the horrors of solitary self-communion, to plunge into some vile orgy and drown remembrance in debauchery. That this picture is no exaggeration of the unfortunate poet's condition of mind during the last years of his life may be proved by reference to the six or seven letters addressed to Mrs. Barry which are still extant. Neither Carlos nor Castalio nor Jaffier has uttered words of more ardent love, more agonized entreaty, than are to be found in the following passages:

"Since the first day I saw you I have hardly enjoyed one hour of perfect quiet; I loved you early, and no sooner had I beheld that soft, bewitching face of yours than I felt in my heart the very foundations of all my peace give

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