he looks upon the things of this life as naught but dreams, and endures his condition without repining, because there is little diference in his eyes between liberty and servitude, prosperity and adversity, the diadem of the monarch and the livery of the slave. CHAPTER VII. THE SON. Gusman. THE dramatic works of Voltaire furnish us with the example of another Christian character-the character of the son. This is neither the docile Telemachus with Ulysses, nor the fiery Achilles with Peleus; it is a young man with strong passions, but who combats and subdues them by religion. There is something very attractive in the tragedy of Alzire, though consistency of manners is not much observed. You here soar into those lovely regions of Christian morality, which, rising far above the morality of the vulgar, is of itself a divine poetry. The peace that reigns in the bosom of Alvarez is not the mere peace of nature. Let us figure to ourselves Nestor striving to moderate the passions of Antilochus. He would adduce examples of young men who have been undone because they would not listen to the counsels of their parents; then, following up these examples with a few trite maxims on the indocility of youth and the experience of age, he would crown his remonstrances with a panegyric on himself, and look back with regret on the days that are past. The authority employed by Alvarez is of a very different kind. He makes no mention of his age and his paternal authority, that he may speak in the name of religion alone. He seeks not to dissuade Gusman from the commission of a particular crime; he preaches to him a general virtue, charity,-a kind of celestial humanity which the Son of man brought down with him to earth, where it was a stranger before his coming. Finally, 1 The ancients themselves owed to their religion the little humanity that is to be found among them. Hospitality, respect for the suppliant and the unfor Alvarez commanding his son as a father, and obeying him as a subject, is one of those traits of exalted morality as far superior to the morality of the ancients as the gospel surpasses the dialogues of Plato for the inculcation of the virtues. Achilles mangles the body of his enemy and insults him when vanquished. Gusman is as proud as that hero; but, sinking beneath Zamor's dagger, expiring in the flower of youth, cut off at once from an. adored wife and the command of a mighty empire, hear the sentence which he pronounces upon his rival and his murderer! behold the admirable triumph of religion and of paternal example over a Christian son !— [To Alvarez.] My soul is on the wing, And here she takes her flight, but waits to see The mask is off; death has at last unveiled The hideous scene, and shown me to myself; A Christian acted, how a Christian died. [To Montezuma, who kneels to him.] Thou, Montezuma, and ye hapless victims Of my ambition, say, my clemency Surpassed my guilt, and let your sovereigns know [To Zamor.] Observe the difference 'twixt thy gods and mine; Mine bids me pity and forgive thee, Zamor.' To what religion belongs this morality and this death? Here reigns an ideal of truth superior to every poetic ideal. When we tunate, were the offspring of religious ideas. That the wretched might find some pity upon earth, it was necessary that Jupiter should declare himself their protector. Such is the ferocity of man without religion! 1 Voltaire's Works, translated by Franklin, vol. vi. pp. 260, 261. say an ideal of truth, it is no exaggeration; every reader knows that the concluding verses— Observe the difference 'twixt thy gods and mine, &c.— are the very expressions of François de Guise. As for the rest of this passage, it comprehends the whole substance of the morality of the gospel : Death has at last unveiled The hideous scene, and shown me to myself. . . . Oh! I have been a proud, ungrateful being, And trampled on my fellow-creatures! One trait alone in this piece has not the stamp of Christianity. It is this: Let your sovereigns know That we were born your conquerors. Here Voltaire meant to make nature and Gusman's haughty character burst forth again. The dramatic intention is happy, but, taken as an abstract beauty, the idea expressed in these lines is very low amid the lofty sentiments with which it is surrounded. Such is invariably the appearance of mere nature by the side of Christian nature. Voltaire is very ungrateful for calumniating that religion which furnished him with such pathetic scenes and with his fairest claims to immortality. He ought constantly to have borne in mind these lines, composed, no doubt, under an involuntary impulse of admiration: Can Christians boast Of such exalted virtue? 'twas inspired By heaven. The Christian law must be divine. Can they, we may add, boast of so much genius, of so many poetic beauties? It is not so generally known that Voltaire, in making use of the expression of François de Guise, has borrowed the words from another poet. Rowe had previously availed himself of this incident in his Tamerlane, and the author of Alzira has been content to translate the passage verbatim from the English dramatist: Now learn the difference 'twixt thy faith and mine. ... CHAPTER VIII. THE DAUGHTER. Iphigenia and Zara. FOR the character of the Daughter, Iphigenia and Zara will supply us with an interesting parallel. Both, under the constraint of paternal authority, devote themselves to the religion of their country. Agamemnon, it is true, requires of Iphigenia the twofold sacrifice of her love and of her life, and Lusignan requires Zara to forget the former alone; but for a female passionately in love to live and renounce the object of her affections is perhaps a harder task than to submit to death itself. The two situations, therefore, may possess nearly an equal degree of natural interest. Let us see whether they are the same in regard to religious interest. Agamemnon, in paying obedience to the gods, does no more, after all, than immolate his daughter to his ambition. Why should the Greek virgin bow submissive to Jupiter? Is he not a tyrant whom she must detest? The spectator sides with Iphigenia against Heaven. Pity and terror, therefore, spring solely from natural considerations; and if you could retrench religion from the piece, it is evident that the theatrical effect would remain the same. In Zara, on the contrary, if you meddle with the religion you destroy the whole. Jesus Christ is not bloodthirsty. He requires no more than the sacrifice of a passion. Has he a right to demand this sacrifice? Ah! who can doubt it? Was it not to redeem Zara that he was nailed to the cross, that he endured insult, scorn, and the injustice of men, that he drank the cup of bitterness to the very dregs? Yet was Zara about to give her heart and her hand to those who persecuted this God of charity! -to those who daily sacrificed the professors of his religion!-to those who detained in fetters that venerable successor of Bouillon, -that defender of the faith, the father of Zara! Certainly reli gion is not useless here, and he who would suppress that would annihilate the piece. Zara, as a tragedy, is, in our opinion, more interesting than Iphigenia, for a reason which we shall endeavor to explain. This obliges us to recur to the principles of the art. We It is certain that the characters of tragedy ought to be taken from the upper ranks alone of society. This rule is the result of certain proprieties which are known to the fine arts as well as to the human heart. The picture of the sorrows which we ourselves experience pains without interesting or instructing us. need not go to the theatre to learn the secrets of our own family. Can fiction please us when sad reality dwells beneath our roof? No moral is attached to such an imitation. On the contrary, when we behold the picture of our condition, we sink into despair, or we envy a state that is not our own, and in which we imagine that happiness exclusively resides. Take the lower classes to the theatre. They seek not there men of straw or representations of their own indigence, but persons of distinguished rank, invested with the purple. Their ears would fain be filled with illustrious names, and their eyes engaged with the misfortunes of kings. Morality, curiosity, the dignity of art, refined taste, and perhaps nature, envious of man, impose the necessity, therefore, of selecting the characters for tragedy from the more elevated ranks of society. But, though the person should be distinguished, his distresses ought to be common; that is to say, of such a nature as to be felt by all. Now it is in this point that Zara seems to us more affecting than Iphigenia. When the daughter of Agamemnon is doomed to die to facilitate the departure of a fleet, the spectator can scarcely feel interested by such a motive; but in Zara the reason is brought home to the heart, and every one can appreciate the struggle between a passion and a duty. Hence is derived that grand rule of the drama, that the interest of tragedy must be founded, not upon a thing, but upon a sentiment, and that the character should be remote from the spectator by his rank, but near to him by his misfortune. We might now examine the subject of Iphigenia, as it has been handled by the Christian pen of Racine; but the reader can |