the feelings themselves.-I would have, gentlemen," continued she, "a play to be virtuous in its sentiments, and also natural in its events. The want of the latter quality, as well as of the former, has a bad effect on young persons; it leads them to suppose, that such a conduct is natural and allowable in common life, and encourages that romantic deception which is too apt to grow up in minds of sensibility. Don't you think, that the sudden conversion of Zara to Christianity, unsupported by argument, or conviction of its truth, is highly unnatural, and may have such a tendency as I have mentioned ?" -"I confess," said Mr," that has always appeared to me an exceptionable passage."" I do not believe, Mamma,' said the young lady," that she was really converted in opinion; but I don't wonder at her crying out she was a Christian, after such a speech as that of her father Lusignan. I know my heart was so wrung

with the scene, that I could, at that moment, have almost become Mahometan, to have comforted the good old man."— Her mother smiled; for this was exactly a confirmation of her remark.

"Voltaire," said Sir H, "has, like many other authors, introduced a dark scene into the last act of this tragedy; yet it appears to me, that such a scene goes beyond the power of stage-deception, and always hurts the piece. We cannot possibly suppose, that two persons walking upon the same board do not see each other, while we, sitting in a distant part of the house, see both perfectly well."—" I do recollect," said the young lady," at first, wondering how Zara could fail to see Osman; but I soon forgot it."-" Thus it always is," replied Mr M " in such

a case; if a poet has eloquence or genius enough to command the passions, he easily gets the better of those stage improbabilities. In truth, the scenic deception is

of a very singular nature. It is impossible we should imagine ourselves spectators of the real scene, of which the stage one is an imitation; the utmost length we are, in reality, carried, is to deliver over our minds to that sympathy, which a proper and striking representation of grief, rage, or any other passion, produces. You destroy the deception, it is said, when any thing impertinent or ludicrous happens on the stage, or among the audience; but you will find the very same effect, if a child blows his three-halfpenny trumpet, in the midst of a solo of Fischer, or a song of Rauzzini; it stops the delightful current of feeling which was carrying along the soul at the time, and dissatisfaction and pain are the immediate consequence; yet in the solo or the song, no such deception as the theatrical is pretended.". Mr

delivered this with the manner of one who had studied the subject, and nobody ventured to answer him.

"You were mentioning," said Mrs "Voltaire's imitation of Othello, in this tragedy; I recollect, in the last act, a very strong instance of it, the concluding speech of Osman, before he stabs himself, which seems to be exactly taken from that of the Moor, in a similar situation." "I remember both speeches well," said Sir H--, "and I think it may be disputed, whether either of them be congenial to the situation." "You will excuse me, Sir H-," said I, "if I hold them both perfectly in nature. The calmness of desperate and irremediable grief will give vent to a speech longer and more methodical than the immediate anguish of some less deep and irretrievable calamity. Shakespeare makes Othello refer, in the instant of stabbing himself, to a story of his killing a Turk in Aleppo; the moment of perturbation, when such a passage would have been unnatural, is past; the act of killing himself is then a matter

of little importance; and his reference to a story seemingly indifferent, marks, in my opinion, most forcibly and naturally, the deep and settled horror on Othello's soul. I prefer it to the concluding lines of the Sultan's speech in Zara, which rest on the story of his own misfortune:

Tell 'em, I plunged my dagger in her breast;
Tell 'em, I so adored, and thus revenged her."

"You have talked a great deal of the author," said the young lady, "but nothing of the actors. Was not the part of Zara excellently performed?" "Admirably, indeed," replied Mr "I know

;

no actress who possesses the power of speaking poetry beyond Miss Younge." " Nor of feeling it neither, Sir, I think.” "I did not mean to deny her that quality; but, in the other, I think she is unrivalled. She does not reach, perhaps, the impassioned burst, the e'ectric flash of Mrs Barry; nor has she that deep and