The Tragic Comedians, Complete

lipped from her companion and gazed into the recess of a doorless inner room, where three gentlemen stood, backed by book cases, conversing in blue vapours of tobacco. They were indistinct; she co

by priests of the later religion burning to hunt him out of worship in the semblance of the hairy, hoofy, snouty Evi

n, and she saw how veritably magnific

born orator's, with the light-giving eyes, the forward nose, the animated mouth, all stamped for speechfulne

s blood that the swift emotion running with the theme as he talked pictured itself in passing and was like the play of sheet lightning on the variations of the uninterrupted and many-glancing outpour. Looking on him was listening. Yes, the looking on him sufficed. Here was an image of the bea

th herself, escaped from cat, persecuted mouse, teased herself, and gloated. It is he! not he! he! not he! most certainly! impossible!-And then it ran: If he, oh me! If another, woe me! For she had come to see Alvan. Alvan and s

he bestial Gentile. There is not in the sublimest of Gentiles a majesty comparable to that of the Jew elect. He may well think his race favoured of heaven, though heaven chastise them still. The noble Jew is grave in age, but

ike a Jew was Alvan; and she was prepared to express her recordation of the circumstance in her

of feeling too deeply the spell of his voice. His voice had the mellow fulness of the clarionet. But for the subject, she could have fancied a noontide piping of great Pan by the sedges. She had never heard a continuous monologue so musical, so varied in music, amply flowing, vivacious, interwovenly the brook, the stream, the torrent: a perfect natural orchestra in a single instrument. He had notes less pastorally imageable, notes that fired the blood, with the ranging of his theme. The subject became clea

e yearned to join him: and as that could not be done by a stranger approving, she panted to dissent. A young lady cannot so well say to an unknown gentleman: 'You have spoken truly, sir,' as, 'That is false!' for to speak in the former case would be gratuitous, and in the latter she is excused by the moral warmth provoking her. Further, dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur-a poor

ompromise is virtual death: it is the pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency. So do we gather dead matter about us. So are we gradually self-stifled, corrupt. The war with evil in every form must be incessant; we cannot have peace. Let then our joy be in war: in uncompromising Action, which need not be the less a sagacious conduct of the war.... Action energizes men's brains, generates grander capacit

e character of Hamlet. Then he reverted to Hamlet's promising youth.

e first!' cr

a sudden crack of thunder. The three mad

t wavering on either side. Brave eyes they seemed, each pair of them, for his were fas

f the elbows. He knelt on the sofa, l

is a contradiction of me

mad,' said Clotilde hurriedly, and she gazed for her hos

You are she of whom I heard from Kollin: who else? Lucretia the gold-haired; the gol

er and speaking her name, all was like the happy reading of a riddle. He came round to her, bowing, and his hand