prominent feature-Francis is the veriest coward imaginable in the battle of Bosworth, Richard fell like a hero; Francis, frightened at a pistolshot, is taken like a poltroon. The dream of Richard, however, on the eve of his engagement with the Earl of Richmond, when the ghosts of all that he had murdered came to his tent, pro claims the horrors of a guilty conscience: -Soft-I did but dream— O coward conscience,-how dost thou afflict me! Schiller has, with equal success, haunted the dreams of Francis with the black catalogue of his own crimes; the terrible sublimity of the quotation will plead my excuse for transcribing it. "FRANCIS. Nay, Daniel-I must tell you'tis so odd-you'll laugh, I promise you:-you must know, I thought I had been feasting like a prince, and I laid me down, quite happy, on one of the grassy banks of the garden—there I fell asleep, and all of a sudden-but you'll laugh when I tell you. "DANIEL. All of a sudden-what? "FRANCIS. All of a sudden I was awaked by a clap of thunder-I got upon my feet, and, stag gering, looked around me-when lo! the whole horizon seemed to be one great sheet of firethe mountains, towns, and forests seemed to melt like wax in a furnace; and then a dreadful tempest arose, which drove before it the heavens, the earth, and the ocean. "DANIEL. Good God! it is the description of the day of judgment. "FRANCIS. Did you ever hear such ridiculous stuff? Then I saw a person come forward, who held in his right hand a brazen balance, which stretched from east to west-he cried with a loud voice, Approach ye children of the dust, I weigh the thoughts of the heart.' " DANIEL. God have mercy upon me! "FRANCIS. All seemed to be struck with terror, and every countenance was pale as ashes -'twas then I thought I heard MY NAME in a dreadful voice that issued in thunder from the mountain-a voice that froze the marrow in my bones, and made my teeth chatter as if they had been of iron. "DANIEL. O may God forgive you! "FRANCIS. HE DID NOT. FORGIVE ME.-Behold, an old man appeared,* bent to the ground with sorrow-a horrible sight; for he had * It is perhaps unnecessary to say that this figure represents his father, whom he supposed he had starved to death. gnawed away one half of his arm from hunger. -None could bear to look upon him.—I knew him :-He cut off one of his grey locks, and threw it from him-Then I heard a voice issue from the smoke of the mountain; Mercy and forgiveness to all the sinners of the earth! THOU ONLY ART REJECTED.'-(After a long pause.) Why don't you laugh?" Can any thing exceed the ghastly horror of this dream? and the idea of laughing at it-the wildest and most distempered imagination cannot conceive a parallel. I should swell a single essay too much, were I to insert the whole of my observations in it: in the next number I shall take an opportunity of concluding them, THE CABINET, vol. i. p. 84. No. CLXXXII. There is no thread so finely spun, as that which weaves the bands of guilt. ROBBERS. THE principal feature in this play is HORROR; and the power of exciting this emotion is, undoubtedly, the forte of Schiller: that energy of expression which thrills through every vein, that wildness of fancy which startles every reader, he well knew would lead along the most intractable attention, and wake the soundest slumbers of a stoic: he well knew that a tale of terror would work its way into the soul that was inaccessible to sorrow; he well knew that the heart must possess a refinement of feeling, and delicacy of sentiment, somewhat above the common portion of humanity, before it can sympathise with the anguish of disappointed love, and vibrate with every palpitation of a woman's breast. But man, in every gradation of character, and every variety of condition, from the depths of barbarity to the very summit of civilization, from a state of stupidity to sensibility itself, would feel affrighted at the daring councils of a desperate banditti, and shudder at the foul and unqualified malignity of such a fiend as Francis. The terror of "Sir Bertrand," and the achievements of the " Old English Baron," will remain, when the languishments of unhappy passion, and the soft sighs which swell the imagery of poetic fiction, shall have faded away "like a sunbeam in the day of the gloomy storm." The characters of this play, if they are uncommon, are consistent. I have already ventured a vindication of Schiller, in representing Amelia as inconstant to Charles; as it appears to me, in such circumstances, a weakness by no means unnatural; and I have given my reasons for the opinion. Cowardice and villany are generally concomitants: there are but two cowards in the piece, Francis and Speigelberg, and they are both villains; perhaps, I cannot reverse the proposition, and say-there are but two villains-yet, among the robbers, almost all the other characters have some solitary spark of generosity or grandeur, which beams through the thick cloud of vice, and flashes admiration on the moralist himself. When the band are sleeping on the ground, and Speigelberg is tempting Razman to the assassination of their captain, Switzer gets up secretly: "Ha! villain -I have not forgot the Bohemian forest-when you screamed like a pitiful scoundrel, that the |