This well-deserved praise—­the success with which the author has studied, in a school, the models of which were human feelings and nature,—­we have yet to illustrate from other passages.  Mr. Stephens evinces his full acquaintance with Nature by a familiarity with her convulsions:  whirlwinds, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and volcanoes—­are this gentleman’s playthings.  When, for instance, Rupert is going to be gallant to Queen Isabella, she exclaims:—­

  “Dire lightnings!  Scoundrel!  Help!”

Martinuzzi conveys a wish for his nobles to laugh—­an order for a sort of court cachinnation—­in these pretty terms:—­

  “Blow it about, ye opposite winds of heaven,
  Till the loud chorus of derision shake
  The world with laughter!”

When he feels uncomfortable at something he is told in the first act, the Cardinal complains thus:—­

  “Ha! earthquakes quiver in my flesh!”

which the Britannia is so good as to tell us is superior to Byron; while the Morning Herald kindly remarks, that “a more vigorous and expressive line was never penned.  In five words it illustrates the fiercest passions of humanity by the direst convulsion of nature:”  (Opinions, p. 7) a criticism which illustrates the fiercest throes of nonsense, by the direst convulsions of ignorance.

Castaldo, being anxious to murder the Cardinal with, we suppose, all “means and appliances to boot,” asks of heaven a trifling favour:—­

  “Heaven, that look’st on,
  Rain thy broad deluge first!  All-teeming earth
  Disgorge thy poisons, till the attainted air
  Offend the sense!  Thou, miscreative hell,
  Let loose calamity!”

But it is not only in the “sublime and beautiful that Mr. Stephens’s genius delights” (vide Opinions, p. 4); his play exhibits sentiments of high morality, quite worthy of the “Editor of the Church of England Quarterly Review,” the author of “Lay Sermons,” and other religious works.  For example:  the lady-killer, Castaldo, is “hotly” loved by the queen-mother, while he prefers the queen-daughter.  The last and Castaldo are together.  The dowager overhears their billing and cooing, and thus, with great moderation, sends her supposed daughter to ——.  But the author shall speak for himself:—­

  “Ye viprous twain! 
  Swift whirlwinds snatch ye both to fire as endless
  And infinite as hell!  May it embrace ye! 
  And burn—­burn limbs and sinews, souls, until
  It wither ye both up—­both—­in its arms!”

Elegant denunciation!—­“viprous,” “hell,” “sinews and souls.”  Has Goethe ever written anything like this?  Certainly not.  Therefore the “Monthly” is right at p. 11 of the Opinions.  Stephens must be equal, if not superior, to the author of “Faust.”

One more specimen of delicate sentiment from the lips of a virgin concerning the lips of her lover, will fully establish the Syncretic code of moral taste:—­