the bullet which had found his heart, the latter stained with his blood; I have seen it,-held it in my hand! Now, will you believe, that within three or four months afterwards, when Antoinette was under the obligation to resume her professional duties, the first character she was ordered to play was that of Thekla? In vain she entreated to be spared this outrage to every feeling of a heart yet bleeding from her loss; the greater her reluctance, the greater the effect which would be produced on the curiosity and sympathy of the public;—this, I suppose, was the cold calculation of the directory! She was not excused; and after going through the scene in which the Swedish captain relates to Thekla the death of her lover,* the poor Antoinette was carried from the stage by her aunt almost lifeless, and revived only to give way to such agonies of grief and indignation as threatened her reason.

Madame Arneth is remarkably calm and simple in her manner, and more than twenty years had elapsed since she had been thus insulted and tortured; but when she alluded to this part of her history, she became gradually convulsed with emotion, trembled in every limb, and pressed her hands upon her eyes, from which the tears would gush in spite of an effort to restrain them. And to this, you will say, an actress could be exposed? Yes; and I remember another instance, when

It will be remembered that the death of Theodore Körner was similar to that of Max Piccodomini.

under circumstances as cruel and as revolting, young and admired actress was hurried before the public in an agony of reluctance; but still I do say, that such exhibitions are not necessarily or solely confined to the profession of the stage; woman, as a legal property, is subjected to them in her conventional position; a woman may be brought into a church against her will, libelled and pilloried in an audacious newspaper; an English matron may be dragged from private life into a court of justice, exposed, guiltless, and helpless, to the public obloquy or the public sympathy, in shame and in despair. If such a scene can by possibility take place, one stage is not worse than another.

Antoinette had suffered what a woman of a quiet but proud temper never forgets or forgives. She had made up her mind to quit the stage, and there was only one way of doing so with honor. Four years after the death of Körner she married Mr. Arneth, one of the directors of the Imperial Museum, a learned and amiable man, considerably older than herself,* and with whom she has lived

*Madame Arneth is now Vorleserin (Reader) to the Empress Dowager, and intrusted with the direction of a school, founded by the Empress for the children of soldiers. In Austria only two soldiers in each company are allowed to marry, and the female children of such marriages are, in a manner, predestined to want and infamy. In the school under Madame Arneth's direction, I found (in 1835) forty-five children, well managed and healthy. The benevolence which suggested such an institutior s, without doubt, praiseworthy; but what shall we say of the system which makes such an institution necessary ?

happily. Before I left Vienna she presented me with a book which Körner had given her, containing his autograph and the dramas he had written for her "Die Toni," "der Grüne Domino," and others. I exclaimed thoughtlessly, "O how can you part with it?" and she replied, with a sweet seriousness," When I married a worthy man who loved me and trusted me, I thought there should be no wavering of the heart between past recollections and present duties; I put this and all other objects connected with that first period of my life entirely away, and I have never looked at it since. Take it! and believe me, even now, it is better in your hands than in mine." And mine it shall never 'eave.

Madame Arneth once described to me the admirable acting of Schroeder in Medea, when playing with her own children; she treated them, however, with savage roughness, and when remonstrated with, she replied, "the children were her own, and she had a right to do what she liked with them." "That was certainly her affair," added Madame Arneth, "but I would not for the whole world have exhibited myself before my own children in such a character."

Is not this a woman worthy of all love, all respect, all reverence? and is not this the sentiment of duty which is, or should be, "the star to every wandering bark?"

GOETHE'S TASSO, IPHIGENIA, AND

CLAVIGO.

February 24.

"CE qui est moins que moi, m'éteint et m'assomme: ce qui est à côté de moi m'ennuie et me fatigue: il n'y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui me soutienne et m'arrache à moimême.”* This is true-how true, I feel, and far more prettily said than I could say it; and thus it is that during these last few days of illness and solitary confinement, I took refuge in another and a higher world, and bring you my ideas thereupon.

I have been reading over again the "Iphigenia," the "Tasso," and the " Egmont" of Goethe.

"Iphigenia" is all repose; "Tasso" all emotion; "Egmont" all action and passion. "Iphigenia" rests upon the grace and grandeur of form—it is statuesque throughout. "Tasso" is the strife between the poetic and prosaic nature. 'Egmont" is the working of the real; all here is palpable, practical -even love itself.

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I laid down the "Tasso" with a depth of emotion which I have never felt but after reading "Hamlet," to which alone I could compare it; but this is a tragedy profound and complete in effect, without the intervention of any evil principle, without a dagger, without a death, without a tyrant, without a traitor! The truth of Leonora d'Este's character * Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse.

struck me forcibly; it is true to itself, as a character,—true to all we know of her history. The shadow which a hidden love has thrown over the otherwise transparent and crystalline simplicity of her mind is very charming-more charming from the contrast with her friend Leonora Sanvitale, who reconciles herself to the project of removing Tasso with exquisite feminine subtlety and sentimental cunning.

Why do you not finish your translation of the "Egmont?" who will ever do it as you can? What deep wisdom, what knowledge of human nature in every scene! And what can be finer than the two female portraits-the imperial, imperious Margaret of Austria, and the plebeian girl, Clärchen? The character of Clärchen grows upon me as I study it. Is she not really a Flemish Juliet, in her fond impatience, her wilfulness, and the energy of resolve arising out of the strength of passion? And her tenderness for her poor discarded lover, Brackenberg, whom she cannot love and cannot hate, is all so womanly natural!

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"Iphigenia" is an heroic tragedy-" Tasso," a poetical tragedy-" Egmont," an historical tragedy. Clavigo" " is what the Germans call a bürgerliche, or domestic tragedy (tragédie bourgeoise). I did not read this play as I read the "Tasso," borne aloft into the ideal, floating on the wings of enthusiasm between the earth and stars; but I laid it down with a terrible and profound pain—yes, pain!