crut obligé de rappeler, d'indemniser même 1 des femmes qui surprenaient quelquefois d'importants secrets, et qu'on pouvait employer utilement à ruiner des hommes que leur fortune aurait pu rendre dangereux. Depuis, la licence est toujours allée croissant, et l'on a vu non seulement des mères trafiquer de la virginité de leurs filles, mais la vendre par un contrat, dont l'authenticité était garantie par la signature d'un officier public, et l'exécution mise sous la protection des lois.2

every woman who should sue for a dissolution of her marriage should be compelled to await the decision of the judges in some convent, to be named by the court.' Soon afterwards the same council summoned all causes of that nature before itself. This infringement on ecclesiastical jurisdiction having occasioned some remonstrance form Rome, the council retained only the right of rejecting the petition of the married persons, and consented to refer such causes to the holy office as it should not previously have rejected.3

«There was a moment in which, doubtless, the destruction of private fortunes, the ruin of youth, the domestic discord occasioned by these abuses, determined the government to depart from its established maxims concerning the freedom of manners allowed the subject. All the courtisans were banished from Venice, but their absence was not enough to reclaim and bring back good morals to a whole people brought up in the most scan

« Les parloirs des couvents où étaient renfermées les filles nobles, les maisons des courtisanes, quoique la police y entretînt soigneusement un grand nombre de surveillans, étaient les seuls points de réunion de la société de Venise, et dans ces deux endroits si divers on était également libre. La musique, les collations, la galanterie, n'étaient pas plus interdites dans les parloirs que dans les casins. Il y avait un grand nombre de casins destinés aux réunions publiques, où le jeu était la principale occupation de la société. C'était un sin-dalous licentiousness. Depravity reached the very bosoms gulier spectacle de voir autour d'une table des persones des deux sexes en masque, et de graves personnages en robe de magistrature, implorant le hasard, passant des angoisses du désespoir aux illusions de l'espérance, et cela sans proférer une parole.

<«<Les riches avaient des casins particuliers; mais ils y vivaient avec mystère; leurs femmes délaissées trouvaient un dédommagement dans la liberté dont elles jouissaient; la corruption des mœurs les avait privées de tout leur empire; on vient de parcourir toute l'histoire de Venise, et on ne les a pas vues une seule fois exercer la moindre influence.»

V.

of private families, and even into the cloister; and they found themselves obliged to recal, and even to indemnify 4 women who sometimes gained possession of important secrets, and who might be usefully employed in the ruin of men whose fortunes might have rendered them dangerous. Since that time licentiousness has gone on increasing, and we have seen mothers, not only selling the innocence of their daughters, but selling it by a contract, authenticated by the signature of a public officer, and the performance of which was secured by the protection of the laws. 5

« The parlours of the convents of noble ladies, and the houses of the courtisans, though the police carefully kept up a number of spies about them, were the only

so different from each other, there was equal freedom.

Extract from the History of the Republic of Venice, by assemblies for society in Venice, and in these two places, P. Daru, Member of the French Academy, vol. V, Music, collations, gallantry, were not more forbidden in|

b. xxxv, p. 95, etc. Paris Edit. 1819.

«To these attacks, so frequently pointed by the government against the clergy, to the continual struggles between the different constituted bodies,-to these enterprises carried on by the mass of the nobles against the depositaries of power,―to all those projects of innovation, which always ended by a stroke of state policy, we must add a cause not less fitted to spread contempt for ancient doctrines; this was the excess of corruption.

"

That freedom of manners, which had been long boasted of as the principal charm of Venetian society, had degenerated into scandalous licentiousness; the tie of marriage was less sacred in that Catholic country, than among those nations where the laws and religion admit of its being dissolved. Because they could not break the contract, they feigned that it had not existed; and the ground of nullity, immodestly alledged by the married pair, was admitted with equal facility by priests and magistrates, alike corrupt. These divorces, veiled

under another name, became so frequent, that the most

important act of civil society was discovered to be amenable to a tribunal of exceptions; and to restrain the open scandal of such proceedings became the office of the police. In 1782 the Council of Ten decreed, that

Le décret de rappel les désignait sous le nom de nostre benemerite meretrici. On leur assigna un fonds et des maisons appelées Case rampane, d'ou vient la dénomination injurieuse de Carampane.

* Mayer, Description de Venise, tom, ii. et M. Archenholtz, Tableau de l'Italie, tom. i. chap. 2.

the parlours than at the casinos. There were a number of casinos for the purpose of public assemblies, where gaming was the principal pursuit of the company. It was a strange sight to see persons of either sex, masked, or grave personages in their magisterial robes, round a table, invoking chance, and giving way at one instant to the agonies of despair, at the next to the illusions of hope, and that without uttering a single word.

«The rich had private casinos, but they lived incognito in them; and the wives whom they abandoned found compensation in the liberty they enjoyed. The corruption of morals had deprived them of their empire. We have just reviewed the whole history of Venice, and we have not once seen them exercise the slightest influence. >>

FROM the present decay and degeneracy of Venice under the barbarians, there are some honourable individual exceptions. There is Pasqualigo, the last, and, alas! posthumous son of the marriage of the Doges with the Adriatic, who fought his frigate with far greater gallantry than any of his French coadjutors in the me

Correspondence of Mr Schlick, French chargé d'affaires. Despatch

of 24th August, 1982.

2 Ibid. Despatch, 31st August.

3 Ibid. Despatch, 3d September, 1785.

4 The decree for their recal designates them as mostre benemerit! meretrici. A fund and some houses called Case rampant srie ar signed to them: bence the opprobrious appellation of Carampane.

5 Mayer, Description of Venice, vol ii. and M. Archenbolts, Picture of Italy, vol. i. chap. 3.

Who this person may be I know not; but he must have been deceived by all or any of those who « repeatedly offered to introduce» him, as I have invariably refused to receive auy English with whom I was not previously acquainted, even when they had letters from England. If the whole assertion is not an invenIl y a une prédiction fort singulière sur Venise: 'Sition, I request this person not to sit down with the tu ne changes pas,' dit-il à cette république altière, ‘ta hberté qui déjà s'enfuit, ne comptera pas un siècle après

Extract from the Literary History of Italy, by P. L. tion,» even had it been true, which for the reasons I Ginguéné, vol. ix. p. 144. Paris Edit. 1819.

Sardanapalus,

AN HISTORICAL TRAGEDY.

PREFACE.

In publishing the Tragedies of Sardanapalus, and of The Two Foscari, I have only to repeat that they were not composed with the most remote view to the stage.

On the attempt made by the managers in a former instance, the public opinion has been already expressed. With regard to my own private feelings, as it seems that they are to stand for nothing, I shall say nothing. For the historical foundation of the compositions in question, the reader is referred to the Notes.

SARDANAPALUS.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

A Hall in the Palace.

SALEMENES (solus).

The Author has in one instance attempted to pre-He hath wrong'd my sister, still he is my brother; He hath wrong'd his queen, but still he is her lord; serve, and in the other to approach the « unities;» conceiving that, with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama. He is aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English literature; but it is not a system of his own, being merely an opinion which, not very long ago, was the law of literature throughout the world, and is still so in the more civilized parts of it. But «Nous avons changé tout cela,» and are reaping the advantages of the change. The writer is far from con

ceiving that any thing he can adduce by personal pre

cept or example can at all approach his regular, or even irregular predecessors: he is merely giving a reason why he preferred the more regular formation of a structure, however feeble, to an entire abandonment of all rules whatsoever. Where he has failed, the failure is in the architect,--and not in the art.

He hath wrong d his people, still he is their sovereign,
And I must be his friend as well as subject;
The blood of Nimrod and Semiramis
He must not perish thus. I will not see
Sink in the earth, and thirteen hundred years
Of empire ending like a shepherd's tale;
He must be roused. In his effeminate heart
There is a careless courage, which corruption
Has not all quench'd, and latent energies,
Represt by circumstance, but not destroy'd-

Steep'd, but not drown'd, in deep voluptuousness.
If born a peasant, he had been a man
To have reach'd an empire; to an empire born,
He will bequeath none; nothing but a name,
Which his sons will not prize in heritage:-
Yet, not all lost, even yet he may redeem
His sloth and shame, by only being that
Which he should be, as easily as the thing
He should not he and is. Were it less toil
To sway his nations than consume his life?
To head an army than to rule a harem?
He sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul,
And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not
Health like the chase, nor glory like the war-
He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound

[Sound of soft music heard from within.
To rouse him short of thunder. Hark! the lute,
The lyre, the timbrel; the lascivious tinklings
Of lulling instruments, the softening voices
Of women, and of beings less than women,
Must chime in to the echo of his revel,
While the great king of all we know of earth
Lolls crown'd with roses, and his diadem
Lies negligently by to be caught up

By the first manly hand which dares to snatch it.
Lo, where they come! already I perceive

The reeking odours of the perfumed trains,
And see the bright gems of the glittering girls,
Who are his comrades and his council, flash
Along the gallery, and amidst the damsels,

MYRRHA, an Ionian female Slave, and the favourite As femininely garb'd, and scarce less female,

of SARDANAPALUS.

Women composing the Harem of SARDANAPALUS, Guards,
Attendants, Chaldean Priests, Medes, etc. etc.

Scene-a Hall in the Royal Palace of Nineveh.

The grandson of Semiramis, the man-queen.-
He comes! Shall I await him? yes, and front him,
And tell him what all good men tell each other,
Speaking of him and his. They come, the slaves,
Led by the monarch subject to his slaves.

Who built up this vast empire, and wert made Why what makes thee the mouth-piece of the people? A god, or at the least shinest like a god

Even from the winds, if thou couldst listen Left she behind in India to the vultures? Unto the echoes of the nation's voice.