another very pleasing drama, which still awaits the hand of a translator. This sentimental comedy bears more resemblance to the Indians in England than to any other of his preceding efforts, and like it has three acts. pro Maurice was a poor nobleman, obliged to leave his aunt and sisters in narrow circumstances, and to embark for the Indies in quest of a maintenance. After having rapidly acquired the fortune of a nabob, he attempted to return through Arabia, where he was plundered of that portion of his perty which had been intrusted to the caravan, and was himself made slave to a Bedouin Sheik. Omar, the son of the Arab chieftain, attaches himself to Maurice, learns of him an European language, obtains his liberty, and accompanies him to Europe: he has saved the life and he enjoys the friendship of Maurice. The piece opens soon after the arrival of the two friends in the sea-port at which the female relatives of Maurice reside, in industrious obscurity. They have just been removed to better lodgings, and are engaged in hiring an additional maid-servant. Maurice is represented as endowed with an excellent head and heart, but as having gotten rid of every prejudice, which the freaks of modern philosophy have attacked. He proposes to each of his sisters that she should marry him but, finding them otherwise inclined, he gives the one to a painter, and the other to his friend Omar. He next applies to the maid-servant, who, after various hesitations, thinks it her duty to tell him that she has already a little bastard, five or six years of age, by a person who is lately dead. Maurice likes both the child and the mother, and determines to marry her. He is willing to let his property become a common stock; and his friends are willing that he should: they agree to lay it out in what is necessary for colonization, and, being rather unfit for Europe, to set off together for the Pelew Islands. Some episodical personages serve to prolong the piece by farcical incidents. Much originality, consistency, interest, and nature, are manifest in the groupe of characters here assembled. The feeling, generous, bold, and naked honesty of Maurice; the negroefidelity and fiery sensibility of Omar; the lofty reserve of Moll, who is incurring the reproach of avarice in order to obtain the means of beneficence; the tender melancholy of his Julia; and the lively petulance and amiable caprice of Nelly, so bewitchingly employed in taming and rewarding the half-savage Arabian;-afford a high degree of variety and of pleasure. The most peculiar scene is perhaps that in which Maria meets the offer of marriage from Maurice by acquainting him with her previous amour: we shall translate it: • Maria Maria (leading in a little boy to Maurice). See. • Maurice (advancing towards her). At length then, you fibber, you are return'd. Are these your quarters of an hour? For this & expect that in future you turn my months into quarters of hours. Maria. I have waited awhile behind the hedge; you were not alone; and I wanted to collect myself-to prepare myself:-my eyes were so red. 'Maurice. Sweet girl, a red cheek I will allow you; for virgin shame reddens the cheek :-but grief the eyes. My wife must have tears only for another's sorrows. Maria. The generosity of a man can dry bitter tears: but generosity is not omnipotence: it cannot blot out the past, it cannot raze the written troubles of the heart. Your wife-good! great-man! there was a time when I might have fancied myself worthy of such a title-but of those sweet days of innocence, nothing now is left to me but the courage to tell you that they are no more. This boy is my son. (She clings about the child, and takes him to her arms.) Charles, Charles, to thee thy mother made a great sacrifice; and in return thou shalt one day curse me for having given to thee a dishonourable being. (She rises up again.) Farewell, Sir. My thanks and my blessing swim in those tears. I owe you much. You lifted up my soul anew. You gave me occasion to discover that I am still not wholly unworthy. Yes, Sir, to you I can willingly own it-I felt so bowed down, and so debased, that I dared not even pray to my God; for I had only words to atone for my faults: but the sacrifice which to-day I make to duty and to virtue, will restore to me some claim on my own esteem. I thank you, Sir. You have saved a wretch! -for who is so wretched as she who has lost her own esteem? The remembrance of this last hour will sweeten many moments of my life. I can again pray to God; and your name shall mingle with every breath of my gratitude. Farewell. Maurice. Stay. (He takes her by the hand, and after a pause beckons the child.) Where is thy father, child? Child. He is dead. • Maurice. I will be thy father, boy. Maria. O! God! 'Maurice (turning from the child to Maria). Thou art again flinging a prejudice in my way, and I-do not stumble at it, but tread it under foot. Look at this diamond (shewing her his ring), it is handsome, it is of the purest water, it is mine. I am not the first who possessed it; though I trust it shall be buried with me. I joy in it as much as if I had myself dug it from the mine of Golconda. (He takes her cordially by the hand.) I feel, Maria, that thou canst make me happy such as thou art. Thou speakest of a time when thou wast better: I tell thee thou art better now. Thy innocence was ignorance, was custom : thou wast good, because it had been told thee to be good. Now thou knowest why thou art good; now thou art virtuous-and shall I cast away the felicity of my life out of deference to a whim ?-refuse a rose because a butterfly has rifled it? What thou hast been I have no right to ask. I know what thou art, and what thou wilt be to me. Why dost thou not ask me whether I have ever been a pure young man, a stranger to incontinence? In my eyes, both sexes have equal rights. To-day begins a new life: the present is clear: the future smiles: the past lies behind us like a cloud which the wind has driven by. Dwell not enthusiastically on thy woes. Think of thy sorrows only with the glad feeling that they are no more. Whatever troubles thee henceforth, let me share it faithfully with thee. Maria (deeply moved, labours to express her gratitude in gestures: she cannot speak. At length she turns to the child, looks alternately at him and at Maurice, and with faultering voice says) And this child? Maurice. I am his father; he is my son. The mother to whom I owe him is not indeed named Pleasure, but Affection. Nature did not force him on me as a son in an hour of intoxication-he is my son by the choice of my heart. Come, my boy, shake hands. (He ofers his hand to the child, who takes it and caresses him.) Here I proDise thee, in the face of those who take most concern in thy fate, in the face of God and of thy mother, that I will truly and faithfully be thy father. I will so act towards thee, that, when we meet thy real father before the throne of God, he shall not dare to say-the lad is mine. The Child (drawing back his hand). You hurt me. • Maurice (smiling). He understands me not: but God has understood me; and thou too? •Meria (with deep emotion). I have. Meurice. So much, then, is settled. I am by this time known to thee; and I may now more confidently repeat my question: Sweet girl, wilt thou be my wife? Maria. You deserve an entire heart. Maurice. And if I deserve, I shall have it. If any of thine affections yet cling to other objects, time will separate them; and every day will add to the wholeness of my possession. This very feeling of progress is a new enjoyment. Maria. Yes, I shall love thee. As yet I cannot: you are too much my benefactor: we are not equal enough to each other :bit if esteem and gratitude be the preparations for real love- as I tink I feel they are-then -yes • Maurice (snatches her hand with transport). Speak after me. • Mourice. I am thine. aria Thine. Maurice (clasping her in his arms.) Mine. Here, my child, thou belonges to our trefoil-leaf. (He lifts up the child, who throws a band round each of their necks) The knot is tied. (He sets down the child, and is go the band of Maria.) It is completely tied in my eyes: in thine it still wants another ceremony. Come. Follow me to the clergyman? I this as in many others of his scenes, KOTZEBUE must be thought to tread on the brink of moral licentiousness. By putting Foundation for a future Zoonomia. 535 putting a case, in which the feelings of an audience are drawn. These dramas are too well written not to be read once: but ART. XII. Grundlage zu einer kunftigen Zoonomie, &c. i. e. A TH HIS is the ingenious attempt of a young medical student. Professor Hufeland, who was consulted by the bookseller respecting the manuscript, observed, that "no sooner had he learned that it came from one of his heaters, than he gave his voice for its being printed; not out of vanity, but because the author had chosen to criticise and reject his doctrines. Nor can any one fail to perceive that happy ideas and penetrating views occur in the essay, however it may be deficient in connection, and sophistical in some of its reasonings." In relation to a former work of similar title, the author remarks that 'Darwin has already used the name Zoonomia, and only the name. For his work is nothing but an universal organical natural history, and looks more like an hypothetical didactic poem than a systematic plan of the laws of organic life. It is very allowable in a poet to call unknown powers into action, but not so in a teacher of the laws of nature. The latter must not go about to explain what he cannot explain.' The cause of the present imperfect knowlege of animal nature is not, we are told, the indolence of inquirers, nor a deficiency of the means of inquiry: the fault hes with Philo sophy, who in the evening appears in one garb; in the morning in another; to-day, takes a thing one way, to-morrow another, and explodes her yesterday's opinion as nonsense. It is Philosophy content with half experiments, and undertaking to make out the remainder à priori. He who invented the doctrine of ideas à priori deserves a pillar from Indolence and Ignorance. This doctrine, alas! makes dreadful encroach. Tay. 1 ments; and we shall soon be able to account for every thing without needing to take a single step after experiment.' This is doubtless meant more particularly of the philosophy of Kant; whose definition of the word organic, this author examines and rejects. He himself offers the following definition: That is organic which, by generation, (gattungserzengung,) is compounded of irritable fitness for a common end.' Afterward, Matter and quality (substance and accident), Vis vita in general, or irritability-Structure of fibres, or vis vitæ in specie—Composition of organs to a living individual-Operation of life-Animalismus in particular-constitute the subjects of so many chapters. We could extract various reasonings equally ingenious with those of celebrated writers, and not more paradoxical. Having contended at length for the irritability (contractibility) of the nerves, the author proceeds to argue against their sensibility in the following manner: Every power of a physical body must have a sensible action. We must perceive this action in a body ab extra. This sensible action of sensibility is neither an idea of perception, nor (what is most in point) can it be made an idea of understanding. This proves that sensation belongs to the soul, not to the body. For every act of the soul is like itself a non-entity, (unding,) and conversely a non-entity belongs to the soul. 2. All the spasmodic symptoms, known under the title of nervous symptoms, arise from a really spasmodic contraction, and can by no means be referred to sensation. One part, for example, feels another not, or more intensely. One part does not so act on the soul that sensation can arise, as it can in another. Now were the action of a nerve sensation, there must take place, at a time when the nerve is so greatly irritated, an increase of fecling, not insensibility: but, when I assume an actual contraction, and conceive the nerve in this state, and irritate it externally, no farther contraction can fol low; for the nerve is at its utmost contraction; and therefore the new stimulus can occasion no increased action of the soul. 3. We do not feel in sleep, and yet we have the same nerves as when awake. That all the conditions necessary to the activity of the nerves are present, appears from our feeling when we suddenly awake. Were sensation the affair of the nerves, they must continue to act as long as the proper conditions shall be present; and sleep would be an im possible state. 4. We perceive animal phænomena which immedi ately depend on the nerves. If sensibility be an act of the nerves, how far can a no phenomenon be the cause of a phænomenon? For it is demonstrable that sensation is no phænomenon. 5. Were the nerves sensible, we should understand the organs, laws, and actions of our system better than we do. We should need no anatomy, no physiology; nor should we have the trouble of framing such frail hypotheses concerning the functions of the organs: for the nerve would well know what neighbours it had; would.manifest to us by its feeling, what acted on it, and how this something acted. But wherefore |