Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 099.djvu/245

Rh prefers the prim proprieties of classical common-place to rough diamonds of the first water, will hold in supreme dislike this mediæval mosaic. He will complain that what spinal column it has is crooked and out of joint, and that on a frail incompetent skeleton are huddled, in most admired disorder, vestments the most incongruous, as though motley were the only wear. Spirits more genial and germane will take the Legend for such as it is, and, admitting the presence of alloy, will call it Golden in the grumbler's teeth. How a pure and simple-hearted maiden gives up her life to save the life of a selfish, sere-hearted prince, makes perhaps a scanty libretto; but the composer has inwoven it with a profusion of accompaniments, variations, quaint melodies, and descriptive harmonies. The most unheroic hero, Prince Henry, however disagreeable (and so far prejudicial to the success of the poem), is portrayed with artful excellence—a mind oscillating, unsteadfast, and that cannot find its centre of rest and harmony—one who is fain to purchase length of days by the death, not of sweet Elsie alone, but of all that's good and true and noble in himself all manhood, self-respect, love, faith, hope, heart. Him the Devil is content to let live, to corrupt his race,

One scarcely likes to see his highness walk off, at the exeunt omnes, with the martyr-maiden, in clinging confidence, under his arm, although she is to be the Lady Alicia (quite a decadence from Elsie), and he a respectable pater familias. Nevertheless, there are such touches of nature in this portraiture, that a humiliating sense of kin should not make us less than kind; and we own to a decided and sustained interest in the distraught prince. Elsie is a vision of delight—a ministering angel—who shall say, not too bright or good for human nature's daily food?—a guileless, earnest creature, inspired by a conviction that "at Salerno, far away, over the mountains, over the sea, it is appointed her to die"—and who hears in the summons a voice not harsh or grating, but soothing music, as though the Spirit and the Bride said, "Come,"—so that she is athirst to come, at the bidding of God and Mary Mother, and would fain come quickly. How beautiful her child-logic about death, when her parents warn her against rashly acquainting herself with what she knows not of!and then recalling a little sister's death-bed—and how the quiet corpse lay there more beautiful than before—and how the test of death was that "like violets faded were her eyes"—and how the skies looked sunnily in through the open window, "and the wind was like the sound of wings, as if angels came to bear her away;" and so she passes on to cheer her mother with the suggestion, in the event she persistently anticipates,more touching still than which is the mother's outburst of feeling in reply—