The Dynasts

Act First

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I. PHANTOM INTELLIGENCES

THE ANCIENT SPIRIT OF THE YEARS/CHORUS OF THE YEARS.

THE SPIRIT OF THE PITIES/CHORUS OF THE PITIES.

SPIRITS SINISTER AND IRONIC/CHORUSES OF SINISTER AND IRONIC SPIRITS.

THE SPIRIT OF RUMOUR/CHORUS OF RUMOURS.

THE SHADE OF THE EARTH.

SPIRIT-MESSENGERS.

RECORDING ANGELS.

II. PERSONS (The names in lower case are mute figures.)

MEN

GEORGE THE THIRD.

The Duke of Cumberland

PITT.

FOX.

SHERIDAN.

WINDHAM.

WHITBREAD.

TIERNEY.

BATHURST AND FULLER.

Lord Chancellor Eldon.

EARL OF MALMESBURY.

LORD MULGRAVE.

ANOTHER CABINET MINISTER.

Lord Grenville.

Viscount Castlereagh.

Viscount Sidmouth.

ANOTHER NOBLE LORD.

ROSE.

Canning.

Perceval.

Grey.

Speaker Abbot.

TOMLINE, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.

SIR WALTER FARQUHAR.

Count Munster.

Other Peers, Ministers, ex-Ministers, Members of Parliament,

and Persons of Quality.

. . . . . . . . . .

NELSON.

COLLINGWOOD.

HARDY.

SECRETARY SCOTT.

DR. BEATTY.

DR. MAGRATH.

DR. ALEXANDER SCOTT.

BURKE, PURSER.

Lieutenant Pasco.

ANOTHER LIEUTENANT.

POLLARD, A MIDSHIPMAN.

Captain Adair.

Lieutenants Ram and Whipple.

Other English Naval Officers.

Sergeant-Major Secker and Marines.

Staff and other Officers of the English Army.

A COMPANY OF SOLDIERS.

Regiments of the English Army and Hanoverian.

SAILORS AND BOATMEN.

A MILITIAMAN.

Naval Crews.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Lord Mayor and Corporation of London.

A GENTLEMAN OF FASHION.

WILTSHIRE, A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

A HORSEMAN.

TWO BEACON-WATCHERS.

ENGLISH CITIZENS AND BURGESSES.

COACH AND OTHER HIGHWAY PASSENGERS.

MESSENGERS, SERVANTS, AND RUSTICS.

. . . . . . . . . .

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

DARU, NAPOLEON'S WAR SECRETARY.

LAURISTON, AIDE-DE-CAMP.

MONGE, A PHILOSOPHER.

BERTHIER.

MURAT, BROTHER-IN-LAW OF NAPOLEON.

SOULT.

NEY.

LANNES.

Bernadotte.

Marmont.

Dupont.

Oudinot.

Davout.

Vandamme.

Other French Marshals.

A SUB-OFFICER.

. . . . . . . . . .

VILLENEUVE, NAPOLEON'S ADMIRAL.

DECRES, MINISTER OF MARINE.

FLAG-CAPTAIN MAGENDIE.

LIEUTENANT DAUDIGNON.

LIEUTENANT FOURNIER.

Captain Lucas.

OTHER FRENCH NAVAL OFFICERS AND PETTY OFFICERS.

Seamen of the French and Spanish Navies.

Regiments of the French Army.

COURIERS.

HERALDS.

Aides, Officials, Pages, etc.

ATTENDANTS.

French Citizens.

. . . . . . . . . .

CARDINAL CAPRARA.

Priests, Acolytes, and Choristers.

Italian Doctors and Presidents of Institutions.

Milanese Citizens.

. . . . . . . . . .

THE EMPEROR FRANCIS.

THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND.

Prince John of Lichtenstien.

PRINCE SCHWARZENBERG.

MACK, AUSTRIAN GENERAL.

JELLACHICH.

RIESC.

WEIROTHER.

ANOTHER AUSTRIAN GENERAL.

TWO AUSTRIAN OFFICERS.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Emperor Alexander.

PRINCE KUTUZOF, RUSSIAN FIELD-MARSHAL.

COUNT LANGERON.

COUNT BUXHOVDEN.

COUNT MILORADOVICH.

DOKHTOROF.

. . . . . . . . . .

Giulay, Gottesheim, Klenau, and Prschebiszewsky.

Regiments of the Austrian Army.

Regiments of the Russian Army.

WOMEN

Queen Charlotte.

English Princesses.

Ladies of the English Court.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

A LADY.

Lady Caroline Lamb, Mrs. Damer, and other English Ladies.

. . . . . . . . . .

THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE.

Princesses and Ladies of Josephine's Court.

Seven Milanese Young Ladies.

. . . . . . . . . .

City- and Towns-women.

Country-women.

A MILITIAMAN'S WIFE.

A STREET-WOMAN.

Ship-women.

Servants.

--

FORE SCENE

THE OVERWORLD

[Enter the Ancient Spirit and Chorus of the Years, the Spirit

and Chorus of the Pities, the Shade of the Earth, the Spirits

Sinister and Ironic with their Choruses, Rumours, Spirit-

Messengers, and Recording Angels.]

SHADE OF THE EARTH

What of the Immanent Will and Its designs?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

It works unconsciously, as heretofore,

Eternal artistries in Circumstance,

Whose patterns, wrought by rapt aesthetic rote,

Seem in themselves Its single listless aim,

And not their consequence.

CHORUS OF THE PITIES (aerial music)

Still thus? Still thus?

Ever unconscious!

An automatic sense

Unweeting why or whence?

Be, then, the inevitable, as of old,

Although that SO it be we dare not hold!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Hold what ye list, fond believing Sprites,

You cannot swerve the pulsion of the Byss,

Which thinking on, yet weighing not Its thought,

Unchecks Its clock-like laws.

SPIRIT SINISTER (aside)

Good, as before.

My little engines, then, will still have play.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Why doth It so and so, and ever so,

This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

As one sad story runs, It lends Its heed

To other worlds, being wearied out with this;

Wherefore Its mindlessness of earthly woes.

Some, too, have told at whiles that rightfully

Its warefulness, Its care, this planet lost

When in her early growth and crudity

By bad mad acts of severance men contrived,

Working such nescience by their own device.--

Yea, so it stands in certain chronicles,

Though not in mine.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Meet is it, none the less,

To bear in thought that though Its consciousness

May be estranged, engrossed afar, or sealed,

Sublunar shocks may wake Its watch anon?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nay. In the Foretime, even to the germ of Being,

Nothing appears of shape to indicate

That cognizance has marshalled things terrene,

Or will (such is my thinking) in my span.

Rather they show that, like a knitter drowsed,

Whose fingers play in skilled unmindfulness,

The Will has woven with an absent heed

Since life first was; and ever will so weave.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Hence we've rare dramas going--more so since

It wove Its web in the Ajaccian womb!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Well, no more this on what no mind can mete.

Our scope is but to register and watch

By means of this great gift accorded us--

The free trajection of our entities.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

On things terrene, then, I would say that though

The human news wherewith the Rumours stirred us

May please thy temper, Years, 'twere better far

Such deeds were nulled, and this strange man's career

Wound up, as making inharmonious jars

In her creation whose meek wraith we know.

The more that he, turned man of mere traditions,

Now profits naught. For the large potencies

Instilled into his idiosyncrasy--

To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room--

Are taking taint, and sink to common plots

For his own gain.

SHADE OF THE EARTH

And who, then, Cordial One,

Wouldst substitute for this Intractable?

CHORUS OF THE EARTH

We would establish those of kindlier build,

In fair Compassions skilled,

Men of deep art in life-development;

Watchers and warders of thy varied lands,

Men surfeited of laying heavy hands,

Upon the innocent,

The mild, the fragile, the obscure content

Among the myriads of thy family.

Those, too, who love the true, the excellent,

And make their daily moves a melody.

SHADE OF THE EARTH

They may come, will they. I am not averse.

Yet know I am but the ineffectual Shade

Of her the Travailler, herself a thrall

To It; in all her labourings curbed and kinged!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Shall such be mooted now? Already change

Hath played strange pranks since first I brooded here.

But old Laws operate yet; and phase and phase

Of men's dynastic and imperial moils

Shape on accustomed lines. Though, as for me,

I care not thy shape, or what they be.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

You seem to have small sense of mercy, Sire?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Mercy I view, not urge;--nor more than mark

What designate your titles Good and Ill.

'Tis not in me to feel with, or against,

These flesh-hinged mannikins Its hand upwinds

To click-clack off Its preadjusted laws;

But only through my centuries to behold

Their aspects, and their movements, and their mould.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

They are shapes that bleed, mere mannikins or no,

And each has parcel in the total Will.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Which overrides them as a whole its parts

In other entities.

SPIRIT SINISTER (aside)

Limbs of Itself:

Each one a jot of It in quaint disguise?

I'll fear all men henceforward!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Go to. Let this terrestrial tragedy--

SPIRIT IRONIC

Nay, Comedy--

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Let this earth-tragedy

Whereof we spake, afford a spectacle

Forthwith conned closelier than your custom is.--

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

How does it stand? (To a Recording Angel)

Open and chant the page

Thou'st lately writ, that sums these happenings,

In brief reminder of their instant points

Slighted by us amid our converse here.

RECORDING ANGEL (from a book, in recitative)

Now mellow-eyed Peace is made captive,

And Vengeance is chartered

To deal forth its dooms on the Peoples

With sword and with spear.

Men's musings are busy with forecasts

Of muster and battle,

And visions of shock and disaster

Rise red on the year.

The easternmost ruler sits wistful,

And tense he to midward;

The King to the west mans his borders

In front and in rear.

While one they eye, flushed from his crowning,

Ranks legions around him

To shake the enisled neighbour nation

And close her career!

SEMICHORUS I OF RUMOURS (aerial music)

O woven-winged squadrons of Toulon

And fellows of Rochefort,

Wait, wait for a wind, and draw westward

Ere Nelson be near!

For he reads not your force, or your freightage

Of warriors fell-handed,

Or when they will join for the onset,

Or whither they steer!

SEMICHORUS II

O Nelson, so zealous a watcher

Through months-long of cruizing,

Thy foes may elide thee a moment,

Put forth, and get clear;

And rendezvous westerly straightway

With Spain's aiding navies,

And hasten to head violation

Of Albion's frontier!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Methinks too much assurance thrills your note

On secrets in my locker, gentle sprites;

But it may serve.--Our thought being now reflexed

To forces operant on this English isle,

Behoves it us to enter scene by scene,

And watch the spectacle of Europe's moves

In her embroil, as they were self-ordained

According to the naive and liberal creed

Of our great-hearted young Compassionates,

Forgetting the Prime Mover of the gear,

As puppet-watchers him who pulls the strings.--

You'll mark the twitchings of this Bonaparte

As he with other figures foots his reel,

Until he twitch him into his lonely grave:

Also regard the frail ones that his flings

Have made gyrate like animalcula

In tepid pools.--Hence to the precinct, then,

And count as framework to the stagery

Yon architraves of sunbeam-smitten cloud.--

So may ye judge Earth's jackaclocks to be

No fugled by one Will, but function-free.

[The nether sky opens, and Europe is disclosed as a prone and

emaciated figure, the Alps shaping like a backbone, and the

branching mountain-chains like ribs, the peninsular plateau of

Spain forming a head. Broad and lengthy lowlands stretch from

the north of France across Russia like a grey-green garment hemmed

by the Ural mountains and the glistening Arctic Ocean.

The point of view then sinks downwards through space, and draws

near to the surface of the perturbed countries, where the peoples,

distressed by events which they did not cause, are seen writhing,

crawling, heaving, and vibrating in their various cities and

nationalities.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS (to the Spirit of the Pities)

As key-scene to the whole, I first lay bare

The Will-webs of thy fearful questioning;

For know that of my antique privileges

This gift to visualize the Mode is one

(Though by exhaustive strain and effort only).

See, then, and learn, ere my power pass again.

[A new and penetrating light descends on the spectacle, enduring

men and things with a seeming transparency, and exhibiting as one

organism the anatomy of life and movement in all humanity and

vitalized matter included in the display.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Amid this scene of bodies substantive

Strange waves I sight like winds grown visible,

Which bear men's forms on their innumerous coils,

Twining and serpenting round and through.

Also retracting threads like gossamers--

Except in being irresistible--

Which complicate with some, and balance all.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

These are the Prime Volitions,--fibrils, veins,

Will-tissues, nerves, and pulses of the Cause,

That heave throughout the Earth's compositure.

Their sum is like the lobule of a Brain

Evolving always that it wots not of;

A Brain whose whole connotes the Everywhere,

And whose procedure may but be discerned

By phantom eyes like ours; the while unguessed

Of those it stirs, who (even as ye do) dream

Their motions free, their orderings supreme;

Each life apart from each, with power to mete

Its own day's measures; balanced, self complete;

Though they subsist but atoms of the One

Labouring through all, divisible from none;

But this no further now. Deem yet man's deeds self-done.

GENERAL CHORUS OF INTELLIGENCES (aerial music)

We'll close up Time, as a bird its van,

We'll traverse Space, as spirits can,

Link pulses severed by leagues and years,

Bring cradles into touch with biers;

So that the far-off Consequence appear

Prompt at the heel of foregone Cause.--

The PRIME, that willed ere wareness was,

Whose Brain perchance is Space, whose Thought its laws,

Which we as threads and streams discern,

We may but muse on, never learn.

END OF THE FORE SCENE

--

ACT FIRST

SCENE I

ENGLAND. A RIDGE IN WESSEX

[The time is a fine day in March 1805. A highway crosses the

ridge, which is near the sea, and the south coast is seen

bounding the landscape below, the open Channel extending beyond.]

SPIRITS OF THE YEARS

Hark now, and gather how the martial mood

Stirs England's humblest hearts. Anon we'll trace

Its heavings in the upper coteries there.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Ay; begin small, and so lead up to the greater. It is a sound

dramatic principle. I always aim to follow it in my pestilences,

fires, famines, and other comedies. And though, to be sure, I did

not in my Lisbon earthquake, I did in my French Terror, and my St.

Domingo burlesque.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

THY Lisbon earthquake, THY French Terror. Wait.

Thinking thou will'st, thou dost but indicate.

[A stage-coach enters, with passengers outside. Their voices

after the foregoing sound small and commonplace, as from another

medium.]

FIRST PASSENGER

There seems to be a deal of traffic over Ridgeway, even at this time

o' year.

SECOND PASSENGER

Yes. It is because the King and Court are coming down here later

on. They wake up this part rarely! . . . See, now, how the Channel

and coast open out like a chart. That patch of mist below us is the

town we are bound for. There's the Isle of Slingers beyond, like a

floating snail. That wide bay on the right is where the "Abergavenny,"

Captain John Wordsworth, was wrecked last month. One can see half

across to France up here.

FIRST PASSENGER

Half across. And then another little half, and then all that's

behind--the Corsican mischief!

SECOND PASSENGER

Yes. People who live hereabout--I am a native of these parts--feel

the nearness of France more than they do inland.

FIRST PASSENGER

That's why we have seen so many of these marching regiments on the

road. This year his grandest attempt upon us is to be made, I reckon.

SECOND PASSENGER

May we be ready!

FIRST PASSENGER

Well, we ought to be. We've had alarms enough, God knows.

[Some companies of infantry are seen ahead, and the coach presently

overtakes them.]

SOLDIERS (singing as they walk)

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

If he won't sail, lest the wind should blow,

We shall have marched for nothing, O!

Right fol-lol!

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

If he be sea-sick, says "No, no!"

We shall have marched for nothing, O!

Right fol-lol!

[The soldiers draw aside, and the coach passes on.]

SECOND PASSENGER

Is there truth in it that Bonaparte wrote a letter to the King last

month?

FIRST PASSENGER

Yes, sir. A letter in his own hand, in which he expected the King

to reply to him in the same manner.

SOLDIERS (continuing, as they are left behind)

We be the King's men, hale and hearty,

Marching to meet one Buonaparty;

Never mind, mates; we'll be merry, though

We may have marched for nothing, O!

Right fol-lol!

THIRD PASSENGER

And was Boney's letter friendly?

FIRST PASSENGER

Certainly, sir. He requested peace with the King.

THIRD PASSENGER

And why shouldn't the King reply in the same manner?

FIRST PASSENGER

What! Encourage this man in an act of shameless presumption, and

give him the pleasure of considering himself the equal of the King

of England--whom he actually calls his brother!

THIRD PASSENGER

He must be taken for what he is, not for what he was; and if he calls

King George his brother it doesn't speak badly for his friendliness.

FIRST PASSENGER

Whether or no, the King, rightly enough, did not reply in person,

but through Lord Mulgrave our Foreign Minister, to the effect that

his Britannic Majesty cannot give a specific answer till he has

communicated with the Continental powers.

THIRD PASSENGER

Both the manner and the matter of the reply are British; but a huge

mistake.

FIRST PASSENGER

Sir, am I to deem you a friend of Bonaparte, a traitor to your

country---

THIRD PASSENGER

Damn my wig, sir, if I'll be called a traitor by you or any Court

sycophant at all at all!

[He unpacks a case of pistols.]

SECOND PASSENGER

Gentlemen forbear, forbear! Should such differences be suffered to

arise on a spot where we may, in less than three months, be fighting

for our very existence? This is foolish, I say. Heaven alone, who

reads the secrets of this man's heart, can tell what his meaning and

intent may be, and if his letter has been answered wisely or no.

[The coach is stopped to skid the wheel for the descent of the

hill, and before it starts again a dusty horseman overtakes it.]

SEVERAL PASSENGERS

A London messenger! (To horseman) Any news, sir? We are from

Bristol only.

HORSEMAN

Yes; much. We have declared war against Spain, an error giving

vast delight to France. Bonaparte says he will date his next

dispatches from London, and the landing of his army may be daily

expected.

[Exit horseman.]

THIRD PASSENGER

Sir, I apologize. He's not to be trusted! War is his name, and

aggression is with him!

[He repacks the pistols. A silence follows. The coach and

passengers move downwards and disappear towards the coast.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Ill chanced it that the English monarch George

Did not respond to the said Emperor!

SPIRIT SINISTER

I saw good sport therein, and paean'd the Will

To unimpel so stultifying a move!

Which would have marred the European broil,

And sheathed all swords, and silenced every gun

That riddles human flesh.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

O say no more;

If aught could gratify the Absolute

'Twould verily be thy censure, not thy praise!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

The ruling was that we should witness things

And not dispute them. To the drama, then.

Emprizes over-Channel are the key

To this land's stir and ferment.--Thither we.

[Clouds gather over the scene, and slowly open elsewhere.]

SCENE II

PARIS. OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF MARINE

[ADMIRAL DECRES seated at a table. A knock without.]

DECRES

Come in! Good news, I hope!

[An attendant enters.]

ATTENDANT

A courier, sir.

DECRES

Show him in straightway.

[The attendant goes out.]

From the Emperor

As I expected!

COURIER

Sir, for your own hand

And yours alone.

DECRES

Thanks. Be in waiting near.

[The courier withdraws.]

DECRES reads:

"I am resolved that no wild dream of Ind,

And what we there might win; or of the West,

And bold re-conquest there of Surinam

And other Dutch retreats along those coasts,

Or British islands nigh, shall draw me now

From piercing into England through Boulogne

As lined in my first plan. If I do strike,

I strike effectively; to forge which feat

There's but one way--planting a mortal wound

In England's heart--the very English land--

Whose insolent and cynical reply

To my well-based complaint on breach of faith

Concerning Malta, as at Amiens pledged,

Has lighted up anew such flames of ire

As may involve the world.--Now to the case:

Our naval forces can be all assembled

Without the foe's foreknowledge or surmise,

By these rules following; to whose text I ask

Your gravest application; and, when conned,

That steadfastly you stand by word and word,

Making no question of one jot therein.

"First, then, let Villeneuve wait a favouring wind

For process westward swift to Martinique,

Coaxing the English after. Join him there

Gravina, Missiessy, and Ganteaume;

Which junction once effected all our keels--

While the pursuers linger in the West

At hopeless fault.--Having hoodwinked them thus,

Our boats skim over, disembark the army,

And in the twinkling of a patriot's eye

All London will be ours.

"In strictest secrecy carve this to shape--

Let never an admiral or captain scent

Save Villeneuve and Ganteaume; and pen each charge

With your own quill. The surelier to outwit them

I start for Italy; and there, as 'twere

Engrossed in fetes and Coronation rites,

Abide till, at the need, I reach Boulogne,

And head the enterprize.--NAPOLEON."

[DECRES reflects, and turns to write.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

He buckles to the work. First to Villeneuve,

His onetime companion and his boyhood's friend,

Now lingering at Toulon, he jots swift lines,

The duly to Ganteaume.--They are sealed forthwith,

And superscribed: "Break not till on the main."

[Boisterous singing is heard in the street.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I hear confused and simmering sounds without,

Like those which thrill the hives at evenfall

When swarming pends.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

They but proclaim the crowd,

Which sings and shouts its hot enthusiasms

For this dead-ripe design on England's shore,

Till the persuasion of its own plump words,

Acting upon mercurial temperaments,

Makes hope as prophecy. "Our Emperor

Will show himself (say they) in this exploit

Unwavering, keen, and irresistible

As is the lightning prong. Our vast flotillas

Have been embodied as by sorcery;

Soldiers made seamen, and the ports transformed

To rocking cities casemented with guns.

Against these valiants balance England's means:

Raw merchant-fellows from the counting-house,

Raw labourers from the fields, who thumb for arms

Clumsy untempered pikes forged hurriedly,

And cry them full-equipt. Their batteries,

Their flying carriages, their catamarans,

Shall profit not, and in one summer night

We'll find us there!"

RECORDING ANGEL

And is this prophecy true?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Occasion will reveal.

SHADE OF EARTH

What boots it, Sire,

To down this dynasty, set that one up,

Goad panting peoples to the throes thereof,

Make wither here my fruit, maintain it there,

And hold me travailling through fineless years

In vain and objectless monotony,

When all such tedious conjuring could be shunned

By uncreation? Howsoever wise

The governance of these massed mortalities,

A juster wisdom his who should have ruled

They had not been.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Nay, something hidden urged

The giving matter motion; and these coils

Are, maybe, good as any.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

But why any?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Sprite of Compassions, ask the Immanent!

I am but an accessory of Its works,

Whom the Ages render conscious; and at most

Figure as bounden witness of Its laws.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

How ask the aim of unrelaxing Will?

Tranced in Its purpose to unknowingness?

(If thy words, Ancient Phantom, token true.)

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thou answerest well. But cease to ask of me.

Meanwhile the mime proceeds.--We turn herefrom,

Change our homuncules, and observe forthwith

How the High Influence sways the English realm,

And how the jacks lip out their reasonings there.

[The Cloud-curtain draws.]

SCENE III

LONDON. THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS

[A long chamber with a gallery on each side supported by thin

columns having gilt Ionic capitals. Three round-headed windows

are at the further end, above the Speaker's chair, which is backed

by a huge pedimented structure in white and gilt, surmounted by the

lion and the unicorn. The windows are uncurtained, one being open,

through which some boughs are seen waving in the midnight gloom

without. Wax candles, burnt low, wave and gutter in a brass

chandelier which hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and in

branches projecting from the galleries.

The House is sitting, the benches, which extend round to the

Speaker's elbows, being closely packed, and the galleries

likewise full. Among the members present on the Government

side are PITT and other ministers with their supporters,

including CANNING, CASTLEREAGH, LORD C. SOMERSET, ERSKINE,

W. DUNDAS, HUSKISSON, ROSE, BEST, ELLIOT, DALLAS, and the

general body of the party. On the opposite side are noticeable

FOX, SHERIDAN, WINDHAM, WHITBREAD, GREY, T. GRENVILLE, TIERNEY,

EARL TEMPLE, PONSONBY, G. AND H. WALPOLE, DUDLEY NORTH, and

TIMOTHY SHELLEY. Speaker ABBOT occupies the Chair.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

As prelude to the scene, as means to aid

Our younger comrades in its construing,

Pray spread your scripture, and rehearse in brief

The reasonings here of late--to whose effects

Words of to-night form sequence.

[The Recording Angels chant from their books, antiphonally, in a

minor recitative.]

ANGEL I (aerial music)

Feeble-framed dull unresolve, unresourcefulness,

Sat in the halls of the Kingdom's high Councillors,

Whence the grey glooms of a ghost-eyed despondency

Wanned as with winter the national mind.

ANGEL II

England stands forth to the sword of Napoleon

Nakedly--not an ally in support of her;

Men and munitions dispersed inexpediently;

Projects of range and scope poorly defined.

ANGEL I

Once more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him.--

Frail though and spent, and an-hungered for restfulness

Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize,

Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind.

ANGEL II

Ere the first fruit thereof grow audible,

Holding as hapless his dream of good guardianship,

Jestingly, earnestly, shouting it serviceless,

Tardy, inept, and uncouthly designed.

ANGELS I AND II

So now, to-night, in slashing old sentences,

Hear them speak,--gravely these, those with gay-heartedness,--

Midst their admonishments little conceiving how

Scarlet the scroll that the years will unwind!

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES (to the Spirit of the Years)

Let us put on and suffer for the nonce

The feverish fleshings of Humanity,

And join the pale debaters here convened.

So may thy soul be won to sympathy

By donning their poor mould.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

I'll humour thee,

Though my unpassioned essence could not change

Did I incarn in moulds of all mankind!

SPIRIT IRONIC

'Tis enough to make every little dog in England run to mixen to

hear this Pitt sung so strenuously! I'll be the third of the

incarnate, on the chance of hearing the tune played the other way.

SPIRIT SINISTER

And I the fourth. There's sure to be something in my line toward,

where politicians gathered together!

[The four Phantoms enter the Gallery of the House in the disguise

of ordinary strangers.]

SHERIDAN (rising)

The Bill I would have leave to introduce

Is framed, sir, to repeal last Session's Act,

By party-scribes intituled a Provision

For England's Proper Guard; but elsewhere known

As Mr. Pitt's new Patent Parish Pill. (Laughter.)

The ministerial countenances, I mark,

Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion--

Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be

That, with a haughty and unwavering faith

In their own battering-rams of argument,

They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk

To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle

Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe,

They are amazed at our rude disrespect

In making mockery of an English Law

Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's brain!

--I hear them snort; but let them wince at will,

My duty must be done; shall be done quickly

By citing some few facts.

An Act for our defence!

It weakens, not defends; and oversea

Swoln France's despot and his myrmidons

This moment know it, and can scoff thereat.

Our people know it too--those who can peer

Behind the scenes of this poor painted show

Called soldiering!--The Act has failed, must fail,

As my right honourable friend well proved

When speaking t'other night, whose silencing

By his right honourable _vis a vis_

Was of the genuine Governmental sort,

And like the catamarans their sapience shaped

All fizzle and no harm. (Laughter.) The Act, in brief,

Effects this much: that the whole force of England

Is strengthened by--eleven thousand men!

So sorted that the British infantry

Are now eight hundred less than heretofore!

In Ireland, where the glamouring influence

Of the right honourable gentleman

Prevails with magic might, ELEVEN men

Have been amassed. And in the Cinque-Port towns,

Where he is held in absolute veneration,

His method has so quickened martial fire

As to bring in--one man. O would that man

Might meet my sight! (Laughter.) A Hercules, no doubt,

A god-like emanation from this Act,

Who with his single arm will overthrow

All Buonaparte's legions ere their keels

Have scraped one pebble of our fortless shore! . . .

Such is my motion, sir, and such my mind.

[He sits down amid cheers. The candle-snuffers go round, and Pitt

rises. During the momentary pause before he speaks the House assumes

an attentive stillness, in which can be heard the rustling of the

trees without, a horn from an early coach, and the voice of the watch

crying the hour.]

PITT

Not one on this side but appreciates

Those mental gems and airy pleasantries

Flashed by the honourable gentleman,

Who shines in them by birthright. Each device

Of drollery he has laboured to outshape,

(Or treasured up from others who have shaped it,)

Displays that are the conjurings of the moment,

(Or mellowed and matured by sleeping on)--

Dry hoardings in his book of commonplace,

Stored without stint of toil through days and months--

He heaps into one mass, and light and fans

As fuel for his flaming eloquence,

Mouthed and maintained without a thought or care

If germane to the theme, or not at all.

Now vain indeed it were should I assay

To match him in such sort. For, sir, alas,

To use imagination as the ground

Of chronicle, take myth and merry tale

As texts for prophecy, is not my gift

Being but a person primed with simple fact,

Unprinked by jewelled art.--But to the thing.

The preparations of the enemy,

Doggedly bent to desolate our land,

Advance with a sustained activity.

They are seen, they are known, by you and by us all.

But they evince no clear-eyed tentative

In furtherance of the threat, whose coming off,

Ay, years may yet postpone; whereby the Act

Will far outstrip him, and the thousands called

Duly to join the ranks by its provisions,

In process sure, if slow, will ratch the lines

Of English regiments--seasoned, cool, resolved--

To glorious length and firm prepotency.

And why, then, should we dream of its repeal

Ere profiting by its advantages?

Must the House listen to such wilding words

As this proposal, at the very hour

When the Act's gearing finds its ordered grooves

And circles into full utility?

The motion of the honourable gentleman

Reminds me aptly of a publican

Who should, when malting, mixing, mashing's past,

Fermenting, barrelling, and spigoting,

Quick taste the brew, and shake his sapient head,

And cry in acid voice: The ale is new!

Brew old, you varlets; cast this slop away! (Cheers.)

But gravely, sir, I would conclude to-night,

And, as a serious man on serious things,

I now speak here. . . . I pledge myself to this:

Unprecedented and magnificent

As were our strivings in the previous war,

Our efforts in the present shall transcend them,

As men will learn. Such efforts are not sized

By this light measuring-rule my critic here

Whips from his pocket like a clerk-o'-works! . . .

Tasking and toilsome war's details must be,

And toilsome, too, must be their criticism,--

Not in a moment's stroke extemporized.

The strange fatality that haunts the times

Wherein our lot is cast, has no example.

Times are they fraught with peril, trouble, gloom;

We have to mark their lourings, and to face them.

Sir, reading thus the full significance

Of these big days, large though my lackings be,

Can any hold of those who know my past

That I, of all men, slight our safeguarding?

No: by all honour no!--Were I convinced

That such could be the mind of members here,

My sorrowing thereat would doubly shade

The shade on England now! So I do trust

All in the House will take my tendered word,

And credit my deliverance here to-night,

That in this vital point of watch and ward

Against the threatenings from yonder coast

We stand prepared; and under Providence

Shall fend whatever hid or open stroke

A foe may deal.

[He sits down amid loud ministerial cheers, with symptoms of

great exhaustion.]

WINDHAM

The question that compels the House to-night

Is not of differences in wit and wit,

But if for England it be well or no

To null the new-fledged Act, as one inept

For setting up with speed and hot effect

The red machinery of desperate war.--

Whatever it may do, or not, it stands,

A statesman' raw experiment. If ill,

Shall more experiments and more be tried

In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand

For sureness of proceeding? Must this House

Exchange safe action based on practised lines

For yet more ventures into risks unknown

To gratify a quaint projector's whim,

While enemies hang grinning round our gates

To profit by mistake?

My friend who spoke

Found comedy in the matter. Comical

As it may be in parentage and feature,

Most grave and tragic in its consequence

This Act may prove. We are moving thoughtlessly,

We squander precious, brief, life-saving time

On idle guess-games. Fail the measure must,

Nay, failed it has already; and should rouse

Resolve in its progenitor himself

To move for its repeal! (Cheers.)

WHITBREAD

I rise but to subjoin a phrase or two

To those of my right honourable friend.

I, too, am one who reads the present pinch

As passing all our risks heretofore.

For why? Our bold and reckless enemy,

Relaxing not his plans, has treasured time

To mass his monstrous force on all the coigns

From which our coast is close assailable.

Ay, even afloat his concentrations work:

Two vast united squadrons of his sail

Move at this moment viewless on the seas.--

Their whereabouts, untraced, unguessable,

Will not be known to us till some black blow

Be dealt by them in some undreamt-of quarter

To knell our rule.

That we are reasonably enfenced therefrom

By such an Act is but a madman's dream. . . .

A commonwealth so situate cries aloud

For more, far mightier, measures! End an Act

In Heaven's name, then, which only can obstruct

The fabrication of more trusty tackle

For building up an army! (Cheers.)

BATHURST

Sir, the point

To any sober mind is bright as noon;

Whether the Act should have befitting trial

Or be blasphemed at sight. I firmly hold

The latter loud iniquity.--One task

Is theirs who would inter this corpse-cold Act--

(So said)--to bring to birth a substitute!

Sir, they have none; they have given no thought to one,

And this their deeds incautiously disclose

Their cloaked intention and most secret aim!

With them the question is not how to frame

A finer trick to trounce intrusive foes,

But who shall be the future ministers

To whom such trick against intrusive foes,

Whatever it may prove, shall be entrusted!

They even ask the country gentlemen

To join them in this job. But, God be praised,

Those gentlemen are sound, and of repute;

Their names, their attainments, and their blood,

(Ironical Opposition cheers.)

Safeguard them from an onslaught on an Act

For ends so sinister and palpable! (Cheers and jeerings.)

FULLER

I disapprove of censures of the Act.--

All who would entertain such hostile thought

Would swear that black is white, that night is day.

No honest man will join a reckless crew

Who'd overthrow their country for their gain! (Laughter.)

TIERNEY

It is incumbent on me to declare

In the last speaker's face my censure, based

On grounds most clear and constitutional.--

An Act it is that studies to create

A standing army, large and permanent;

Which kind of force has ever been beheld

With jealous-eyed disfavour in this House.

It makes for sure oppression, binding men

To serve for less than service proves it worth

Conditioned by no hampering penalty.

For these and late-spoke reasons, then, I say,

Let not the Act deface the statute-book,

But blot it out forthwith. (Hear, hear.)

FOX (rising amid cheers)

At this late hour,

After the riddling fire the Act has drawn on't,

My words shall hold the House the briefest while.

Too obvious to the most unwilling mind

It grows that the existence of this law

Experience and reflection have condemned.

Professing to do much, it makes for nothing;

Not only so; while feeble in effect

It shows it vicious in its principle.

Engaging to raise men for the common weal

It sets a harmful and unequal tax

Capriciously on our communities.--

The annals of a century fail to show

More flagrant cases of oppressiveness

Than those this statute works to perpetrate,

Which (like all Bills this favoured statesman frames,

And clothes with tapestries of rhetoric

Disguising their real web of commonplace)

Though held as shaped for English bulwarking,

Breathes in its heart perversities of party,

And instincts toward oligarchic power,

Galling the many to relieve the few! (Cheers.)

Whatever breadth and sense of equity

Inform the methods of this minister,

Those mitigants nearly always trace their root

To measures that his predecessors wrought.

And ere his Government can dare assert

Superior claim to England's confidence,

They owe it to their honour and good name

To furnish better proof of such a claim

Than is revealed by the abortiveness

Of this thing called an Act for our Defence.

To the great gifts of its artificer

No member of this House is more disposed

To yield full recognition than am I.

No man has found more reason so to do

Through the long roll of disputatious years

Wherein we have stood opposed. . . .

But if one single fact could counsel me

To entertain a doubt of those great gifts,

And cancel faith in his capacity,

That fact would be the vast imprudence shown

In staking recklessly repute like his

On such an Act as he has offered us--

So false in principle, so poor in fruit.

Sir, the achievements and effects thereof

Have furnished not one fragile argument

Which all the partiality of friendship

Can k****e to consider as the mark

Of a clear, vigorous, freedom-fostering mind!

[He sits down amid lengthy cheering from the Opposition.]

SHERIDAN

My summary shall be brief, and to the point.--

The said right honourable Prime Minister

Has thought it proper to declare my speech

The jesting of an irresponsible;--

Words from a person who has never read

The Act he claims him urgent to repeal.

Such quips and qizzings (as he reckons them)

He implicates as gathered from long hoards

Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged

With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic art

On the devoted, gentle, shrinking head

O' the right incomparable gentleman! (Laughter.)

But were my humble, solemn, sad oration (Laughter.)

Indeed such rattle as he rated it,

Is it not strange, and passing precedent,

That the illustrious chief of Government

Should have uprisen with such indecent speed

And strenuously replied? He, sir, knows well

That vast and luminous talents like his own

Could not have been demanded to choke off

A witcraft marked by nothing more of weight

Than ignorant irregularity!

_Nec Deus intersit_--and so-and-so--

Is a well-worn citation whose close fit

None will perceive more clearly in the Fane

Than its presiding Deity opposite. (Laughter.)

His thunderous answer thus perforce condemns him!

Moreover, to top all, the while replying,

He still thought best to leave intact the reasons

On which my blame was founded!

Thus, them, stands

My motion unimpaired, convicting clearly

Of dire perversion that capacity

We formerly admired.-- (Cries of "Oh, oh.")

This minister

Whose circumventions never circumvent,

Whose coalitions fail to coalesce;

This dab at secret treaties known to all,

This darling of the aristocracy--

(Laughter, "Oh, oh," cheers, and cries of "Divide.")

Has brought the millions to the verge of ruin,

By pledging them to Continental quarrels

Of which we see no end! (Cheers.)

[The members rise to divide.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

It irks me that they thus should Yea and Nay

As though a power lay in their oraclings,

If each decision work unconsciously,

And would be operant though unloosened were

A single lip!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

There may react on things

Some influence from these, indefinitely,

And even on That, whose outcome we all are.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Hypotheses!--More boots it to remind

The younger here of our ethereal band

And hierarchy of Intelligences,

That this thwart Parliament whose moods we watch--

So insular, empiric, un-ideal--

May figure forth in sharp and salient lines

To retrospective eyes of afterdays,

And print its legend large on History.

For one cause--if I read the signs aright--

To-night's appearance of its Minister

In the assembly of his long-time sway

Is near his last, and themes to-night launched forth

Will take a tincture from that memory,

When me recall the scene and circumstance

That hung about his pleadings.--But no more;

The ritual of each party is rehearsed,

Dislodging not one vote or prejudice;

The ministers their ministries retain,

And Ins as Ins, and Outs as Outs, remain.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Meanwhile what of the Foeman's vast array

That wakes these tones?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Abide the event, young Shade:

Soon stars will shut and show a spring-eyed dawn,

And sunbeams fountain forth, that will arouse

Those forming bands to full activity.

[An honourable member reports that he spies strangers.]

A timely token that we dally here!

We now cast off these mortal manacles,

And speed us seaward.

[The Phantoms vanish from the Gallery. The members file out

to the lobbies. The House and Westminster recede into the

films of night, and the point of observation shifts rapidly

across the Channel.]

SCENE IV

THE HARBOUR OF BOULOGNE

[The morning breaks, radiant with early sunlight. The French

Army of Invasion is disclosed. On the hills on either side

of the town and behind appear large military camps formed of

timber huts. Lower down are other camps of more or less

permanent kind, the whole affording accommodation for one

hundred and fifty thousand men.

South of the town is an extensive basin surrounded by quays,

the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent

excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded

with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry

kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of

one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a

two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and

long narrow pinnaces arranged for many oars.

Timber, saw-mills, and new-cut planks spread in profusion

around, and many of the town residences are seen to be adapted

for warehouses and infirmaries.]

DUMB SHOW

Moving in this scene are countless companies of soldiery, engaged

in a drill practice of embarking and disembarking, and of hoisting

horses into the vessels and landing them again. Vehicles bearing

provisions of many sorts load and unload before the temporary

warehouses. Further off, on the open land, bodies of troops are at

field-drill. Other bodies of soldiers, half stripped and encrusted

with mud, are labouring as navvies in repairing the excavations.

An English squadron of about twenty sail, comprising a ship or two of

the line, frigates, brigs, and luggers, confronts the busy spectacle

from the sea.

The Show presently dims and becomes broken, till only its flashes and

gleams are visible. Anon a curtain of cloud closes over it.

SCENE V

LONDON. THE HOUSE OF A LADY OF QUALITY

[A fashionable crowd is present at an evening party, which

includes the DUKES of BEAUFORT and RUTLAND, LORDS MALMESBURY,

HARROWBY, ELDON, GRENVILLE, CASTLEREAGH, SIDMOUTH, and MULGRAVE,

with their ladies; also CANNING, PERCEVAL, TOWNSHEND, LADY

ANNE HAMILTON, MRS. DAMER, LADY CAROLINE LAMB, and many other

notables.]

A GENTLEMAN (offering his snuff-box)

So, then, the Treaty anxiously concerted

Between ourselves and frosty Muscovy

Is duly signed?

A CABINET MINISTER

Was signed a few days back,

And is in force. And we do firmly hope

The loud pretensions and the stunning dins

Now daily heard, these laudable exertions

May keep in curb; that ere our greening land

Darken its leaves beneath the Dogday suns,

The independence of the Continent

May be assured, and all the rumpled flags

Of famous dynasties so foully mauled,

Extend their honoured hues as heretofore.

GENTLEMAN

So be it. Yet this man is a volcano;

And proven 'tis, by God, volcanos choked

Have ere now turned to earthquakes!

LADY

What the news?--

The chequerboard of diplomatic moves

Is London, all the world knows: here are born

All inspirations of the Continent--

So tell!

GENTLEMAN

Ay. Inspirations now abound!

LADY

Nay, but your looks are grave! That measured speech

Betokened matter that will waken us.--

Is it some piquant cruelty of his?

Or other tickling horror from abroad

The packet has brought in?

GENTLEMAN

The treaty's signed!

MINISTER

Whereby the parties mutually agree

To knit in union and in general league

All outraged Europe.

LADY

So to knit sounds well;

But how ensure its not unravelling?

MINISTER

Well; by the terms. There are among them these:

Five hundred thousand active men in arms

Shall strike (supported by the Britannic aid

In vessels, men, and money subsidies)

To free North Germany and Hanover

From trampling foes; deliver Switzerland,

Unbind the galled republic of the Dutch,

Rethrone in Piedmont the Sardinian King,

Make Naples sword-proof, un-French Italy

From shore to shore; and thoroughly guarantee

A settled order to the divers states;

Thus rearing breachless barriers in each realm

Against the thrust of his usurping hand.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

They trow not what is shaping otherwhere

The while they talk this stoutly!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

Bid me go

And join them, and all blandly k****e them

By bringing, ere material transit can,

A new surprise!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Yea, for a moment, wouldst.

[The Spirit of Rumour enters the apartment in the form of a

personage of fashion, newly arrived. He advances and addresses

the group.]

SPIRIT

The Treaty moves all tongues to-night.--Ha, well--

So much on paper!

GENTLEMAN

What on land and sea?

You look, old friend, full primed with latest thence.

SPIRIT

Yea, this. The Italy our mighty pact

Delivers from the French and Bonaparte

Makes haste to crown him!--Turning from Boulogne

He speeds toward Milan, there to glory him

In second coronation by the Pope,

And set upon his irrepressible brow

Lombardy's iron crown.

[The Spirit of Rumour mingles with the throng, moves away, and

disappears.]

LADY

Fair Italy,

Alas, alas!

LORD

Yet thereby English folk

Are freed him.--Faith, as ancient people say,

It's an ill wind that blows good luck to none!

MINISTER

Who is your friend that drops so airily

This precious pinch of salt on our raw skin?

GENTLEMAN

Why, Norton. You know Norton well enough?

MINISTER

Nay, 'twas not he. Norton of course I know.

I thought him Stewart for a moment, but---

LADY

But I well scanned him--'twas Lord Abercorn;

For, said I to myself, "O quaint old beau,

To sleep in black silk sheets so funnily:--

That is, if the town rumour on't be true.

LORD

My wig, ma'am, no! 'Twas a much younger man.

GENTLEMAN

But let me call him! Monstrous silly this,

That don't know my friends!

[They look around. The gentleman goes among the surging and

babbling guests, makes inquiries, and returns with a perplexed

look.]

GENTLEMAN

They tell me, sure,

That he's not here to-night!

MINISTER

I can well swear

It was not Norton.--'Twas some lively buck,

Who chose to put himself in masquerade

And enter for a whim. I'll tell our host.

--Meantime the absurdity of his report

Is more than manifested. How knows he

The plans of Bonaparte by lightning-flight,

Before another man in England knows?

LADY

Something uncanny's in it all, if true.

Good Lord, the thought gives me a sudden sweat,

That fairly makes my linen stick to me!

MINISTER

Ha-ha! 'Tis excellent. But we'll find out

Who this impostor was.

[They disperse, look furtively for the stranger, and speak of

the incident to others of the crowded company.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Now let us vision onward, till we sight

Famed Milan's aisles of marble, sun-alight,

And there behold, unbid, the Coronation-rite.

[The confused tongues of the assembly waste away into distance,

till they are heard but as the babblings of the sea from a

high cliff, the scene becoming small and indistinct therewith.

This passes into silence, and the whole disappears.]

SCENE VI

MILAN. THE CATHEDRAL

[The interior of the building on a sunny May day.

The walls, arched, and columns are draped in silk fringed with

gold. A gilded throne stand in front of the High Altar. A

closely packed assemblage, attired in every variety of rich

fabric and fashion, waits in breathless expectation.]

DUMB SHOW

From a private corridor leading to a door in the aisle the EMPRESS

JOSEPHINE enters, in a shining costume, and diamonds that collect

rainbow-colours from the sunlight piercing the clerestory windows.

She is preceded by PRINCESS ELIZA, and surrounded by her ladies.

A pause follows, and then comes the procession of the EMPEROR,

consisting of hussars, heralds, pages, aides-de-camp, presidents

of institutions, officers of the state bearing the insignia of the

Empire and of Italy, and seven ladies with offerings. The Emperor

himself in royal robes, wearing the Imperial crown, and carrying the

sceptre. He is followed my ministers and officials of the household.

His gait is rather defiant than dignified, and a bluish pallor

overspreads his face.

He is met by the Cardinal Archbishop of CAPRARA and the clergy, who

burn incense before him as he proceeds towards the throne. Rolling

notes of music burn forth, and loud applause from the congregation.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

What is the creed that these rich rites disclose?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

A local cult, called Christianity,

Which the wild dramas of the wheeling spheres

Include, with divers other such, in dim

Pathetical and brief parentheses,

Beyond whose span, uninfluenced, unconcerned,

The systems of the suns go sweeping on

With all their many-mortaled planet train

In mathematic roll unceasingly.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I did not recognize it here, forsooth;

Though in its early, lovingkindly days

Of gracious purpose it was much to me.

ARCHBISHOP (addressing Bonaparte)

Sire, with that clemency and right goodwill

Which beautify Imperial Majesty,

You deigned acceptance of the homages

That we the clergy and the Milanese

Were proud to offer when your entrance here

Streamed radiance on our ancient capital.

Please, then, to consummate the boon to-day

Beneath this holy roof, so soon to thrill

With solemn strains and lifting harmonies

Befitting such a coronation hour;

And bend a tender fatherly regard

On this assembly, now at one with me

To supplicate the Author of All Good

That He endow your most Imperial person

With every Heavenly gift.

[The procession advances, and the EMPEROR seats himself on the

throne, with the banners and regalia of the Empire on his right,

and those of Italy on his left hand. Shouts and triumphal music

accompany the proceedings, after which Divine service commences.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Thus are the self-styled servants of the Highest

Constrained by earthly duress to embrace

Mighty imperiousness as it were choice,

And hand the Italian sceptre unto one

Who, with a saturnine, sour-humoured grin,

Professed at first to flout antiquity,

Scorn limp conventions, smile at mouldy thrones,

And level dynasts down to journeymen!--

Yet he, advancing swiftly on that track

Whereby his active soul, fair Freedom's child

Makes strange decline, now labours to achieve

The thing it overthrew.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thou reasonest ever thuswise--even if

A self-formed force had urged his loud career.

SPIRIT SINISTER

Do not the prelate's accents falter thin,

His lips with inheld laughter grow deformed,

While blessing one whose aim is but to win

The golden seats that other b---s have warmed?

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Soft, jester; scorn not puppetry so skilled,

Even made to feel by one men call the Dame.

SHADE OF THE EARTH

Yea; that they feel, and puppetry remain,

Is an owned flaw in her consistency

Men love to dub Dame Nature--that lay-shape

They use to hang phenomena upon--

Whose deftest mothering in fairest sphere

Is girt about by terms inexorable!

SPIRIT SINISTER

The lady's remark is apposite, and reminds me that I may as well

hold my tongue as desired. For if my casual scorn, Father Years,

should set thee trying to prove that there is any right or reason

in the Universe, thou wilt not accomplish it by Doomsday! Small

blame to her, however; she must cut her coat according to her

cloth, as they would say below there.

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

O would that I could move It to enchain thee,

And shut thee up a thousand years!--(to cite

A grim terrestrial tale of one thy like)

Thou Iago of the Incorporeal World,

"As they would say below there."

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Would thou couldst!

But move That scoped above percipience, Sire,

It cannot be!

SHADE OF THE EARTH

The spectacle proceeds.

SPIRIT SINISTER

And we may as well give all attention thereto, for the evils at

work in other continents are not worth eyesight by comparison.

[The ceremonial in the Cathedral continues. NAPOLEON goes to

the front of the altar, ascends the steps, and, taking up the

crown of Lombardy, places it on his head.]

NAPOLEON

'Tis God has given it to me. So be it.

Let any who shall touch it now beware! (Reverberations of applause.)

[The Sacrament of the Mass. NAPOLEON reads the Coronation Oath in

a loud voice.]

HERALDS

Give ear! Napoleon, Emperor of the French

And King of Italy, is crowned and throned!

CONGREGATION

Long live the Emperor and King. Huzza!

[Music. The Te Deum.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

That vulgar stroke of vauntery he displayed

In planting on his brow the Lombard crown,

Means sheer erasure of the Luneville pacts,

And lets confusion loose on Europe's peace

For many an undawned year! From this rash hour

Austria but waits her opportunity

By secret swellings of her armaments

To link her to his foes.--I'll speak to him.

[He throws a whisper into NAPOLEON'S ear.]

Lieutenant Bonaparte,

Would it not seemlier be to shut thy heart

To these unhealthy splendours?--helmet thee

For her thou swar'st-to first, fair Liberty?

NAPOLEON

Who spoke to me?

ARCHBISHOP

Not I, Sire. Not a soul.

NAPOLEON

Dear Josephine, my queen, didst call my name?

JOSEPHINE

I spoke not, Sire.

NAPOLEON

Thou didst not, tender spouse;

I know it. Such harsh utterance was not thine.

It was aggressive Fancy, working spells

Upon a mind o'erwrought!

[The service closes. The clergy advance with the canopy to the

foot of the throne, and the procession forms to return to the

Palace.]

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Officious sprite,

Thou art young, and dost not heed the Cause of things

Which some of us have inkled to thee here;

Else wouldst thou not have hailed the Emperor,

Whose acts do but outshape Its governing.

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I feel, Sire, as I must! This tale of Will

And Life's impulsion by Incognizance

I cannot take!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Let me then once again

Show to thy sceptic eye the very streams

And currents of this all-inhering Power,

And bring conclusion to thy unbelief.

[The scene assumes the preternatural transparency before mentioned,

and there is again beheld as it were the interior of a brain which

seems to manifest the volitions of a Universal Will, of whose

tissues the personages of the action form portion.]

SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Enough. And yet for very sorriness

I cannot own the weird phantasma real!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Affection ever was illogical.

SPIRIT IRONIC (aside)

How should the Sprite own to such logic--a mere juvenile-- who only

came into being in what the earthlings call their Tertiary Age!

[The scene changes. The exterior of the Cathedral takes the place

of the interior, and the point of view recedes, the whole fabric

smalling into distance and becoming like a rare, delicately carved

alabaster ornament. The city itself sinks to miniature, the Alps

show afar as a white corrugation, the Adriatic and the Gulf of

Genoa appear on this and on that hand, with Italy between them,

till clouds cover the panorama.]

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.