And there they are! the winged insect lovers of pleasure, and of gain and strife--in one word, of sin--entangled in the ladder webb; while such a monster is in the centre, watching his larder. John Bell is instinctively a moral weaver. Fine-spun are his philosophical threads; we stop not to enquire if they will bear the tug of life. He is trying them, however, on the "tug of war." Pen and needle are set to work philosophically, methodically, benignly. In this he is but a unit out of many thousands. His opinions are not singular. Amiable moralist!-- delightful is the dream, sweetly sounding the wisdom; but is it practicable? John Bell's warfare, "The Assault," is, without a doubt, "confusion worse confounded;" it is not easy, at a view, to find legs and arms and heads in their anatomical order. We must trace the human figure as through its map. Perhaps this is purposely done to resemble a battle the more truly, where limbs are apt to fly out of their places. But John Bell thinks-- "The play's the thing Wherewith to touch the conscience of the king." So he pours forth from his "Unpublished Play" a choice tirade against the royal play of human ninepins:-- "And then a battle, too--no doubt it is A right fine thing; or rather to have been there. But all things have their price; and this, methinks, Is rather dear sometimes. Oh! glory's but The tatter'd banner in a cobwebb'd hall, Open'd not once a-year--a doubtful tomb, With half the name effaced. Of all the bones Have whiten'd battle-fields, how many names Live in the chronicle? and which were in the right? One murder hangs a man upon a rope, A hundred thousand maketh him a god, And builds him up a temple in the air Out of men's skulls. A loving mother bears A thousand pangs to bring into the world One child; your warrior sends a thousand out, Then picks his teeth." JOHN BELL--_Unpublished Play_.