beautiful play of the _Elder Brother_--which was mutilated to please our barbarous grandfathers by Cibber,--and Calderon's _Two Effects from one Cause_, (_De una Causa dos Efectos_;) the _Maid of the Mill_, by Beaumont and Fletcher, and Lope's _Quinta de Florencia_; Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, and Lope de Vega's _Mayor Domo de la Duquesa de Amalfi_. So the _Señora Cornelia_, a novel of Cervantes', is the foundation of the brilliant play of the _Chances_. The third scene of the third act of the _Little French Lawyer_, is taken from the fourth chapter of the second part of the first book of Aleman's _Guzman d'Alfarache_. _The Knight of the Burning Perkle_, shows that _Don Quixote_ was commonly read in England. The _Spanish Gipsy_ of Middleton and Rowley, and _Beggars' Bush_ of Fletcher, are taken from the _Fuerza de la Sangre_, and _Gitanilla_ of Cervantes; and the plan of _Love's Pilgrimage_ is borrowed from the _Dos Doncellas_ of the same author. _The Spanish Curate_ is taken from the _Gerardo_ of Gonzalo de Cerpedes; and _The History of Alphonso, or a Wife for a Month,_ is that related by many Spanish writers of Sancho, the eighth King of Leon. To this list may be added a remarkable passage in Milton's _Areopagitica_, in which he alludes to Spanish poetry as we should allude to Manzoni and Lamartine. "The villages also must have _their_ visitors, to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebec reads even to the gamut of every municipal fiddler; for _these_ are the _countryman's_ Arcadias and his Monte Mayors." In 1663 was printed, _The Adventures of Five Hours_, from the Spanish comedy, _Los Empeños de Seis Horas_. Lord Digby's _'Tis better than it was_ is taken from Calderon's _Mejor está que estaba_. His _Worse and Worse_ from _Peor está que estaba_. His _Elvira, or the Worst not always True_, from Calderon's _No siempre lo Peor es Cierto_. There can be little doubt, as a careful and elaborate writer, Shack, remarks in his instructive work on the Spanish stage, that a more accurate inquiry than has yet been instituted into the English drama, would lead to the conclusion, that many of the works of Lope de Vega were familiar to the great writers of Elizabeth's time; not, indeed, that it is contended, or that with any shadow of plausibility it can be maintained, that the Spanish is the origin of the English drama, or, indeed, that it ever exercised a decided influence on the English stage. The rapid intrigue, the brilliant accumulation of incidents, which the peasant of the South follows with delight and ease in scenic representation, would confound and bewilder the most educated classes of which a Northern audience is composed. Let an English or German reader try the experiment of reading one of Calderon's most agreeable plays, _Tambien, hay duelo en las Damas_, which may be freely translated, "There may be Trust in Women," and see whether, even in the quiet of his study, his brain does not grow dizzy