For, oh! 'tis worse than death to see, Lady, thy dreadful state of woe."[71] After this the scenes of horror accumulate;--children crying to their mothers for bread; brothers lamenting over each other's suffering; and some repining at, and others nobly anticipating the hour when death and flames are to envelope all. Such scenes, denuded of their poetry, are mere horrors; but clothed, as Cervantes has clothed them, in the language of the affections, and of the loftier passions of the soul, the reader, even while trembling with the excitement, reads on and exults at last, when not a Numantine survives to grace Scipio's triumph. Nothing can be more truly national than the drama; and, as if fearful that a Spanish audience would feel too deeply the catastrophe, he introduces Spain, the river Duero, War, Sickness, and Famine, as allegorical personages, who, while they mourn over the present, prophesy the future triumphs of their country. Another merit of this play is one not usual in Spanish authors: it is of no more than the necessary length to develope its interest; there is no long spinning out, and except quite at the outset, before the poet had warmed to his subject, it has not a cold or superfluous line. It is indeed a monument worthy of Cervantes's genius, and proves the height to which he could soar, and brings him yet in closer resemblance to Shakspeare; showing that he could depict the grand and terrible, the pathetic and the deeply tragic, with the same master hand. It is said that this tragedy was acted during the frightful siege of Saragossa by the French in the last war; and the Spaniards found in the example of their forefathers, and in the spirit and genius of their greatest man, fresh inducements to resist: this is a triumph for Cervantes, worthy of him, and shows how truly and how well he could speak to the hearts of his countrymen.