--peril, such as he must brook, Who dares to love the wife of great Calaynos. Her maid, Martina, tells her that --Queens of Spain Have had their paramours-- and she replies, --So might it be, _Yet never hap to bride of a Calaynos_! Don Luis, the villain of the plot, thus paints his own picture: --I was not formed for good: To what Fate orders I must needs submit: The sin not mine, but His who made me thus-- Not in my will but in my nature lodged. * * * * * I will grasp the stable goods of life, Nor care how foul the hand that does the deed. Martina is admirably drawn; her wit is excellent, and as exhaustless as it is keen. She says of Calaynos-- He looks on pleasure as a kind of sin, Calls pastime waste-time---- * * * * * I heard a man, who spent a mortal life In hoarding up all kinds of stones and ores, Call one, who spitted flies upon a pin, A fool to pass his precious lifetime thus. She says of Oliver, Calayno's secretary, Yes, there he goes-- Backward and forward, like a weaver's shuttle, Spinning some web of wisdom most divine. She addresses him thus-- Our clay, the preachers say, was warmed to life; But yours, your dull, cold mud, was froze to being. _I would not be the oyster that you are For all the pearls of wisdom in your shell!_ All the persons of the play are vivid and life-like. With the beginning of the third act the interest becomes intense, and nothing could be more vigorous and touching than the action and depth of pathos toward the close of the piece. Every page teems with fine thoughts and images, which lead us to believe that the mine from which this book is a specimen, contains a golden vein of poetry which will go far to enrich our native literature. _Literary Sketches and Letters: Being the Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, Never before Published. By Thomas Noon Talfourd. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._