"'Tis ease! 'tis ease! I am content! 'Tis peace,-- 'Tis anything that is most soft and quiet. And after such a dream! I want my daughter. Send me my daughter! Will she come, or not? I'll call myself. Virginia!" His call of Virginia was a call dictated by a dethroned mind. It was a sound that appeared to come from a mysterious vault. There was a kind of semi-wakefulness in it, like the utterance of a thought in a dream. It had a touch of pity. It was an inverted form of sound, that turned back whence it issued and fell dead where it was born, feeling that there was no reply for it to keep it alive. Yet, after a pause, he fancies he hears her answering; and he rapidly asks,-- "Is it a voice, or nothing, answers me? I hear a sound so fine there's nothing lives 'Twixt it and silence." And then, with an entranced listening, he follows the illusory voice around to different parts of the room, in the vain attempt to find its source. An apathetic stare, a blank, miserable stupor, succeeds, soon broken by the fancy that he hears her shrieking in the prison for rescue from Appius,--and he darts away. Appius, meanwhile, is planning an escape, and gloatingly counting over in imagination the victims he will pick out to expiate for his present shame, when the shattered Virginius, appalling even in his ruins, rushes in upon him, wildly crying, "Give me my daughter!" The affrighted prisoner replies,-- "I know nothing of her, Virginius, nothing. _Virginius._ Do you tell me so? Vile tyrant! Think you, shall I not believe My own eyes before your tongue? Why, there she is! There at your back,--her locks dishevelled, and Her vestment torn,--her cheeks all faded with Her pouring tears. Villain! is this a sight to show a father? And have I not a weapon to requite thee?" In his distraught fury, feeling over his body for some weapon he _discovers_ his own hands. A wild and eager delight shudders through him as, holding these naked instruments before him, he springs on the terrified Appius and strangles him to death. Lucius, Icilius, and Numitorius enter, bearing the urn of Virginia. The wronged father and sufferer looks up, and sighs, with a bewildered gaze,-- "What a load my heart has heaved off! Where is he? I thought I had done it." They call him by name. He makes no response. Icilius places the urn in his right hand, with the single word, "Virginia." He looks at Icilius and the urn, at Numitorius and Lucius, seems struck by their mourning garb, looks again at the urn, breaks into a passion of tears, and falls on the neck of Icilius, exclaiming, "Virginia!" METAMORA. [Illustration: Jas Bannister EDWIN FORREST AS METAMORA.]