Our author also stigmatizes the whole medical art of our day as a science of death and moral torture. While the anguished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence, and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dreadful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child, at the same time announcing to his father that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness. Immediately after the declaration of this fearful sentence, he turns to the distressed parent to ask him if he would like to know the name of this malady, and that in Greek it is called [Greek: amaurosis] Indeed, through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one human being manifests any deep moral feeling--a woman, a servant! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless sockets of the young heir, her fragile but beloved charge. Thus it is a woman of the people who, in the midst of the corrupt and dissolving society, alone preserves the sacred traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice. The cruel tyranny of Pancratius and the mob, is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, _but in the truth that a government is without love for the governed, whatever may be its constitutional form_. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle. With these few remarks, some of them necessary for a full comprehension of this subtile and many-sided Polish drama, we leave the reader to the pleasant task of its perusal. He will find a full and eloquent criticism, in which its faults and beauties are ably discussed, in a course of 'Lectures on Sclavonic Literature,' delivered by the Polish poet Mickiewicz, before the College of France. Most of the above remarks have been condensed from his valuable work. PART I. THE IDEAL. Stars are around thy head--under thy feet surges the sea--a rainbow forever floats upon the waves before thee--painting the mists, or melting them into light--whatsoever thou lookest upon is thine--the shores, the cities, the men belong to thee--the heavens are thine--it seems as if nothing ever equalled thy glory! * * * * * To alien ears thou chantest airs of inconceivable rapture--thou weavest hearts into one with a single touch of thy fairy fingers, and with a breath again dividest them--thou forcest tears--thou driest them with a smile--alas! the next moment thou frightenest the wan smile from the quivering lip for a time--too often, forever! Tell me, what dost thou thyself feel? Of what dost thou think? What dost thou create? The living stream of Beauty flows on through thee, but thou thyself art not Beauty!