If we are asked the merit of a performance which made such an impression at the time, we may borrow an expression applied to a certain orator,[7] and say, that "The Empress of Morocco" must have acted _to the tune_ of a good heroic play. It had all the outward and visible requisites of splendid scenery, prisons, palaces, fleets, combats of desperate duration and uncertain issue,[8] assassinations, a dancing tree, a rainbow, a shower of hail, a criminal executed,[9] and hell itself opening upon the stage. The rhyming dialogue too, in which the play was written, had an imperative and tyrannical sound; and to a foreigner, ignorant of the language, might have appeared as magnificent as that of Dryden. But it must raise our admiration, that the witty court of Charles could patiently listen to a "tale told by an idiot, full of noise and fury, signifying nothing," and give it a preference over the poetry of Dryden. The following description of a hail-storm will vindicate our wonder: "This morning, as our eyes we upward cast, The desert regions of the air lay waste. But straight, as if it had some penance bore, A mourning garb of thick black clouds it wore. But on the sudden, Some aery demon changed its form, and now That which looked black above looked white below; The clouds dishevelled from their crusted locks, Something like gems coined out of crystal rocks. The ground was with this strange bright issue spread, As if heaven in affront to nature had Designed some new-found tillage of its own, And on the earth these unknown seeds had sown. Of these I reached a grain, which to my sense Appeared as cool as virgin-innocence; And like that too (which chiefly I admired), Its ravished whiteness with a touch expired. At the approach of heat, this candid rain Dissolved to its first element again. _Muly-H._ Though showers of hail Morocco never see, Dull priest, what does all this portend to me? _Ham_. It does portend-- _Muly._ What? _Ham_. That the fates design-- _Muly_. To tire me with impertinence like thine."