RUDOLPH. Ha! runs it so? Are rev'rence and obedience gone already? [_To the armed Attendants, who press in._ You see the murd'rous deed that has been done. Our help is vain, vain to pursue the murd'rer; Other cares demand us. On! To Küssnacht! To save the Kaiser's fortress! For at present All bonds of order, duty, are unloosed, No man's fidelity is to be trusted. [_Whilst he departs with the Attendants, appear six Fratres Misericordiæ._ ARMGART. Room! Room! Here come the Friars of Mercy. STÜSSI. The victim slain, the ravens are assembling! FRATRES MISERICORDIÆ [_form a half-circle round the dead body, and sing in a deep tone_]. With noiseless tread death comes on man, No plea, no prayer delivers him; From midst of busy life's unfinished plan, With sudden hand, it severs him: And ready or not ready,—no delay, Forth to his Judge's bar he must away! The death of Gessler, which forms the leading object of the plot, happens at the end of the fourth act; the fifth, occupied with representing the expulsion of his satellites, and the final triumph and liberation of the Swiss, though diversified with occurrences and spectacles, moves on with inferior animation. A certain want of unity is, indeed, distinctly felt throughout all the piece; the incidents do not point one way; there is no connexion, or a very slight one, between the enterprise of Tell and that of the men of Rütli. This is the principal, or rather sole, deficiency of the present work; a deficiency inseparable from the faithful display of the historical event, and far more than compensated by the deeper interest and the wider range of action and delineation, which a strict adherence to the facts allows. By the present mode of management, Alpine life in all its length and breadth is placed before us: from the feudal halls of Attinghausen to Ruodi the Fisher of the Luzern Lake, and Armgart,— The poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg, Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss, To mow the common grass from craggy shelves And nooks to which the cattle dare not climb,— we stand as if in presence of the Swiss, beholding the achievement of their freedom in its minutest circumstances, with all its simplicity and unaffected greatness. The light of the poet's genius is upon the Four Forest Cantons, at the opening of the Fourteenth Century: the whole time and scene shine as with the brightness, the truth, and more than the beauty, of reality.