It is the bell that thou so oft hast heard Summoning the band of liberty--"the bell That pealed its loud, triumphant note, and raised Its mighty voice with such a mastery Of glorious power, as if the spirit of sound That dwells in the viewless wind, and walks the waves Of the chafed sea, and rules the thunder-cloud That shrouded him in that small orb, to spread Tidings of freedom to the nations." RIENZI'S FALL. And for such I left The assured condition of my lowliness,-- The laughing days, the peaceful nights, the joys Of a small, quiet home--for such I risked Thy peace, my daughter. Abject, crouching slaves! False, fickle, treacherous, perjured slaves! * * * * * Oh, had I laid All earthly passion, pride, and pomp, and power, And high ambition, and hot lust of rule, Like sacrificial fruits, upon the altar Of Liberty, divinest Liberty! Then--but the dream that filled my soul was vast As his whose mad ambition thinned the ranks Of the Seraphim, and peopled hell. These slaves! These crawling reptiles! May the curse of chains Cling to them for ever. LIBERTY. For liberty! Go seek Earth's loftiest heights, and ocean's deepest caves; Go where the sea-snake and the eagle dwell, 'Midst mighty elements,--where nature is. And man is not, and ye may see afar, Impalpable as a rainbow on the clouds. The glorious vision! Liberty! I dream'd Of such a goddess once--dream'd that yon slaves Were Romans, such as rul'd the world, and I Their tribune--vain and idle dream! Take back The symbol and the power. We can well imagine the effect which Mr. Young gives to some of these eloquent passages. They are full of poetical and dramatic fire. Indeed, we know of no professor of the histrionic art who could give so accurate an embodiment of Rienzi--as Mr. Young, the most chaste and discreet, if not the most impassioned, actor on the British stage. Again, we can conceive the force of these lines in the manly tones of Mr. Cooper: I know no father, save the valiant dead Who lives behind a rampart of his slain In warlike rest. I bend before no king, Save the dread Majesty of heaven, Thy foe, Thy mortal foe, Rienzi. In reprinting _Rienzi_, we suggest a larger size; we fear people in a second row of either circle of boxes, will find the type of the present edition too small; besides, they do not want to be checking the performers, or to be puzzled with "stage directions." * * * * * THE BOY'S OWN BOOK. The sight of this little book, as thick as, and somewhat broader than, a Valpy's Virgil, will make scores of little Lord Lingers think of "bygone mirth, that after no repenting draws." It is all over a holiday book, stuck as full of wood-cuts as a cake is of currants, and not like the widely-thrown fruit of school plum puddings.