suaded by her attendants to write and implore him to stay, lest scandal should couple her name with his; and Gutierre surprises her as she writes, sees her faint at his coming, and draws his own conclusions from the entreaty he finds in her unfinished note. They are now in their house in Seville; and Mencia, on recovering her senses, finds the doors locked, the servants dismissed, and these ominous words on her own letter, written in her husband's hand: "Love adores thee, honour abhors thee; therefore while the one slays, the other warns thee thus: thou hast two hours of life left; thou art a Christian, save thy soul, -thy life is past saving."

Gutierre is as good as his word. Two hours later a physician is led with bandaged eyes to his house, and to the chamber where the fainting Mencia lies on a bed already decked for death, with burning tapers and crucifix beside it, her face covered by a veil. Gutierre stands beside the doctor, poniard in hand, and bids him bleed his patient to death. The trembling physician obeys; but is horrified to hear his victim's last protestations of her innocence dying away with her life. A moment after, his eyes are again blinded, and he is led outside. But, like other heroes of similar tales, he takes care to draw his bloody hand over the outer door, hoping to identify the house by the red token in the morning. Gutierre (who meant to make the doctor unable to report the tale) is scared back at the sight of two forms silently patrolling the street in the moonlight, before he has conducted the physician far. He leaves him unwillingly in the hands (as it proves) of the king, who, with one attendant, is playing the part of Haroun Alraschid in the streets of Seville. To him the trembling man reveals his dreadful

secret.

The blood-red hand is found at sunrise on Don Gutierre's house-door; the king stands before it a moment lost in thought, and then arrests Dona Leonor on her way to early mass, and, with her standing by his side, listens to the sad recital of Mencia's death from her husband, who rushes out in seeming anguish to describe the fatal accident (the displacement of a bandage after bleeding) which has robbed him of his peerless wife. In the recesses of the house, the eye, following as he points, discerns, white and motionless but still fair in death, the lady whom Don Enrique wooed in vain, and whose truth, kept through such conflicts, has met with so sad a guerdon.

King Pedro sees the whole at a glance, and prepares to do justice on Gutierre alike for the living and the dead. He bids him espouse Leonor forthwith. "Let me weep a little longer," is the entreaty; "scarcely safe from the storm, would you bid me tempt the sea once more?" The king insists. Then Gutierre begs to say a word to him in private: "What if I find your brother again disguised in my house?" "Give no credence to suspicions." "How if I once more find Don Enrique's dagger in my own chamber?" "Servants may be to blame for that."

Gutierre.

How if all my house's precincts Night and day I see him haunting? King.

Complain to me.

Gutierre.

If, so complaining, I a worse grief hear while listening.

King.

What matter if all proves unreal;
And time her beauty shows a fortress
Which tempests blow around, but shake
not?

concurrence of suspicious circumstances, the other by the matchless, though villanous, skill of Iago; each has avenged his supposed wrong; but where Othello dies, Gutierre-marries again. And such different ends are possible; because, while Othello loved Desdemona with the deepest and truest love of man for woman, and was by her beloved again with a love answering to his own, Gutierre loved himself better than he loved Mencia, and dimly felt all along that he had won her hand without her heart. And Mencia herself is less to be pitied than Desdemona, seeing that in her case death blighted a less perfect wedded happiness; nay, more, stepped timely into the lists to throw down the truncheon ere, in the conflict between love and duty in her breast, the weaker though worthier champion might sink down exhausted by the protracted combat.

It is time now to draw the curtain before our "Chamber of Horrors."

That Shakespeare is much greater than Calderon is a point too universally acknowledged to stand in need of proof. The one takes man as he essentially is, the other the Spaniard of a particular period, for his theme; the one deals with the deepest things of the human heart, the other mostly with conventionalities; the one occupies us with realities, the other mainly with appearances. Othello teaches us that, "Love born of Hate is blind as he :" Calderon's jealous husbands that, even where Love might pardon, Honour must slay. But though the tragedies at which we have been looking do not deserve the minute study which Othello so well repays, we may yet

hope that the short time which we have given to them has not been ill bestowed. The delicate touch laid in them on a most hazardous subject, their lofty and pure strain of feeling, and the view which they give us of the Spaniards of a day when Spain imposed its sentiments on Europe, make them well worth at least one reading. If their heroines cannot win such a place in our memories as that which belongs to "the gentle lady wedded to the Moor," they still claim tears by their sad histories which few would refuse them. Their heroes are noble and courteous gentlemen, though so grievously misled by their false notions of honour. They are indeed far the inferiors of Calderon's own Portuguese Regulus, that saintly knight, his "constant prince." But although they do not attain his high standard, we feel, after all, inclined to take our leave of them with a word of pity rather than of blame. It is perhaps their misfortune more than their fault that they survive their slain wives; for from each of them is withheld that revelation of his victim's innocence which is the portion of Othello, and which makes him count it "happiness to die." Fatal regard for seeming rather than being seals their lips where his spoke out so plainly; and therefore to them never comes that knowledge, at once so satisfactory and so deadly, which exempts Othello from their hard necessity of putting forth to brave fresh storms in their rent and shattered vessels; and enables him to say, as he stands beside his dead, "Here is my journey's end, here is my butt,

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail."

A MONTH ago it was quite clear that, although no progress had been made and no alteration effected in the relations of the Turkish Government to the insurgent provinces, yet a new phase of what is called the Eastern Question had been reached, and one uncertain chapter of diplomacy had been closed. Nearly twelve months had passed since the Turkish troubles had begun, and the principal subject of attention had been the attitude of the Great Powers to one another. The failure of the Andrassy Note, and the hopelessness of internal reform in Turkey, were small matters compared with the possible designs of Russia and Austria, and the undisclosed policy of Great Britain. The assent of the Powers to the Berlin Memorandum, the refusal of England to join in it, and the events which followed, threw light, at all events, upon that portion of this intricate problem which concerns the external rivalry of those Powers which are compelled to interest themselves in the internal difficulties of the Turkish empire. The result was, as we observed a month ago (and events have subsequently confirmed that impression), that the policy of the Great Powers was not of a character to precipitate European war; and that the adverse criticism passed by the English Government upon the policy disclosed by the Berlin Memorandum had indirectly dissolved the triple alliance, and had opportunely evoked the censure of Europe upon a precipitate and ill-judged interference. The result was due partly to the firmness of the English diplomacy, partly to the course of events at Constantinople. The one brought to light the divergent interests of

the three Powers and the dissatisfaction of Europe; the other rendered the proposed measures inapplicable, and facilitated their withdrawal. Some excitement ensued, and hard words were written and spoken; but it soon became apparent that warlike counsels were not in the ascendant. Both sides in the controversy had ostensibly paid exclusive regard to "the alarming news from Turkey," "the dangers of the situation," the surexcitation menaçante, and the Salonica massacre. The Berlin Memorandum did so in express terms; and some weeks later, Lord Derby, as we had anticipated, attributed the movements of the British fleet to precisely the same cause-the strong and general excitement which prevailed. A policy of aggression is fortunately at the present time forbidden, by the circumstances in which every great European Power, and especially Russia, now finds itself placed. And we are not surprised that, after the silent trial of strength which ensued on the first intimation of the Berlin Memorandum and its designs, a calm descended upon the politics of Europe, that the principle of nonintervention assumed an unwonted sanctity, and that the political atmosphere was cleared of its more threatening elements. Whatever may have been the real political motives for ordering the British fleet to Besika Bay in such considerable strength, and in retaining it there, the official explanation of the matter forbids the supposition that it was intended as a hint to Russia or as an encouragement to Turkey. However mistaken the world may have been in the construction which it put upon that important move

ment, it was not intended to impair the harmony which prevailed, nor has it produced the slightest misunderstanding amongst the Great Powers.

The important deputation which expressed to Lord Derby its "profound conviction that our country would not be justified under any pretext in upholding, even by its moral influence, far less by force of arms, the Turkish authority in conflict with its revolted subjects," did essential public service by eliciting Lord Derby's truly valuable speech in reply. It contained a fuller exposition of Ministerial policy than we had previously received; it tended, by timely explanation, to check a growing division of feeling as to our policy in these disputes. Its memorial deprecated using "our power in helping to fasten on the necks of the oppressed subjects of the Porte a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear." It denounced as execrable an "alliance with a cruel and criminal despotism;" and earnestly hoped that our policy would be that of strict neutrality, "except when it may be able to interpose its friendly offices to mitigate the horrors and to has ten the close of the conflict that is now raging." Lord Derby did not accept every statement contained in the memorial; but with regard to the policy recommended-"I say, as regards that expression of opinion, your feeling is absolutely and entirely mine." It is to be noted that Lord Derby declares that he was never very sanguine as to preventing the war which is still proceeding. And according to the papers recently published, it would seem that that war was in contemplation as far back as last February.

We need not refer to the Foreign Secretary's vindication either of refusing to concur in the Berlin Memorandum or of sending the fleet to Besika Bay. We have most of us

formed our own opinions on those subjects; and the expressions in regard to the future are of far more importance. "I think it is the most improbable thing in the world, that in consequence of anything that is now passing within the limits of the Turkish empire a general European war should ensue." He briefly reviewed the circumstances in which each one of the Great Powers was placed, with a similar conclusion. And as regards the policy of England, non-intervening and pacific as it is declared to be, "we must push no doctrine to an extreme; and an absolute declaration of non-intervention under all circumstances is a declaration of international anarchy, and I need not tell you that international anarchy does not mean either international peace or progress." We cannot tell all the world that "we have nothing to do with the East, that we mean to give no advice, to exercise no influence, to cancel all treaties, and to profess entire indifference to what is going on." Lord Derby was much more explicit with regard to the political position external to Turkey than with regard to the view taken by the Government of the internal commotions of that unhappy country. Except that he expected the rising of the Slavs, the speech contained no definite reference to purely Turkish questions.

In answer to a second deputation, however, the Foreign Minister declined to admit that the application of the same régime to the two creeds of Christianity and Mohammedanism is utterly impracticable. He explained that the integrity of the Ottoman empire meant " Here is an extensive territory which we agree to respect; because, if not respected, it would lie open to a general scramble in the theatre of war." Within the limits of the Turkish empire the scramble is between