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into the crevices of the rocks, filled, as these are already, by decomposed vegetable matter: here they swell and contract, as the heat and moisture increase or diminish. They act like true levers, until they gradually pulverize the earthy materials which they have been able to penetrate. While the roots are thus busy under ground, boring, undermining, cleaving, and crumbling every thing that impedes their progress, the branches and leaves are equally indefatigable overhead. They arrest the volatile particles of vegetable food which float in the atmosphere. Thus fed and sustained, each tree not only increases annually in size, but produces and deposits a crop of fruit and leaves. The fruit becomes the food of animals, or is carried into a spot where it can produce a new plant: the leaves fall around the tree, where they become gradually decomposed, and, in the lapse of ages, make a vast addition to the depth of the vegetable mould; and whilst the decomposition of vegetables makes a gradual addition to the depth of the cultivable soil, another cause, equally constant in operation, contributes to increase its fertility-the produce of the minutest plants serves to subsist myriads of insects; after a brief existence, these perish and decay: their decomposed particles greatly fertilize the vegetable matter with which they happen to mingle. The period at length arrives when the timber having reached its highest measure of growth and perfection, may be cut down, in order that the husbandman may enter upon the inheritance prepared for him by the hand of the all-wise and all-beneficent Author of his existence. Such is the system, which they that have eyes to see may see. Plants which appear worthless in themselves,-those lichens, mosses, heaths, ferns, furze, briars, and brooms, in which economists, forsooth! perceive only the symbols of eternal barrenness, -are so many instruments employed by perfect Wisdom in fertilizing new districts for the occupation of future generations of mankind:

'The course of Nature is the art of God.'

The wastes of this country, as they have been managed for ages, have been partly taken out of the hands of Nature without having been wholly taken into the hands of man. The constant depasturing of cattle on wastes and commons counteracts the means which Nature makes use of in producing fertility, and, in consequence, greatly retards the period when the soil becomes sufciently deep for agricultural purposes. There is not, perhaps, a heathy waste in England, which would not become a forest, were the commoners restrained from setting their flocks upon it.

It is admitted on all hands that the growth of timber for naval purposes is an object of vital importance to the nation; and great exertions have been already made, and still continue to be made,

in replanting parts of the royal forests, where the timber had been cut down, or fallen into decay. However praiseworthy the object of these exertions, we entertain some doubt whether they are conducted on right principles; we are inclined to suspect that replanting oak trees where oaks have grown before, is as great a blunder in forest economy as sowing wheat immediately after wheat would be considered in rural management. It is a wellknown fact, that wherever trees of any particular species have fallen into decay, other trees of the same species will not naturally thrive for instance, when a forest of firs falls naturally into decay, it is never found to be succeeded by another crop of firs, but by birch, oaks, or other species congenial to the soil which the fir-wood had formed. We are tempted, then, to recommend the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to reconsider the system upon which they now proceed-to regard the ancient forests of the crown in which timber has not only come to perfection but fallen to decay, as so much land prepared by the hand of Nature for the purpose-not of being replanted-but ploughed. It would, we think, be desirable to sell every part of these forests not already covered with thriving plantations, and to vest the proceeds in the purchase of other wastes, which would answer even better for the growth of timber. The crown lands and forests might thus be made the base from which cultivation might be extended over extensive districts; and the office of Woods and Forests take rank as one of the most efficient and important branches of administration. We cannot see any valid objection to conferring upon these commissioners the power of purchasing wastes or commons for the purpose either of being planted or of being allotted and sold for tillage.

The vast plantations which, within the last fifty years, have been spread over the heaths of various districts of this country, are to be considered not only as the sources of enormous future profit to their owners, but as of the highest importance to the public. In them we behold the most efficient means which could have been adopted towards covering these barren tracts with a depth of soil adequate for the purposes of husbandry. Many of these trees, and more especially the larch, are known to destroy the heath, and to afford a shelter highly favourable to the growth of nutricious grasses. Thus, even without including the timber in the estimate, the land on many great estates has already been, to all intents and purposes, doubled in value ;-and all this is known to few men more thoroughly than to Lord Lowther. Why not follow out the same system on the domains of the crown?

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Here, again, we say, it is at least worth a trial. But, indeed, the subject is of too much importance to be dismissed with this incidental notice; and we shall, ere long, recur to it.

ART.

ART. VI.-Isaac Comnenus. A Play. London. 1827.

WE

E notice this play because it is equally remarkable for originality of conception and sobriety of execution.

Those ages, to recount the revolutions of which, according to Milton, it is not more worth, than to chronicle the wars of kites and crows, flocking and fighting in the air,' are rich in materials for poetry and romance, and more especially for the drama. They abound in striking examples of virtue as well as of enormous wickedness-in great and sudden reverses of fortune-and in circumstances well fitted to excite an intense interest for the fate of individuals, which can rarely be partaken when the wider scene opens, and attention is less fixed upon the personages who pass like shadows over the stage, than upon general concerns and the great course of events. When we come to times of political history, the heroic character disappears, happily for mankind,— the splendid virtues which are called forth in turbulent ages, and which command the admiration of posterity, being dearly paid for by the generations which witness their display. To a certain degree it may be true, that in this change of society one class of crimes has given place to another. It is nevertheless an improvement in our condition to live under the star of Plutus (if he has one) rather than that of Mars-to be born in the bank-paper age instead of the iron one-to pay taxes rather than black mail-to have our pockets picked rather than our throats cut-and to endure lengthy speeches upon Catholic emancipation rather than be massacred like the Albigenses, hunted down like the Vaudois, or burnt alive for the good of our neighbours' souls, like those martyrs who purchased for us our inheritance of religious liberty.

The dramatists of our silver age (for so that of Lee may be called, rather in reference to the leaden one that followed than to the golden time of Elizabeth and James) went more frequently to romance than to history for their subjects. Calprenade, Mademoiselle Scudery, and her brother, were to them what Sir Walter Scott is to the play-wrights and melodrama-mongers of this generation. They were thus saved the trouble of invention, and no skill was required for insinuating the plot into an audience, the greater part of whom might be supposed to be familiar with the names and circumstances of the story. They followed in this the Horatian precept, not in deference to Horace, but because it was the easiest course for incapacity and ignorance. Had they been better read, they would have known that history is richer than romance in events and characters suited for dramatic representation, and they would have been less in danger of falling into extravagance and bombast, either of action or sentiment, into both which they were misled by their models.

The

The author of Isaac Comnenus has taken the groundwork of his play from an age fertile in dramatic events, and peculiarly suited to the cast of thought and feeling which may be supposed to characterise him, if the character of an author may be estimated from his writings. This, Mr. D'Israeli has told us, in his agreeable book upon the literary character, is but a deceitful kind of physiognomy; but the deception can only be as to the principles and morals of the writer, not as to the degree and order of his intellectual powers. A profligate may write hypocritically; a sensualist may affect the refinements of sensibility; and one who lives only for himself may expatiate upon his feelings for others, and obtain credit for the most enlarged benevolence. In such cases, he who wields the pen may set down what he pleases to his own credit, and impose upon others; but with regard to his intellectual powers, except, indeed, in the circles of the dupes and the dunces, (alas, they are large exceptions!) he can impose only upon himself the power of his understanding and the complexion of his mind will be made apparent to all who are capable of estimating them.

The play before us is of a meditative and somewhat melancholy cast. The latter ages of Byzantine history are best regarded when they are contemplated in such a frame of mind;-for although revolutions have not been more frequent anywhere than in the capital of the eastern empire, nor more barbarous among the most barbarous people, there were at Constantinople the remains of literature and philosophy as well as of imperial greatness; and these were not preserved in convents alone, as in Western Christendom, but they were to be found in high places and in public life, in camps and in courts. The Greek mind as well as the Greek language had triumphed over the Roman; and, as in elder Greece, the better parts of the national character long survived the loss of the empire, though lingering in a slow and continual decay. Men were found there, till the last of the Constantines, capable of reflecting with grief and self-humiliation upon the decline of their country, and the public and private corruption which accelerated its downfall;-a corruption by which they were surrounded, and in which they themselves had largely and consciously partaken.

Subjects of busier interest than the accession of Alexius Comnenus to the empire might have been found in any portion of this history. If we go back no farther than to the strange adventures of Zoe and Theodora, and the theatrical vicissitudes which befel their successors, they occur in abundance within the short interval of thirty years. The elevation of the first Comnenus to the throne-his abdication; the character of Constantine Ducas;

the

the schemes, matrimonial and political, of Eudoxia; the tragedy of Romanus Diogenes; the reclusion of Michael Ducas; the mixture of amorous intrigues with ambition and conspiracies; the influence of women upon political affairs; the literary habits of those who were implicated in such courses, and the anxiety which they felt for standing well in the opinion of posterity, even while conscious of their own ill deserts,-might seem rather creations of fiction than matters of history, so rapid and various are the events-so strongly marked and so romantic the characters which figure in them. An instance of moral dignity has appeared to the present author more impressive, and more capable of dramatic interest, than any of these previous transactions. When the Comneni succeeded in dethroning Nicephorus Botoniates, Isaac waived his pretensions to the empire in favour of his younger brother, Alexius. This fact is the foundation of the play -the character of the principal personage is inferred from it, and represented as corresponding to it in all respects, and the other circumstances of the drama are either adapted to this conception or imagined to accord with it.

Even Anna Comnena has not represented her father Alexius more favourably than he is pourtrayed in this tragedy. The two brothers are models of fraternal affection; their sister, Eudocia, a woman of firm and lofty character, worthy of her race; Anna, their cousin, a gentle creature devoted with her whole heart to Isaac, who, not having a whole heart with which to requite her, designs her and the empire, if their designs should prove successful, for his brother. Meantime, Theodora, the daughter of Nicephorus, endeavours to win his love, by revealing to him her father's machinations; but he, whom the knowledge of those machinations has already determined to the decided course which he is taking, parries her advances with mortifying serenity. She says to him, You shall partake my counsels, and I yours, And we will share the issue.

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Comnenus.

That can we never.

Nature has set apart our destinies,

And each must follow out the course assign'd;
I mindful of this token of good-will,

Nor you regardless of your household ties.

Theodora. What is this talk of nature?

Hear my creed.

The strongest ties have Nature's strongest sanction;
And if the ties of blood be not the strongest,

Nature doth abrogate and make them void.

Comnenus. Where these are not the strongest all are frail.'—p. 17. The moral, meditative character of Isaac Comnenus is well brought forth in the first interview with his brother, after a long separation; their meeting is on the shore of the Propontic :

'Alexius.

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