HEROISM

“Paradise is under the shadow of swords.”
Mahomet.

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves;
Sugar spends t0 fatten slaves;

Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;
Thunderclouds are ]ove’s festoons,
Drooping oft in wreaths of dread
Lightning-knotted round his head;
The hero is not fed on sweets,

Daily his own heart he eats;
Chambers of the great are jails,
And head-winds right for royal sails.

IN the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the
plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant
recognition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were
as easily marked in the society of their age as color
is in our American population. When any Rodrigo,
Pedro, or Valerio enters, though he be a stranger,
the duke or governor exclaims, “This is a gentle-
man,” and proflers civilities without end; but all
the rest are slag and refuse. In harmony with this
delight in personal advantages, there is in their plays
a certain heroic cast of character and dialogue,—as
in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the Double
Marriage,—wherein the speaker is so earnest and
cordial, and on such deep grounds of character, that
the dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in
the plot, rises naturally into poetry. Among many
texts, take the following. The Roman Martius has

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