ent faithfulness to her, has been false to himself. From
that hour for her,

"Our joy is dead, and only smiles on us,
A loving shade from out the place of tombs."

Then comes the interposition of the Gypsy chief, Fedalma's sweet sad
steadfastness to her "high allegiance, higher than our love;" the brief
moment of suspense, when

"His will was prisoner to the double grasp
Of rage and hesitancy;"--

and then before the stormful revulsion of baffled and despairing passion
all else is swept away, and there only survives in the self-clouded mind
and soul the fixed resolve to secure that which for him has come to
overmaster all allegiance. Strange and sad beyond all description are
the sophistries under which the sinner strives to veil his sin,--by which
to silence that still small voice which will not be hushed amid all that
inward moil. Fedalma's earnest pleadings with his better self, Zarca's
calm, pitying, almost sorrowful scorn--

"_Our_ poor faith
Allows not rightful choice save of the right
Our birth has made for us"--

fall unheeded amid that fierce tempest of aroused self-will; and the
Spanish knight and noble of that very age when

"Castilian gentlemen
Choose not their task--they choose to do it well,"

becomes the renegade, abjuring and forswearing country, honour, and God.

We have hitherto abstained from quotation, except where necessary to
illustrate our remarks. But we cannot forbear extracting from this scene
the most exquisite of the many beautiful lyrics scattered throughout the
poem, expressing, as it does, with a mystic power and depth beyond what
the most elaborate commentary could do, the all but hopelessness of
return from such a fall as Don Silva's:--

"Push off the boat,
Quit, quit the shore,
The stars will guide us back:--
O gathering cloud,
O wide, wide sea,
O waves that keep no track!

On through the pines!
The pillared woods,
Where silence breathes sweet breath:--
O labyrinth,
O sunless gloom,
The other side of death!"

In the scenes which follow among the Gypsy guard, both that with Juan and
the lonely night immediately preceding the march, the terrible reaction
has already begun to set in. The "quivering" poise of Don Silva's nature
makes it impossible he should rest quiet in this utterness of moral and
spiritual fall. Already we hear and see the "murde