This greatness on my unpolluted heart, Ismene. Hold! Parricide-forbear! She whom thou hast aveng'd, she whom the death Thoas. Ismene. Thou! Dost doubt my word? Is there no witness in thy mantling blood Which tells thee whence 't was drawn? Is nature silent? If, from the mists of infancy, no form Of her who, sunk in poverty, forgat Its ills in tending thee, and made the hopes Which glimmer'd in thy smiles her comfort,-gleams When foragers from Corinth toss'd a brand Upon the roof that shelter'd thee; dragg'd out Thoas. Would the solid earth Would open, and enfold me in its strong Ismene. Dost mock me? I have clasp'd Sorrow and shame as if they were my sons, Moulded from mine, to strike the oppressor dead. Dost confess Thoas. Ismene. Confess!-I glory in it! Thy arm hath done the purpose of my will; Long past, which man ne'er guesses at ;-for years Have not a word to body forth; for all, By filling for a moment these fond arms, Which held thee first. Thoas. [Shrinking from her.] I cannot. I will kneel To thank thee for thy love, ere thou didst kill Honour and hope !-then grovel at thy feet, Ismene accuses Hyllus of the crime which Thoas has committed, and the youth, though informed by the real murderer of the truth, is willing to die for the friendship he bears his deliverer in battle and in the sports. Some fine situations occur for the display of Creusa's tender affections. Thoas unravels the secret of the murder in a highly dramatic scene by using his dagger against himself, and telling the truth, and the Queen, seeing how fate has fooled her, comes to the end so finely conceived in the following lines: "She rush'd, With looks none dared to question, to the cave; Met those who might prevent her course, withdrew Where none dare ever tread to seek for that Which was Ismene." We shall only quote further a passage where the Captive gives atterance to his attachment to the city of his birth, which doubtless breathes the classic associations of the author-associations akin to those, on the supposed part of Thoas, which Scott has so fondly and naturally expressed in regard to his "own romantic town." "From Athens; Her groves; her halls; her temples; nay, her streets For I was left an orphan, in the charge Of an old citizen, who gave my youth Rough though kind nurture. Fatherless, I made Hung in chill morning o'er the mountain's brow ART. III.-Danmarks og Hertugdommenes Statsret med stadigt Hensyn til dens ældere horfatning ved JOH. FRED. WILHELM SCHLEGEL, &c. The Present Public Law of Denmark, and of the Duchies, in Connexion with its Past State. By J. F. W. SCHLEGEL, Counsellor of Conferences, Doctor and Professor of Law in the Royal University of Copenhagen, Assessor to the Supreme Court, Knight of Dannebrog, &c. 2 Vols. Copenhagen. 1836. THE Countries which compose the present dominions of the Danish monarchy, are an interesting object of attention in many points of view. This is a part of the northern hive, from whence issued forth those swarms of barbarians that subverted the Roman empire, and infused a fresh portion of vigour into the exhausted races of the South. Here are emphatically gentis cunabula nostræ. From these regions came the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, by whom England was successively conquered, and repeopled after the extirpation of the original inhabitants, and from whom we derive our language, our laws, and whatever it is that peculiarly distinguishes us from other races of men. The various fortunes of the different states of modern Europe which were built up on the ruins of the Roman empire form a singularly attractive subject of speculation to the political inquirer. They were all free in their primitive institutions and manners, and it is a wonder how such brave men were gradually fashioned to bow their necks to the double yoke of feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny. But the various mutations through which they have passed, until they have reached that condition of society in which we see the present kingdoms of Europe, deserve a still more scrutinizing examination. In some, the aristocracy triumphed over both the crown and the people. In others, the rights of every order were absorbed in the dazzling brilliance of the crown; whilst few had the wisdom. or the good fortune to find refuge under the shadow of constitutional freedom. Take again that remarkable state which was founded, not by the rude invaders of the North, but by fugitives from the catastrophe of the falling Empire, on the sand-banks formed in the lagunes at the mouths of the Po, whence the proud mistress of the Adriatic raised her lofty turrets, and survived for so many ages every other dominion. For three centuries she retained her democratical form of goverment. The Doges, with almost sovereign authority, succeeded, and these again were stripped of almost all but nominal power, by an aristocracy the most jealous, crafty, cruel, and despotic that the world has yet seen. The political revolutions of Denmark may be said to have taken an opposite direction. Like the other Scandinavian and Gothic kingdoms of Europe, the monarchy was originally elective, or rather the hereditary principle was so imperfectly established, that it may be said rather to have had reference to a dynasty, than to have indicated by any constant rule the individual who was to succeed to the vacant throne.* Four orders of the state were gradually formed, in the progress of society, with distinct political rights; the clergy, the nobility, the burghers of the towns, and the peasantry. Each of these orders had a right to be represented in the States General of the kingdom. Written constitution there was none; but on the accession to the throne of Christopher the Second, whose despotic inclinations were suspected by his subjects, the first capitulation was drawn up in 1320, to the faithful observance of which his successors were compelled to take a solemn oath, before they were crowned, or acknowledged as kings. The last capitulation was that signed by Frederic the Third, in 1648, which provided that the crown should for ever be elective, and restrained the royal prerogative within still narrower bounds. As the clergy and the nobility, who possessed all the little learning of the age, drew up these capitulations, they were naturally more careful to insert such conditions as favoured their own pretensions, than mindful of the rights and privileges of the other orders. The Reformation came, and with it a correspondent depression of ecclesiastical influence. The Protestant religion was declared to be the established religion of the state, the clergy fell back into the second rank among the orders of the kingdom. The nobles, who now occupied the first, greedily seized "This elective quality of the crown, as well as its independence of the Papal See, is expressed with some energy by king Waldemar the Third, in his answer to the Pope's nuncio, who claimed an authority over him, according to the extravagant pretensions of the church of Rome in that age. Naturam habemus a Deo, regnum a subditis, religionem a Romanâ ecclesiâ; quam si nobis invides, renuntiamus per præ sentes. VOL. II. (1838.) No. II. upon the property of the church, which according to a resolution of the diet of Copenhagen ought to have been annexed to the domains of the crown. The peasants had already been deprived of their personal liberty in Zealand and the adjacent islands. The nobles compelled the greater part of those in Jutland and Fionia to surrender their proprietary interests, and consent to become their vassals and tenants. Thus they revenged upon this oppressed class the share it had taken in the insurrection in favour of the dethroned king Christian the Second, and abused for this purpose their power as intendents of the bailiwicks and administrators of the royal domains. The diets of the kingdom were rarely convoked, and the peasantry still more rarely summoned to attend them, though their right to be represented in these national assemblies was never formally questioned. Instead of the regular diets were substituted convocations of the senators and nobility, called Herredage. The calamitous wars of Frederic the Third had fully exposed those defects in the constitution of the government which the heroic character and splendid abilities of Christian the Fourth had, to a certain degree, concealed from view. In fact, the nobility gradually encroached both upon the crown and the commons, until the state became an unmitigated aristocracy, under the name of a kingdom, and with the forms of a monarchy, as Venice was under the name and with the forms of a republic. The resentment and despair of the clergy and the commons, which were aggravated by the refusal of the nobility to bear their due proportion of the burthen of the new taxes required by the necessities of the state, found no other resource than the extreme one of rendering the government hereditary, and of conferring on the king the absolute powers of sovereignty. Lord Molesworth reproaches the Danes with the levity which thus threw away, in a single day, the liberties of themselves and their posterity; and with that bitter spirit of sarcasm which pervades his work, he compares them to the Cappadocians of old. And the authors of the "Voyage de Deux Français," consider the Lex Regia as the very essence of despotism, and yet they very sagely conclude that the Danes have never had occasion to repent this surrender of their liberties! The truth is, they had no liberties to surrender; the burghers and the clergy were both oppressed by the nobles, and the peasantry were abject slaves, glebæ adscripti; it was only the feudal aristocracy who lost by the revolution of 1660. Although the Danish literature is rich in treatises on the civil and criminal jurisprudence of the country, a work upon the public law of Denmark was still wanting. Foreign inquirers, who sought for information respecting the political institutions of this kingdom, had recourse to the work of Lord Molesworth, entitled "An Account of Denmark as it was in the Year 1692," which bears too many marks of prejudice and passion to be entitled to implicit confidence. Professor Schlegel has convicted his lordship of gross in |