nary battle of Shrewsbury, in which Hotspur was slain, and the adherents of Mortimer routed and chased off the field with immense slaughter. In the mean time, the possessions of the Percy family are bestowed, by king Henry IV. on Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who had rendered important services to this sovereign against the rebels. Young Percy is educated at the court of Robert Stuart, duke of Albany, the Scottish regent. Here he is instructed in all the accomplishments of the times, and in his early youth exhibits many traces of his father's spirit, which, however, seem wholly effaced as he arrives at the age of manhood, when he abandons himself, apparently without control, to all the amusements and frivolities of the court at which he resides. One friend alone, the son of that Douglas who fought by the side of his father on the field of Shrewsbury, sees through the disguise of the light flutterer in the sunshine of fashion and gallantry, and beholds him languishing in secret for his native land, and laying plans for the recovery of his hereditary honours; and, in the adventures of the chase, finds occasion to admire the heroic and generous qualities of his character, his strength of arm, his love of hardship, and contempt for danger. At length he withdraws from the Scottish court, and repairs in disguise to the castle of Warkworth, the ancient seat of his family, but now the residence of the Nevilles. The story of his appearance and reception are thus related by Eleanor, the daughter of the Earl of Westmoreland.

As for that youth-few words

Will sum his story. Three months since, surprized
By a wild night, while journeying near these walls,
He begged a shelter. Voice or face or mien-
Fate willed it-touched my sire, who questioned him.
Fortune, he said, smiled fairly at his birth,
But fatal feuds, mischances long to tell,

Robbed him of friends and substance when a child,
And ever since his adverse fate had frowned.
Cheered by kind looks and courtesy, he asked,
Among the hunting train, some humble post.
Rare talents in the art so cherished here
Had won him rank and favour.

He takes the name of Arthur, is appointed chief huntsman to the Earl, and has the good fortune, by his bravery, to rescue Eleanor from a band of moss-trooping Scots, who had seized her captive, as she had incautiously strayed with one of the damsels of the castle, on a calm evening, to some distance from the battlements of Warkworth, and who were carrying her to the border. We can make room only for the conclusion of the story of her captivity and deliverance, which she relates to a female friend.

I found myself upon the moonlight bank
Sustained by Agnes; felt, upon my cheek,
The night breeze freshened by the gushing rill
Which Arthur from his casnet sprinkled o'er me.
No hostile sound disturbed us; tranquil, pale,
And sweet all seemed, till, on the runnel's brink,
Close at my feet, I spied two grim marauders
Mixing their life-blood with the bubbling stream.
That night he gave me to my mother's arms,
And such a night, such agonies of joy,

I hope no more to see.

This adventure, together with the noble spirit, fine accomplishments and courtesy of the young huntsman, breaking out with a splendour far above his station, make an impression upon the gentle heart of Eleanor, which her pride will not suffer her to acknowledge even to herself. In the mean time, Arthur, who has no such restraint upon his feelings, suffers himself to become deeply enamoured of the fair being whose life and honour he had preserved. His passion, however, does not make him forget the great object for which he left the Scottish court. In his disguise of huntsman he traverses the ancient domains of his family; he makes remarks on the strength of the country; he studies and searches out the spirit of its inhabitants. He takes occasion to pursue the chase far among the hills, and passes many nights among the hospitable cottages, to whom he speaks of the Percys, and artfully revives their old and unextinguished affection to his house. It is not long before he is joined by young Douglas, who brings a body of two hundred men, whom he conceals in a wood on the Scottish side, where they wait his orders, and at the intercession of Arthur is assigned a place among the servants of

Westmoreland. About this time, the king, attended by a train of twenty nobles and two hundred knights, arrives at Warkworth, on his way to Berwick. This is deemed by Percy a favourable opportunity to put in execution his enterprize of recovering the possession of Northumberland. He finds means to gain over several of the chieftains of the country, the old adherents of the Percy family; and a party of conspirators assemble, at night, in a vast cavern at some distance from the castle, where the design of the meeting is thus explained by the youthful adventurer.

In honour of the king

The Earl to-morrow holds a mighty hunt,
And grants me leave at night to show a masque.
Arms and the keys to that intent are mine.
My lords, this cavern, seemingly barred up
By yon piled rocks, issues beneath the castle,
Commanding, by a range of vaults unknown
To its new lord, the halls and posterns scooped
For special purpose in my grandsire's wars.
Through this what power we please may be conveyed
Into the walls; environ them without,

And every gate, ward, avenue, is ours,

Even to the hall of state, where, high in pomp,

The king and nobles feast. The castle won,

Whose voice shall dictate ? Will they for their lives
Cavil on nice conditions? Call my lands

A hard condition for a monarch's ransom?

On his return to the castle, he beholds a light burning in the tower of Eleanor, which was once his mother's oratory, and to which he knows the secret passage. He ascends, surprises her at her devotions, and does not leave her, till, without letting her into the secret of his name and family, he succeeds in convincing her of the nobility of his extraction, and is suffered to believe that he does not love her with a hopeless passion. The hour of putting the plot in execution at length arrives. Mountfort, Bertram, Bardolph, and other chiefs of Percy's party, marshal in the cavern a formidable body of their followers, who have arrived in the disguise of foresters and friars, coming in at different times, and by different and unfrequented paths. In the mean time. the feast is spread in the halls of Warkworth, and the masque

planned by Arthur is called for. A phalanx of spearmen, with Percy and Douglas in the midst, are ushered in with the sound of minstrelsy. Percy advances, lifts his beaver and speaks.

Too long, too long a Masquer, Arthur comes
Stripped of disguise, this night to execute
His father's testament, whose blood lies spilt,
Whose murmurs from the tomb are in his ears,
Whose injuries are treasured in a scroll
Steeped with a widow's and an orphan's tears,
O'er that curst record has my spirit groaned
Since dawning reason, in unuttered anguish.
When others danced, struck the glad wire, or caught
The thrilling murmurs of loved lips, I roamed
Where the hill-foxes howl and eagles cry,
Brooding o'er wrongs that haunted me for vengeance.
K. Hen. What tune may this be, Uncle?
West. Faith, my lord-

Per. For I have been an outcast from my cradle,
Poor, and in exile, while an alien called

My birth-right home. Halls, founded by my sires,
Have blazed and rudely rung with stranger triumphs.
Their honourable name have cowards stained;
Their laurels trampled on, their bones profaned.
Hence have I laboured, watched while others slept,
Known not the spring of life, nor ever plucked
One vernal blossom in the day of youth.
The harvest of my toils this night I reap,
For death, this night, or better life awaits me.
Before my
lord the king I stand, and claim
Northumberland, my just inheritance,
As Henry Percy, son and heir of Hotspur.
(All start.)

West. Percy!-Hotspur !

K. Hen. Impossible! "impossible! great heaven!

It cannot be.

Lady West. 'Tis but in sport, my lords,

"Tis but the play.

West. What means this, boy?-But sport ?—

Speak, or, by heaven

Per. Peruse yon steely circle,

Do those dark faces seem familiar?

West. These are the warriors of the Bloody Heart,

And this the son of Douglas.

All is now tumult and confusion. Westmoreland throws open a postern to give the party an opportunity to escape, but finds it guarded by armed men, he then demands permission of the king to charge the spearmen, but Percy raises an ivory horn suspended by his side, and sounding it three times, is answered, successively, by Mountfort from under the walls, by Bertram from the armoury above, and by Bardolph from the four corners of the castle. Douglas then gives a signal to his clansmen to retire, and the two friends are left alone amidst the royal train. After an affecting appeal to the compassion and generosity of the king, in which he touches on the former services and late misfortunes of his family, he kneels, and claims, from the hand of that monarch, to whose sacred person he swears never to offer violence-death, or the restoration of his inheritance. Henry, softened by his submissive manner, commands him to rise, rebukes him gently for the desperate enterprise in which he had engaged, informs him that he had already sent his pardon to Scotland, and renders back to him the ancient honours and possessions of his house. The Earl of Westmoreland is advanced to the title of Marquis of Montacute; and, to conclude, the king bestows the hand of Eleanor on Percy.

Such is the outline of the story-not encumbered with any underplot—not overcharged with incidents nor yet so destitute of them as to be without a considerable portion of life and interest. It is likewise sufficiently probable for the warlike and violent spirit of the age in which it is supposed to have happened, and the contrivance of the subterraneous passage to the castle, though a common resort in novels and plays in cases of difficulty, is, however, managed in a manner rather new. But the greatest fault of the plot lies, we think, in making the hero of the piece, whom the author, in order to secure our sympathy with his misfortunes or successes, ought always to bring us to respect,-act, throughout, with submission, what we should call a treacherous and dishonourable part towards the Earl of Westmoreland. Soliciting charity with the appearance of want and suffering, relieved by the compassion of that nobleman, taken into his service, raised into favour, and honoured with his confidence, he takes advantage of all this generosity to strip him of his possessions--possessions fairly won, the forfeited estates of a