and no less in
all the pathetic parts, he far exceeded expectation, and deserved all
the applause he received.

Oh, tell me who and where's my mother!
Oppressed by a base world, perhaps she bends
Beneath the weight of other ills than grief,
And, desolate, implores of Heaven the aid
Her son should give----
Oh, tell me her condition.

There was, in his delivering these lines, an expression of tenderness
which appealed forcibly to the heart; and was rendered still more
striking by the abrupt transition to his sword,

Can the sword----
Who shall resist me in a parent's cause?

which he executed with a felicity that nothing but consummate genius
could accomplish. Again he blazed out with _the true spirit_ in the
following lines:

The blood of Douglas will protect itself.
Then let yon false Glenalvon beware of me.

That part, however, in which he disclosed not only exquisite feeling but
a soundness of judgment that would do honour to an experienced actor,
was where Glenalvon taunts him, for the purpose of rousing his spirit to
resentment. In that speech particularly which begins,

Sir, I have been accustomed all my days
To hear and speak the plain and simple truth.

The suppression of his indignation in this and the succeeding
passages--the climax of passion marked in his face, his tone and his
action, when he says to himself

If this were told!----

the gradation thence to

Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self?

till at last he flames into ungovernable rage in

Did I not fear to freeze thy shallow valour,
And make thee sink too soon beneath my sword,
I'd tell thee--what thou art--I know thee well.

was altogether a string of beauties such as it rarely falls to the lot
of the critic to commemorate. Had age and personal hardihood been added,
it would have defied the cavils of the most churlish criticism, and
deprived even enmity of all pretence to censure.

The next striking beauty he disclosed was in his reply to Randolph, when
the latter offers his arbitration between him and Glenalvon.

Nay, my good lord, though I revere you much,
My cause I plead not, nor demand your judgment.

The cold peremptory dignity he threw into these words was beautifully
conceived, and executed in a masterly manner: nor was he less successful
in the transition to an expression of poignant but smothered sensibility
in the next line:

I blush to speak: I will not, cannot spe