s, in the time of war,
laudably impelled, will slander public enemies into brutes, that the
nation may hate them without offence to brotherly love.

Articles of sacred faith are often so piously, yet so ignorantly
expounded in what are termed systems of education and instruction--that
doubts are created, where all was before secure, and infidelity sown,
where it was meant to be extirpated.

In this general failure of human perfection, the German author of this
play has compassionated--and with a high, a sublime, example before
him--an adultress. But Kotzebue's pity, vitiated by his imperfect
nature, has, it is said, deviated into vice; by restoring this woman to
her former rank in life, under the roof of her injured husband.

To reconcile to the virtuous spectator this indecorum, most calamitous
woes are first depicted as the consequence of illicit love. The deserted
husband and the guilty wife are both presented to the audience as
voluntary exiles from society: the one through poignant sense of sorrow
for the connubial happiness he has lost--the other, from deep contrition
for the guilt she has incurred.

The language, as well as the plot and incidents, of this play, describe,
with effect, those multiplied miseries which the dishonour of a wife
spreads around; but draws more especially upon herself, her husband, and
her children.

Kemble's emaciated frame, sunken eye, drooping head, and death-like
paleness; his heart-piercing lamentation, that--"he trusted a friend who
repaid his hospitality, by alluring from him all that his soul held
dear,"--are potent warnings to the modern husband.

Mrs. Siddons, in Mrs. Haller (the just martyr to her own crimes) speaks
in her turn to every married woman; and, in pathetic bursts of grief--in
looks of overwhelming shame--in words of deep reproach against herself
and her seducer--"conjures each wife to revere the marriage bond."

Notwithstanding all these distressful and repentant testimonies,
preparatory to the reunion of this husband and wife, a delicate
spectator feels a certain shudder when the catastrophe takes place,--but
there is another spectator more delicate still, who never conceives,
that from an agonizing, though an affectionate embrace, (the only proof
of reconciliation given, for the play ends here), any farther
endearments will ensue, than those of participated sadness, mutual care
of their joint offspring, and to smooth each other's passage to the
grave.

B