186 ACCOUNT of the GERMAN THEATRE. 



own fituation, makes himfelf known, at the inftant of parting, 

 to his Amelia, and flies to rejoin his defperate afTociates. 



In this fituation of things, the fourth adl commences. The 

 fcene is of that favage kind, which prepares the imagination 

 for the horrors to enfue. 'Tis night ; and the remains of 

 the band are affembled on a defert heath, near to the ruins of 

 an ancient tower, round which the winds whittle, and the owl 

 fhrieks. They had watched three days and nights of danger 

 and alarm, and all, except their unhappy chief, whom remorfe 

 and anguifh keep awake, yield to their fatigue, and lay them- 

 felves on the ground to fleep. Moor remains alone, and walks 

 to and fro, like the fovereign fpirit of the night, revolving in 

 his troubled, but daring foul, this world and the next. In this 

 world, he has now nothing left to hope, and he looks, with 

 defperate calmnefs, on the dark and unknown gulph of that 

 to come. His foliloquy is of that fublime and broken fort 

 which expreffes the agitation of a great but erring mind, yield- 

 ing to remorfe for crimes which have ftained his life, but not 

 corrupted his foul, and left him, amidft the outrages of violence 

 and vice, the fentiments and the fufferings of virtue and of 

 feeling. After a paufe of gloomy meditation, he breaks out in 

 the following words, (to my tranflation of which the Society 

 will afford the indulgence I formerly foliated.) 



— " A long long night ! — on which no morning will 



" ever dawn ! Think ye that Moor will tremble ? Shades of 

 " the victims of this afTafTinating fword ! I fee your bleeding 

 " wounds, I look on your livid lips, and hear the laft agoni- 

 " zing groans they breathe — but I tremble not. — Thefe are but 

 " links of that eternal chain, which he who fits in yonder 

 *' heaven holds in his hand. He ftamped thefe horrors on my 

 '* defliny. Even amidft the innocent, the happy days of my 

 -" unfullied infancy, his eye faw them, and fealed them on my 

 " fate! (be draws a piftol) The barrier betwixt eternity and 

 " time, this little inftrument can burfl — and then — Thou 



" dread 



