Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848. Various

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      And faltering hand, that curtain drew, and showed,

      Of solid diamond formed, a lucid vase;

      And warm within the pure elixir glowed;

      Bright red, like flame and blood, (could they so meet,)

      Ascending, sparkling, dancing, whirling, ever

      In quick perpetual movement; and of heat

      So high, the rock was warm beneath their feet,

      (Yet heat in its intenseness hurtful never,)

      Even to the entrance of the long arcade

      Which led to that deep shrine, in the rock's breast

      As far as if the half-angel were afraid

      To know the secret he himself possessed.

      Tahathyam filled a slip of spar, with dread,

      As if stood by and frowned some power divine;

      Then trembling, as he turned to Zophiël, said,

      "But for one service shall thou call it thine:

      Bring me a wife; as I have named the way;

      (I will not risk destruction save for love!)

      Fair-haired and beauteous like my mother; say —

      Plight me this pact; so shalt thou bear above,

      For thine own purpose, what has here been kept

      Since bloomed the second age, to angels dear.

      Bursting from earth's dark womb, the fierce wave swept

      Off every form that lived and loved, while here,

      Deep hidden here, I still lived on and wept."

      Great pains have evidently been taken to have every thing throughout the work in keeping. Most of the names have been selected for their particular meaning. Tahathyam and his retinue appear to have been settled in their submarine dominion before the great deluge that changed the face of the earth, as is intimated in the lines last quoted; and as the accounts of that judgment, and of the visits and communications of angels connected with it, are chiefly in Hebrew, they have names from that language. It would have been better perhaps not to have called the persons of the third canto "gnomes," as at this word one is reminded of all the varieties of the Rosicrucian system, of which Pope has so well availed himself in the Rape of the Lock, which sprightly production has been said to be derived, though remotely, from Jewish legends of fallen angels. Tahathyam can be called gnome only on account of the retreat to which his erring father has consigned him.

      The spirits leave the cavern, and Zophiël exults a moment, as if restored to perfect happiness. But there is no way of bearing his prize to the earth except through the most dangerous depths of the sea.

      The furious storm has been raised by the power of his betrayer and persecutor, and in gloomy desperation Zophiël rises with the frail Phraërion to the upper air:

      But his flight toward Medea is stayed by a renewal of the tempest —

      At length comes a shock, as if the earth crashed against some other planet, and they are thrown amazed and prostrate upon the heath. Zophiël,

      The interview between the bland spirit and the prime cause of his guilt is full of the energy of passion, and the rhetoric of the conversation has a masculine beauty of which Mrs. Brooks alone of all the poets of her sex is capable.

      Zophiël returns to Medea and the drama draws to a close, which is painted with consummate art. Egla wanders alone at twilight in the shadowy vistas of a grove, wondering and sighing at the continued absence of the enamored angel, who approaches unseen while she sings a strain that he had taught her.