an Edinburgh reviewer says, with dazzling lustre, nor with a gorgeousness that engrosses our attention, has at least the merit, such as it is, of seldom impeding with useless glitter the progress and development of incident and character, "but mingling itself with them, and raising them pleasantly above the prosaic level of common life."[1]
The plot of the "Maid of Mariendorpt" is taken, with such alterations and omissions as stage-craft required, from one Miss Porter's novels. It concerns the devotion of a daughter, Meeta, in behalf of her imperilled father, Muhldenau, who, while in quest of another daughter, lost during the siege of Magdeburgh many years before, and of whose existence he cherishes an irrepressible conviction, is seized in Prague as a spy, imprisoned, and sentenced to speedy death. Meeta quits home, and braves all hazards to see her sire once more, and to outpour her very soul in intercession for his pardon. In the supposed daughter of the Governor of Prague she secures an earnest mediator, and discovers her long-lost sister. The express orders of the emperor require the execution of the death decree on the aged prisoner; but the governor is delivered from the dilemma caused by conflicting duty and feeling, by an attack on the town conducted by Meeta's betrothed, the result of which is an exeunt omnes on the best of terms, and in exemplary and universal charity. The stout-hearted and eke tender-hearted maiden is of course the cynosure of admiring eyes; and several pretty things she says, as well as does, in the course of her enterprise; but there is no very striking evidence of art or of passion, no remarkable felicity of portraiture, or poetical sentiment. Her ardent, self-forgetting resolve to face any and all perils, that she may save her father, is expressed in a scene that recals, to its own disadvantage, the similar undertaking of Thekla in Schiller's noble play. Joseph, the Bohemian Jew, by whose agency the redeeming dénouement is brought about, is a less philosophic version of Lessing's Nathan the Wise—one whose faith, and works are essentially Christian, and who, if he is a little prosy, yet puts a Christianly restraint upon the longitude and latitude of his speeches. The good-natured, fussy, old governor, is another gentleman of excellent heart, whom the gods have not made poetical, though they seem to have inspired him with considerable powers of loquacity. Adolpha, his adopted child, and the sister of the heroine, is a graceful, winning damsel, whose changing moods, from gravest to most light, and all in like extreme, are ever sure of sympathy—whether her mirth defies all other wing, or her sadness dives a depth where none can follow her. We like, too, the sketch of Muhldenau; it is quiet, but pointed and affecting:
An old man
With a pale brow, sweet face, and silver hair,
That would not hurt a fly I and he must perish,
And no one to console him, and his daughter
Within the walk's breadth of him.
He is just the sort of father to save whom a high-minded child would not give up, or retreat, or compromise, "while there is chance the substance of a thread—a film." Well he warrants Meeta's stanch determination,
Altho' a thousand emperors
Had sworn against the life of his grey hairs,
While it is in them, I will try and save them!
- ↑ Edinburgh Review, 1833.
