using all things at pleasure, and changing and playing with our purposes as with his own. None other hath so fully developed nor shown such a love of humanity. Our globe and all thereon and all therein he hath turned and played with for his amusement, surveying generations of men, and observing individuals as they passed, with all their acts of folly and wisdom, their vices and their virtues. The simplicity and innocence of childhood, the out-pourings of despair, the ravings of disordered fancy, have been by him most truthfully shown. Like his own Glendower, the "spirits" of the "vasty deep" he has evoked; the demonaic, the wondrous and the terrible, and by his "ways of art" hath made them subservient to his' purpose. His "deep experiments," "full of fiery shapes," and deeper knowledge made him familiar with all within the womb of nature. The gentle fays dancing their "ringlets to the whistling wind," paid him respect, so did the "black and midnight hags" who render darkness still darker. The outpourings of his fancy are wonderful, his creations still more so. He had but to think and all was resolved; all passed before him, as the kings passed before Macbeth. His descriptions are so terse; he condenses into a line, what others take pages to express. "He lays open to us in a single word, a whole series of preceding conditions." With him an epithet carries back the mind for years, the brain reverts to the past, as when Prospero in relating the tale to his daughter of the causes which produced his present sorrow, applies to her, "Me, and thy crying self." The imagination is here. thrown back, and we pass from the grown woman to

the helplessness of infancy, and immediately is placed before us the first and most trying scene of his misfortunes, and all that he must have suffered in the interval. Again, in Richard III. he displays the same power, though the example is of an opposite nature, looking forward instead of reverting back,

"Up with my tent there! here will I lie to-night:
But where to-morrow?

The imagination is again on wing, to-morrow awakens thoughts of the coming strife, of death and futurity, with all its calamities or pleasures.

In his high impassioned speeches no word can be substituted for those which he uses; they must be rendered correct, or else the sound is not euphonious, it grates upon the ear, and the beauty of the sentence is marred. Take his description of the approach of night in Macbeth, and try to alter one word, and see if the beauty be not destroyed:

"Light thickens,

And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse."

Where can a word be substituted? can one be altered without marring the beautiful expression of feeling? Shakspere must have been thoroughly observant of external nature, and have faithfully stored within the chambers of his wondrous brain the results of his observations, to have been so truthful in his descriptions. The account of Ophelia's death displays his closeness of observation, for no other author has marked the difference of the sides of the willow leaf, the upper being green, the underneath being white:

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.”
Hamlet, A. IV. s. 7.

In the Winter's Tale, how accurately he dis

criminates between the bandied

nature, when he observes,

terms of art and

"Nature is made better by no mean,

But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art
Which you say adds to Nature, is an art

That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentle scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race: this is an art

Which does mend Nature, change it rather, but
The art itself is Nature.-A. IV. s. 4.

How thoroughly he displays his knowledge of humanity, the result of great observation, in Henry IV., when depicting the fickleness of the popular will, he says,

"An habitation giddy and unsure

Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be.

Part II. A. II. s. 3.

In describing the power of imagination after the brain has resolved upon action, how wonderful is the knowledge he evinces, and how accurately he analyses the courses of human thought. In Julius

Cæsar, he observes,

"Between the acting of a dreadful thing,
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council; and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection."—A. II. S. 1.

In the Tragedy of Othello, one of the grandest of all tragedies, how beautiful is his power of discrimination displayed, how excellently through the character of Iago is effected the jealousy of Othello; how gradually, yet certain, is the coil wound round the unsuspecting Moor; how every circumstance tends to work upon the impassioned black; and when Othello asks Iago, "If he dost not think Cassio honest," how the echo of Iago, "Honest my lord," serves still further to arouse the Moor, causing him to repeat the question, "Honest? ay honest,” and when Iago again echoes the words of Othello, the chords are struck, the poison beginneth its work; for Othello immediately exclaims to himself,

"Think, my lord, by heaven, he echoes me,

As if there were some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown."-A. III. s. 3.

Throughout the whole of this scene the inuendoes of Iago have their weight and succeed in arousing the jealousy of Othello; and when Desdemona importunes the Moor for Cassio, how that passion becomes strengthened, and waxes still stronger through the loss of the handkerchief, so cleverly contrived by Iago, until Othello is completely carried away by his imaginary wrongs and slays his innocent wife. How wonderfully is the remorse of the Moor pourtrayed, when he discovers the treachery of Iago, and what a splendid conclusion the poet puts into the mouth of the Moor, fit compeer for the splendid opening, when addressing Ludovico, he says,

"Soft you; a word or two, before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know't.
No more of that. I pray you, in
your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,

Nor aught set down in malice: then must you speak
Of one that lov'd not wisely, but too well;
Of one, not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one, whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away,

Richer than all his tribe; of one, whose unsubdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Dropt tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state,

I took him by the throat the uncircumcised dog,
And smote him,—thus

Lud. O bloody period!

Gra.
Oth.

All that is spoke is marr❜d.

I kiss'd thee, ere I kill'd thee:-no way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss."—A. v. s. 2.

of

In reviewing Shakspere and his works, innumerable are the forms, phases, and guises under which he appeareth. We behold in him the man learning, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, and the man of the multitude. If we wish to learn a code of morals, we have only to cull his works, and Minerva like they spring up complete in every page. Do we wish to learn his politics, we shall find his works abound in political truisms, with a knowledge of peoples and governments that seem truly miraculous. Do we wish to view life and know its character, read his pages, and you cannot fail to discover and be bettered by your discovery.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this pretty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!