SONG.

1.
Spring. When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo, then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married car!

II.

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,

And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo, then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,

Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo,-0 word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

III.

Winter. When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;
To-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. 1 Gerarde, in his Herbal, 1597, says that the

IV.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,

To-who;
To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While
greasy

Joan doth keel the pot.? Arm. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You, that way; we, this way.

[Exeunt.

The Merchant of Venice," says Schlegel, is one of Shakspeare's mest perfect works; popular to an extraordinary degree, and onlculated to produce the most powerful effect on the stage, and at the same time a wonder of ingenuity and art for the reflecting critic, Shylock, the Jew, is one of the inconceivable masterpieces of characterization of which Shakspeare slone, furnishes us with examples. It is easy for the poet and the player to exhibit a caricature of ritional entiments, modes of speaking, and gestures, Shylock, however, is overy thing but a common Jew; he possesses a very detent and realistidnity, and yet we perceive a slight touch of day thg which her does. We imagine we hear a sprinkeling point the mere written words, as we sometimes

Neelogues notwithstanding their social refinement und hat foreign to the European blood and Christiansenimente, se cele able: but in passion, the national stamp apparently worked All these inimitable niceties the finished art of a grant to con properly express. Shylock is a min of information, even the very be own way: he has only not discovered the region where bestaan fuelinge dwell: his morality is founded on the disbelief in goodness and magne nimity. The desire of revenging the oppressionel humiliations of fered by ble nation is, after svarice, his principal spring of actin. Hie hinte naturally directed chiefly against those Christians who post truly Christian sentiments; the example of disinterested love of our neighbor seems to him the most unrelenting persontion of the Town The letter of the law is his idol; he refuses toonitor to the voice of

mercy, which speaks to him from the mouth of Pertia with heavenly eloquence; he insists on severe and flexible justice, and it at last recoile on his own head. Here he becomes a symbol of the general history of We unfortunate nuntion. The melancholy and self-neglectful maganimity of Antonio is affectingly sublime. Like a royal merchant, he is surrounded with a whole train of noble friends. The contrast which this forms