with present shame for her. And when left to himself and to the expression of his world weariness, it was indeed manly suffering. Tears seemed to come against his will, and he dismissed them silently. Imbued from first to last with the poet's own caution against "periwig patedness," the colouring of the whole representation was soft and harmonious, Correggio as opposed to Rubens ; rich, deep, clear as day, full of grand chiaro-scuro, but without one raw tint. The disposition, the generosity, the fine temper of the being was the palpable design from first to last. Hamlet was a creature to be admired and loved. Kind with Horatio, courteous with all, indignant with cause, and as an exception from his disposition. The player restored, in the scene after the disappearance of the Ghost, these wonderful and terrible touches of pleasantry, thought necessary by the poet to mark the excess of terror in such a visitation, by the effect of the rebound, when Hamlet is enabled to summon his powers to contend with the oppression. And this was due as a part of the tragic suffering, which is the human lot of the hero, and the intensity of which evolves his thoughts and actions. In his scene with Ophelia, how little noise and how much feeling! How little action and how deep an interest! The eye, the broken tone, told the love which the words hid from the king; and as what he spake only "lack'd form a little," and "seem'd not like madness," neither did he act the outrageons madman; which, had Shakespeare intended him to do, undoubtedly the king would have noticed it as much as the matter of his speeches. The audience had the full volume of the previous story whereby to read Hamlet's words, a commentary which the king had not, and, as Iago need never wink, or scowl, or sneer his villany at Othello, to let the spectators see what a villain he is, so Hamlet, summoning to his imagination the feelings of the lover, who has taken forced but solemn leave of his mistress, who fears lest she could unworthily betray him, who doubts the sex he has honoured by the moral conviction of his own mother, whom he honoured the most, and who wishes to conceal all under the mask of mournful misanthropy, need only utter the text as such a man must talk it, to make his auditory feel almost as much as himself. But perhaps the effective triumph was in the closet scene. The player never forgot that Hamlet was speaking to his mother, and sometimes in the very presence of another life. His reproaches were feverish with horror at the being obliged to use them. They were anything but the gratification of will or the relief of a desire. They evidently arose

as reproaches, or even as the narrations of fact do in men's minds, the more terrible and emphatic in words the more the speaker may try to qualify them. The welcome indulgence of passion was in the killing of the supposed king, and in the comparison of the two brothers. Nothing could be more tender or pathetic than the promise to "beg blessings "when the queen should be "desirous to be blessed.' There was reconciliation for two worlds in it. In a word, the actor's taste brought out all that is noble, elevated, tender, and kindly, as the habits of the character, and put upon these all that could contrast with them, as the uncongenial accidents of his fate.

I always welcome the gravediggers with their well-assorted argument; their trade-talk of death, which is the best sermon upon it; their "houses which last till doomsday." They enforce the terror in the lesser sense and disarm it in the greater. Suffice it that my clowns were natural and unconscious ones, which is the task the poet has set them. And Osric, the comic quintessence of the courtier class of the characters, played his part only with superior earnestness and amusing dotage on nothings. Lords in waiting and gentleman ushers are really very droll in their inanity, but if they were pretentious buffoons they would be kicked out. Their merit is an exceeding solemnity, an incapability of the ludicrous, which makes them as ridiculous as the gravest of all four-footed animals. Where a smile or a frown is promotion or disgrace, luxury or beggary, the observation of the royal countenance is a most serious occupation. A vivacious absurdity from such a person! Make bim guilty of high treason at once! High treason it would be against the mystery of kingcraft. How finely did this cringing over-servile thing contrast with the placid, equal Horatio!

You have said nothing of Ophelia and Laertes.

No! They are a family portrait and should always be considered together. The characteristic of each is exceeding sensitiveness. Ophelia, as I saw her represented, hid hers as a girl does to make it the stronger by the suppression when she might indulge it; shew as timid, conscious at first, recklessly woe-begone afterwards, and in her madness telling the whole truth of her sense. Then she was passionate to the full, and the music in which she spoke, and the flowers which were her types were treated as the natural occupations of her purer lip, the services as well as the embodiments of her thoughts. This was expressed by the actress in her perfect spontaneity.

The brother, Laertes, has always been one of the most ill-used of all the great dramatist's creations. He has always been made ferocious instead of quick in feeling. It would be difficult to contrive more pungent wrongs than he has to suffer, and such as would make a man, full of the worldly falsehood of punctilious courage, less nice about the means. Laertes invested himself with interest in the beginning by his anxious love, his fear for his sister, not words spoken merely, but earnest feelings expressed. He was tender, anxious, doting on her, her honour, her youth, her beauty, her fate. In the latter part his rage became concentrated and terrible from the suppression of his tears; the anger itself was as grave as Macduff's, the deadly revenge was the prompting of the demon king ready to use it for his own fell purpose.

I could tell you more, for who could see Hamlet played and not have more to say about it? But even what I have said, suppose you to know the play throughout, and to care more about it than the average of readers or auditors, perchance. But, this theatre of yours, may I ask you, where— "In my mind's eye, Horatio," as you knew before you asked. But that mind's eye has been informed by what every one may consult for himself. Shakespeare expected to be misunderstood in this play. He has commented himself on almost every scene, by repeating all the less obvious ones in a short description. Look through the text.

Aye.

I do not say that some performers have not done this diligently, but to "play out the play," as it should be.

Why you will end as you begun; you will say few good actors wanted!

there are

FIAT JUSTITIA!

'Twas when the moon was darkened o'er with clouds of lurid hueTwas when in all the blackened sky you'd see no speck of blue'Twas when the blast swept searching past, across the lonesome moor, Bearing its weight of snow and sleet to sixty houseless poor;

Then rose the wail, upon the gale, of many a shivering mother,
And quick the wail, the sharp white hail, in stifling sobs would smother.
But, fierce and loud, the curses proud of savage manly wrath
Might make the brave Christ's ben'son crave upon that grisly path.

For there were deeds of justice done upon a wintry day,

And twenty hovels, black and bare, without the thatch-roof lay.
It was the law, and bayonets saw-the bayonets of the free!—
The right asserted of the good who sought his failing fee.

Knaves, famished, lean, with skin not clean, lank hair and horny hand,
From sire to son scant life had won upon a sterile land.

For twice a hundred years they toiled, in squalor and in grief,
And only paid full twice the meed of many a fertile fief.

But blight had fallen upon the field; this year their rent-staff died;
Potato, pig, the osier twig, drooped, plague-struck-(woe betide!)
The landlord (just and stern was he, and fitly proud of blood)
Bethought him well, time now to quell a sordid, useless brood.
'Twas thus that night the deed of right saw finished full and fair,
And not a wretch a limb might stretch upon a covered lair.
And as the curse grew wild and worse for savage kindred dead,
The good man calls his house to prayers, and, thankful, goes to bed.

But now was haste upon the waste, gaunt faces, glistening eyes,
Black-bearded men shake hands, and then they count who sinks and

dies.

Next day the sun shines cheerful down, as e'er shined wintry sun;
But under that fair, happy sun, a murther dark is done!

With cheerful face of health and grace (true symbols of the good),
The righteous master hies him forth to earn his zest for food;
And here and there, with bounteous air, he hails a neighbour's bow;
But one sad spot he visits not (his heart too soft I trow).

While ambling now, with musing brow, a briary bank before,
One yell-like as the fiend of hell!-lent force to that fell roar !

The good man falls-two death-winged balls his "fair round" body pierce,

And o'er the bank, lean, eager, lank, just peer two faces fierce.

A month hath waned,—the turf, blood-stained, has claimed the price of sin

Two ghastly corpses, on a tree, in sickening silence swing.
The good man's rest is in oaken chest, where all his fathers slept-

In many a page, by the county sage who rules the news-sheet wept.

TIS.

A HISTORY FOR YOUNG ENGLAND.*

What a pitie is it to see a proper gentleman to have such a crick in his neck that he cannot look backward. Yet no better is he who cannot see behind him the actions which long since were performed. History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or grey hairs; privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof. Yea, it not onely maketh things past, present; but inableth one to make a rationall conjecture of things to come. For this world affordeth no new accidents, but in the same sense wherein we call it a new moon; which is the old one in another shape, and yet no other than what had been formerly. Old actions return again, furbished over with some new and different circumstances.-FULLER.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH.

JOHN, SURNAMED LACKLAND.

1199-1216. JOHN was present at the death-bed of Cœur de Lion; and the dying king was said to have declared him successor to the throne, and heir to one-third of his treasures. The latter he seized at Chinon; and passing into Touraine, Maine, and Anjou, was met in that ancient territory of the Plantagenets by the claim of his nephew Arthur. This adverse confederacy, headed by the Breton people, had a formidable aspect; and John, content with sacking the city of Mans, and burning down that of Angers, hastened into Normandy and Acquitaine, where, by the influence of friends whom he had long secretly cherished in those provinces, and backed by the hereditary rights of his mother, his sovereignty was admitted. He received the ducal coronet and sword at Rouen from the hands of the archbishop. He had been Earl; he was now Duke; and by God's teeth (his favourite oath) he swore he would be King.

I have shown the growth of a power in England, during the last reign, claiming to overawe the crown and compel the responsibility of its ministers. But this power was never distinctly put in motion against the succession of John. When, indeed, on Archbishop Hubert's arrival with the letters from Normandy, justiciary Fitz-Peter commanded all freemen to swear allegiance to the duke, there was enough hesitation among the

* Continued from p. 84, Vol. III.