These formed part of the celebrations for Whitsun week; and such things still exist at a few primitive and remote places on the continent of Europe.

As in other departments of art, dramatic representations are imitative, and they are avowedly no more. They are not meant, therefore, to deceive, any more than a painting or a statue is; nor do they produce that effect except momentarily; or if more enduringly, it is on the simple child of nature who is a stranger to art and artifice. They excite in us, for the time, emotions such as the reality would awaken; and we admire them according as they approximate to the thing represented. With the precise subject we are not identified, though we expect that it will present nothing of a dangerous or disagreeable character. We should admire the painter who gave us a forcible representation either of Judas Iscariot or of the beloved disciple; and so we also admire an able dramatic artist, whether he depicts the evil passions of a bad man or the sublime virtues of a good one. In some departments of art, one man's labours are the beginning, middle and end; so completely, that even an old frame or a bad light cannot seriously injure a first class painting. In others, again, there must be the perfect harmony of two distinct minds, if the effect is not to be marred; as when the actor understands what he reads and reads what he understands,-that is to say, when he thoroughly identifies himself with the sentiments of the author, and successfully conveys them to others.

Of the destinies which shaped the course of Shakspeare, I do not intend to speak; but in its rough-hewing it did not differ essentially from those of other men. As schoolboy, youth, and man, he was subject to the ordinary contingencies; he underwent the same process of education; he looked upon the same green fields and blue skies; combated the same difficulties; exhibited the same organs, affections, senses,

passions. But, one man is gifted with a species of second sight, for the eye of imagination, like that of faith, carries him far beyond the mere outward appearance; while in the stupid animal-nature of another the words of the poet are verified,

A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more.

There is evidence that besides being endowed with the faculties which blossomed so pleasantly and bore such rich fruit, he possessed the inestimable blessing of an intelligent mother; so that the time, the place, the persons, and other accidents in his antecedents and surroundings, contributed in no small degree to the great end. In the arrangements of Providence some men are drifted into a position mechanically; others have to fight their way to it through a thousand adverse circumstances; but in the majority of cases, as in that of Shakspeare, the peculiar state of the wind and tide are the given conditions, and the steering of the bark is the personal problem to be solved. He was not permitted to realise all his own seven stages of human life, but passed away at fifty-two, like a ripe fruit dropping from the bough. By an unusual coincidence, the day of his death was the same as that of his birth, both of which coincide with the day of our national saint. The red cross of St. George has braved the battle and the breeze for centuries; and so long as it remains the recognised blazon of our country, so long will the name of Shakspeare be a household word, and so long will his sentiments be written in the hearts of admiring millions.

The language of his writings is surrounded by just such a halo as gives interest to the expressions, and attracts increased attention to the thoughts. The latter are like books in quaint bindings or like pictures in medieval frames. It is interesting to estimate how much of our admiration for a writer,

say Bacon, depends upon the quaintness of diction by which he surrounds an ordinary thought, and how some of the best known passages are marred by being modernised, or expressed in the secular language of daily life. But after making all necessary allowance on this ground, it must be admitted that the expressions of Shakspeare are truly beautiful; and it is perhaps an advantage that we can admire his jewels for two reasons, viz., first, for their intrinsic worth, and second for the elegance of their setting. Though I intended to speak only in general terms, to the avoidance of all quotations, and though I take for granted that all present are familiar with the choicest passages, I will yet venture to produce one illustrative extract.

The quality of mercy is not strained:

It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice.

It is said that Shakspeare falsified history, and we are ready to admit that the impressions which he gives us of national and personal facts are sometimes wide of the truth. But it should be borne in mind that books were fewer then than now, while the independent investigation of original documents was rarely attempted; and therefore we ought to look at him in the softened light of his own time, not in the increased splendour of our age. The objection is answered, however, in a great degree, by the fact that he was not a historian, but

a dramatist; and that be purified and exalted popular sentiment before presenting it in a condition for representation. Yet it was still popular sentiment, and he has acted just as a great painter who clothes prophets and apostles in the Dutch rustic costume of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is in obedience to this popular sentiment that Macbethone of the most amiable and intelligent of Scotland's early monarchs-is represented as an assassin and a regicide, trampling on the sacred duties of hospitality; that Richard III is hump backed; or that a patient and persecuted Jew, from whom the pound of flesh was about to be cut, is represented as desirous to inflict that suffering on a Christian. There are some of Shakspeare's works which appear to have had no basis of recognised history on which to rear the superstructure; but, as is usual with novelists, incidents of private life, known to the author, are built up with the new materials formed by imagination alone. At the present moment, international events of profound importance call up vividly some of the scenes of Hamlet; and, probably, there are more than the gravediggers of Denmark who would now say that there are men in England as mad as the slayer of Polonius.

It has been suggested by a Lord High Chancellor of England, that Shakspeare was at one time connected with the profession of the law; so familiar does he appear to be with its processes and with the proceedings of courts. But the same remark might be made by a surgeon, a soldier, a mechanic, or a divine; for with the occupations of all of them he was perfectly familiar. And herein consists the leading characteristic of the man. He could identify himself not with one class of persons but with every class. He could throw himself into the position of each in turn, place himself in that person's circumstances, and utter his thoughts in language adapted to his condition and habits, so that he was, in a higher sense than we have known elsewhere, "his

"own and all mankind's epitome." His general training, his omnivorous intellect, his versatile talents, his varied experiences, all contributed to qualify him for the part he had to play in life; so that no glaring deformity marks his labours, and no signal failure appeared, to mortify himself or the successive generations of his admirers. In our own age, the division of labour causes every man to move in a narrow circle, and to make a deeper groove for himself in proportion as he contracts the area of his labour. In other periods of our history, a different set of causes contributed to produce narrowness of mind and conventionality of thought; and hence, extended information is always rare, and so is extended sympathy; while their coincidence in the same person, and in so high a degree, is a phenomenon which we can hardly expect to witness again. As logicians say, the greater the comprehension the less the extension; that is, the larger the concurrence of qualities required, the fewer there be that possess them. To use his own expression put into the lips of Hamlet, "He was a man, take him for all in all; or we may say of him as Byron said of Sheridan,—that nature formed only one such person, and that she broke the die in the process of moulding him.

The witticisms which are scattered through his works, the quaint sayings, the homely popular proverbs, the allusions to implements which have become objects in the collection of the antiquary, and the punning or other allusions to popular manners and customs, constitute of themselves a string of literary pearls. Like Falstaff, he was not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others; and, if all his reflected rays were withdrawn from some of our modern publications, these would be left in comparative darkness. On some occasions he paid too high a price for his jewels, introducing puns where they injure rather than improve; but, whether his pure dia

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