confinement itself; and if there were no neglected mass, there would be no necessity for what is called prison discipline: it would not be worth a thought. If an agriculturist were asked how to clear a marsh from weeds, he would answer, drain it, and what spring up after will easily be subdued. So, to clear the country from crime, govern well, and the individual cases which arise will be disposed of without difficulty. Great as is the quantity of crime at present existing, it is to me quite astonishing, considering the quantity of neglect, that there is not an immense deal more, and thence I infer that, with adequate attention in the proper direction, there would be an immense diminution. The principal means of accomplishing this is by moral influence to be derived from improved parochial government, carried on by the most worthy part of the community, most of whom now either take no part in public affairs, or employ their efforts on expedients for government, instead of in government. This is the only system for a free and christian country, and to this we must

come.

ROMEO AND JULIET.

In no other writings, in any language I believe, is to be found united, in the same degree as in those of Shakspeare, the force of reality with vividness of imagination. Hogarth's paintings eminently exhibit the same qualities, but, comparatively speaking, in an extremely limited range. He descends as low as Shak

speare, but is at an immeasurable distance from him in whatever partakes of the sublime and beautiful; or rather, I think, he seldom touches on the beautiful, and never on the sublime. In what he does delineate, from the drawing-room in 'Marriage-à-lamode' to the night-cellar in the 'Stages of Cruelty,' there is a truth and imagination, so far as the pencil goes, utterly unrivalled. Shakspeare generally writes as if, by some magical art, he had conjured up the scene before him, and had only put down what his characters themselves had uttered, so faithful is it not only to nature, but to the actual circumstances. As instances of this, I will only mention the quarrel between Hotspur and Glendower over the map of England, in the 'First Part of Henry the Fourth ;' the dialogue between Hotspur and his wife, whilst he is thinking of his roan horse, in the same play; the scene between Hamlet and the grave-digger; and, lastly, the celebrated balcony-scene in Romeo and Juliet,' an unaccountable mistake in which, in the different editions and in the representation, suggested to me this article. In the days of Miss O'Neill, I saw the play on twelve different occasions, and for some time it struck me that during

Romeo's soliloquy that accomplished actress was always rather awkward, and at a loss to know what to do with herself, as also that the soliloquy itself was not altogether clear and applicable. As this was neither O'Neillian nor Shakspearian, I examined into the matter, and found the cause to be a mistake in the stage directions, which destroyed the beauty and propriety of the soliloquy; and in order to make it at all consistent, a transposition was made, and, if I recollect right, some omission. The misdirection runs, I believe, through all the editions, and it seems to me most extraordinary that it was never detected. The scene arises out of the following circumstances, and its truth to nature entirely depends upon them. Romeo and Juliet fall deeply in love with each other at a ball at Juliet's father's house, where Romeo had introduced himself in mask for the purpose of seeing Juliet's cousin, for whom he entertained a very strong but unrequited passion. He is there struck with Juliet's extreme loveliness, and suddenly transfers his full-grown passion to her. She, on the other hand, has just had marriage put into her head for the first time, and a match proposed to her by her mother, to which she answers,

I'll look to like, if looking liking move.

In this state she is passionately addressed by the most accomplished youth in Verona, who, when he is gone, and an impression made, she discovers to be the only son of her father's deadly enemy,

My only love sprung from my only hate.

According to the dictates of nature, her love for such an object becomes violent in proportion to the obstacles which it presents. After the ball, Romeo, riveted to the spot

Can I go forward, when my heart is here?—

scales the garden-wall, and hears the volatile Mercutio making jokes on his former passion, on which he appropriately remarks, He jests at scars that never felt a wound;

then observing light appear through a window, as from some one entering a room with a lamp, he exclaims,

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

and, with a most beautiful comparison, adds,

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

Having caught the idea, and with the waning moon above him, he goes on in the true Italian style of poetry and love,—

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief,

That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid since she is envious;

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it ;-cast it off.

At the conclusion of this passage, Juliet advances to the balcony, and not as in the books and on the stage, before the words,

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

In the representation, after this last line, is introduced, out of its place,

It is my lady; O it is my love!

O that she knew she were!

66

In short, the whole of this beautiful soliloquy is made into what I can only adequately express by using the familiar phrase, a complete hash." As soon as Romeo sees his conjecture realized, he rapturously exclaims,

It is my lady; O it is my love!

O that she knew she were!

And the rest of his observations are naturally called forth by Juliet's as natural actions. The remainder of the soliloquy peculiarly illustrates what I have said respecting Shakspeare's art in conjuring up the scene; and though this tragedy is not amongst his highest, I consider it as one of his most extraordinary and beautiful efforts. I think it is Aristotle who says, then when we are thinking of what is past, we look downwards, and when of what is to come, upwards. I suppose Juliet to enter the balcony with downcast look, in deep thought on what had passed between herself and Romeo. At length, with some exclamation dying on her lip, she slowly raises her eyes, as if to read in the stars her future fate; on all of which Romeo, who is intently watching her, minutely comments as follows:

-

She speaks-yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.-

I am too bold-'tis not to me she speaks.

When her eye moves upwards to his level, he is on the point of advancing; but when it reaches the stars, he checks himself with a lover's diffidence, and then breaks out into a lover's rhapsody:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head ?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing, and think it were not night.

In her inquietude of mind, Juliet here changes her position, which calls forth from Romeo the well-known gallant passage,—

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

At length Juliet, seeing no end to her perplexity, exclaims in despair, "Ah me!" on which Romeo waits all attentive, and then falls into another rhapsody :

She speaks!

O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven

Unto the white, upturned, wond'ring eyes
Of mortals, that fall back to gaze on him,
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Here, interrupted by Juliet's exclamations, ends this famous soliloquy, to the mangled, and as it seems to me only halfunderstood beauties of which I have endeavoured to render justice. If I have succeeded where so many others have failed, it is entirely owing to the spirit I imbibed from so frequently witnessing the performance of the accomplished actress I have already mentioned. She illuminated her author with her loveliness, and gave a purer taste and more accurate perception to her auditors at least to those who had taste and perception capable of improvement. It is a curious fact with respect to the passages immediately following the soliloquy, that the impassioned fancies of a love-sick girl should have furnished part of the common currency of our language. "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" and "What's in a name?" are phrases of every-day use. Throughout the scene Juliet's character is full of beautiful touches. Her anxiety, in the first instance, for Romeo's safety whilst in her father's garden, her curiosity to know how he found out the placé, her full and ingenuous confession in return for his avowal of love, her protest that she should have been more strange, but that he overheard, ere she was aware, her true love's passion, her repugnance to any oath, her misgiving as to so sudden and unadvised a contract, her hope that it might prove fortunate, her expression of conscious innocence, her profession of boundless attachment, follow each other beautifully and succinctly. But the poet's most artful touch is the causing her at this juncture to be summoned down to her mother, which must be supposed to be for the purpose of saying something to her respecting her intended marriage; and this introduces the decisive step-as the only means of preventing her fate of stealing back, and thus addressing her lover:

If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one I will procure to come to thee,

Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,
And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,

And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world.

This passage was exquisitely delivered by Miss O'Neill, as well as the pathetic appeal which follows amidst the interruption of another summons

But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech

Thee, cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.

Her second return, and lingering, artless fondness close the scene with the same truth and beauty which pervade the whole, and stand unrivalled.

I have entered into this detailed criticism principally with a view to endeavour to rescue the lovely Juliet from the disfavour with which she is looked upon by ladies. They seem to consider her as a traitress to the dignity and delicacy of their sex, and speak of her almost as they would of a girl who should ask a gentleman at Almack's or a race-ball, whom she had never seen or heard of before, to marry her the next morning. But Shakspeare was no such bungler, either in choosing his groundwork, or in filling it up. He took an extreme case, and he has treated it with that extreme art, which requires study of the author himself, instead of a garbled representation, to comprehend and appreciate. Juliet, with a mind prepared, was addressed by Romeo with the energy of a ripened passion. When she discovered who he was, his reputation was already known to her, and she found in a fancied object of hatred one worthy of all her devotion. Chance discovered her secret, which she was not overstepping the bounds of delicacy in uttering to herself in darkness and imagined solitude, and it was not till Romeo had responded to her passion that she made a full confession. Necessity urged her at a critical moment to take that decisive step, which, under any other circumstances, would have been revolting, and “the mask of night," and the security of her situation, gave a tone of delicacy to her interview with Romeo, which would have been wanting in any other combination of time and place. It is singular that among the many representations on canvass of Juliet in the balcony, there is not one that is successful. The late Mr. Dawe, the royal academician, painted Miss O'Neill in this scene, but with no adequate expression, and with so little understanding of his subject, as to introduce a lamp suspended over her head. In my thirteenth number it is mentioned, in the letters from the Continent, that I prolonged my stay at Florence to attend a ball