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and its immoveable scenery, necessarily appears cold; and from coldness to tedium there is but a step. By this we may explain, without defending it, the extravagant character of the modern drama, which is the fac-simile of every crime, and presents to the eye of the audience, scaffolds and executions, murders, rapes, and incests, the phantasmagoria of churchyards and haunted castles.

We have now neither actors to perform classic tragedy, nor spectators capable of judging and enjoying it. The regular, the true, and the beautiful, are neither known, felt, nor appreciated. Our taste is so corrupted by the indifference and the vanity of the age, that, if the charming society of the Lafayettes, the Sévignés, the Geoffrins, and the Philosophers, could be revived, it would appear to us insipid. Before and after civilization, when the taste for intellectual objects has either not arisen or has passed away, mankind seek the representation of material objects. Nations begin and end with gladiators and puppets; children and old men are puerile and cruel.

STRIKING BEAUTIES OF SHAKSPEARE.

If I were required to say which I consider the finest of the plays of Shakspeare, I should hesitate between Macbeth, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Julius Cæsar and Hamlet. I do not however, very highly esteem the much eulogised soliloquy; I always ask myself how the philosophic Prince of Denmark could entertain the doubts which he expresses on the subject of a future state. After his conversation with the " poor ghost" of the King, his father, ought not his doubts to have been at an end?

One of the most powerful dramatic scenes in existence is that of the three queens in Richard III. Margaret after retracing her own misfortunes to harden herself against the miseries of her rival, ends with these words :

"Thou did'st usurp my place, and dost thou not

Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?

Farewell, York's wife-and Queen of sad mischance"

This is tragedy: the sublimest point of tragedy.

I do not believe that any writer ever looked deeper into human nature than Shakspeare.Take for example the following scene from Macbeth

MACDUFF.

See, who comes here ?

MALCOLM.

My countryman; but yet I know him not.

MACDUFF.

My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.

MALCOLM.

I know him now-Gocd God, betimes remove
The means that make us strangers!

ROSSE.

Sir, Amen.

MACDUFF.

Stands Scotland where it did?

ROSSE.

Alas, poor country,

Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot

Be call'd our mother, but our grave; where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;

Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstacy; the dead man's knell

Is there scarce ask'd, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

MACDUFF.

O, relation

Too nice, and yet too true!

MALCOLM.

What is the newest grief?

ROSSE.

Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughtered.

My children too?

MACDUFF.

ROSSE.

Wife, children, servants, all

That could be found.

MACDUFF.

And I must be from thence !

My wife killed too?

ROSSE.

I have said.

MALCOLM.

Be comforted:

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge

To cure this deadly grief.

He has no children!

MACDUFF.

This dialogue resembles that between Flavian

and Curatius in Corneille.

Flavian enters to

announce to the lover of Camilla that he has

been chosen to combat the Horatii.

CURIACE.

Albe de trois guerriers a-t-elle fait le choix?

FLAVIAN.

Je viens pour vous l'apprendre.

CURIACE.

Hé bien! qui sont les trois ?

FLAVIAN.

Vos deux frères et vous.

CURIACE.

Qui ?

FLAVIAN.

Vous et vos deux frères.

The interrogations of Macduff and Curiatius are beauties of the same order. But Macduff's exclamation: "He has no children!" is unparalleled.

The same hand which drew this picture has traced a charming scene in the farewell of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo has been condemned to

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