SHAKSPEARE. THE wonders and sublimity of the Heavens have formed subjects for a most eloquent and impressive discourse before this Institute. Health and beauty, physiologically considered, have also been exhibited to you in their most alluring shape and colors. Others have presented to you the instinct of flowers, and the beauty of ancient literature. But what is instinct, animal or vegetable? What are health and beauty? What the delights of literature? What all the glories, all the immensity, all the mystery, and majesty of the physical world, when compared with that quality which we denominate mind? That for which every thing was formed. through which every thing is enjoyed. That without which, every thing—is nothing. "A beam ethereal, sullied and absorbed, That It is a mistake, to suppose that in the various systems of the universe, man is an insignificant or unimportant being. He is, let it be remembered, an immortal being. The favorite of Heaven, the designed tenant of Heaven. His body springs from the dust, it is true, and to dust must return. But the mind "rests and expatiates upon things to come;" and wonderful as is all creation, the mind of man is most wonderful of all. After creating, breathing into existence this mighty universe, God formed man in his own image, after his own likeness, and gave him dominion over all the earth. Of all terrestrial creation, He is the only immortal part. And the sun shall become as black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood, and the Heavens depart as a scroll that is rolled together; yet he shall flourish in immortal youth. What a piece of work is a Man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a God! The mind of man is competent, as you have perceived, to explain the philosophy, the uses, purposes, properties, and character of all those glorious orbs floating through the measureless and boundless realms of space. But who shall explain the mind of man? Human reason is never so bewildered and perplexed, never so foiled and baffled as in an ex ercise upon itself. Could it but only clearly comprehend its own nature, it would have attained greater perfection than mortals yet have reached. It would imbibe greater and more glowing views of its original, than it will ever belong to the lot of finite beings to enjoy. That is a perfection which is reserved for the period when mortals shall put on immortality—when we shall, instead of seeing as through a glass darkly, behold our Maker face to face, and unite with the cherubim and the seraphim in realms of everlasting joy, in chanting hosannahs to the Most High. If such be the difficulties in estimating the intellectual structure and moral character of ourselves, what must be the difficulties in ascertaining those of others; what of those, who for some all-wise purpose seem, while in nature they pertain to man, to belong also to angels, and thus to form an immediate and connecting link between earth and Heaven. That men have been directly inspired, by the supreme disposer of events, for religious purposes, no one will venture to deny. And that men are also intellectually inspired occasionally beyond their fellow men, for the purpose of conferring intellectual and moral blessings and benefits upon mankind, is by no means inconsistent with the beneficence of the Deity, and may be, therefore, reverentially asserted. And if there ever was a mortal who was thus inspired, who compassed all creation at a single glance, who sounded and unfolded all the depths, workings and intricacies of the human heart, who possessed by intuition what others never could acquire by labor, even with all appliances and means to boot, it was Shakspeare. What is the philosophy of Bacon? said to be the wisest and brightest of mankind! I reject the slanderous part of the quotation. What the science of Newton, lustrous and imperishable as the stars to which directed, in the advantages which they have shed upon the world, compared with the exposition of the springs and motives of human action, for which we are indebted to the immortal bard? What is it to be told even in his own magnificent language, that "The Heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, "The proper study of mankind, is man." Who then was this sweet swan of Avon, as he has been called by one of the greatest of his contemporaries. What he was, all the world, which he embellished, delighted, and improved, can readily tell you. But who he was, is an inquiry not so easily answered. Indeed, some have gone so far as really to contend, thereby destroying at least one of the most pleasurable illusions of life, that no such man as Shakspeare ever lived, and the basis of this conclusion seems to be, that no other such man ever lived, which cannot be denied. And that those immortal works which are associated in our memories with that name, are the combined product of the united efforts of all the choice and master spirits of that age in which Shakspeare is supposed to have flourished. This ungenerous effort has not been confined to the English bard. For a similar attempt has been made to strip the father of Grecian poetry, Homer, of all his glory, by the suggestion, that he was but the itinerant vender of those intellectual treasures which legitimately belonged to the efforts of other and greater minds. History, however, aided by tradition, her faithful handmaid, seems to have settled the question in despite of unbelief, as to the identity of the subject of this brief and imperfect sketch, and I proceed to trace him from his birth to the tomb. On the 23d day of April, old style, which answers to the 4th day of May, new style, in the year 1564, in an obscure town on the borders of the |