Across this broad picture, Shakspeare has caused shoot one ray from the unseen world. We refer, of course, to the ghost. There is nothing which shows more the delicate and masterly handling of a Creator (who loves, understands, and treats tenderly his own children, not, like a plagiarist and stepfather, ignorantly and despitefully uses them) than his management of this awful visitor. The words "horribly beautiful" are applicable to him, and to him alone. There is not one vulgar element about him. He is-shall we say?-a 2-a perfect gentleman, and has a "courteous action." One desire, that of revenge, burns in his bosom, but it burns rather against the crime than the criminal. He leaves his wife "to Heaven, and to the thorns" in her own breast. In his last appearance, while the queen is affrighted at Hamlet's ecstasy, he tells him, in compassion, to "step between her and her fighting soul." And how admirably has Shakspeare caught the true shape, form, and figure of a spiritual being, such as we at present conceive of it! He is not a vague vapor; he is "clad in complete steel;" his beard is visible, "a sable silvered;" his "beaver is up;" his countenance is "very pale," but more in sorrow than in anger;" he has come from literal "fire," and his thoughts, feelings, and language resemble those of one still in the flesh. And yet, around the steel, and the beaver, and the beard, there hangs a haze of spiritual mystery and terror, which lends and receives effect from the materialism of the apparition. He "vanishes at the crowing of the cock." He passes, like heat, through the solid ground. Shakspeare has thus avoided the extremes of representing a ghost in too shadowy or too gross a light-of spinning this grisly thread | too thickly or too thin-to homespun or to gossamer. His shadow is something of a substance, and his substance is something of a shade. And such a nondescript form, too, appears at first Hamlet himself-a ghost among men, the phantom son of a phantom sire, neither a hero nor a coward, neither right flesh and blood nor a mere abstraction, armed, like Satan, "with what seemed both sword and shield," and yet, like him, shrinking away, at times, from the contest. He stands between the living and the dead, and seems to disdain all critical classification. He may be compared to one of those shifting shapes, met with in water, mist, or cloud, which appears, at one angle and from one distance, a palace; at another, a temple; at a third, a misshapen monster; and at a fourth, a man. Thus, Hamlet, at one time, and to one observer, seems the bravest and strongest of men; anon, the weakest and most cowardly at one time, devout and rational; at another, a fierce and profane babbler: now, an ardent lover; and now, a heartless insulter of the woman he had professed to love: now, prompt in action to rashness; and now, slow to indolence and fatuity: now, a counterfeit of madness; and now, really insane: now, the most cunning; and now the most careless, of men now a rogue, now a fool, now a wise man, and now a heterogeneous compound of all three. Twenty theories have been propounded of him; all bave been plausibly based on particular points in his character; and yet, as in the case of the authorship of "Junius," no theory is entirely, or even approximately, complete; each is serviceable chiefly in blowing out the one immediately before itself: and still Hamlet seems, as he stands, shrouded and shifting to every breath, to say to his critics, as he said to Rosincrantz and Guildenstern, "You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from the lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak.” We happen at present to have beside us only two of those twenty "soundings," and beg leave to say something of them, ere propounding our own view. The first is that of Dr. Johnson. It comes, as Hamlet would say, "trippingly off the tongue," and is written with more than his usual careless rotundity and lazy elaboration of style. It commences by praising, very properly, the "variety" of the play. But what does the doctor mean by the "merriment" it excites? Surely it is " very tragical mirth." Even in the laughter of this drama, its heart is sad. Hamlet and a gravedigger are the two jesters! And while the wit of the one is wild, reckless, turbulent, like the glee of the damned, that of the other has a death-rattle in its throat, and, returned to us on the echoes of the grave, produces an unspeakably dreary effect. Dr. Johnson adds: The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth." This we question. At least, us it has always impressed with a feeling of melancholy. Indeed, the lighter parts of the play, consisting more of wit than of humor, excite rather wonder at the sharp turns, lively sallies, and fierce retorts of a stung spirit, than any broad and genial laughter. He says that "some scenes neither forward nor retard the action." This we may grant; but are not these in fine keeping with the "slow, reluctant" delay of the hero? Shakspeare must linger, in sympathy with Hamlet. Nay, this was frequently the manner of the poet. An inspired loiterer, he often leans over some beautiful stream, or pauses at some fine point of prospect, or strikes into some brief byway of humor, or character, or pathos, even when his day's journey, and the day itself, are both drawing to a close. For why? He was a man, not a railway machine; and, besides, as his soul had its habitual dwelling in summer, his days were all long. He says that "Hamlet was an instrument, rather than an agent," but suggests no reason why Shakspeare has made him so. He charges, finally, the play with a "lack of "lack of poetical justice and poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose. The revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him who is required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the destruction of a usurper and a murderer is abated by the death of Ophelia, the young and beautiful, the harmless and the pious." But, first, the apparition's object was gained-the ghost did not leave his grave in vain; and, secondly, Shakspeare probably consulted something higher than our "gratification." He sought, probably, the broad moral purpose we have already expressed; and, if questioned as to poetical justice, might have replied in words similar to those of Scott-perhaps the noblest passage, in a moral point of view, in all that writer's works-"A character of a lofty stamp is degraded, rather than exalted, by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit, and it is a dangerous and fatal doctrine, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with, or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, or rank, the reader will be apt to say, Verily, virtue has had its reward. But a glance at the great picture of life will show that duty is seldom thus remunerated." And what is true of the apportionment of the gifts of Providence is true also of its evils. It were degrading to a lofty character, not only to enrich it with uniform good fortune, but to give it an unnatural insula tion from the great and wide ruin which is produced by guilt. VOL. XXIV. NO. L We pass to Goethe's far more celebrated account of "Hamlet," of which the "Edinburgh Review" declares, that there is "Nothing so good in all our own commentators— nothing at once so poetical, so feeling, and so just. After a beautiful picture of Hamlet's original character, and a paraphrase of his story, Goethe says, "To me it is clear that Shakspeare meant to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it." And then follows the well-known and exquisitely beautiful figure-" An oak-tree is planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom: the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away." This is very fine, but is it true? Does it open the lock of Hamlet's character? Does it account for all, or for the most, of the mysteries connected with it? Now, we do not find any proofs that Hamlet was peculiarly weak of nerve; nay, we find many proofs to the contrary. Did he not front his father's spirit in arms? Did he not rebuke his mother, and pink old Polonius, mistaking him for his uncle? Did he not confront Laertes, and at last stab the king? These actions and others seem to prove him endowed with the "Nemean lion's nerve;" and, although he more than once charges himself with cowardice, yet this occurs always in passages where he seems to be beating about in search of causes for his conduct, and to be lashing himself, by imaginary arguments, into rage. Nor does Shakspeare wish to represent him as peculiarly delicate and tender. He seems rather an oak than a flower-jar, though it be an oak shaken by the wind. No namby-pamby sentimentalist had he ever been, but a brave, strong man, whose melancholy and exasperation bring forth, in tumultuous profusion, the excessive riches of a prematurely thoughtful and very powerful soul. His is manifestly no weakly, elegant, and graceful nature unhinged; but a strong, and rarely gifted, and bold spirit, in anguish, uncertainty, aberration, and despair. Though there were no other evidence, the vigor and tact discovered in the trick passed upon Rosincrantz and Guildenstern, in sending them to be executed instead of himself, prove that he was an energetic and not a feeble character. So that, although Goethe has extracted "music" from this strange instrument, he has not "plucked out" the heart of its mystery. 5 Ere stating our own impressions, we may premise, that we offer them with sincere diffidence, and not without some fear that we may, unknown to ourselves, have been anticipated, amid the hundreds of previous writers on this extraordinary character. Nor do we hold them as dogmatically certain, but simply as highly probable. First, then, we do not think that Shakspeare ever intended Hamlet for a thoroughly consistent and regular character, swayed always by intelligible motives, and adjusted, in his actions, either according to fixed prinples or to steady currents of passion. He meant to show us a mind of great general powers and warm passions, liable to every species of whim and caprice, and at last, through the force of melancholy and mingling circumstances, partially unhinged aware, however, of this, and with astuteness enough to turn the real aberration into a means for supplying evidence for the existence of the assumed. Such a nondescript being, hovering between the worlds of reality and insane dream, Shakspeare chose, that he might survey mankind from a new and strange angle, and through a medium which should bring out more forcibly the mysterious contrasts of human life. Hamlet is a being all but loosened from humanity, whom we see bursting tie after tie which had bound him to his kind, and surveying them at last almost from an ideal altitude. He is a "chartered libertine," with method in his madness, and with madness in his method, and who, whether he rushes or pauses on his uncertain path-now with the rush of the cataract above, and now with the pause of the deep pool below-is sure to dash a strong and lawless light upon the subjects or the persons he encounters. He becomes thus a quaint and mighty mask, from behind which Shakspeare speaks out sentiments which he could not else have so freely disclosed; and shall we say ?-the great dramatist has used Hamlet as Turpin did Black Bess he has drenched him with the wine of demi-derangement, and then accomplished his perilous ride. tions are not profound. He at first implicitly believes the word of the ghost as to his uncle's guilt, but afterwards his belief falters, and he has to be re-assured by the matter of the play. The mask of total madness he snatches up, wears con amore for a while, and then wearies of it, and drops it, and then resumes it again. This, too, explains his conduct to Ophelia. He loves her; but his love, or its expression, yields for a time to the paroxysm of the passions excited by the ghost; it returns, like a demon who had been dismissed, in sevenfold force, and he rushes into her apartment, and goes through antics, partly to sustain his assumed character of madness, but principally as the wild outcome of real love; his passion is again overlaid by the whirling current of events, but breaks out at last, like a furnace, at her grave. So, too, with his desire for vengeance on his father's murderer. It has lighted, not as Goethe has it, on a feeble, but on a flighty nature; the oak is not in a tiny jar, it is planted in a broad field, but a field where there is not much "depth of earth," and where many other trees growing beside, draw a portion of that depth away. It is not the want of nerve; he could kill the king, in a momentary impulse, as he killed Polonius, but he cannot form or pursue any strong and steady plan for his destruction; if that plan at least required time for its development. Other feelings, too, interfere with its accomplishment. There is at times in his mind a reluctance to the task, as a work of butchery--the butchery of an uncle and a stepfather. Regard for his mother's feelings, and the consequences to result on her, is no stranger to his soul, and serves to cool his ardor and to excuse his delay. The desire of vengeance never, in short, becomes the main and master passion of his mind, and this, simply, because that powerful, but morbid and jangled mind is incapable of a master passion, and of the execution of a fixed purpose. One consistency only is there in Hamlet's character, that of subtle and poetic intellect. This penetrates with its searching light every Secondly, Hamlet's conduct is entirely nook and corner of the play, follows him what might have been expected from the through all the windings of his course, unites construction of his mind, and the effect sad in some measure the contradictory pascircumstances have produced upon him. He sions which roll and fluctuate around him, inis "everything by turns, and nothing long." spirits his language into eloquence, wit, and No deep passion of any kind can root itself wisdom, and makes him the facile princeps in his mind, although a hundred passions of Shakspeare's fools--those illustrious perpass and repass, and rage and subside within sonages who "never say a foolish thing, and his soul. He well speaks of himself as con- never do a wise one." Such a "foremost sisting of divers "parts." His very convic-fool of all this world," with brilliant powers, shattered will, and "scattery" purposes and passions, is Hamlet the Dane, as at least he appears to us after much and careful pondering of his character. Throw into the crucible strong intellect, vivid fancy, irregular will, fluctuating courage, impulsive and inconstant feelings, an excitable heart, a melancholy temperament, and add to these the damaging, weakening, yet infuriating influences of a father's murder, a mother's marriage, the visit of a ghost, an unsettled passion for Ophelia, the meddling interference of a weak father-in-law, the spectacle of a disturbed and degraded country, the feeling of his own incapacity for fixed resolve or permanent energy of passion, and from this weird mixture there will come out a Hamlet, in all his strength and weakness, wisdom and folly, energetic commencements and lame and impotent conclusions, insane and aimless fury, and strong, sudden gleams of resolution and valor, vain and sounding bombast and clear, terse, and inspired eloquence. We grant him weak, but his weakness does not lie so much in any one part of his mind, as in the want of proper management and grasp of his powers as a whole. Partially insane he is, but his insanity is the reverse of a monomania; it arises from the confusion and too rapid succession of moods and feelings, which he cannot consolidate into a whole, or press into one strong, narrow current, running on to his purpose "As the Pontick sea To the Propontick and the Hellespont." Is it too much to call him a sublime and sententious, an earnest and eloquent fool? Yet it is clear that Shakspeare had a peculiar and profound sympathy with Hamlet. He lingers beside him long. He lavishes all his wealth upon him. He seems to love to look out at mankind through the strange window of those wild eyes. Was this because Hamlet was (as is generally supposed) the child of his mature age, or was it from a certain fellow-feeling? Hamlet is what Shakspeare would have been, had the iron ever entered into his soul, had he ever been thoroughly soured, and had that magnificent head of his ever begun to reel and totter. Had Shakspeare, like Swift, Johnson, and Byron, a fear of" dying a top," and has he shot out that awful fear into his impersonation of the Prince of Denmark, and thus relieved and carried it off? The general moral of the play has been stated above; but there are besides numberless minor morals, as well as separate beauties, scattered in golden sentences throughout, which must be familiar to all. There is the picture of man, in his strange contrarieties of wormhood and godhood-his head of gold, and his feet of miry clay-compacted out of all contradictions; and who-even as the Andes include in their sweep, from the ocean below to the hoary head of Chimborazo above, all climates, seasons, and productions of earth-touches, as he ascends, all conditions of being, and runs parallel to all the gradations of the universe Pascal, Herbert, Young, and Pope, have written in emulous and eloquent antithesis on the same theme; but they all pale before this one expression of Hamlet's (after a matchless enumeration of man's noble qualities)-" this quintessence of dust." Where in literature such an anti-climax? such a jerking down of proud pretensions? such two worlds of description and satire condensed into two words? This, and many other expressions here, and in other of Shakspeare's works, prove what an accusing spirit, what a myriad-armed and tongued misantrophe, he might have been! But a soured Shakspeare is a thought difficult to be entertained. The two famous soliloquies, again, seem "God's canon against self-slaughter," versified. They have, we doubt not, deterred many a rash spirit from suicide. If they do not oppose it upon the highest ground, they do it on one generally intelligible and powerful. The prayer of the guilty king is worth a thousand dull homilies on the subject. It points to the everlasting distinction between a sinful and a sinner's prayer. The advice of Polonius to his son is full of practical wisdom; but, owing to the contrast with the frozen stupidity of the man from whom it comes, reminds us of a half-melted and streaming mass of ice. The irony and quaint moral which gild the skull in the graveyard, till it glares and chatters, are in keeping with the wild story and wilder characters, but are not devoid of edifying instruction to those who can surpass the first shudder of disgust. And the character and fate of Ophelia convey, in the most plaintive manner, a still tenderer and more delicate lesson. The pool of her death might have been again and again replenished from the tears which her story has started. Surely Shakspeare was the greatest and most humane of all mere moralists. Seeing more clearly than mere man ever saw into the evils of human nature and the corruptions of society, into the natural weakness and the acquired vice of man, he can yet love, pity, forget his anger, and clothe him in the mellow light of his genius, like the sun, who, in certain days of peculiar balm and beauty, seems to shed his beams, like an amnesty, upon all beings. But we must not forget that Shakspeare is no pattern for us-that this very generosity of heart seems, we fear, to have blinded him to the special character and adap tations of the Christian scheme-and that we, as Christians, and not mere philanthropists, are bound, while pitying the guilty, to do indignant and incessant battle against that giant something, for which sin is but a feeble name, which slew our Saviour, and which has all but ruined our race. From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. THE PALACE AT WESTMINSTER. "I CANNOT comprehend it," exclaimed Monsieur Vieuxtemps, a French gentleman standing near the Crystal Palace on the 1st of May, as soon as the subsidence of the cheers which greeted the Queen permitted him to be heard. "I am told-and I can readily believe it-that there are a million of human beings in and about this glorious park, and among them exiles, refugees, visitors of every nation and degree, and yet there are certainly not more than three or four hundred soldiers to be seen! Where shall I find the secret of this multitudinous homogenity--this grave enthusiasm--this order without force--this freedom without license--this antique, hearty, but unservile loyalty; where seek the mot d'enigme of this marvelous riddle?" As I happened to be one of a small group thus indirectly addressed, I said: "You must not forget, Monsieur Vieuxtemps, that there is a reverse side to this gay pictureprofound shadows, but the gloomier for the brilliant lights with which they are contrasted. In yon vast, half-deserted city, which has poured forth this multitude of well-dressed holiday-makers, there are hundreds of wretched homes and pining hearts" "Of course-of course," broke in the impatient Frenchman; "that must be the case, I imagine, in all competitive societies; and the only question appears to me to bewhether struggle, which is the life of a people, should, because of the frequent injustices which grow out of it, be exchanged for inert languor-moral death? But it was not of this I was either speaking or thinking." Technically correct; but who set the thing agoing, and now supports it? The multiform potentate who really does everything in England; and if you have a mind to see him in his representative form, I shall be glad to introduce you." "Let me go with you, and be brought face to face, also, with your parliament," interposed one of the group, Herr von Blunderblast, fresh from Faderland. This was agreed to; the hour and place of meeting arranged; and we separated. "It will be a splendid building, no doubt, when finished," said M. Vieuxtemps, when at the appointed time we met in New Palace Yard. "A fitter residence for monarchs, than to echo the boisterous clamors of a turbulent democracy. The façade on the river side, which I have seen, is very beautiful, and, I am told, nine hundred feet in length." "Yes; the Czar of all the Russias, when here, is said to have called the work a dream in stone.' dream in stone.' It is certainly a splendidlyenriched edifice." "And the cost already incurred is, I understand, enormous," said Herr von Blunderblast; "nearly two millions and a half sterling-a fabulous sum to any but English apprehensions.' "When one reflects upon the gorgeous character and costly decorations of the build |