ghosts obey; and, with reference to the disappearance of that which they have seen on the crowing of the cock, on the warning always given thus to every wandering ghost, every “extravagant and erring spirit," to hie, ere morning break, to his confine. They talk of the belief that ever against the season when our Saviour's birth is celebrated "the bird of dawning singeth all night long ;" so that no spirits walk abroad, and no planetary influence affects the wholesome nights,

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no fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm." At length their watch is ended by the daylight, and they separate with the resolve to tell what they have seen to Hamlet. By my advice Horatio says—

Let us impart what we have seen to-night
Unto young Hamlet: for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

And thus ends the first scene.

In the course of the day that follows, we are first introduced to Hamlet. We find him with his uncle the King, his mother the Queen, and Polonius the Lord Chamberlain, and Laertes the son of Polonius, and

C

Voltimand, and Cornelius, and lords attendant, in "a room of state." It is here, I think, that we should carefully examine the first tracings of his character. We see him moody and unsocial, not yet reconciled to his mother's second marriage, grieving heavily indeed for his late father's death; and hating his successor, whose great crime is still unknown to him, as are also the events on the platform in the night just passed. That marvellous scene, and the more subduing sorrow which awaits him, are not yet among the troubles of his brain. No suspicion of the manner of his father's death has yet entered his mind. His bereavement, and his mother's indecorous marriage, make him fancy that his cup of sorrow is full but it does not yet overflow, as it must soon do.

The king, meanwhile, bears his own fortunes comfortably; makes a fair speech to the courtiers, announcing his having taken his sometime sister to wife; and still, with a decent show of mingled feelings

With one auspicious and one dropping eye;
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale, weighing delight and dole.

He then heartily sends off Cornelius and Voltimand to "old Norway," to suppress the further gait of young Fortinbras, who has pestered him with messages and demands for surrendering lands; "so much for him." To Laertes, who has some suit, he is very gracious; allows him leave to return to France; and he now proffers smiles and graciousness to Hamlet, who is not so easily contented, and who remembers his smiles long afterward.

But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,

His cousin and son seems to awake from some troubled reverie, and whispers to himself, and in reply to more direct questions as to the clouds that hang upon him, says that he is "too much i' the sun;" a play upon the word, and, although a triviality, yet illustrative of Hamlet's mocking disposition, as well as expressive of the contempt mingled with his hatred of his uncle. The king's intention to say more falters, and his poor queen tries to help him; remonstrating with Hamlet, and setting forth that death is common,

and all that lives must die; to which her son does but

answer,

Ay, madam, it is common.

To further question from her, he rather vaguely asserts the depth of his grief, in terms denoting a mind not only occupied, but disturbed with it. The king, recovering from the first rebuff, becomes fluent, reminds the mourner that his father lost a father; and that father lost, lost his; and that to mourn too long is irreligious. Finally, he urges him not to go back to school in Wittenberg; for which, indeed, as Hamlet was thirty years of age, there could be no particular reason, save that of avoiding his uncle's court. The queen seconds the entreaty, and Hamlet dutifully consents: whereupon the king, much disposed to dismiss matters of uneasy character, declares that this unforced accord sits smiling to his heart; and that every jocund health he drinks that day shall be told to the clouds by the great cannon which they will echo. In this pleasant mood he departs, with the queen and the company, leaving Hamlet alone.

And now, all at once, we learn the actual mental state of this unhappy prince. Even now, unconscious of what he is soon to know, we perceive that his mind is a very whirlpool of violent and miserable thoughts; that suggestions of self-destruction already lie and heave among them; that he feels the sum of his misery even now too much for him; and that the chief part is his mother's marriage to his hated uncle. And thus he bemoans himself—

HAM. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fye on't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature,
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead !--nay, not so much, not two;
So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,