which no commentary can be more appropriate than

that of her listening brother,

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,

She turns to favour and to prettiness.

She sings again, and now two stanzas of a more mournful ditty,-of him who will not come again, and whose beard was as white as snow; which ends with the rustic prayer, "Gramercy on his soul;"-to which in her simple charity she adds, "And on all Christian souls! I pray God. God be wi' you!" She goes away thus; and we see her no more.

In days when the life of every man and woman above the reach of the lowest poverty is diversified by frequent changes of scene and incident, all this may seem overstrained, as if to dwell on disappointed affections were but a weakness, and to die of a broken heart a mere phrase. Physicians, however, still recognise these casualties, and in every rank; sometimes in words, but more frequently in their effects, revealed, if not confessed, in various forms of sickness and decline. Our asylums for ruined minds now and then present remarkable illustrations of this fatal malady, so that even

N

casual visitors recognise in the wards an Ophelia ; the

same young years, the same faded beauty, the same fantastic dress and interrupted song. An actress, ambitious of something beyond cold imitation, might find the contemplation of such cases a not unprofitable study. It is not easy to account for the fact, that in the present age of intellectual activity, although representatives of light and graceful comedy abound, the more imaginative characters, whether tragic or amusing, find few actors and fewer actresses equal to their embodiment. The deficiency may in some degree be occasioned by the more prevalent demand for melodramatic performances, or such as produce more violent or more acutely sensational pictures to the spectators, but as respects actresses it is remarkable that we have scarcely an Ophelia, or a Lady Macbeth, or a Juliet, or a Portia, or a Rosalind, or a Miranda. There would seem to have been some circumstances in the great theatrical age now passing away which led to greater earnestness of feeling or to more industrious study in female performers, and to the nurture of more vigour of imagination; and such circumstances may be want

ing or less influential in a more advanced period, richer in immediate indulgences. The early days of most of the actresses who adorned the stage in the first half of the present century and in the latter part of the century preceding were passed in poverty, and their first efforts were put forth in small provincial theatres or in barns; their homes were obscure, their privations many, their recreations few possibly their studies were the more welcome to them and more intense, and their fancy was invigorated by more exercise. Certainly a forgetfulness of self, and a more careful observation of nature than seems usually to be thought important by the young actresses to whom the part of Ophelia is generally entrusted, are indispensable to its effective performance. It seems to be supposed that it is an easy task to play the part of a crazy girl, and that it is chiefly composed of singing and prettiness. The habitual courtesy, the partial rudeness of mental disorder, the diminished consciousness of what is present and real, and the glimpses of acute observation, the sudden transitions, the broken recollections mingled with painful and with lighter fancies, the vague purpose and the

ineffectual hurry, and all the nothings that are more

than matter," are things to be witnessed and reflected upon, things to be imagined only by few. Without such observation or such imaginative power, an actress must fail; her gestures, however graceful, will want true expression; her delivery of the words will have the fault of being too pointed and significant; and her singing, however finished and artistic, will want the affecting intonation of a lunatic's song.

Among the admirable papers relative to Hamlet scattered through the pages of Blackwood, one essay may be here referred to with especial propriety, both because it contains an interesting description of Young's performance of the character of the Danish prince, and a notice of Miss Kelly's well remembered charming articulation of Shakspeare's blank verse, and also of her peculiarly affecting manner of conveying the distracted snatches of melody which Ophelia pours forth in her madness,—in "soft, wild notes, sung in a minor key, and dying gently away into silence." * A more

painful illustration of the exalted tone of mind, at least

* Blackwood's Magazine, vol. xxiv., p. 560.

allied to a perfectly truth-like representation of Ophelia, is recorded in Campbell's Life of Mrs. Siddons, as related by Mrs. Bellamy, who had it from Colley Cibber. Mrs. Mountfort, an actress who had been withdrawn from her profession by the derangement of her mind, got away from her attendants one evening when Hamlet was the play performing, and went on the stage as Ophelia, before the actress could do so to whom the part was assigned; and she exhibited, it is said, "a representation of it that astonished the performers as well as the audience;" it is added, however, that "she exhausted her vital powers in this effort, was taken home, and died soon after."

Just after Ophelia has gone away, and when the king has almost succeeded in assuaging the anger of Laertes, or at least in turning it from himself towards Hamlet, an unexpected event occurs, in the arrival of certain sailors, with letters for Horatio, and for the king; letters, the sailors say, "from the ambassador that was bound for England," but really from Hamlet. That to Horatio tells him that the vessel in which