time." From the soul of him upon whom Christianity has had its true effect, as from before the face of him whom John saw in vision, sitting upon "a great white throne," "the earth and the heavens have fled away, and there is found no place for them." Shakspeare was, as I have said, the childlike embodyment of this sense of existence. It found its natural expression in the many forms of his characters; in the circumstances of Hamlet, its peculiar one. As has been well observed, the others we love for something that may be called adventitious; but we love him not, we think not of him because he was witty, because he is melancholy, but because he existed and was himself; this is the sum total of the impression. The great fore-plane of adversity has been driven over him, and his soul is laid bare to the very foundation. It is here that the poet is enabled to build deep down on the clear ground-work of being. It is because the interest lies here, that Shakspeare's own individuality becomes more than usually prominent. We here get down into his deep mind, and the thoughts that interested him, interest us. Here is where our Shakspeare suffered, and, at times, a golden vein of his own fortune penetrates to the surface of Hamlet's character, and enriches, with a new value, the story of his sorrows. If Shakspeare's master passion then was, as we have seen it to be, the love of intellectual activity for its own sake, his continual satisfaction with the simple pleasure of existence must have made him more than commonly liable to the fear of death; or, at least, made that change the great point of interest in his hours of reflection. Often and often must he have thought, that, to be or not to be forever, was a question, which must be settled; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation upon which we feel that there can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul. Other motives had no hold upon him; — place, riches, favors, the prizes of accident, he could lose and still exclaim, "Fortune and I are friends," but the thought of death touched him in his very centre. However strong the sense of continued life such a mind as his may have had, it could never reach that assurance of eternal existence, which Christ alone can give, which alone robs the grave of victory, and takes from death its sting. Here lie the materials out of which this remarkable tragedy was built up. From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet. It is to this condition that Hamlet has been reduced. This is the low portal of grief to which we must stoop, before we can enter the heaven-pointing pile that the poet has raised to his memory. Stunned by the sudden storm of woes, he doubts, as he looks at the havoc spread around him, whether he himself is left, and fears lest the very ground on which he lies prostrate, may not prove treacherous. Stripped of all else, he is sensible on this point alone. Here is the life from which all else grows. Interested in the glare of prosperity around him, only because he lives, he is ever turning his eyes from it to the desolation in which he himself stands. His glance ever descends from the lofty pinnacle of pride and false security to the rotten foundation, and tears follow smiles. He raises his eye to heaven, and "this brave o’erhanging firmament" seems to him but "a pestilential congregation of vapors ;" it descends to earth, and "its goodly frame seems a sterile promontory." He fixes it on man, and his noble apostrophe "what a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!" is followed fast upon by the sad confession, "Yet man delights me not, nor woman neither.” He does not, as we say, "get accustomed to his situation." He holds fast by the wisdom of affliction, and will not let her go. He would keep her, for she is his life. The storm has descended, and all has been swept away but the rock. To this he clings for safety. He will not return, like the dog to his vomit. He will not render unavailing the les turns. sons of Providence by "getting accustomed" to feed on that which is not bread, on which to live is death. He fears nothing save the loss of existence. But this thought thunders at the very base of the cliff on which, ship-wrecked of every other hope, he had been thrown. That which to every body else seems common, presses upon him with an all-absorbing interest; he struggles with the mystery of his own being, the root of all other mysteries, until it has become an overmastering element in his own mind, before which all others yield and seem as nothing. This is the hinge on which his every endeavor Such a thought as this might well prove more than an equal counterpoise to any incentive to what we call action. The obscurity that lies over these depths of Hamlet's character, arises from this unique position in which the poet exhibits him; a position which opens to us the basis of Shakspeare's own being, and which, though dimly visible to all, is yet familiar to but few. There is action indeed, but projected on so gigantic a scale, that, like the motion of some of the heavenly bodies, from whom we are inconceivably removed, it seems a perpetual rest. With Dr. Johnson, and other commentators, we are at first inclined to blame Hamlet's inactivity, and call him weak and cowardly; but as we proceed, and his character and situation open upon us, such epithets seem least of all applicable to him. So far is he from being a coward, in the common meaning of that term, that he does not set this life at a pin's fee. He is contending in thought with the great realities beyond it— the dark clouds that hang over the valley of the shadow of death, and float but dimly and indistinct before our vision, have, like his father's ghost, become fixed and definite "in his mind's eye;" he has looked them into shape, and they stand before him wherever he turns, with a presence that will not be put by. Thus it is, that to most he seems a coward, and that enterprises which to others appear of great pith and moment, "With this regard, their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.' Macbeth is contending with the realities of this world, Hamlet with those of the next. The struggle which is going on in the far-seeing mind of Hamlet never arrives at its consummation; Macbeth, on the contrary, is short-sighted enough to contend with the whips and scorns of time, and with him, therefore, the mental conflict is soon over. “If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well |