A state of mind like this affords an easy and natural solution of Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia. He loved her deeply,-deeper than aught else; yet when she broke in upon his soliloquy, in which existence itself now and forever seemed questionable, and the sun, on which that world of love within his bosom hung, seemed ready to be blotted out, the thought of all this might well work in him that bitterness, whose poignance but the more strongly proved his love. The view of the world and all its hopes and fears which he has just expressed, is a sufficient explanation of the whole scene. As he has said before, man delights him not nor woman neither; and as the thought too of his uncle's and his mother's wickedness presses upon his mind, and there seems to him nothing that can be trusted, nothing sure; we may pardon the harshness of his words to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery; why shouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" Then too we may sympathize with him, when, as if to palliate a harshness which in his present state of mind he cannot but feel, he turns with like reproach upon himself—"I am myself indifferent honest." His language therefore, in this scene, is in perfect keeping with the rest of the play, and his own character. There is no dissimulation, as has been supposed,for there was need of none.

The words of Hamlet as a lover are, as we think,

in some respects parallel to those addressed by him as a son to his father's shade, when he exclaims to the ghost beneath; "Ha, ha, boy! sayst thou so; art thou there, true penny?" and again—“Well said, old mole! canst work in the earth so fast?" In the height of emotion and mental conflict to which he is raised by these contemplations, he finds relief, as in the grave yard, in expressions which seem strangely at variance with each other; but which, in reality, are but natural alternations. So much does he dwell in the world of spirits that there is a sort of ludicrous aspect upon which his mind seizes as often as it returns to this. "There is something," says Scott, "in my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours, that compels me to mix with my distresses strange snatches of mirth, which have no mirth in them.”

Before we lose sight of this noblest, yet still unappreciated monument of Shakspeare's mind, we cannot but pause for a moment and look back with awe and admiration upon its dark and majestic outline, as it stands towering against the sky,-the kingly pyramid of the prince of Denmark covering in its secret chambers a mystery more hidden, and precious, than that which the pile of an Egyptian monarch, though reared with a thousand hands, is fabled to conceal. His thoughts, though common with us as the sun-light and the air, are, like them,

mighty hieroglyphics which may indeed have false meanings attached to them, but which can never be interpreted until the wisdom of God is shed abroad in our hearts. Then shall we read and understand. Then may we be touched by his own sadness as we listen to this last farewell of our Shakspeare.

"Our revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit shall dissolve;
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir I am vexed;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troub-
led.

Be not disturbed with my infirmity:

But hence retire me to my" AVON, "where
Every third thought shall be my grave."

POEMS.