with the will of our Father. From both we learn, that of ourselves we can do no positive act; but have only the power given us to render of no avail that which is so- - that we cannot make one hair white or black; that our seeming strength is weakness, nay, worse than weakness, unless it co-operates with God's. Let us labor then, knowing that the more we can erase from the tablets of our hearts the false fashions and devices which our own perverse wills have written over them, the more will shine forth, with all their original brightness, those ancient primeval characters, traced there by the finger of God, until our whole being is full of light.

HAMLET.

THE play of Hamlet, when viewed with reference to the character of Shakspeare, which we have given, will no longer stand in that unique relation to the rest of his performances it has hitherto held; but will be found to be more vitally connected, than any of them, with the great characteristics of the poet's mind. We have chosen this, therefore, because it illustrates our previous remarks; and because these, in their turn, afford the position from which it is to be viewed. As to the time of its composition, it stands at about an equal distance between his first and last play; and, we think, we can see the influence of this upon those that succeed, in giving them more of a sobered and tragical interest. Those who have attempted an explanation of it, have failed from the want of a just conception of Hamlet's situation and character.

In Lear, and in many other

of Shakspeare's plays, the chief character seems naturally to be that for which all the others were formed; and, however important these are at first, as objects for the eye to rest on, they seem, at last, to the mind, but as shadings to show the main one in the strongest light. This is especially the case with Hamlet; and they who have commented on it, seem to have erred from viewing that as of the greatest importance, which Shakspeare must have considered but as accidental. There is, to use his own words, something more than natural" in this tragedy, "if philosophy could find it out." That which makes it so, is the playing up, in a peculiar manner, of the great features of Shakspeare's own mind - that sense of existence which must have been, as we have said, the accompanying state of so much and so varied activity. Hence the darkness which has so long hung over it; a darkness which, for us, can only be dispelled, when we too rest on the same simple basis.

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Instead of feeling, continually, that the life is more than the food, and the body than the raiment; we live as if it were directly the other way, and by that very state of mind, are incapacitated almost from conceiving of one who stood in a truer relation to things; to whose thoughts, time and space seem not to adhere as to ours- who could "put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," and to whom this, our life of years, was but "a bank and shoal of

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