their box-the customary question was asked by the clerk of the crown-and-" Guilty" was faintly answered, accompanied with a recommendation to mercy. An agonizing pause succeeded-the court was as silent as the grave-the prisoner bowed respectfully to the jury, then planting his foot firmly on the floor, he drew himself up to his full height and calmly listened to his doom. Slowly Judge Fletcher assumed the fatal cap, and all unmoved, he pronounced, and Campbell listened to, his sentence. While the short address which sealed the prisoner's fate was being delivered, the silence of the court was only broken by smothered sobs; but when the sounds ceased, and, the ashy lips of the stern old man, a groan of horror burst from the auditory, and the Highland soldiers, who thronged the court, ejaculated a wild "Amen," while their flashing eyes betrayed how powerfully the fate of their unhappy countryman had affected them. He was removed from the bar--a doomed man- -but no harsh restrictions were mposed upon him, nor was he conducted to the gloomy apartment to which condemned criminals after sentence were then consigned. From the moment the unfortunate duelist had entered the prison gates, his mild and gentlemanly demeanor had won the commiseration of all within; and the governor, confident in the honor of his prisoner, subjected him to no restraint. He occupied the apartments of the keeper, went over the building as he pleased-received his friendsheld unrestricted communication with all that sought him--and, in fact, was a captive but in name. the dying man was laid, "a sorry sight!" in Macbeth's words, surrounded by his frantic wife and infant family, the homicide knelt at his bed-side, implored forgiveness, and wrung from him a qualified admission that "all was fair." No attempt was made to arrest him, and that night Campbell left the town and remained at Chelsea with his lady and family for several months, under an assumed name. When the summer assizes were approaching, he determined to surrender and stand his trial; and although his legal advisers warned him that the step was most perilous, he would not be dissuaded, and unhappily persevered. He was, on the 13th of August, 1808, arraigned for " wilful murder," pleaded "not guilty" in the usual form-the fact of" Lord have mercy on your soul!" issued from the homicide was admitted-and a number of officers, high in rank, attended, and gave the prisoner the highest character for humanity. I did not hear the evidence, and when I came into the court house the jury for some time had been considering their verdict. The trial had been tedious; twilight had fallen, and the hall of justice, dull at best, was rendered gloomier still from the partial glare of a few candles placed upon the bench, where Judge Fletcher was presiding. A breathless anxiety prevaded the assembly, and the ominous silence that reigned throughout the court was unbroken by a single whisper. I felt an unusual dread-a sinking of the heart-a difficulty of respiration, and as I looked around the melancholy crowd, my eye rested on the judge. Fletcher was a thin, bilious looking being, and his cold and marble features had caught an unearthly expression from the shading produced by the accidental disposition of the candles. I shuddered as I gazed upon him, for the fate of a fellow creature was hanging upon the first words that would issue from the lips of that stern and inflexible old man. From the judge my eys turned to the criminal, and what a subject the contrast offered to the artist's pencil! In the front of the bar, habited in deep mourning, his arms folded and crossed upon his breast, the homicide was awaiting the word that should seal his destiny. His noble and commanding figure thrown into an attitude of calm determination, was graceful and dignified; and while on every countenance besides a sickening anxiety was visible, neither the quivering of an eyelash, nor a motion of the lip, betrayed on the prisoner's face the appearance of discomposure or alarm. Just then a slight noise was heard a door was slowly and softly opened-one by one the jury returned to No man impersonated the grandeur of Byron's beautiful couplet so happily as Campbell: when the hour of trial came, "He died as sinful man should die, Without parade-without display," while, during the painful interval when the seat of mercy was appealed to, and when, as it was generally considered, mercy would have been extended, the most unmoved of all, as post after post brought not the welcome tidings, was Campbell. One anecdote is too characteristic to be omitted. The commiseration of all classes was painfully increased by the length of time that elapsed between the trial and death of Major Campbell. In prison, he received from his friends the most constant and delicate atten tion; and one lady, the wife of Captain ———, seldom left him. She read to him, prepared his meals, cheered his spirits when he drooped, and performed those gentle offices of kindness, so peculiarly the province of a woman. When intelligence arrived that mercy could not be extended, and the law must take its course, she boldly planned an escape from prison; but Campbell, when she mentioned it, recoiled from a position that must compromise his honor with the keeper. "What," he exclaimed, when assured that otherwise his case was hopeless, "shall I break my faith with him who trusted it? I know my fate, and am prepared to meet it manfully; but never will I deceive the person who confided in my honor." Two evenings before he suffered, Mrs.was earnestly urging him to escape. The clock struck twelve, and Campbell hinted that it was time she should retire. As usual, he accompanied her to the gate; and on entering the keeper's room, they found him fast asleep. Campbell placed his finger on his lip. "Poor fellow," he said in a whisper, to his fair companion, "would it not be a pity to disturb him?" then taking the keys softly from the table, he unlocked the outer wicket. "Campbell," said the lady, "this is the crisis of your fate; this is the moment for your deliverance! Horses are in readiness, and-" The convict put his hand upon her mouth, "Hush," he replied, as he gently forced her out. "Would you have me violate my word of honor ?" Bidding her "good night," he locked the wicket carefully, replaced the keys, and retired to his chamber without awakening the sleeping jailer! His last hour was passed in prayer, and at noon he was summoned to pass the grand ordeal which concludes the history of the hero and the herdsman. The drop, as it was called, was, in the Irish jails, attached to the upper story of the building, a large iron-studded door, which hung against the wall, and was only raised to a parallel position with the door from which the criminal made his last exit, when that concluding ceremony of the law was to be performed. Attended by the jail chaplain,-one who, in the last bitter trial, clave to the condemned soldier closer than a brother, he steadily mounted the stairs, and entered the execution room. The preliminaries of death were undergone composedly; he bade a long farewell to those around, and stepped firmly on the board. Twenty thousand lookers-on filled the green in front of the prison; and, strange accident! the Highland regiment with whom, shoulder to shoulder, he had charged "the Invincibles" in Egypt, formed a semicircle round the prison. In the north of Ireland, all is decorously conducted. When he appeared, a deep and solemn silence awed the multitude; and until he addressed the Highlanders in Gaelic, a whisper might have been heard in the crowd. To the simple request of "Pray for me!" a low deep groan responded, and every bonnet was removed. He dropped a cambric handkerchief,-down came the iron-bound door-it sounded over the heads of the silent concourse like a thunder-clap; and, in one minute, as brave a heart as ever beat upon a battle-field, had ceased to throb. Peace to the ashes of the brave! If a soldier's life, a Christian's end, can atone for the sad consequences of unreining an ungovernable temper, both can be honestly pleaded in extenuating poor Campbell's crime. From Hogg's Instructor. THE GREAT POEM-MYSTERIES-HAMLET. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. "HAMLET" is Shakspeare's grand poetical tion around all things, which, as it shines, puzzle, confessedly the most intellectual of now twists them into odd and mirthful attiall his dramas, and expresses most fully, al- tudes, now invests them with shadowy horror, though by no means most clearly, the results and now with pleasing gloom. Man and of his deep, subtle, and long-continued mus- woman have both ceased to delight him, but ings upon man, and all the strange phenomena have not ceased to be objects of eager inby which, in this little life of his, he is sur-terest, curiosity, and speculation. rounded. Coleridge once remarked, that Shakspeare never seems to have come to his full height, else he had not been a man, but a monster. Had he written, we may add, ten plays equal to "Hamlet," this monstrous growth had been complete: Its wisdom, so deep and varied-its calm mastery--its profusion of incidents and characters-the skill with which the most contradictory elements, from a ghost to a gravedigger, are harmonized-the philosophic self-possession, united to the burning passion and the imaginative interest-the combination of breadth and length, of height and depth-the mere size of the canvass chosen the mystic uncertainty of the whole. co-existing with singular clearness and finish in most of the parts-the rapidity of the transitions-the unflagging spirit of the dialogue, and the energy of the soliloquies-all go to constitute it a unique amid a world of uniques, the most wonderful of wonders, the most Shakspearian of Shakspaere's works. Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," seems growing into that somewhat greater than himself, for which at present we want a name, and was arrested, we might also think, while becoming the tertium quid between man and a superior order of intelligences. It is the point of view maintained in "Hamlet" which gives it its peculiar power as a meditative play. Hamlet is a man loosened in a great measure from earth, although not utterly exasperated against it. He sees it not at the point of the misanthrope, nor altogether at that of the maniac, but at that of one who is half-way toward both these characters. His sadness casts a moonlight of contempla Driven by circumstances and temperament toward an insulated position, he pauses in his full retreat from mankind to record his impressions of them. Madame Roland, on her way to the scaffold, wished she had been able to record the strange thoughts which were rising in her mind. So Hamlet-a wounded deer seeking the forest of death, separated from men for ever-has, in immortal soliloquies, in pungent lines, in wild and whirling words, or in wilder laughter, uttered the strange ideas which he felt flocked around. his mind. Profound as wisdom itself are many of those thoughts, and expressed in sentences of the most compact signficance. But this characteristic extends to the whole play. A general infection of wisdom has seized upon all the characters. Old Polonius talks at times like another Dr. Johnson. Ophelia is far too wise for one so young. The king himself hiccups aphorisms; and the ghost, while he says, "Brief must I be, I smell the hour of dawn," makes up for the brevity by the pith of his speeches. Indeed, had "Hamlet" appeared in this century, we should have said, that it was constructed on the principle of bringing in all the fine thoughts which had been accumulating for years on the pages of its author's note-book. But such a practice was, in Shakspeare's day, unknown, and, in a writer of his rich and spontaneous power, is unlikely, if not impossible. "Hamlet," while above all Shakspeare's plays, belongs at the same time to one singu lar and lofty class of them-that, namely, in which strong disease and distemperature of mind minister the principal part of the in man, he should not pass through man's hour of darkness. There is no play in all Shakspeare's works, if we perhaps except "Timon" and "Lear," where the interest and power are so inextricably interwoven with the main character as in "Hamlet." He is the play. Compared to him, the other characters seem shadows as unsubstantial as his father's ghost. That ghost himself dwindles beside his son. Hamlet does not merely subordinate all the others to himself, but, like Aaron's rod, seems to swallow them up. Like shadows swaying to the motions of their substances, do they obey his changeful whims, yield to his tempestuous rage, and echo his wild wisdom. Never was the overbearing influence of one driven on the wind of destiny, over idle and commonplace personages, more powerfully dis terest. Such are his "Winter's Tale," his "Othello," his "Timon of Athens,' "his "King Lear," and his "Macbeth." These are dreams of his darker moods, for the smile of the "gentle Willy" disguised often wild tumults of thought and feeling, and resembled that red morning sunshine which introduces long days of tempest. There was a vein in Shakspeare's heart running in a deep and secret channel seldom disclosed, but which found now and then a fearful vent in his impersonations of the jealous lover, the maniac, the misanthrope, the murderous king, or the wild, changeful, witty, exasperated, and more than half-maddened prince. In these he is thoroughly in earnest; the large iron which has pierced a large soul is boldly displayed; and, under the mask he has assumed, you see the biggest of human hearts agitated to agony, and the most sweet-blood-played. Truly, the slightest whisper of real ed of men doing well to be angry even unto death. It is terribly sublime to stand by the shore of an angry Shakspeare, and to see him, like the troubled sea, casting out a furious, yet rainbow-tinted spray, against the hollowness and the abuses of human society, and making sport, for a season, of man himself! Thus Timon seems to fling his platters of hot water past his flatterers upon humanity at large; thus Lear shrieks up questions to the heavens, which make the gloomy curtains of night to shiver; thus Macbeth, when not hewing at his enemies, is cutting, with a like desperate hand, at the problems of human life and destiny; and thus Hamlet, while dancing on his wild erratic way to his uncle's death, tramples on many an ancient saw, and makes many a popular error to tremble below his uncontrollable feet. This did not, as some might imagine, arise from the necessity of fully impersonating certain eccentric characters; for, first, why did he create or select such characters at all? and, secondly, could he have presented them with such effect without profound sympathy for them? Shakspeare was not a mere mimic or mocking-bird: he spoke out of the abundance of a universal heart, he reproduced himself in most of his characters, and his choice and con amore treatment of so many dark and morbid subjects, seem conclusively to show that there was a fever somewhere in his own system, although it has often been identified, and that, on the whole, justly, with all that is genial and gentler. It was, indeed, a priori impossible that a being who formed the microcosm and mirror of humanity should not reflect its shadows as well as its lights; and that as the representative of despair is thunder, its merest touch is iron, its breath an irresistible tempest! It will bespeak a visitor from the other world, “although all hell should yawn;" it will make a ghost" of any one who dares to stand in its fierce way. Many critics, while seeking to unravel the mystery of Hamlet's character, have omitted to notice what is the main moral and purpose of the play-that is, unquestionably, to show the ramified wretchedness springing from crime. This it is which is the root of all the mischief and calamity in the play. This disturbs the grave, embroils the state, infuriates and half-deranges the great soul of Hamlet, and is avenged by the successive deaths of Polonius, Ophelia, Hamlet, the king, the queen and Laertes. This object of the poet is thoroughly gained. Nemesis is left sitting upon heaps of carcasses, and surveying with an iron smile the manifold and mingling streams of blood, which are all traceable to the one murder in the garden. And the moral is-crime never speaks without being answered by echo upon echo from the rocks of eternal justice; and, in the ruin which follows, the innocent are often as deeply involved as the guilty. Shakspeare, no doubt, puts into the mouths of his characters words which might seem to accuse Providence. Hamlet, in one of his last speeches, calls it a "harsh world." And Horatio's language, when, in summing up the whole eventful history, he speaks of "Cruel, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, is hardly that of profound faith. But both "All these things shall be dissolved." And Macbeth's words are more in keeping with the moment in his history, when, in the pros are speaking from partial and one-sided points of view; whereas the spirit of the whole play, and many of the words, go to teach us that in everything there is a pur-pect of death, and in the madness of despose, that Providence "commends the poisoned chalice" to the lips of those who have mingled it, and that the inequalities and gaps which do exist in the administration of human affairs are but the open mouths of a general cry for a scene of more perfect retribution in another world. But two deductions from the catastrophe of Hamlet seem possible: the one, that this world is a mere atheistic hubbub, the scene of innumerable wrongs-wrongs, too, mixing and intertwining for evermore, and which are never to be redressed; or that there must be a future state. We advise any one who is doubtful as to which of these conclusions Shakspeare wished us to draw, first to ponder the impression left on his own mind as he rises from the perusal of the play, for that, let him depend on it, is the impression the poet meant to leave; and then to read carefully Hamlet's several soliloquies, and the soliloquy of the miserable king. In these, and throughout the play, the power of conscience, the supremacy of the "canons of the Eternal," the existence of a future world, and the influence of prayer with God, are recognized in language so decided, and in a manner so sincere, that we are led, and many may be driven, to the conviction that this most profound of dramas-this broadest of all panoramic views of human nature, and life, and destiny--a view caught on the shuddering brink, and from the fearful angle of all but madness-is not a libel upon the Divine Author like the "Cenci," nor a pæan sheathed in blasphemy like the "Faust," but that, in spirit, and tone, and language, it doth "Assert Eternal Providence, And vindicate the ways of God to man." And if "Hamlet" explains not, and if it even deepens in some measure the mystery of human guilt, it at the same time proclaims trumpet-tongued the clear certainty of present punishment, and the strong probability of future retribution. What Shakspeare's theological creed was, we do not profess to know. An author recently maintains that he was an ideal pantheist, and quotes in proof of it his words in "Macbeth". "We are such stuff as dreams are made of," and the famous finale of "Prospero." But Prospero's speech is merely a paraphrase of the Scripture statement: perate guilt, all things were becoming unreal and swimming around his vision, than they are expressive of his creator's calm and settled opinion. The murderer is hunted back into the refuge of atheism, and, sleepless himself, would seek to identify sleep and death. "Our little life is rounded with a sleep." As if he said, with a ghastly smile, "Sleep has forsaken me, and thus rendered my life a hideous fragment, a yawning chasm; but death cannot so fly it must close and complete my career." But he who speaks of "sleep" with Macbeth, speaks also of "dreams" with Hamlet. Whatever Shakspeare's notion of religious matters, however, might be, it is interesting to know that his theory of morals, as it may be gathered from his greater and more serious plays, is essentially sound. This may not appear to some a matter of much consequence; but, as it is pleasing now and then to turn from commonplace clocks, and to learn the hour from a sun-dial, so we like sometimes to look away from systems of moral philosophy to the living and sunlit tables of this great master of human nature. To others, again, his deliverances on such subjects may possibly seem oracular, as from a new Dodona seated among the oaks of the Avon. The intellectual and poetical qualities of Shakspeare find in "Hamlet" ample scope for display. It is the longest of his dramas, and, at the same time, the richest. The sun of semi-madness, vertical above, has produced a wild and tropical luxuriance of imagery. Every sentence is starred. No play of his contains at once so much sense and so much nonsense, so much bombastic verse and so much dense and pointed prose, so much extravagant license of fancy and so much profound insight. And so broad is the canvass, that there is ample room in it for all those extremes: they never interfere or jostle; the profoundest practical philosophy and the wildest raving here meet together; "vice and a radiant angel" embrace each other; and Billingsgate like that of a drab, and eloquence and apprehension like that of a god, are united, if not reconciled. It is this exceeding comprehension of view which has rendered "Hamlet," along with "Faust," the true "Psalm of life," exhibiting it, not partially, or by selection, or in colors, but calotyping it calmly and sternly as a mystic, fantastical, but real whole. |