54 brick wall," as we used to say at school, to admitting the most facile conjectural emendation. On the other hand, we can always depend upon his accuracy, and we are bound to acknowledge and requite the studied courtesy with which he treats his brother critics. Si sic omnes! The text which he is about conversion. to publish, according to his new lights, will present a singular contrast to his former text. Mr. Collier will, however, not be alone in his His discovery has revealed to us a depth of corruption in the printed text which no one had imagined, and will, doubtless, embolden men to produce conjectures which they had before confined to the modest privacy of their own margins. Shakespeare, we may now be sure, never wrote bad metre or nonsense; ergo, every passage in Our rash faults Make trivial price of all the things we have, The chief difficulties lie in own love and shame- : Our owl-love waking cries to see what's done, says Cram 's with praise and make 's tongueless, &c. which either occurs, is corrupt, and a fair As fat as tame things: one good deed dying subject for conjecture. On this ground, we have ventured already to suggest two or The line wont scan. Read, "One Good dythree emendations of our own, and now pro-ing tongueless." Similarly, our MS. corrector ceed to bespeak the favorable consideration reads "good" for "goal," four lines further of our readers for a few more, on passages which Mr. Collier's folio leaves untouched. All's Well that Ends Well, Act ii. Scene 1. The King says to the kneeling Lafeu, "I'll see thee to stand up," which surely cannot be right. It ought to be, "I lease thee to stand up," or, possibly, "I'll free thee to stand up.' In the same scene, the King is made to say to Helena Now fair one does your business follow us? Surely it ought to be "fellow." The verb is used by Leontes in Winter's Tale, Act i. Scene 2. Still in the same scene, might we not read coacher for torcher in this passage? Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring on. In the same scene, Camillo, when asked to poison Polixenes, replies: I could do this and that with no rash potion, Read, nostro periculo, suspiciously. Comedy of Errors, Act ii. Scene 1. The following passage in Adriana's speech is crossed out as unintelligible by the corrector:I see the jewel best enamelled Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still Mr. Collier reads tho' for the, in the second In the last line of the scene, the King pro- line; an for and in the third; and wear for mises Helena : where in the fourth; but even so the passage I see the jewel best enamelled Will lose his beauty; yea tho' gold bides still In Henry IV., Part 1, Act ii. Scene 4, the best: Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter? | to be, "O me, all one?" i. e., "Do you all choose one leader?" or "Are you all as one Pitiful-hearted Titaness that melted at the sweet tale of the sun. The butter is the Titaness, that melts at the Titan's kiss. In Troilus and Cressida, Act v. Scene 3, the last two lines and a half of the following passage are crossed out in the corrected folio : man ?" In the same Act, Scene 9, Coriolanus says: You shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical; As if I loved my little should be dieted It is a question with us, whether we ought Andromache. O! be persuaded; do not count it not rather to read, holy To hurt by being just; it is as lawful, For we would count give much to as violent thefts, And rob in the behalf of charity. For us to give much count to violent thefts. Which does not mend the sense. "Count seems to have come from the first line. (The beer stain in the MS. must have been unusually dark here.) We venture to guess: It is as lawful, For much to give, to compass violent thefts, The meaning being "to commit highway. robbery for the sake of having much to give away. The next line, repeating the sense in a gnomic form, is quite after our poet's man The present wars devour him; he is grown The first clause is an imprecation, and should be so punctuated; the second is, we think, nonsense. We would read The present wars devour him! He is grown Too proud to be subservient. Some such word is wanted. We had also thought of obedient, or more aidant, i. e., "of use any more." "More" being written "mo:" might give rise to the misprint in part. Subordinate" is not impossible. 66 In the same act, towards the end of the sixth scene, Coriolanus is made to say, without any meaning, "O me, alone!" It ought As if it 'hoved my little should be dieted In Act ii. Scene 1, Volumnia loquitur, in halting measure, I have lived To see inherited my very wishes, And the buildings of my fancy; Only there's one thing wanting which I doubt not We propose to read the third line thus: and to omit "but" in the fifth line. I have been Consul and can show from Rome Theobald substituted "for Rome," and Mr. Dyce (Remarks, p. 162,) vehemently approves. The misprint is more easy, if we suppose the original words to have been "fore Rome." In these conjectures, so far as we know, no commentator has anticipated us. Before laying down our pen we want to make one suggestion for the glorification of our great poet. Why should not Mr. Collier, Mr. Knight, and Mr. Dyce lay aside their mutual differences, and unite in producing a grand quarto edition of Shakespeare, in the decoration of which all the resources of the typographer, the illuminator, and the engraver should be taxed to the uttermost-the concluding volume to appear on the twentythird of April, eighteen hundred and sixtyfour-the tercentenary of the birth of William Shakespeare? From the Dublin University Magazine. THE CROWN MATRIMONIAL OF FRANCE. his love-match in peace? With the populace it may be acceptable, so long as it gives them pageants to "assist" at, to gaze upon, and to talk about; but the alliance of an emperor of France with a Spanish countess, the subject of another sovereign, is not glo FOR upwards of sixty years has France exhibited to the world the spectacle of a phantasmagoria-wild, fitful, and incoherent as a nightmare-dream. The horrible and the pathetic mingled with the grotesque; things incongruous and unexpected, succeeding each other with transformations as rapid as leger-rious enough for the other classes, who are demain; massacres and festivals; miseries and orgies; reckless license and stringent despotism; strange visions of murdered sovereigns, and ephemeral consuls and dictators. Dynasties changing like the slides in a magiclantern; an emperor rising from the chaos of revolution, as from a surging sea; sinking, re-appearing, then again sinking. A longguarded captive seated himself on the throne of his captor; a Republic with the anomaly of Equality for its motto, and a PrincePresident at its head; and Absolutism established in honor of Liberty and Fraternity. Party colors glance on the sight like the tints of a quick-shaken kaleidoscope; the white of the Bourbon lilies, and the blue of the Napoleon violets; imperial purple, tricolored cockades, and Red Republicanism. Another shake of the kaleidoscope, and again the purple predominates. But the present resume of the empire has not the prestige of its original, whose birth was heralded by glittering trophies, and the exciting strains of martial music. No! Here is an empire created by sleight of hand amid no prouder minstrelsy than that of the violins of fêtes. With a new slide of the magic-lantern we behold an imperial wedding, surpassing in brilliant externals even the nuptials of the Napoleon and Maria Louisa. But the bridegroom is not Napoleon the Great, nor is the bride a daughter of the Caesars. We must give the bridegroom due credit for proving that he still possesses some freshness of feeling, not yet wholly seared by coups d'etat and diplomacy, and that he amiably prefers (for the time, at least) domestic affection to self-interest and expediency. But how long will he be permitted by the most changeable, the most uncertain people on earth, to enjoy really aristocratic in their hearts, notwithstanding occasionally short freaks of democracy. Republican governments have never governed the French; they are only impressed by the opposites of democracy, by the prestige of ranks, titles, and distinction. Louis XIV., a far more mighty sovereign than Napoleon the III., and who, on his firmly established throne, was servilely worshipped as the "Grand Monarque," never dared to avow his clandestine marriage with Madame de Maintenon. Napoleon I. showed how well he understood the genius of the French people, when he replaced his really beloved Josephine by the daughter of an emperor, and required his brother Jerome to put away his first wife, Miss Patterson, for a German princess. Louis Napoleon himself seems to have had his misgivings as to the effect the step he contemplated would have on the mind of the nation; and the fall of the French funds, from the time the marriage came on the tapis, was full of significance. Instead of following the usual example of monarchs, and simply announcing his intended marriage, he proceeded to make his notification a piece justificative, full of explanations and apologies, in which his anxiety betrayed him into inconsistencies and errors of judgment. At variance with his hereditary pretensions as Napoleon III., he rejoiced in the character of parvenue, and then boasted the "high birth" of his consort. He endeavored to frame his speech, as though he had taken for his text Ovid's maxim "Non bene conveniunt nec in una sede morantur Majestas et Amor." -Metam. lib. ii. 846. Yet he has labored to overload love with the most far-fetched and dazzling majesty. | mother, a Kirkpatrick). May the "canny He complacently instanced his grandmother, drop" be allowed free circulation through Josephine, as beloved by France, though not her heart! Yes, we wish her happiness of royal blood; seemingly oblivious that willingly, but very doubtfully; not because Napoleon I. had not stooped from the throne she has wedded a Bonaparte, for the men to raise her (she had been his wife ere men of that name have not the reputation of undreamed of him as a monarch)—and that his kind husbands (even to the wives they repupolicy soon compelled her to descend from diated), and she might be very happy with the throne, and give place to a prouder bride. Louis Napoleon in another sphere; not Louis Napoleon has promised that the Em- merely because her position is trying, and press Eugenia will revive the virtues of the apparently insecure, but because she places Empress Josephine: far wiser had he not on her head the crown matrimonial of France touched on the topic, to remind his bride that -a circlet with which some dark fatality the reward-the earthly reward—of those seems connected: for, among the many fair virtues was divorce and a broken heart; and brows on which it has rested, there are very to remind his people how easily the non- few that it has left without a blight or a royal wife could be moved aside, when wound. ever the interest of the crown or the nation should require it. He who has declared that "the empire is peace," has dropped ominous words of the hour of danger," in which the good qualities of his Eugenia will shine forth; in contrast, he evidently meant, with the incapacity and selfishness of Maria Louisa, when France was invaded by the allies; but how utterly distasteful to the French public must that ill-judged reminder be! He spoke, in his ante-nuptial speech, of the unhappy fates of the illustrious ladies who had worn the crown of France-a suggestive theme, in which we are about to follow his lead; but from his lips the subject seemed peculiarly ill-chosen and ill-timed. Verily, his Imperial Majesty has been singularly infelicitous in his selection of topics. In every country of Europe there are still men whose hearts can respond to the sentiment "Dulce et decorum est PRO PATRIA mori."-Hor. Such men would have esteemed it more judicious to have avoided any mention of the deceased father of Eugenia de Montijo, than to have announced him as one who, in the struggle of Spain for independence, fought against his own countrymen, and with the invaders of his native land. The unnecessary allusion to the bereaved Duchess of Orleans is in such bad taste, that to comment on it would be a continuation of the fault. But we must excuse the inconsistencies of a man too much in love to see the import of all he said and we must not, in common courtesy, omit for his bride the customary compliment to all brides, the expression of our good wishes. We wish her happiness, and the more willingly for the sake of the good blood in her veins-the blood of worthy, sagacious, and patriotic Scotland (derived not from her father, but from her When our memory passes in review the royal and imperial wives of France, we are surprised to see how many have been divorced, how many broken-hearted, how many have left a disgraceful name behind to posterity. And among the smaller number, the innocent and the happy, how many have been snatched away by a premature death, or have been early and sadly widowed. The crown matrimonial of France has been borne, by the majority of its wearers, unworthily, unhappily, or too briefly. For some it has been imbued, as it were, with a disfiguring stain; for others, lined with sharp, cruel thorns; for others, wreathed with the funereal cypress. If history, holding her mirror to our view, "Bids us in the past descry The visions of futurity," with such a history of French queens and empresses before our eyes, it is but natural that good wishes for the bliss of Empress Eugenia should be damped by doubts and fears. By casting with us a quick and comprehensive glance over the memoirs of the royal ladies to whom we have alluded, the reader will be convinced of the great preponderance of cares, crimes, and sorrows, over peace, innocence, and felicity, in their lives. We will commence our summary with the reign of Charlemagne, as a remarkable era, and sufficiently early for our purpose. Charlemagne, ▲. D. 768 (date of his accession). His first wife was HERMENGARDE (daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards), whom he had been persuaded by his mother, Bertha, to wed, contrary to his inclinations, and * Quoted from the Prologue to Bland's Translations from the Greek Anthology. whom he divorced in two years after his accession, on the plea of her ill health. She had the grief to see her father dethroned by Charlemagne, whose prisoner he died. The desolate Lombard princess died in obscurity. The second wife, HILDEGARDE, a noble Swabian, was fair, wise, and good, but was caluminated by Taland, a half-brother of Charlemagne, who (in revenge for her disdain of his own proffered addresses) accused her of criminality with a foreign knight during the king's expedition against a German tribe. Obliged to conceal herself from her incensed husband, she lived in great poverty, till her accuser, struck with remorse after a dangerous illness, declared her innocence. In memory of her restoration to her home and her good fame, she founded, in Swabia, the Abbey of Kempsten; in the annals of which religious house is written the history of her patience and her suffering (during her concealment), and her noble forgiveness of her persecutor. But her recovered happiness was brief; she was snatched by death from her numerous children at the early age of twentysix, in 784. FASTRADE, the third consort, daughter of Raoul, Count of Franconia, so disgusted the people by her arrogance, that a conspiracy was formed to dethrone her husband on account of her influence over him. This plot, though abortive, caused Fastrade much mortification and anxiety; and she died very young, in 794, as much hated as her predecessor had been lamented. * conquered, Hermengarde sentenced him and his adherents to death; and though the sentence was commuted by Louis, she caused the eyes of Bernard to be pulled out, and such tortures to be inflicted on him, that he expired in consequence. She herself died soon after her victim; having, however, been more fortunate in her lot than her predecessors, for she had enjoyed a peaceable wedded life for twenty-one years. Her successor JUDITH, daughter of Welf of Bavaria, was an artful and licentious woman, whose bad conduct caused her stepsons (children of Hermengarde) to revolt, filling the kingdom with trouble. They published her profligacy with Bernard (the son of her husband's tutor), whom she, by her influence over Louis, caused to be created Duke of Septimanie. She was taken by her step-sons, and imprisoned in a convent at Poictiers, and compelled to pronounce the vows; but was liberated by her husband when he had put down the revolt, she having solemnly sworn to her innocence. Again the young princes revolted; and Judith, again captive, was sent to Tortona, in Italy, and her young son Charles separated from her, and shut up in a monastery; the unfortunate Louis himself being confined at St. Medard; from whence he was released only on submitting to some very abject conditions. He received back his wife and her son, but soon after died of grief. Judith survived him but three years; having, however, lived to see the murder of her favorite Bernard, by the hands of her son Charles, who stabbed him for revolt. She has left an odious name in the records of history. Charles I. (the Bald). 840. LUTGARDE, a German, the last consort of Charlemagne, handsome, generous, and literary, loved her husband; and to enjoy his society, usually accompanied him to the chase. But he was faithless to her, choosing for his favorite one of the ladies of her train. He married first HERMENTRUDE, daughter Whatever mortification Lutgarde might have of Odo Count of Orleans. She was prudent felt was soon terminated by death. She and good, but her life was one of sorrow. died young and childless (in A. D. 800), after Her eldest son, Louis, had an impediment in an union of little more than four years. his speech; her second son, Charles, died young; her third son, Carloman, rebelling against his father, because the latter required him to become a monk against his will, was taken prisoner, had his eyes put out, and was imprisoned in the Abbey of Corbie. Her only daughter Judith, widow of Ethelbald, King of England, eloped from court with Baldwin of Flanders, causing great (Louis I. (le Debonnaire). 814. His first wife was HERMENGARDE, daughter of Ingram, Count of Hesbay.t She has left an unenviable reputation as cruel and despotic. When Bernard, a petty Italian king, who revolted against Louis, had been She enjoyed the friendship of the learned Alcuin (disciple of the venerable Bede), at whose persuasion Charlemagne founded the University of Paris. In the country of Liege. scandal and trouble. Hermentrude had not the consolation of her husband's affection; for Louis formed an attachment for Richilde, sister of Boson, King of Provence, and illtreated Hermentrude, whom he sought to |