And all this day an unaccustomed spirit

Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts," &c.-(V. 1.).

And at that moment Balthazar enters with the news that Juliet is dead.

Our first impulse might be to place this episode in the third group as a case of mirth before ill-chance; but on closer study we are more inclined to see in it sympathetic thought-reading between the lovers, and to exclaim: Oh, if only Romeo had trusted this faithful instinct ! If he had only kept up his courage and his hope.

For Juliet was not dead. At the time when he was happy in dreamland she had proved herself capable of the loftiest devotion, and was now lying, in a trance,

C 2

indeed, and in the abode of death, but alive and well; the plans were all complete, and that very day the husband and wife might have been together in Mantua, the town of his adoption, waiting until the Friar, having brought about a reconciliation between the respective parents, recalled them to Verona.

But only the brief vision vouchsafed to Romeo in the night and the Friar's rehearsal of his defeated plans over the dead bodies of the lovers, remain to tell us what might have been. Apart from historical or legendary fact, it was more dramatically true that it should be so. The tragic elements surrounding the unhappy pair were too strong, their Southern blood was too impulsive for the stream of life to flow smoothly, and the

PRESENTIMENTS.

tale moves on, though through apparent accident, to its inevitable conclusion.

If we turn, as in the first three classes, to the author himself to find some words by which to define this last group of presentiments, we think irresistibly of Hamlet's well-known utterance, the truth of which is becoming more apparent every day :

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." (I., 5.).

37

GHOSTS.

I.

Shakespeare introduces us in all to fourteen visitants from another world, eleven of whom appear in one play. Of the other three each has a whole drama for its environment. It is impossible to be certain from a perusal of the plays whether the author himself believed in the apparitions he created, but, when we consider the state of philosophy and of religion in those days, it is highly probable that he did.

Bacon, the greatest philosopher of the age, looked upon spirits, both good and bad, as a legitimate subject of study. "So of degenerate and revolted spirits, he writes in "Advancement of Learning,"

book ii., "the conversing with them or the employment of them is prohibited, much more any veneration towards them. But the contemplation or science of their nature, their power, their illusions, either by Scripture or reason is part of spiritual wisdom. For so the apostle saith, 'We are not ignorant of his stratagems.'

And it is no more unlawful to inquire the nature of evil spirits than to inquire the force of poison in nature, or the nature of sin and vice in morality." It would have been interesting if Bacon had given us the result of his study of evil spirits, but he only notes that much has already been written on the subject, for the most part "too fabulous and fantastical." In the same book, however, when treating of the imagination, he asserts that the