as if he had died a great while ago, 190 such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me; and though I did not cry or 195 take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him. I missed 200 his kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, and was 205 as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, must have been when the doctor took off his limb. Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little mourning which they 210 had on was not for Uncle John, and

they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother. Then I told 215 how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W--n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained

to them what coyness, and difficulty, 220 and denial meant in maidens when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I became in 225 doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and 230 still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: 'We are 235 not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. dreams. We are only what might 240 have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name' and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated 245 in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.

wrote an immense number, ranging over an extraordinary variety of subjects. They may be classed under three heads, as historical, speculative, and imaginative essays. The first group includes also his biographical writings, of which the bestknown are his somewhat indiscreet Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, contributed to "Tait's Magazine' for 1834, his Autobiographic Sketches, and many chapters in the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which first appeared in the 'London Magazine' of 1821. To the third class belong, among others, the 'dream phantasies' in the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and its sequel the Suspiria de Profundis (1845), the wild rhapsodies of The English Mail-Coach (1849), and

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In the spring time of the year, and whilst her own spring was budding, 85 he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he awakens 90 to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-45 within the bedchamber of the Czar, 95 bringing before his eyes a daughter, not less pious, that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of the keys it is that 100 Our Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, 106 because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honour with the title of Madonna.

The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs. 110 She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read 115 their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, 120 droops for ever, for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in 25 the highest against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to ab130 jectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur

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she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places 135 that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the 140 oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled penitent revert- 145 ing his eyes for ever upon a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards 150 pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother,as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; 160 every woman sitting in darkness without love to shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections, 165 which God implanted in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun defrauded of 170 her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; all that are betrayed, and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace: 175 all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key, but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless vagrant of every 180

clime. Yet in the very highest walks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, 185 carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads.

But the third sister, who is also the youngest! Hush! whisper whilst 190 we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers.

Her head, turreted like that

of Cybele, rises almost beyond the 195 reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes, rising so high, might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which 200 she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing

WILLIAM

WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830), the

son of a Unitarian minister at Maidstone, Kent, was brought up for the ministry, but, following the example of his elder brother, took up painting, in which art he succeeded well enough to leave us a good portrait of Charles Lamb. Dissatisfied, however, with his artistic attainments, he exchanged this profession for that of a man of letters, living by all sorts of journalistic work and by lectures on literature and philosophy. He resided mainly in London, or on his first wife's property at Winterslow, near Salisbury. Unfortunately his oversensitive and wayward character not only isolated him from his friends, but estranged him also from

tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. 205 She is also the mother of lunacies and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power, but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom 210 a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions, in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. 216 Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, 220 bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater 225 Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness.

HAZLITT.

his two wives. On the other hand, Hazlitt was gifted with a singular sensibility to æsthetic impressions and, therefore, became one of England's finest critics on literature and painting. His best literary criticism is to be found in the Characters of Shakspere's Plays (1817) and in his lectures on The English Poets (1818), on The English Comic Writers (1819), and on The Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1820). His numerous essays, contributed to various periodicals, were collected under such titles as The Round Table (1817), Table Talk (1821), Winterslow (posth. 1850), and others. His best performance is perhaps the series of contemporary portraits called The Spirit of the Age (1825).

This is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that

famous soliloquy on life, who gave 5 the advice to the players, who thought 'this goodly frame, the earth,' a sterile promontory, and this brave o'er

hanging firmament, the air, this ma10 jestical roof fretted with golden fire,' 'a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;' whom 'man delighted not, nor woman neither;' he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised 15 on Yorick's skull; the school-fellow of Rosencrans and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he that was mad and sent to England; the slow 20 avenger of his father's death; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we do our own, 25 because we have read them in Shakspere.

Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are 30 they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of 35 history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought him40 self 'too much i' th' sun;' whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull 45 blank with nothing left remarkable

in it; whoever has known 'the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes;' he who 50 has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; 55 who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action

We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our owr. faces. 70 But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakspere's plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, 75 and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he 80 applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He 85 is not a common-place pedant. If 'Lear' is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, 'Hamlet' is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied develop- 90 ment of character. Shakspere had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: 95 everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think and speak 100 and act just as they might do if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene the gusts of 105 passion come and go like sounds of