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as matters of course; the characters think, and speak, 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 passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not only the outward pageants and the signs of grief,' but we have that within which passes show.' We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but Shakspeare, together with his own comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great advantage. The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility-the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect-as in the scene where he kills Polonius; and, again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical; dallies with his purposes till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the king when he is at his prayers; and, by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more fatal opportunity.

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The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless.* The ethical delineations of that noble and liberal casuist'-as Shakspeare has been well called-do not exhibit the drab-coloured Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the license of the time,' or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation, to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of

To me it is clear that Shakspeare meant to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. In this view the whole piece seems to me to be composed. An oak-tree is planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered! A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away.-GOETHE'S Wilhelm Meister.

affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When his father's spirit was in arms,' it was not a time for the son to make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself. to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much otherwise than he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral :

I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

This distinguished American ornithologist (17801851) was a native of Louisiana, son of an admiral in the French navy. He travelled for years collecting materials for his great work, The Birds of America (1828, &c.), which was completed in 87 parts, with 448 plates of birds, finely coloured, and costing altogether £182, 145. A second edition, in seven volumes, was published in 1844. | Cuvier said: 'Audubon's works are the most splendid monuments which art has erected in honour of ornithology.'

The Humming-bird.

Where is the person who, on observing this glittering fragment of the rainbow, would not pause, admire, and instantly turn his mind with reverence toward the Almighty Creator, the wonders of whose hand we at every step discover, and of whose sublime conceptions we everywhere observe the manifestations in his admirable system of creation? There breathes not such a person, so kindly have we all been blessed with that intuitive and noble feeling-admiration!

No sooner has the returning sun again introduced the vernal season, and caused millions of plants to expand their leaves and blossoms to his genial beams, than the little humming-bird is seen advancing on fairy wings, carefully visiting every opening flower-cup, and, like a curious florist, removing from each the injurious insects that otherwise would erelong cause their beauteous petals to droop and decay. Poised in the air, it is observed peeping cautiously, and with sparkling eye, into their innermost recesses; whilst the ethereal motions of its pinions, so rapid and so light, appear to fan and cool the flower, without injuring its fragile texture, and produce a delightful murmuring sound, well adapted for lulling the insects to repose.

The prairies, the fields, the orchards and gardens, nay, the deepest shades of the forests, are all visited in their turn, and everywhere the little bird meets with pleasure and with food. Its gorgeous throat in beauty and brilliancy baffles all competition. Now it glows with a fiery hue, and again it is changed to the deepest velvety black. The upper parts of its delicate body are of resplendent changing green; and it throws itself through the air with a swiftness and vivacity hardly conceivable. It moves from one flower to another like a gleam of light-upwards, downwards, to the right, and to the left. In this manner, it searches the extreme northern portions of our country, following, with great precaution, the advances of the season, and retreats with equal care at the approach of autumn.

* Audubon had recollected a passage in Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming: Winglet of the fairy humming-bird,

Like atoms of the rainbow fluttering round.

377

Descent of the Ohio.

It was in the month of October. The autumnal tints already decorated the shores of that queen of rivers, the Ohio. Every tree was hung with long and flowing festoons of different species of vines, many loaded with clustered fruits of varied brilliancy, their rich bronzed carmine mingling beautifully with the yellow foliage, which now predominated over the yet green leaves, reflecting more lively tints from the clear stream than ever landscape-painter portrayed or poet imagined.

The days were yet warm. The sun had assumed the rich and glowing hue which at that season produces the singular phenomenon called there the Indian summer. The moon had rather passed the meridian of her grandeur. We glided down the river, meeting no other ripple of the water than that formed by the propulsion of our boat. Leisurely we moved along, gazing all day on the grandeur and beauty of the wild scenery around us. Now and then a large cat-fish rose to the surface of the water in pursuit of a shoal of fry, which, starting simultaneously from the liquid element, like so many silvery arrows, produced a shower of light, while the pursuer with open jaws seized the stragglers, and with a splash of his tail disappeared from our view. Other fishes we heard uttering beneath our bark a rumbling noise, the strange sounds of which we discovered to proceed from the white perch, for, on casting our net from the bow, we caught several of that species, when the noise ceased for a time.

Nature, in her varied arrangements, seems to have felt a partiality toward this portion of our country. As

the traveller ascends or descends the Ohio, he cannot help remarking that alternately, nearly the whole length of the river, the margin on one side is bounded by lofty hills and a rolling surface; while on the other, extensive plains of the richest alluvial land are seen as far as the eye can command the view. Islands of varied size and form rise here and there from the bosom of the water, and the winding course of the stream frequently brings you to places where the idea of being on a river of great length changes to that of floating on a lake of moderate extent. Some of these islands are of considerable size and value; while others, small and insignificant, seem as if intended for contrast, and as serving to enhance the general interest of the scenery. These little islands are frequently overflowed during great freshets or floods, and receive at their heads prodigious heaps of drifted timber. We foresaw with great concern the alteration that cultivation would soon produce along those delightful banks.

As night came, sinking in darkness the broader portions of the river, our minds became affected by strong emotions, and wandered far beyond the present moments. The tinkling of bells told us that the cattle which bore them were gently roving from valley to valley in search of food, or returning to their distant homes. The hooting of the great owl, and the muffled noise of its wings as it sailed smoothly over the stream, were matters of interest to us; so was the sound of the boatman's horn, as it came winding more and more softly from afar. When daylight returned, many songsters burst forth with echoing notes, more and more mellow to the listening ear. Here and there the lonely cabin of a squatter struck the eye, giving note of commencing civilisation. The crossing of the stream by a deer foretold how soon the hills would be covered with

snow.

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When I think of the times, and call back to my mind the grandeur and beauty of those almost uninhabited shores; when I picture to myself the dense and lofty summits of the forest, that everywhere spread along the hills, and overhung the margins of the stream, unmolested by the axe of the settler; when I know how dearly purchased the safe navigation of that river has been by the blood of many worthy Virginians; when I see that no longer any aborigines are to be found there, and that the vast herds of elks, deer, and buffaloes which once pastured on these hills and in these valleys, making for themselves great roads to the several saltsprings, have ceased to exist; when I reflect that all this grand portion of our Union, instead of being in a state of nature, is now more or less covered with villages, farms, and towns, where the din of hammers and machinery is constantly heard; that the woods are fast disappearing under the axe by day, and the fire by night; that hundreds of steam-boats are gliding to and fro over the whole length of the majestic river, forcing commerce to take root and to prosper at every spot; when I see the surplus population of Europe coming to assist in the destruction of the forest, and transplanting civilisation into its darkest recesses: when I remember that these extraordinary changes have all taken place in the short period of twenty years, I pause, wonder, and—although I know all to be fact-can scarcely believe its reality.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859), a native of America, commenced a career of literary exertion in this country by the publication in 1820 of The Sketch-book, a series of short tales, sketches, and essays, sentimental and humorous, which were originally printed in an American periodical, but illustrative chiefly of English manners and scenery. Mr Irving had previously published, in conjunction with others, a satirical periodical entitled Salmagundi (1807-8), and in 1809 appeared his History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, being an imaginary account of the original Dutch inhabitants of that State. received with great favour in Britain; its carefully The Sketch-book was elaborated style and beauties of diction were highly praised, and its portraitures of English rural life and customs, though too antiquated to be strictly accurate, were pleasing and interesting. It was obvious that the author had formed his taste upon the works of Addison and Goldsmith; but his own great country, its early state of society, the red Indians, and native traditions, had also supplied him with a fund of natural and original description. His stories of Rip Van Winkle and the Sleepy Hollow are among the finest pieces of original fictitious writing that this century has produced. In 1822 Mr Irving continued the same style of fanciful English delineation in his Bracebridge Hall, in which we are introduced to the interior of a squire's mansion, and to a number of original characters, drawn with delicacy and discrimination equal to those in his former work. In 1824 appeared another series of tales and sketches, but greatly inferior, entitled Tales of a Traveller. Having gone to Spain in connection with the United States embassy, Mr Irving studied the history and antiquities of that romantic country, and in 1828 published The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, in four volumes, written in a less ornate style than his former works, but valuable for the new information it communicates. Next year appeared The Conquest of Granada, and in 1832 The Alhambra, both connected with

the ancient Moorish kingdom of Granada, and for its preservation. The whole house was constantly partly fictitious. Several lighter works afterwards in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops, issued from his fertile pen-Astoria, a narrative and brooms, and scrubbing-brushes; and the good of American adventure; A Tour on the Prairies; housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey; Legends of the animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, Conquest of Spain; Adventures of Captain Bonne-insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us ville; a Life of Goldsmith; Mahomet and his fingers like unto a duck; and some of them, he had that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed Successors; a Life of Washington; &c. The little doubt, could the matter be examined into, would principal works of Mr Irving are his Sketch-book be found to have the tails of mermaids; but this I look and Bracebridge Hall; these are the corner-stones upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is worse, a of his fame. In all his writings, however, there wilful misrepresentation. are passages evincing fine taste, gentle affections, The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where and graceful description. His sentiments are the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. manly and generous, and his pathetic and hu- In this sacred apartment no one was permitted to enter morous sketches are in general prevented from excepting the mistress and her confidential maid, who degenerating into extravagance by practical good visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a sense and a correct judgment. Modern authors thorough cleaning, and putting things to rights, always have too much neglected the mere matter of style; taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, but the success of Mr Irving should convince the scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, and entering devoutly on their stocking-feet. After careless that the graces of composition, when which was curiously stroked into angles, and curves, employed even on paintings of domestic life and and rhomboids, with a broom-after washing the winthe quiet scenes of nature, can still charm as in dows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting the days of Addison, Goldsmith, and Mackenzie. a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace, the windowThe sums obtained by Mr Irving for his copy-shutters were again closed, to keep out the flies, and the rights in England form an interesting item in literary history. Mr Murray gave £200 for The Sketch-book, but he afterwards doubled the sum. For Bracebridge Hall, the same publisher gave 1000 guineas; for Columbus, 3000 guineas; and for The Conquest of Granada, £2000. On these last two works, the enterprising publisher lost heavily, but probably the continued sale of the earlier works formed a compensation.

Mr Irving was born in New York; his family was originally from the island of Orkney. He died at his country-seat, 'Sunnyside,' on the banks of the Hudson.

Manners in New York in the Dutch Times. The houses of the higher class were generally constructed of wood, excepting the gable-end, which was of small black and yellow Dutch bricks, and always faced on the street; as our ancestors, like their descendants, were very much given to outward show, and were noted for putting the best leg foremost. The house was always furnished with abundance of large doors and small windows on every floor; the date of its erection was curiously designated by iron figures on the front; and on the top of the roof was perched a fierce little weather-cock, to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew. These, like the weathercocks on the tops of our steeples, pointed so many different ways, that every man could have a wind to his mind; and you would have thought old Æolus had set all his bags of wind adrift, pell-mell, to gambol about this windy metropolis; the most staunch and loyal citizens, however, always went according to the weather-cock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly the most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning to climb up and point it whichever way the wind blew.

In those good days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife; a character which formed the utmost ambition of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front door was never opened except on marriages, funerals, New-year's days, the festival of St Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker curiously wrought, sometimes into the device of a dog, and sometimes of a lion's head; and was daily burnished with such religious zeal, that it was ofttimes worn out by the very precautions taken |

room carefully locked up until the revolution of time
brought round the weekly cleaning-day.
As to the family, they always entered in at the gate,
To have seen
and most generally lived in the kitchen.
a numerous household assembled around the fire, one
would have imagined that he was transported back to
before our imaginations like golden visions. The fire-
those happy days of primeval simplicity which float
places were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the
whole family, old and young, master and servant, black
and white, nay, even the very cat and dog, enjoyed a
community of privilege, and had each a prescriptive
right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in
perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with
half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing for hours together;
the goede vrouw on the opposite side would employ
herself diligently in spinning her yarn or knitting
stockings. The young folks would crowd around
the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some
old crone of a negro who was the oracle of the family,
and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chim-
ney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a
string of incredible stories about New England witches,
grisly ghosts, horses without heads, and hairbreadth
escapes, and bloody encounters among the Indians.

In those happy days a well-regulated family always rose with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown. Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers shewed incontestable symptoms of disapprobation and uneasiness at being surprised by a visit from a neighbour on such occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singularly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bonds of intimacy by occasional banquetings, called tea-parties.

These fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes or noblesse-that is to say, such as kept their own cows and drove their own wagons. The company commonly assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might get home before dark. I do not find that they ever treated their company to iced creams, jellies, or syllabubs, or regaled them with musty almonds, mouldy raisins, or sour oranges, as is often done in the present age of refinement. Our ancestors were fond of more sturdy substantial fare. The tea-table was crowned with a huge earthen dish well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company being seated around the genial board, and each furnished with a fork, evinced their dexterity in launching at the fattest pieces of this mighty

dish, in much the same manner as sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes. Sometimes the table was graced with immense applepies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or oly kocks; a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, excepting in genuine Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delf tea-pot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses, tending pigs-with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was, to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth-an ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany, but which prevails, without exception, in Communipaw, Bergen, Flat-Bush, and all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea-parties the utmost propriety and dignity of deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting-no rambling of old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones-no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their pockets; nor amusing conceits and monkey divertisements of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say, 'Yah, Mynheer,' or 'Yah, ya Vrouw,' to any question that was asked them; behaving in all things like decent well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed: Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were carried home by their own carriages that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door; which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present: if our greatgrandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it.

to the future rather than the past; where, in short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of young existence and prospective improvement-there was something inexpressibly touching in the sight of enormous piles of architecture, gray with. antiquity, and sinking to decay. I cannot describe the mute but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic ruin like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and shut up from the world, as though it had existed merely for itself; or a warrior pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness on its rocky height, a mere hollow yet threatening phantom of departed power. They spread a grand and melancholy, and, to me, an unusual charm over the landscape. I for the first time beheld signs of national old age and empire's decay; and proofs of the transient and perishing glories of art, amidst the ever-springing and reviving fertility of nature.

But, in fact, to me everything was full of matter; the footsteps of history were everywhere to be traced; and poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land. I experienced the delightful feeling of freshness of a child to whom everything is new. I pictured to myself a set of inhabitants and a mode of life for every habitation that I saw, from the aristocratical mansion, amidst the lordly repose of stately groves and solitary parks, to the straw-thatched cottage, with its scanty garden and cherished woodbine. I thought I never could be sated with the sweetness and freshness of a country so completely carpeted with verdure; where every air breathed of the balmy pasture and the honeysuckled hedge. I was continually coming upon some little document of poetry in the blossomed hawthorn, the daisy, the cowslip, the primrose, or some other simple object that has received a supernatural value from the muse. The first time that I heard the song of the nightingale, I was intoxicated more by the delicious crowd of remembered associations than by the melody of its notes; and I shall never forget the thrill of ecstasy with which I first saw the lark rise, almost from beneath my feet, and wing its musical flight up into the morning sky.

Rural Life. From 'The Sketch-book.'

In rural occupation there is nothing mean and debasing. It leads a man forth among scenes of natural grandeur and beauty; it leaves him to the workings of his own mind, operated upon by the purest and most elevating of external influences. The man of refinement, therefore, finds nothing revolting in an intercourse with the lower orders of rural life, as he does when he casually mingles with the lower orders of cities. He lays aside his distance and reserve, and is glad to waive the distinctions of rank, and to enter into the honest heartfelt enjoyments of common life. Indeed the very amusements of the country bring men more and more together, and the sounds of hound and horn blend all feelings into harmony. I believe this is one great reason why the nobility and gentry are more popular among the inferior orders in England than they are in any other country; and why the latter have endured so many excessive pressures and extremities, without repining more generally at the unequal distribution of

Feelings of an American on First Arriving in England. fortune and privilege.

From Bracebridge Hall.

England is as classic ground to an American as Italy is to an Englishman, and old London teems with as much historical association as mighty Rome.

But what more especially attracts his notice, are those peculiarities which distinguish an old country, and an old state of society, from a new one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with the crumbling monuments of past ages, to blunt the intense interest with which I at first beheld them. Accustomed always to scenes where history was, in a manner, in anticipation; where everything in art was new and progressive, and pointed

To this mingling of cultivated and rustic society may also be attributed the rural feeling that runs through British literature; the frequent use of illustrations from rural life: those incomparable descriptions of nature which abound in the British poets, that have continued down from The Flower and the Leaf of Chaucer, and have brought into our closets all the freshness and fragrance of the dewy landscape. The pastoral writers of other countries appear as if they had paid Nature an occasional visit, and become acquainted with her general charms; but the British poets have lived and revelled with her-they have wooed her in her most secret haunts-they have watched her minutest caprices.

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