long legs, a short head, and little or no heart. Polonius, accordingly, has made success his test of merit, and success has made him self-conceited. For such is apt to be the case with artful, intriguing men; generally succeeding, as the world counts success, they naturally estimate merit by success, and thus become as conceited as they are successful. They deserve to be conceited!

From books, also, Polonius has gleaned maxims, but not gained development; can repeat, but not reproduce, their contents; equips, not feeds his mind out of them; uses them, in short, not as spectacles to read nature with, but only as blinds or goggles to protect his own eyes with. He has, therefore, made books his idols, and books have made him pedantic. For he is a conceited old pedant. An exceedingly practical man, he is too fond of the dirt to be in any danger of getting up into the clouds. Craving truth only for the stomach's sake, of course he always has food enough, and his understanding is too enpeptic to think of living by faith; he believes in living on realities there is no romance about him; no, indeed, he cultivates solider things than that!

To such a mind, or rather, half-mind, the character of Hamlet must needs be a

profound enigma. It takes a whole man to know such a being as Hamlet; and Polonius is but the attic story of a man! Of course he cannot find a heart or a soul in Hamlet, because he has none himself to find them with for it always takes a heart to find a heart, a soul to find a soul; those who have them not always think, and deserve to think, that others are without them. As, in Polonius's mind, the calculative faculties have eaten out the perceptive faculties, so, of course, his premises are seldom right, and his inferences seldom wrong. Assuming Hamlet to be thus and thus, he reasons and acts most admirably in regard to him; but the fact is, he has no eye for the true premises of the case; he cannot see Hamlet, cannot understand him; and his premises being wrong, the very correctness of his logic makes him seem but the more ridiculous.

Wherefore, knowing the prince can hope to make nothing by marrying his daughter, he cannot conceive why he should woo her, unless from dishonorable intentions.

And he falls into a similar mistake in regard to Ophelia. He thinks she is in danger from Hamlet's addresses to her, that she will fall a victim to some inhuman arts, because he is insensible to her real power: to him she appears all weakness and exposure, because he has no eye to discern her true strength. But, to such a man as Hamlet, a man of heart, of soul, of honor, of religion, of manhood, she is the concentration of whatever is most powerful and most formidable: her virgin innocence, her gentleness, her maiden honor, her sweet, sacred defencelessness, "create an awe about her as a guard angelic placed;" all Heaven, in short, is set for the protection of such a being; but Heaven, alas! is no protection against a brute, much less, against a selfish, heartless, soulless man!

Coleridge has very happily remarked, that "good terrestrial charts can be constructed only by celestial observations.” As it is only by the aid of the stars that men can direct their course securely and profitably over the earth, so some men observe the stars only for the sake of profit and security; they look upwards, not, in-i deed, to learn what is above them, but only that they may the better avail themselves of what is around or beneath them. Such appears to be the case with Polonius in the few precepts with which he accompanies the farewell blessing upon Laertes. Coming from another man, these precepts, it must be confessed, would seem the very perfection of prudential morality, containing here and there a trace of manly, generous sentiment. Coming from Polonius, they seem but the extraction and quintessence of Chesterfieldism, of which the first and great commandment is, act and speak to conceal, not to express, thy thoughts, and avoid to do anything that may injure thyself; for on this commandment undoubtedly hang all the law and the prophets of his morality; and if in this brief abstract of policy, he sprinkles a few elements of manly honor and generosity, it is only to make the compound more palatable to a young mind, that has not so far desiccated itself of heart and soul as to take up with mere policy. The precept,

"To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man,”

means, in his mouth, be true to thine own interest, and but expresses the common notion, that injustice to others is injurious to one's self. This precept, indeed, has sometimes been urged as redeeming the author from that utter baseness and selfishness which the rest of his conduct so plainly indicates; but to us it seems rather to confirm the view we have taken of him; for it must obviously mean one of two things: either, be true to thine own heart, which is, perhaps, the best morality, or, be true to thine own interest, which is the worst morality; and all the rest of the character seems to warrant, if not to require, the latter construction. What does such a man naturally mean by self? his heart? he don't know that he has one; perhaps he has not; interest being all the heart he has or deserves to have. It has been suggested, that Polonius here forgets himself, and, speaking from memory, unwittingly drops a better sentiment than he is aware of. To which we can only reply, such men as he are seldom guilty of anything so good as forgetting themselves; indeed, their chief misery and meanness is, that they seldom think of anything but themselves. Polonius would, doubtless, have his son strain at a gnat of indiscretion, and swallow a camel of insincerity; sit up nights to make himself a gentleman, but take no pains to make himself a man. Of course we mean a fashionable gentleman; for a true gentleman is, we take it, the finest piece of work that God has yet shown us -except a true lady. Polonius aims, not to plant high principles, nor kindle noble passions, but only to lodge shrewd practical maxims in his son. The whole gist of his instructions to Laertes is, to study and discipline all spontaneousness out of himself; and for those involuntary and unconscious transpirations of character, which reveal that one has a heart, though perhaps with some flaws in it, he would leave no room whatever. In his view "the dictates of an inward sense, whose voice outweighs the world," are but bugbears to frighten children withal; and a virtue which cannot prate about itself, which, moved by secret, vital forces, goes so smoothly, and sweetly, and silently, as not to hear itself, or be conscious of its workings, is not to be thought of or trusted in, much less sought after or approved. In a word, his mo

rality and religion spring altogether from the understanding, not from the conscience nor the heart, and therefore are, in reality and in effect, but two chapters of political economy, one for this world, and one for the next.

And yet Polonius is a great man in his way; many of the world's parasites are but diminutives of him; several modern politicians might, we suspect, be cut out of him. He has the lower faculties, the calculative, in the highest degree; the higher faculties, the imaginative, he has not at all. He is virtuous inasmuch as he keeps below vice, (for there is a place down there, and some people in it;) is honest, because he thinks honesty to be the best policy-a maxim which, by the way, is far from being universally true for honesty sometimes carries people to the stake, (queer policy that!) and perhaps it would carry more of us to the stake, if we had it; and if it did not carry us to the stake, it might carry us to poverty, and that, some people think, is the next thing to the stake. Polonius, indeed, is free alike from princi-. ple and from passion, so that he goes straight ahead, merely from want of susceptibilities for temptation to lay hold of, and keeps himself transparent, because he has got so crystallized, that no dust can stick to him.

Shakspeare's matchless skill, in revealing a character through its most characteristic transpirations, is nowhere more finely displayed than in the instructions Polonius gives his servant, Reynaldo, for detecting the habits and practices of his absent son. In framing plans to "get at truth, though it lie hid within the centre;" how, "with the bait of falsehood, he may take the carp of truth;" and how, "of wisdom and of reach, with windlasses and with assays of bias," he may "by indirections find directions out;" here the old politician is perfectly at home; his mind seems to revel in the mysteries of wirepulling and trap-setting; and schemes fly together in his head and troll out of his mouth as if they could not help it. In Hamlet, however, he finds an impracticable subject; here all his strategy and sagacity are effectually nonplussed; and the trap with which he essays to catch the truth only springs on himself. The mere torch of policy, nature, or Hamlet, who is

an imbodiment of nature, blows him out, so that he rays out nothing but darkness and smoke whenever he attempts to throw light on the prince. The sport of circumstances, it was only by a chance of circumstances that Hamlet came to know him. Once the honored minister of his royal father, now the despised tool of his father's murderer, Hamlet sees in him only a mean and supple time-server, ready at any time to "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning;" and the ease with which be baffles, and puzzles, and plagues the old fox, shows how much craftier one can be, who scorns craft, than one who courts it.

Habits of intrigue having extinguished in Polonius the powers of insight and adaptation to circumstances, he of course discerns not the unfitness of his usual methods to the new exigency; while at the same time his faith in the craft which he has hitherto found so successful betrays him into the most overweening assurance. Hence, also, that singular but most characteristic specimen of unconscious grannyism, namely, his pedantic, unseasonable and impertinent trifling and dallying with artful forms and turns of thought and speech, amidst the most serious business, though conceiving and swearing the while that he is using no art at all; where, mindless of the occasion, and absorbed in his frivolous fancies, he appears not unlike the learned dunce in Hudibras, who "could speak no sense in several languages;" and shows what a tedious old fool he is, the moment he leaves to "hunt the train of policy," and forsakes the habitual routine of intrigue and management. Superannuated politicians, indeed, like Polonius, seldom appear wise but in proportion as they fall back upon the resources of memory; for out of these resources, the ashes, so to speak, of long extinct faculties, they may seem wise after the fountains of wisdom are dried up within them; as a man who has lost his sight may seem to distinguish colors perfectly so long as he does not undertake to speak of the colors about him. On the whole, Polonius is a fine exemplification of the truth, that, while wisdom grows more bright and beautiful as it waxes older, aged cunning relapses into garrulous dotage; and that amid the decays of sense,

nothing can retain the soul in its dignity but a faith in the truth, and a child-like simplicity of heart which reposes meekly and gently upon a wisdom above its own.

There is one relation, however, in which, from whatsoever motives, Polonius wishes to do his entire duty. He sincerely aims and endeavors to be a good father, and evidently has the welfare, or rather, the interest of his children truly at heart. But here, as elsewhere, the politician is visibly uppermost, perverting his endeav ors and thwarting his aims; for Ophelia seems to have grown up what she is rather in spite of her father's instructions, than in consequence of them. The truth is, he has practiced the arts of intrigue until they have grown into second nature; the craft which he adopted as his servant, has become his master; so that in spite of himself the wily magician looks out upon us through the face of the father. It is thus that a principle of action, when once taken home to the bosom, insinuates itself throughout the character, shaping and coloring the whole life into its likeness. The mean and wicked arts which we call in as friends and auxiliaries generally remain as our conquerors and lords; and Satan, invited to a corner of the mind, seldom fails to usurp the whole.

Of all Shakspeare's heroines the impression of Ophelia is perhaps the most difficult of analysis, partly because she is, so intensely real, and partly because she is so undeveloped. A perfect rose-bud of womanhood, just ready to burst into development from its own fullness, we feel its riches in the promise, but cannot distinguish the peculiarities that are to characterize the flower. Nipt, too, on the promise of the blossom, the bud perishes "before its buttons be disclosed," leaving us nothing but smiles for its beauty, and tears for its fate.

Ophelia is brought forward but little in the play, and yet the whole play seems pervaded with her presence. Her very absence reveals her; her very silence utters her; we think of her the more for that we miss her society. We see her and Hamlet together scarcely any, yet we can hardly separate them in our thoughts. Of their sweet hours of courtship, when Ophelia "sucked the honey of his music vows," we hear nothing whatever; yet we

know them all, we read their whole history in the impression they have left upon her, subduing her entire being, heart, soul and sense, to the sweet sovereignty of love. Perhaps the reason why Ophelia, though seen so little in the play, affects so deeply and constantly, is, that those about her owe their best development to her influence. Amid the court circle, she is like a voice of music issuing from the bosom of Chaos. Whatever harmony comes from Polonius and the queen, is of her elicit ing; all that redeems them from our hatred or scorn, is of her inspiring. Laertes is interesting to us, chiefly for the interest he takes in his sister; he had little hold on our regard, but for the feelings she has awakened within him. Of Hamlet's soul, too, she is the sunrise and the morning hymn, bathing in brightness the birth of a day so awful in its beauty and so pitiable in its woe. The soul of innocence and gentleness, wisdom seems to radiate from her insensibly, as fragrance is exhaled from flowers. It is in such forms that Heaven most frequently visits us.

Ophelia's situation very much resembles that of Imogen; their characters are in perfect contrast. Both appear amidst the corruptions of a wicked court: Ophelia escapes them by insensibility to their presence; Imogen, by firm, steady resistance. The former is unassailable in her innocence; the latter is unconquerable in her strength. Ignorance protects Ophelia; knowledge protects Imogen. The conception of vice has hardly found its way into Ophelia's mind; in Imogen the daily perception of vice has but called forth the power to repel it. Ophelia dreams not but she is surrounded by angels; Imogen knows she is surrounded by devils: knowledge of her situation would ruin the former; ignorance of her situation would ruin the latter. Ophelia's utter ignorance of her father's character begets perfect confidence in him, and therefore requires implicit obedience to his orders; Imogen's perfect knowledge of her father's character begets utter distrust of him, and therefore requires unyielding resistance to his orders. In Ophelia again, as in Desdemona, the comparative want of intelligence, or rather, of intellectuality, is never felt as a deficiency. She fills up the idea of excellence just as completely as if she were all intellect. In

the rounded harmony of her character we miss not the absent elements, because there is no vacancy left for them to supply; and high intellect would rather strike us as a superfluity than as a supplement; its voice would rather drown than complete the harmony of the other tones.

Ophelia is exhibited in the utmost ripeness and mellowness, both of soul and of sense, to impressions from without. With her susceptibilities just opening to external objects, her thoughts are so completely engrossed with those objects as to leave no room for self-contemplation. This exceeding impressibility is the source at once of her beauty and her danger. From the lips and eyes of Hamlet she has drunk in assurances of his love, but she has never heard the voice of her own; and she knows not how full her heart is of Hamlet, because she has not a single thought or feeling there at strife with him; the current of her feelings runs so deep that it does not admit of tumult enough to make her conscious of them. In the words of Mrs. Jameson, "She is far more conscious of being loved than of loving, and yet loving in the depth of her young heart far more than she is loved." For it is a singular fact, that though Hamlet gives many disclosures, and Ophelia gives only concealments, many have doubted the reality of his love, while no one has ever thought of doubting the reality of hers.

Critics generally have construed Ophelia's silence respecting her own passion into a wish to hide it from others; but the truth is, she seems not to be aware of it herself; and she unconsciously betrays it in the modest reluctance with which she yields up the secret of Hamlet's addresses to her. The extorted confession of what she has received reveals how much she has given. The soft movements of her bosom are made the plainer by the delicate lawn of silence thrown over it. To the warnings of her brother and the orders of her father she promises and intends implicit obedience, ignorant herself of the fearful truth, and yet betraying it to us by this very ignorance, that those warnings and orders have come too late. Alas! she knows not that the love which she thus consents to shut out of her heart has already entwined itself inextricably with the innermost thread of her life, Even

when despair is wringing and crushing her innocent young soul into an utter wreck, she seems not to know the source of her affliction; and the dreadful truth comes forth only when her sweet mind, which, stringed and tuned in heaven, once breathed such enchanting harmony, lies broken in fragments before us, and the secrets of her maiden heart are hovering on her soul-deserted tongue.

One of the bitterest ingredients in poor Ophelia's cup of sorrow, is the belief that by her repulse of Hamlet she has scared away the music of his mind; and when, forgetting the wounds with which her own pure spirit is bleeding, over the heartrending spectacle of that "unmatched form and feature of blown youth, blasted with ecstacy," she meets his fatal "I loved you not," with the despairing sigh, "I was the more deceived," we see that she feels not the sundering of the ties that bind her sweetly-tempered faculties in harmony. The singing of this innocent sweet bird has but betrayed her to the hunter's aim; and she feels not the fatal shot because it strikes to the very source of her spirit's life.

And yet we blame not Hamlet, for he is himself but a victim of the same relentless, inexorable power which is spreading its ravages through him over another life as pure and heavenly as his own. Standing on the verge of an abyss which he sees is yawning to ingulf himself, his very effort to frighten her back from it, only hurries her in before him. To snatch a jewel from Mrs. Jameson's casket, "he knows he can neither marry her nor reveal to her the terrific influences which have changed the whole current of his life and purposes; and in his agony he overacts the painful part with which he has tasked himself; like the judge of Athens who, engrossed with graver matters, flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom with such violence that he unwittingly killed it."

Ophelia's insanity absolutely exhausts the fountains of human pity. The breaking of her virgin heart lets loose the secrets which have hitherto enriched it, and their escape reveals the utter ruin of their own sweet dwelling-place. It is one of those pictures surcharged with unuttered and unutterable woe, over which the mind

can only brood in silent sympathy and awe; which Heaven alone has a heart adequately to pity, and a hand effectually to heal. Its pathos were too much for our hearts to bear, but for the sweet incense that rises from her crushed spirit, as "she turns thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, to favor and to prettiness." The victim of crimes in which she has no share but as a sufferer, we hail with joy the event which snatches her from the rack of this world; and, in our speechless pity for such helpless innocence, we seek the sure consolations of hope in the arms of religious faith. In the death of this gentle creature there is a divine depth of sorrow which strikes expression dumb. In their solemn playfulness, the songs with which she chants, as it were, her own burial service, are like smiles gushing from the very heart of woe. Over this picture so awful in its beauty, we can but repeat the sighs of its most gifted commentator: Ophelia ! poor Ophelia ! O, far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast among the briars of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life. What shall be said of her! for eloquence is mute before her. So exquisitely delicate is her character, it seems as if a touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we dare not consider it too deeply. Her love, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts, as it dies on her own. Her sorrow asks not words but tears; and from the spectacle of her insanity we feel inclined to turn away, and veil our eyes in reverential pity, and too painful sympathy."

The queen's affection for this lovely being is one of those unexpected strokes of character so frequent in Shakspeare, which surprise us into reflection by their very naturalness. Mrs. Jameson compares it to the nightingale of Sophocles singing in the groves of the Furies. That Ophelia should disclose a vein of goodness in the wicked queen, was necessary, perhaps, to keep us both from underrating the influence of the one, and from overrating the wickedness of the other. The love, too, which she thus awakens in one so depraved goes to prevent the pity which her con dition moves from lessening the respect