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influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature; such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist, or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.

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! Like a strain of sad sweet music, which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear-like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms--like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth-like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses-such is the character of Ophelia : so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a touch would profane it ; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as upon her own. Her sorrow asks not words but tears; and her madness has precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away and veil our eyes in reverential pity, and too painful sympathy.

Beyond every character that Shakspeare has drawn, (Hamlet alone excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation. Whenever we bring it to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called

her into life. The effect (and what an effect !) is produced by means so simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought of them. It is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in its pathos, that, Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old ballads-we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme and consummate triumph of art,

The situation of Ophelia in the story,* is that of a young girl who, at an early age, is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of the court-a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude, magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person of the queen, and is apparently her favorite attendant. The affection of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling, which we find only in Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there remains within her heart some sense of the virtues he has forfeited, seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being she has destined for the bride of her son; and the scene in which she is introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of those effects of contrast in poetry, in character, and in feeling, at once natural and unexpected, which fill the eye and make the heart swell and tremble within itself:-like the nightingales singing in the grove of the Furies, in Sophocles t

Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Chamberlain

*In the story of the drama; for in the original "History of Amleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his mate ials, there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduce Amleth, but not even the germ of the character of Ophelia.

* In the Edipus Coloneus.

Polonius-the shrewd, wary, subtle, pompous, garrulous old courtier have we not the very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when she is brought to the court, she seems in her Loveliness and perfect purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom, and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence;" for that Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the better to beguile;" we feel at once that it comes too late for from the moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny. Once at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young, and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it wasand I watched it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird! hither and thither, with its silver pinions shining against the black thunder cloud, till, after a few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered into the turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up for ever. It reminded me then of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storn. It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence, and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to bear

them, and love and grief together rend and shatter the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather intended to hide than to reveal the cmotions of her heart; yet in those few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and Titian like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue eyed daughter of the north, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more conscious of being loved than of loving; and yet, alas! loving in the silent depths of her young heart, far more than she is loved.

When her brother warns her against Hamlet's importunities

For Hamlet and the trifling of his favor,
Hold it a fashion and a toy of blood,

A violet in the youth of primy nature,

Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting,

The perfume and the suppliance of a minute-
No more!

she replies with a kind of half consciousness

No more but so?

LAERTES.

Think it no more.

He concludes his admonition with that most beautiful passage, in which the soundest sense, the most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain of the most exquisite poetry.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon-
Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes ;
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are most imminent.

She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary avowal, that his fears are not altogether with

out cause:

I shall the effect of this good lesson keep

As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst like the puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read.*

When her father immediately afterwards catechises her on the same subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but not a word of her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible delicacy; it is one of those instances common in Shakspeare, in which we are allowed to perceive what is passing in the minds of a person without any consciousness on their part; only Ophelia herself is unaware that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the love with which it is returned.

POLONIUS.

What is between you? give me up the truth.

OPHELIA.

He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders

Of his affection to me.

* "And recks not his own read," i. e. heeds not his own lesson

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