passed there for the fame of our author were better concealed. The vindictive ghost plays off illusions before the eyes of the son, till fancying that he is stabbing Assur, he plunges his dagger into the bosom of Semiramis. He then drags his victim through the dust, sobbing in death, and unable to articulate her lamentations; till struck by a sudden sensation of horror, and still ignorant who it is he has slain, he bursts from the tomb. The dreadful truth is at last revealed by the bleeding Semiramis coming forth and breathing her last at its entrance. Thus then are the laws of nature suspended and interrupted, thus is the sacred repose of the grave violated, for the sole purpose of forcing upon the struggling conscience of the noble and virtuous Ninias, the murder of his mother; that mother, who, before she knew him, offered him her affection and her crown; who on the discovery of his birth had subdued her love, but still displayed the tenderness of a mother in the resignation of her throne. As for the trick, the pantomime, the harlequinade performed in the recesses of his tomb by the ghost of Ninus, by which his son is for ever consigned to misery and remorse amidst the splendors of empire, its child

ishness is almost equal to its horror; and we may venture to assert, without incurring the danger of being accused of partiality towards our own illustrious dramatist, that in his early age, without any models to work by, left to the resources of a mind in a great degree uncultivated, he has exhibited no where a greater error in taste, judgment, or morality, Did Semiramis deserve death, her son should not have struck the blow-if heaven, after fifteen years of remorse and virtue, was still unsatisfied, its agent should have executed its own purpose-the yawning tomb might have closed for ever over the unfortunate queen, and consigned her to those embraces she had such good reason to detest. As the play stands, we perceive clearly that Semiramis acted only in self-defence, when she destroyed a husband, whose hatred was so strong that not the grave could subdue it-whose vindictive wrath no lengthened penitence, no splendid virtue could soften or appease; who was indeed so fond of blood, as to choose rather to condemn his son to misery, than to suffer his afflicted wife still to dispense blessings over an applauding people.

These observations naturally lead the at

tention to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. The original conception of this play in the mind of it's author, was, I doubt not, as sublime, as was ever formed by man, and though in it's execution it is soiled and degraded by the errors of his age, and equally by his characteristic carelessness, yet does he, with all his imperfections on his head, through beauty and deformity, through success and failure, through wrong and right, accomplish his purpose; nor is there an auditor or reader at the conclusion, who refuses to accompany Horatio in his tears and panegyric on the departed prince. All execrate the murderer of his father, all rejoice in the death of the usurper, all acknowledge the stroke given by Hamlet to be the stroke of justice, all feel that it has only been too long delayed, all lament the unmerited fate of the avenging monarch. The character of Hamlet, though drawn with disastrous negligence, is singularly interesting and imposing. Great talents, splendid accomplishments, a love of literature, a deep knowledge of the world, a high degree of personal resolution and bravery, a contemplative and philosophic cast of mind, an ardent patriotism, are the qualities by which he commands our admiration. As a man, anxious to surrender,

in his intercourse with his friend, every feeling his princely dignity might suggest to himself or others; a warm, though not perhaps a very consistent lover, a most devoted and revering son, more disposed to mourn or correct than to punish a too guilty mother, he has almost equal claims on our affection. The general dialogue between Hamlet and Horatio is incomparable and inimitable; that between Hamlet and his father's ghost equally excellent. It is in this latter representation that Shakespeare has many rivals, and it is here, for that reason perhaps, his superiority is the most strikingly manifested. I have in my recollection two Greek ghosts, a French ghost, and an Italian ghost; and as the spirit of Hamlet's father flies before the first glimpse of morning, so most assuredly do all these foreign visions disappear before the "buried majesty of Denmark," as obedient to the magic and incantations of Shakespeare. In the Hecuba of Euripides, the 'shade of Polydorus rises, in order to request his mother to bury the body that once belonged to him. In the Persians of Eschylus, that of Darius deepens the tragic scene by his lamentations. Voltaire raises a ghost to expose himself in the man

ner already described; and the Italian ghost in the opera of Semiramide, is not ashamed to imitate the French apparition, with this difference indeed, that not daring to trust himself with recitative, he maintains a most prudent and judicious silence. The ghost of Hamlet's father breaks the fetters of the tomb, for a most solemn and important end, which could have been answered by no other means than this dreadful interruption of the laws of nature. The spirit of a king is in arms, and we feel that all is not well. When the awful vision speaks, we are alarmed at the slightest hint of the secrets of the prison house, and we rejoice that the eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. The ghost of Hamlet's father wages no war with women, but conjures his son to leave his guilty queen to her conscience and to heaven. He deems the time spent in reproving her, as lost and unprofitable, even the " speaking daggers" he disapproves, and takes this opportunity of appearing, to inflame his son against the murderous usurper. It is superfluous to dwell longer upon the merits of Shakespeare in this part of his play, or where his excellencies are more mixed, and less clear, to point out the splendid