God grant, ma'am, all such misery Out in the sparkling sunshine, Kisses a cheek most fair Within, four dark and dingy walls, George W. Hows. A THE EMPTY NEST. SONG of a nest: There was once a nest in a hollow, Down in the mosses and knot-grass pressed, I pray you hear my song of a nest, You shall never light in a summer quest Shall never light on a prouder sitter, A fairer nestful, nor ever know I had a nestful once of my own, Right dearly I loved them; but when they were grown, They spread out their wings to fly. I pray you, what is the nest to me, My empty nest? And what is the shore where I stood to see Can I call that home where I anchor yet, Can I call that home where my nest was set, Nay, but the port where my sailor went, There is the home where my thoughts are sent, Fean Ingelow. WOMANHOOD AND SHAKESPEARE. T may seem strange to go back three hundred years for a type of womanhood, but Shakespeare's ideal of womanhood is the ideal of our own day; it is never out of date, for the creations of the immortal poet are destined to endure for all time. Shakespeare is indeed the oracle of woman, for we find in his plays four heroines to one hero. Shakespeare has given. us seven hundred characters, and not one resembles another; but, considered as a whole, the men are remarkable for their weakness, the women for their strength. We see Hamlet troubled with his father's ghost; Macbeth frightened by imaginary daggers in the air; Othello, the martyr rather than the hero; King Lear sinned against rather than sinning, and exchanging his kingdom for a hovel; Iago, a villain without a single virtue; Cardinal Wolsey being like a spider's web in the king's palace, until brushed away by the crown of Henry the Eighth; Shylock demanding his three thousand ducats for three months; Antony selling the Roman Empire for a kiss. And then, in striking contrast, we see the lovely Miranda, the sprightly Rosalind, the gentle Ophelia, the queenly Catharine, the noble Cordelia, and Portia, who combines the virtues of them all. Let us take a few of his characters, and, using them as prisms, discover the nature of that radiance which illuminates them all. In Miranda, living with her father in an island seclusion, we have a type of spotless innocence and purity, and nothing is more simply beautiful than the love-making between her and Ferdinand. Of all Shakespeare's creations, Rosalind, in "As You Like It," is the happiest. She has been well called the "crystal-hearted ;" and her wit, unlike that of Beatrice, is never hard and cold. Ophelia and Juliet can best be studied in contrast. Juliet's home was in sunny Italy, the land of the flowers; Ophelia's in gloomy Elsinore. Juliet is ever surrounded by gayety; Ophelia stands against a dark back-ground of spectres and shadows. The love of Romeo and Juliet is the groundwork of their drama; that of Hamlet and Ophelia, but the silver thread that runs through the play. But the lives of both illustrate the truth, that woman's devotion is "like apples of gold in pictures of silver." Where can we find a better example of wifely constancy through distrust and imprisonment than that of Queen Catharine ? King Lear differs from the rest of Shakespeare's plays, as sculpture differs from painting. The characters are more clearly cut and distinct. Cordelia, misjudged in heart, and deprived of her inheritance, returns at last to the aid of her father, a broken-down old man, praying to the storm. Of all the women of the great poet, Cordelia uses fewest words, but she says most. As a fitting type of the heroic, we have the saintly Isabel, willing to give her life, but not her honor, to rescue her brother from an ignominious death. Portia is the highest jewel in Shakespeare's casket, blending in her true womanliness the romantic, the domestic, and the heroic; and nowhere does she appear to better advantage than in the trial scene in the "Merchant of Venice," than which there is but one grander in all history, that of Paul before Agrippa. Wallace Bruce. THE IRISHWOMAN'S LETTER. EAR NEFFA: DEAR I haven't sent ye a lettre since the last time I wrote to ye, becase we've moved from our former places o' livin; and I didn't know where a lettre would find ye; but I now wid pleasure take up me pin to inform ye uv the deth of yer own livin Uncle Kilpatrick, who died very suddinly last wake, after a lingerin illness of six wakes. The poor man was in violent convulsions the whole time of his illness, layin perfectly still all the while, spacheless intirely, talkin incoherently, and cryin for wather. I had no opportunity of informin ye by the last post, which wint two days before his deth, and thin you'd had the postage to pay. I'm at a great loss to tell what his deth was occasioned by, but I fear it was by his last sickness. He niver was well tin days thegither durin the whole time of his confinement; but be that as it will, as soon as he brathed his last, the dochter gave up all hopes of his recovery. I need n't tell ye anything about his age, for ye well know that in May next he would have been twenty-five years old, lackin tin months; and had he lived till that time, he thin would have been six months ded. His property is very considerable; it devolved upon his nixt of kin, who is ded some time since, so that I expect it will be equally divided between us, and thin, my dear Laray, ye 'll get two-thirds o' the whole; and ye know he had a fine estate, which was sould to pay his debts, and the remainder he lost on the horse-race. But it was the opinion of all the ladies present that he would have won the race if that horse he ran against had n't been too fast for him! bad luck to the baste! But, poor sowl! he 'll niver ate nor dhrink any more; and now, Larry, ye have n't a livin relation in the wide. world, except meself and yer two cousins that was kilt in the last war. But I can't dwell upon this mournful subject, but will sale the lettre with black sailin-wax, and put on yer uncle's coat of arms; so I beg ye not to brake the |