banishment, and, on the morning after his secret marriage with Juliet, he is warned by the approaching daylight that it is time to depart.

JULIET.

Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day;
It was the nightingale and not the lark
That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear;
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree :
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.

ROMEO.

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,

No nightingale: look, love. what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east ;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops;
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

JULIET.

Yon light is not day-light, I know it, I;
It is some meteor that the sun exhales
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,

And light thee on thy way to Mantua :
Therefore stay yet, thou need'st not to be gone.

ROMEO.

Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so;
I'll say, yon grey is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow ;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads :
I have more care to stay than will to go ;-
Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.-

How is't my soul? Let's talk, it is not day.

JULIET.

It is, it is, hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,

Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;

This doth not so for she divideth us;

Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
O, now, I would they had changed voices too!
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunt's up to the day.
O, now be gone; more light and light it grows.

This contrast of the charms of the dawning of morning and the parting endearments of the lovers, with the catastrophe which is about to follow, is very touching. The sentiment is more natural than that of the Greek tragedies and less pastoral than that of the Italian tragicomedies. I know of only one dramatic scene which bears any resemblance to that which I have just quoted from Romeo and Juliet. It occurs in an Indian drama. The resemblance, however, does not consist in the freshness of the imagery in the simplicity of the sorrowful farewell, and certainly not in the interest of the situation. Sacontala, when about to quit her paternal roof, feels herself drawn back by her veil,

SACONTALA.

Who thus seizes the folds of my veil ?

OLD MAN.

It is the kid which thou hast so often fed with the grains of the synmaka. He will not quit his benefactress.

SACONTALA.

Why dost thou weep, tender kid? I am forced to forsake our common home. When thou did'st lose thy mother, soon after thy birth, I took thee under my care. Return to thy manger, poor young kid, we must now part.

The farewell scene in Romeo and Juliet is very lightly touched by Bandello. It belongs wholly to Shakspeare. Bandello describes the parting of the lovers in the few following words:

"A la fine cominciando l'aurora a voler uscire; si bacciarono; esttretamente abbraciarono gli amanti, e pieni di lagrime e sospiri si dissero addio."

"At length the dawn beginning to appear, the lovers kissed; they closely embraced one another, and full of tears and sighs bade each other adieu.”

SHAKSPEARE'S FEMALE CHARACTERS.

BRING together Lady Macbeth, Queen Margaret, Ophelia, Miranda, Cordelia, Jessica, Perdita, Imogen, and the versatility of the poet's genius must excite our wonder. There is a charming ideality in Shakspeare's youthful female characters. The blind King Lear says to his faithful Cordelia,

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,

flowers, mistaking her brother for Hamlet, whom she loves, and who has killed her father, addresses him thus,

VOL. I.

T

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember; ....

"— I would give you some violets; but they withered all, when my father died."

In Hamlet, that tragedy of maniacs, that Royal Bedlam in which every character is either crazy or criminal, in which feigned madness is added to real madness, and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with the skull of a fool; in that Odeon of shadows and spectres where we hear nothing but reveries, the challenge of sentinels, the screeching of the night-bird and the roaring of the sea, Gertrude thus relates the death of Ophelia who has drowned herself,

"There is a willow grows askant the brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men s fingers call them
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang; an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:

Which time, she chaunted snatches of old tunes

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indu'd