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least likely to find due response from those around him. Yet he is felt, almost in his due sense, by two or three.

Lear has not only one faithful daughter, whom he knew not how to value, but a friend beside.

Timon is prized by the only persons to whom he was good, purely from kindliness of nature, rather than the joy he expected from their gratitude and sympathy, his servants.

Tragedy is always a mistake, and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us, so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.

Were I, despite the bright points so numerous in their history and the admonitions of my own conscience, inclined to despise my fellow men, I should have found abundant argument against it during this late study of Hamlet. In the streets, saloons, and lecture rooms, we continually hear comments so stupid, insolent, and shallow on great and beautiful works, that we are tempted to think that there is no Public for anything that is good; that a work of genius can appeal only to the fewest minds in any one age, and that the reputation now awarded to those of former times is never felt, but only traditional. Of Shakspeare, so vaunted a name, little wise or worthy has been written, perhaps nothing so adequate as Coleridge's comparison of him to the Pine-apple; yet on reading Hamlet, his greatest work, we find there is not a pregnant sentence, scarce a word that men have not appreciated, have not used in myriad ways. Had we never read the play, we should find the whole of it from quotation and illustration familiar to us as air. That exquisite phraseology, so heavy with meaning, wrought out with such admirable minuteness, has become a part of literary diction, the stock of the literary bank; and what set criticism can tell like this fact how great was the work, and that men were worthy it should be addressed to them?

L. The moon looks in to tell her assent. See, she has just

got above that chimney. Just as this happy certainty has with you risen above the disgusts of the day.

A. She looks surprised as well as complacent.

L. She looks surprised to find me still here. I must say good night. My friend, good night.

A. Good night, and farewell.

L. You look as if it were for some time.

A.

That rests with you. You will generally find me here, and always I think like-minded, if not of the same mind.

An ancient sage had all things deeply tried,
And, as result, thus to his friends he cried,

"O friends, there are no friends." And to this day
Thus twofold moves the strange magnetic sway,
Giving us love which love must take away.

Let not the soul for this distrust its right,

Knowing when changeful moons withdraw their light,

Then myriad stars, with promise not less pure,
New loves, new lives to patient hopes assure,
So long as laws that rule the spheres endure.

Ꮮ Ꮁ Ꭲ Ꭼ Ꭱ Ꭺ Ꭲ Ꮜ Ꭱ Ꭼ Ꭺ Ꮃ Ꭰ ᎪᎡᎢ

PART II.

PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.

POETS OF THE PEOPLE.

RHYMES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF A HAND-LOOM WEAVER. BY WILLIAM THOM, OF IVERURY.

"An' syne whan nichts grew cauld an' lang,

Ae while he sicht-ae while he sang."

Second Edition, with Additions. London, 1845.

We cannot give a notion of the plan and contents of this little volume better than by copying some passages from the Preface:

"The narrative portion of these pages," says Thom, "is a record of scenes and circumstances interwoven with my experience-with my destiny. * * The feelings and fancies, the pleasure and the pain that hovered about my aimless existence were all my own--my property. These aerial investments I held and fashioned into measured verse. * * The self-portraiture herein attempted is not altogether Egotism neither, inasmuch as the main lineaments of the sketch are to be found in the separate histories of a thousand families in Scotland within these last ten years. That fact, however, being contemplated in mass, and in reference to its bulk only, acts more on the wonder than on the pity of mankind, as if human sympathies, like the human eye, could not compass an object exceedingly large, and, at the same time, exceedingly near. It is no small share in the end and aim of the present little work, to impart to one portion of the community a glimpse of what is sometimes going on in another; and even if only that is accomplished, some good service will be done. I have long had a notion that many of the heart-burnings that run through the SOCIAL WHOLE spring not so much from the distinctiveness of classes as their mutual ignorance of each other. The miserably rich look upon the miserably poor with distrust and dread, scarcely giving them credit for sensibility sufficient to feel their own sorrows. That is ignorance with its gilded side. The poor, in

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