appalling, too hideous for human contemplation. Miserable man, prepare for death, and after that the judgment; yet, even for you, if you repent, there may be pardon; it is my privilege to tell even you that life and hope are never to be separated, so long as God is merciful, or man may be contrite. The sacrifice of Him who died for us all, for you, poor fellow-creature [here the good judge wept for a minute like a child], for you, no less than for me, is available even to the chief of sinners. It is my duty and my comfort to direct your blood-stained but immortal soul eagerly to fly to that only refuge from eternal misery. As to this world, your career of wickedness is at an end: covetousness has conceived, and generated murder; and murder has even overstept its common bounds, to repeat the terrible crime, and then to throw its guilt upon the innocent. Entertain no hope whatever of a respite; mercy in your case would be sin. "The sentence of the court is that you, Simon Jennings, be taken from that bar to the county jail, and thence on this day fortnight be conveyed to the place of execution within the prison, and there by the hands of the common hangman be hanged by the neck At the word "neck," in the slow and solemn enunciation of the judge, issued a terrific scream from the mouth of Simon Jennings: was he mad after all-mad indeed? or was he being strangled by some unseen executioner? Look at him, convulsively doing battle with an invisible foe! his eyes start, his face gets bluer and bluer, his hands, fixed like griffin's talons, clutch at vacancy-he wrestles, struggles, falls! All was now confusion: even the grave judge, who had necessarily stopped at that frightful interruption, leaned eagerly over his desk, while barristers and sergeants learned in the law crowded round the prisoner: "He is dying! air, there, air! a glass of water, some one!" About a thimblefull of water, after fifty spillings, arrived safely in a tumbler; but as for air, no one in that court had breathed anything but nitrogen for four hours. He was dying: and three several doctors, hoisted over the heads of an admiring multitude, rushed to his relief with thirsty lancets: apoplexy, oh, of course, apoplexy: and they nodded to each other confidentially. Yes, he was dying: they might not move him now: he must die in his sins, at that dread season, upon that dread spot. Perjury, robbery, and murder, all had fastened on his soul, and were feeding there like harpics at a Strophadian feast, or vultures ravening on the liver of Prometheus. Guilt, vengeance, death, had got hold of him and rent him, as wild horses tearing him asunder different ways; he lay there gurgling, strangling, gasping, panting: none could help him, none could give him ease: he was going on the dark dull path in the bottom of that awful valley, where Death's cold shadow overclouds it like a canopy; he was sinking in that deep black water, that must some day drown us all-pray Heaven, with hope to cheer us then, and comfort in the fierce extremity!-His eye filmed, his lower jaw relaxed, his head dropped back, he was dying, dying, dying— On a sudden he rallied! his blood had rushed back again from head to heart, and all the doctors were deceived; again he battled and fought, and wrestled, and flung them from him; again he howled, and his eyes glared lightning:-mad?-Yes, mad! stark mad! quick, quick, we cannot hold him; save yourselves there! But he only broke away from them to stand up free; then he gave one scream, leaped high into the air, and fell down dead in the dock, with a crimson stream of blood issuing from his mouth. From the "Crock of Gold." MRS. JAMESON. No work pretending to give an account of the prominent English authors of the nineteenth century would be complete without the name of this charming and instructive writer. Accident, she says, made her an author, and she thus expounds some of her aims in continuing to write. "It is not by exposing folly and scorning fools that we make other people wiser or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and examples of the kindly and generous affections—to show how the human soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope there is for those who despairhow much comfort for those whom a heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and to put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit of the day." 66 1 This high and noble aim she has successfully carried out in many of her I may add prolific too, for her mine of intellectual wealth seems to be inexhaustible. The following are the chief works she has hitherto published: Diary of an Ennuyée," "Characteristics of Women,' "Memoirs and Essays illustrative of Art, Literature, and Social Morals," "Memoirs of Female Sovereigns," "Loves of the Poets," "Hand-book to Public Picture Galleries in and near London," "History of the early Italian Painters," "Social Life in Germany," "Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art," "Companion to Private Picture Galleries." works, but in none more than in that by which she is best known, "Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical." These are designed to illustrate the Female Characters of Shakspeare, and never did commentator catch more perfectly the spirit of an author, or convey to the reader a more exact or a more vivid impression of his genius and scope. It is more than interesting; it is bewitching, for, take it up where you will, you will not find it easy to lay it down. "The secret of this excellence of Mrs. Jameson's book we take to be the fact that it is a woman, a very woman, who undertakes the task-none so well able as those to approve or condemn, as one who, being of a like nature, has in herself had the same feelings excited in her own heart during her life-who as lover, wife, mother, and friend, has in turn acted all these parts in real history, and has not gone to other commentators for her criticism."1 In her "Essays," Mrs. Jameson has an admirable chapter on our own countryman, Washington Allston, whose peculiar genius and power she well appreciates; for, an artist herself, she can enter into an artist's hopes and fears, his disappointments and his triumphs. In her chapter, in the same book, entitled, "Woman's Mission, and Woman's Position," she takes a plain, practical, common sense view of that hackneyed theme on which so much nonsense has been spoken and written. In short, in most of her works, she aims to be practical-" to bring the flowers of art and genius to glorify our common household lives, and render them more sweet by the beatification." PORTIA. Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities which Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters; but, besides the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself: by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decision of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit. These are innate: she has other distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the circumstances in which she is placed. Thus she is the heiress of a princely name and countless wealth; a train of obedient pleasures have ever waited round her; and from infancy she has breathed an atmosphere redolent of perfume and blandishment. Accordingly there is a commanding grace, a high-bred, airy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements of jasper Powell's "Living Authors of England." and porphyry-amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and fountains, and haunting music. She is full of penetrative wisdom, and genuine tenderness, and lively wit; but, as she has never known want, or grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the sombre or the sad; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope, and joy; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity. But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable principles, her best feelings as a woman are all displayed. She maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end; yet the painful, heart-thrilling uncertainty in which she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not contrived for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two objects in view; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe the safety of Antonio to anything rather than the legal quibble with which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she reserves as a last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his temper and feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end, as examining with intense anxiety the effect of her own words on his mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence which, with an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from heaven:" but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert than do these heavenly words upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice : Shylock, there's thrice thy money offered thee! Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity: Be merciful! Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond. All that she says afterwards-her strong expressions, which are calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves-the reflections she interposes-her delays and circumlocution, to give time for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself- all, all are premeditated, and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view. Thus You must prepare your bosom for his knife. Therefore lay bare your bosom! These two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken at Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate his bosom. In the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh; and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready: Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, Shylock.-Is it so nominated in the bond? Portia. It is not so expressed—but what of that? So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew, that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His gentle, yet manly resignation-the deep pathos of his farewell, and the affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio : Commend me to your honorable wife; Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c. are well calculated to swell that emotion which, through the whole scene, must have been laboring suppressed within her heart. At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of act," springs on his victim-"A sentence ! come prepare!" then the smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust, burst forth with an impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at first affected; particularly in the speech Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more, Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate. But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler scorn and a more self-possessed exultation. It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of |