Taube, G., in Lear's best style; both are unexceptionable, and may truly be called living portraits. Dispersed all over Europe. We need not detail its habits. Mr. Gould informs us that a pair of these birds once built a nest and laid two eggs in confinement; and we have no doubt it would frequently do so if properly managed, despite the agreement to which most ornithologists have come, that it never has and never will breed in domesticity. Those who have not had the pleasure of feasting their eyes on this plate, scarcely know what a good ornithological drawing is.

The eighth part concludes with two lovely figures of the Spotted Sandpiper, Totanus macularius-Chevalier perlé, Fr.-Gefleckte Strandlaüfer, G.-and as we have said so much ourselves, we shall now permit the author to have his say. Here then follows a part of his account of the bird :-"This elegant little Sandpiper is most intimately allied to the well-known Common Sandpiper (Totanus hypoleucos), which pays its annual visit during the summer months to the brooks and rivulets of our island; but, unlike this latter bird, its visits are of the most rare occurrence, no instance having come under our own observation. M. Temminck states that it occurs accidentally on the shores of the Baltic and in some of the provinces of Germany, but never in Holland. The native country of this bird appears to be the arctic regions of both continents; but it is most abundant in America, extending from these high latitudes over the whole of the United States, where it appears to take up the same situation as the Totanus hypoleucos, frequenting Pennsylvania, and the rivers Schuylkill and Delaware, as we are informed by Wilson, from whose valuable work we have taken the liberty of extracting an account of the habits and manners of this bird, which we have not had the opportunity of observing." The rest of the description is, accordingly, from Wilson, which it will not be necessary to quote. We shall have much pleasure in resuming our critical notices of the valuable and ably-executed Birds of Europe in

our next.

SOME REMARKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY AND OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE.

VI. HAMLET.

Of all Shakspeare's plays, Hamlet has been the most studied and the least understood. As a subject of criticism, it has attracted the attention of our most celebrated authors, who have all made more or less approach to its elucidation, in proportion to the metaphysical or poetical tendency of their minds: nevertheless, the character of Hamlet is still an uninterpreted mystery.

In reading this play, one thing is obvious-that our impressions become so various and our opinions so contradictory, that we leave it with but a vague and painful idea of the whole. The presumptive inconsistencies in Hamlet's character destroy in our minds its unity and completion: in this rests the difficulty of the task to abstract our ideas from particulars, rejecting every opinion of the parts until, by a careful comparison of them all, we come to a better understanding of the beautiful and homogeneous creation of Hamlet. No study is, perhaps, more difficult than to follow such a subject with an analytical criticism from part to part: for it is the essential excellency of Shakspeare, that he is always suggestive-a moral telescope, which opens to our view new and brilliant imaginations, filling the mind at every glance with beautiful and profound reflections. It is no easy task, then, to carry on these successive impressions, as it were mapping them together into one complete structure. Hamlet is the masterpiece of human genius; it combines all that is sublime in thought acting on one of the most perfect of human beings his apparent inconsistencies belong to his greatness; a common mind so circumstanced would have exhibited none of his conduct, but have gone at once, beast-like, to his revenge.

Hamlet forejudged every act, and reasoned to the utmost limit of fallibility; it is no wonder, therefore, that his biography is seldom read and never understood. The character of Hamlet is a triplet, compounded of three causes-the physical, the spiritual, and the educational: this triad, acting in concert under most peculiar circumstances, produced an effect or developed a character which, as a whole, is contrary to its parts.

To examine the character of Hamlet, we will take these causes separately, and by examining each individually we may, perhaps, better understand the profound mystery of his character, and be able

to reconcile those inconsistencies and defalcations which awaken our surprise and leave us in doubt.

The physical constitution of Hamlet is the very diapason of his mind:

“Ophelia.—Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword:
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstacy!"

We at once recognize a perfect organization, that exact proportion of parts, that symmetry of form, that fine adaptation of the intellectual, moral, and animal, which distinguishes the sublime creations of art; it is the preponderance of a particular faculty which directs the conduct of mankind, which makes opinion prophetical and action speculative. But in the very few whose cerebral development approaches this perfect agreement, one faculty so equapoises the other as to create, by that reflective anticipation of the soul, a possible uncertainty. The greatest minds are always the most doubtful. Unhappily, the general temperament of Hamlet was disanalogous with the concordance of his structure, and thus assisted in producing those strange self-contradictions; a temperament, or the bodily liability of his nature, at variance with his moral consciousness; that melancholy atrabiliousness, denoted great and violent exertion, but conjoined with the inert lymphatic habit, his energy and passion are momentary and his will deadened by lethargy; and thus

"the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought”—

Hamlet, though he succumbed to the necessity of his nature, was, nevertheless, fully aware of the defect

"Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

Like John a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing."

and the whole of this beautiful speech to Guildenstern is full of dark sublimity:

"I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, foregone_all custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air-look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire-why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man !—how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world—the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither;"

and again the soliloquy, profaned by the mouthing of every whining school-boy,

"Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!"

The whole play is craped with the gloom of his nature. Such was Hamlet, a compound in physical temperament: the dispositions of his nature were antagonists; "one not easily moved, but being so is moved in the extreme."

Without going into an explanation of what is meant by the spiritual nature or mind of Hamlet, and however the physical is implicated in the moral character, we are content to distinguish by this term the habitual characteristic of Hamlet's mind. We speak of Hamlet as a being always existing; we look upon him as a monad set aside for our interpretation and profit. The mental peculiarity of Hamlet was reflection, deep, searching, profound thought; from his earliest recognitions comparisons were held; he looked upon every event, upon every action, as implying the past and future in their causes and consequences. He had beheld human nature in its most subtle and occult appearances, when vice becomes more baneful because more concealed. The evil which vice loses with its grossness is made up in its permanency and insidiousness; and thus Hamlet disdained the polished hypocrisy of the court, and chose his friend in the sane and firm-minded Horatio.

Reflection with him is a moral excess; his mind is a profound of thought; he analyzes every thing, dissects the conduct of mankind, and refers every act to some imperfection, either of weakness or wickedness. The complexion of his ideas was always gloomy;

his wit severe and sarcastic. He is a human Mephostophiles without sin, before whom the circumstances of existence are laid bare, the original cause of intent and action is defined, and goodness itself exhibited as the deceitful cloak of selfishness. Thought is ceaseless; it is a monomania that admits of no pause. The actions of men seem frivolous, and life itself, by a dark comparison with itself, is beheld with indifference, as but a painful suspense. Hamlet was a man to become sick of the uses of the world, scorning what he despised. The ambition of the soldier, the phrenzy of the lover, the policy of the courtier-he had tried them all, and left them as a madman's labour. Hamlet, though sceptical as to creeds, was firmly religious. But

"that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter,"

he would have sought in the grave repose from the oppressive tediousness of life.

Hamlet educationally was a scholar and a gentleman; the fellowstudent of Horatio at Wittenberg, where congregated all the learned men of the day. A metaphysical complexion marks the learning of that time; the mind was for ever wrestling in the Palestra of abstract reasoning. The quiddits of the Aristotelian school occupied the place of experimental philosophy, oppressing the intellect with infinite and intangible ideas. We perceive Hamlet complains to Rosencrantz that he could not reason, though he is continually touching upon his favourite logic:

"Ham. O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams.

"Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

"Ham.-A dream itself is but a shadow.

"Ros.—Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.

"Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs and outstretch'd heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason."

Yet the genius or reflective faculties of Hamlet made him an experimental philosopher; he not only idealised, but he observed, and derived no little of his learning from the visible world. His knowledge of natural philosophy is evidently the result of observation. That he was a diligent student at Wittenberg there is no doubt, and he most probably aspired to attainments of the highest possible