imagination for their chief effects, abound in vivid and varied tones associated with the different moods of sympathy and emotion; while Didactic subjects, being usually directed to the reason and judgment through the understanding, hold a more steady, uniform and regulated course of utterance, adapted to a clear, distinct, and pointed conveyance of thought to the intellect. NARRATIVE, DESCRIPTIVE, AND HAMLET'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PLAYERS Speak the speech I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,- to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant: it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame, neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this special observance that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, can not but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh! there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably! -William Shakespeare. BOOKS Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness, and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar; they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. - Francis Bacon. THE CHILD-WIFE All this time I had gone on loving Dora harder than ever. If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, I was saturated through and through. I took night walks to Norwood where she lived, and perambulated round and round the house and garden for hours together, looking through crevices in the palings, using violent exertions to get my chin above the rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling on the night to shield my Dora,- I don't exactly know from what,I suppose from fire, perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection. Dora had a discreet friend, comparatively stricken in years, almost of the ripe age of twenty, I should say, whose name was Miss Mills. Dora called her Julia. She was the bosom friend of Dora. Happy Miss Mills! One day Miss Mills said: "Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming the day after to-morrow. If you would like to call. I am sure papa would be happy to see you." I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness. At last, arrayed for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills's, fraught with a declaration. Mr. Mills was not at home. I did n't expect he would be. Nobody wanted him. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do. I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Dora's little dog Jip was there. Miss Mills was copying music, and Dora was painting flowers. What were my feelings when I recognized flowers I had given her! Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at home, though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was conversational for a few minutes, and then laying down her pen, got up and left the room. I began to think I would put it off till to-morrow. "I hope your poor horse was not tired when he got home at night from that picnic," said Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. "It was a long way for him." I began to think I would do it to-day. "It was a long way for him, for he had nothing to uphold him on his journey." "Was n't he fed, poor thing?" asked Dora. I began to think I would put it off till to-morrow. "Ye-yes, he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the unutterable happiness that I had in being so near to you." I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot. "I don't know why you should care for being near me," said Dora, "or why you should call it a happiness. But, of course, you do n't mean what you say. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!" I don't know how I did it, but I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip. I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her. I told her that I idolized and worshiped her. Jip barked madly all the time. My eloquence increased, and I said, if she would like me to die for her, she had but to say the word, and I was ready. I had loved her to distraction every minute, day and night, since I first set eyes upon her. I loved her at that moment to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had ever loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us in his own way got more mad every moment. Well, well: Dora and I were sitting on the sofa, by and by, quiet enough, and Jip was lying in her lap winking peacefully at me. It was off my mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged. Charles Dickens. GEORGE THE THIRD We have to glance over sixty years in as many minutes. To read the mere catalogue of characters who figured during that long period, would occupy our allotted time, and we should have all text and no sermon. England has to undergo the revolt of the American colonies; to submit to defeat and separation; to shake under the volcano of the French Revolution; to grapple and fight for the life with her gigantic enemy Napoleon; to gasp and rally after that tremendous struggle. The old society, with its courtly splendors, has to pass away; generations of statesmen to rise and disappear; Pitt to follow Chatham to the tomb; the memory of Rodney and Wolfe to be superseded by Nelson's and Wellington's glory; the old poets who unite us to Queen Anne's time to sink into their graves; Johnson to die, and Scott and Byron to arise, Garrick to delight the world with his dazzling dramatic genius, and Kean to leap on the stage and take possession of the astonished theater. Steam has to be invented; kings to be beheaded, banished, deposed, restored; Napoleon to be but an episode, and George III. is to be alive through all these varied changes, to accompany his people through all these revolutions of thought, government, society,to survive out of the old world into ours. His mother's bigotry and hatred George inherited with the courageous obstinacy of his own race; but he was a firm believer where his fathers had been free-thinkers, and a true and fond supporter of the Church, of which he was the titular defender. Like other dull men, the king was all his life suspicious of superior people. He did not like Fox; he did not like Reynolds; he did not like Nelson, Chatham, Burke: he was testy at the idea of all innovations, and suspicious of all innovators. He loved mediocrities; Benjamin West was his favorite painter; Beattie was his poet. The king lamented, not without pathos, in his after life, that his education had been neglected. He was a dull lad, brought up by narrowminded people. The cleverest tutors in the world could have done little probably to expand that small intellect, though they might have improved his tastes and taught his perceptions some generosity. George married the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and for years they led the happiest, simplest lives, sure, ever led by married couple. It is said the king winced when he first saw his homely lit le bride; but, however that may be, he was a true and faithful husband to her, as she was a faithful and loving wife. They had the simplest pleasures, the very mildest and simplest, - little country dances, to which a dozen couple were invited, and where the honest king would stand up and dance for three hours at a time to one tune; after which delicious excitement they would go to bed without any supper (the Court people grumbling sadly at that absence of supper), and get up quite early the next morning, and perhaps the next night have another dance; or the queen would play on the spinnet,- she played pretty well, Haydn said; or the king would read to her a paper out of the Spectator, or per |