of Anne Boleyn; then the deaths of Catherine and Wolsey. In the last act, we have the birth of Elizabeth, her christening, and Cranmer's prophecy of her future glory.

Nothing shows more the greatness of Shakspeare's mind than the spirit in which this history is written; for a history it is; the truest, the most impartial, the most interesting history of Henry the Eighth's reign that has ever been written. Those who accuse Shakspeare of being ignorant of the world can surely never have read Henry the Eighth. We see him laying before us all the hidden springs of action. We see that he is not only a great poet and moralist, but also a profound statesman and political philosopher. We see how clearly he discerned what an impure atmosphere was that of courts, what fulsome meanness and baseness were concealed under the smiling countenance of courtiers, what pride, ambition, and hypocrisy were often hidden under the cardinal's hat and the sacerdotal robes.

There are many compliments introduced into the play to Queen Elizabeth. Some people may think that even Shakspeare is not altogether free from the faults of the great Roman poets. Yet Shakspeare's praise is not altogether flattering; for many of his eulogies were well deserved. It is now the custom to detract from the merits of this great princess. But such detraction is unjust, ungenerous, and unwise. It is well that we should forget old differences, and endeavour to acknowledge the good qualities of our enemies. But it is not well that when we become tolerant to our enemies, we should become intolerant to our friends. Shakspeare might well be excused if with his countrymen he felt some enthusiasm for the virgin queen, who had governed England with a wisdom which no monarch had ever shown; who had raised her country, which seemed in danger of becoming a province of Spain, to a power of the first rank; who had fearlessly maintained the independence of her nation when assailed by the greatest European sovereigns: who had more than any other

ruler the merit of founding the maritime greatness and commercial prosperity of England; who had, in defiance of the fiercest opposition, supported the feeble sapling of Protestantism, until it had struck its roots wide and deep, and spread its branches broad and far, and peace, order, justice, and prosperity flourished under its shade.

Shakspeare's admiration of Elizabeth did not prevent him from doing justice to Catherine. She appears throughout the play much more worthy of our esteem than Anne Boleyn, the mother of Elizabeth. Catherine, the meek, the gentle, the quiet, the confiding, the pious, the saint-like Catherine, is the great charm of the piece. One feels delighted, amid the baseness and selfishness of kings, cardinals, courtiers, and statesmen, to contemplate such a beautiful creation. Shakspeare always excels in his female characters. In no other writings do we find such pure feminine sweetness. And in none of his works is there a more lovely being. The first scene in which she appears is very characteristic. She is pleading for the people; she is endeavouring to convince the king that it is his interest to be loved, not to be feared. And as her misfortunes come, her firm and dignified opposition, her mild and Christian resignation, are very beautifully delineated. Her death is, indeed, a noble scene. We seem to see her spirit take its flight from a world that was unworthy of her to the blissful regions, where sin, and sorrow, and suffering never enter.

Cardinal Wolsey's character is drawn with a bold and masterly hand. There he is, as in life, with his pride, ambition, arrogance, and luxuriousness. The darkness of three centuries seems to pass away at the wave of the great magician's wand; and we see the haughty cardinal busily engaged in weaving the web which was to entangle himself in its toils. But soon the sky begins to blacken, intrigue is at work seeking his downfall; he is disgraced, his hollow friends of prosperity fly from him, his secret enemies declare their enmity, and with the characteristic baseness of such minds, insult the

man before whom they had humbly bent the knee. At last the storm bursts, and he falls with a mighty ruin.

And then appears the justice, the true greatness, of Shakspeare. Dramatists have too often pandered to the worst passions of the people. From the time of Aristophanes, the stage has been the chosen place whence, as from an ambush, the defenceless might be assailed, and the poisoned arrow most surely aimed. When the torrent of vice and profligacy was rolling along in the reign of Charles the Second, it was on the stage that virgin purity and modesty were ridiculed. When the French writers of the last century attempted to make a jest of virtue and religion, it was on the stage that piety and goodness were lampooned. And had Shakspeare at all resembled his successors, it would have been in this play, under the pretence of blaming the vices of the cardinal, that he would have assailed the altar itself. But he does not do so. He blames Wolsey's faults, but he never attacks Christianity. He censures Wolsey. Yet it would be difficult for any Roman Catholic writer to show that Shakspeare at all exaggerated the defects of the cardinal's character. On the contrary, what is most admirable and most astonishing, is the spirit of justice which the dramatist displays. After Wolsey's fall Shakspeare makes him appear truly great. We see that he, like the body of mankind, could bear the frowns of fortune better than her smiles. We see that in adversity he acquires qualities which he had never shown in prosperity. He discovers what a deceitful phantom he had been pursuing, his eyes are opened, he finds how slippery is the path of greatness, how deceitful are the smiles of kings, what a broken reed to lean on is the favour of a monarch, how despicable is the service of the proudest ruler of this world, compared with that of Him who is always ready to succour the afflicted, and never deserts His servants when the snows of age begin to shower upon their heads.

Shakspeare even makes some apologies for Wolsey; and he does this, it must be remembered, in a play which was written during the time of Queen Elizabeth, and which was to be acted before Protestants. After the severe and just enumeration of the cardinal's errors, he tells us that, though sprung from an humble stock, the fallen minister was born to much honour from his cradle; that though proud and haughty to his enemies, he was always kind and generous to his friends; that he was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; that he was a munificent patron of learning, and founded two colleges, one at Ipswich, and the other at Oxford; that his overthrow was to him a blessing, for it was not till then that he knew himself and felt the blessedness of being little: and that, to add greater. honour to his age than man could give, he died fearing God. Such is the magnanimity, the lofty philosophy, the Christian charity that is every where breathed through the historical plays. Shakspeare's worst characters have generally some redeeming traits; for they, too, are of divine origin; they too have stamped upon them the image of the Creator; they too are children of time, and in joy or sorrow heirs of immortality. His motto seems to have been "sanctè et sapienter;" as indeed it is the motto of every truly great man, of every truly great body of men, that have ever permanently influenced, or will ever permanently influence, the world.

It is time that this essay should end. And yet much more might be said on these noble dramas. The difficulty is not what to say, but, of such a number of thoughts as crowd upon the mind, what to omit. We seem as though we had been wandering in some lovely country with the men of former ages. Each great man has passed; and we should gladly have questioned each hero. But one by one they have all passed by; and while we are still wishing to learn much, the time has flown swiftly away, and the hour of departure has come. We again turn to the genius of the place, aud not without tears of gratitude, bid Shakspeare farewell.

I

Many people have supposed that he was ignorant of his high vocation. And yet it is difficult to imagine a great genius successfully labouring for so many years, and taking such profound and just notes of human nature, without himself being conscious that he had written words worthy of immortality. But every improbability has been eagerly admitted rather than that Shakspeare should be considered a reasonable being. Genius is not that blind creature of instinct that it has sometimes been supposed. In the heart of a man of genius there is a still small voice which is ever urging him onwards; a still small voice which is heard in poverty, in obscurity, in misfortune, and disgrace; a still small voice which rouses him to exertion, and makes him play manfully the part which he was sent by heaven to play; a still small voice which is ever telling him to be wakeful, for that he is not like the common children of mortality, who are born, grow up to maturity, become old and die, without the earth retaining imprinted on its bosom the least trace that they ever were. It was this still small voice which might bid him be comforted, when he was suffering from the neglect, the ingratitude, and the injustice of the world, and might tell him to be of good cheer, for that victory follows in the footsteps of the brave. It was this still small voice which might gladden his heart when he found himself friendless and forlorn in the streets of London, and which might remind him that, though he seemed a mere drop in the great stream of humanity that was rolling on to its destination in the ocean of eternity, yet the smallest drop has sometimes become a pearl, and has been kept as a precious treasure, after the great brawling torrent has been for ever engulphed. It was this still small voice which might whisper to him, that, though he was then poor and unknown, though the busy jostled him, though the horses of the rich splashed him, yet the time would come, when, in every part of the globe, in the halls of Oxford, in the streets of Germany, among the dusky population of Hindostan, in the hut of the backwoodsman in the