HAMLET'S INSTRUCTİON TO THE PLAYERS. 391 66 Then flushed his cheek, but not with pride, "My wife sits at the cabin-door, With throbbing heart and swollen eyes;- She speaks of sundered ties; "I cannot let those cherubs stray He's gone!-No golden bribes divide The Dacian from his babes and bride. HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS. SPEAK SHAKESPEARE. (PEAK 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 spoke 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. O! 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 392 UNDER THE ICE. 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 'twere, 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, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O! 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, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made men well, they imitated humanity so abominably! UNDER THE ICE. UNDER the ice the waters run; Under the ice our spirits lie; The Winter is growing warm and old, Under the ice, under the snow, Our lives are bound in a crystal ring, By-and-by will the south winds blow, And the roses bloom on the banks of Spring. River of life-river of love; SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS. The nights grow short, the days grow long, And the sun shines bright above. Under the ice our souls are hid, Under the ice we hide our wrong— Under the ice that has chilled us through; 393 SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.-Webster. THE HE eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor; I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all,-the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions,-Americans, all,-whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In their day and generation they served and honored the country and the whole country; and their renown is of the 394 SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS. treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,-does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose, it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight rather. Sir, I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven,-if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South,-and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist,―alienation and distrust,—are the growth, unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered. Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is,―behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history, the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill,-and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia,-and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where OUTSIDE THE ALE-HOUSE. 395 American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it,-if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it,-if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall succeed to separate it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure,-it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin! OUTSIDE THE ALE-HOUSE. DON'T go in to-night, John- There's not a loaf at home, John, Ah, John, you must remember, And, John, I can't forget, Was in the ale-house set. Ah! those were happy times, John, Then don't go in to-night! You will not go, John-John, I mind |