2. The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality; its power of communication with all other minds; so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and no one peculiar bias or exclusive excellence, more than another. He was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in himself, but he was all that others were, or that they could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but he could follow them, by anticipation, intuitively, into all their conceivable +ramifications, through every change of fortune, or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had "a mind, reflecting ages past," and present; all the people that ever lived are there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and the beggar. "All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states; maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave," are hardly hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as with his own.

3. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and surveyed the generations of men and the individuals as they passed, with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions, and motives; as well those they knew, as those they did not know or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies "nodded to him and did him their courtesies;" and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of "his so potent art."

4. He had only to speak of any thing, in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects, "subject to the same skyey influences," the same local, outward, and unforseen accidents which would occur in reality. Thus, the character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language and manners of his own, but the scenery and situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, "his frequent haunts, and ancient neighborhood," are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all the familiarity of an old recollection. "The whole *coheres semblably together," in time, place, and circumstance.

5. In reading this author, you do not merely learn what his characters say; you see their persons. By something expressed

or understood, you are at no loss to decipher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the grouping, the by-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word, an epithet, paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in the history of the person represented. So, (as it has been ingeniously remarked,) when Prospero describes himself as being left alone in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, "Me and thy crying self," flings the imagination instantly back from the grown woman, to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the first and most trying scene of his misfortune before us, with all that he must have suffered in the interval.

6. How well the silent anguish of Macduff is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of Malcolm, "What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows!" Again, Hamlet, in the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, somewhat abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on life, by saying "Man delights me not, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so;" which is explained by their answer-" My lord, we had no such stuff in our thoughts; but we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what scanty entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way:" as if, while Hamlet was making his speech, his two old school-fellows from Wittenberg, had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players crossing their minds. It is not "a combination and a form" of words, a set-speech or two, a +preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this; but all the persons concerned must have been present in the poet's imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the reader.

HAZLITT.

LESSON CLXXXI.

BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

1. THE characteristic peculiarity of the "Pilgrim's Progress" is, that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory of Bunyan, has been read by many thousands with tears. There are some good allegories in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit in Addison. In these performances, there is, perhaps, as much wit and ingenuity, as in the "Pilgrim's

Progress." But the pleasure which is produced by the vision of Mirza, or the vision of Theodore, or the contest between Rest and Labor, is exactly similar to the pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes, or from a canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which belongs wholly to the understanding, and in which the feelings have no part whatever.

2. It is not so with the "Pilgrim's Progress." That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it. Doctor Johnson, all whose studies were desultory, and who hated, as he said, to + read books through, made an exception in favor of the "Pilgrim's Progress.' That work, he said, was one of the two or three works which he wished longer. In the wildest parts of Scotland, the "Pilgrim's Progress" is the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery, the "Pilgrim's Progress" is a greater favorite than Jack the Giant-Killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path, as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not, should be as though they were; that the imaginations of one mind, should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle, the tinker* has wrought.

3. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turn stile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket-gate and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction; the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it; the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows; all the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross or overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill-favored ones and shining ones; the tall, comely, swarthy Madame Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money; the black man in the bright vesture; Mr. Worldly Wiseman and My Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative and Mrs. Timorous; all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travelers through their allegorical progress, with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London.

4. Bunyan is almost the only writer that ever gave to the abstract, the interest of the concrete. In the works of many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. + We have not an Othello, but jealousy; not an Iago, but perfidy; not a Brutus, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative, that personifications, when he dealt with them, became men. A dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human beings in most plays.

*Bunyan was a tinker.

5. The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature, on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old, unpolluted English language; no book which shows so well, how rich that language is, in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

6. Cowper said, fifty or sixty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of these produced the "Paradise Lost," the other the "Pilgrim's Progress."

MACAULAY.

LESSON CLXXXII.

THE GOODNESS OF GOD.

1. BLESS the Lord, O my soul!

And all that is within me, bless his holy name!

Bless the Lord, O my soul!

And forget not all his benefits;

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;

Who healeth all thy diseases;

Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;

Who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies;

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things:

So that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.

2. The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment
For all that are oppressed.

He made known his ways unto Moses,
His acts unto the children of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy.
He will not always chide;

Neither will he keep his anger forever.
He has not dealt with us after our sins;
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as the heaven is high above the earth,

So great is his mercy toward them that fear him;
As far as the east is from the west,

So far hath he removed our transgression from us.

3. Like as a father pitieth his children,

So the Lord pitieth them that fear him;
For he knoweth our frame,

He remembereth that we are dust.
As for man, his days are as grass:

As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth;

For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;

And the place thereof shall know it no more.

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting,
Upon them that fear him;

And his righteousness unto children's children,

To such as keep his covenant,

And to those that remember his commandments to do them.

4. The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; And his kingdom ruleth over all.

Bless the Lord, ye, his angels, that excel in strength,

That do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word! Bless the Lord, all ye his hosts!

Ye ministers of his that do his pleasure!

Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion;
Bless the Lord, O my soul!

PS. CIII.

LESSON CLXXXIII.

GOD SEEN IN THE PHENOMENA OF NATURE.

1. I MARKED the Spring as she passed along,
With her eye of light and her lip of song;

While she stole in peace o'er the green earth's breast,
While the streams sprang out from their icy rest;
The buds bent low to the breeze's sigh,

And their breath went forth in the scented sky;
When the fields looked fresh in their sweet repose,
And the young dews slept on the new-born rose.

2. The scene was changed. It was Autumn's hour;
A frost had discolored the summer bower;
The blast wailed sad, 'mid the cankered leaves;
The reaper stood by his gathered sheaves;