upon an equal balance; the greatest abuses everywhere prevailed, and consequently universal discontent.

To account for this sudden and unexpected change puzzled all the conjurors; not one of them could unravel the mystery. One ventured to imagine that the king was under the influence of some of the emissaries of Yama, whose office it is to corrupt the souls of holy men, and seduce them to his infernal abodes. Another would not for a moment admit that the soul of so pious a penitentiary, who had rivalled all the seven penitents in the dreadful severity of his mortifications, could on a sudden have abandoned the claims to which his penances entitled him, and have submitted to the dominion of that retributory divinity who presides over the infernal prison of doomed souls, to whom he awards everlasting tortures. No one, however, could assign the true cause of that remarkable change which had lately distinguished the conduct of their royal master, and general gloom prevailed. Commerce became languid; the cultivation of the land was neglected; the rains failed during one entire monsoon*, and famine was the unhappy consequence. Still the sovereign seemed to feel no sympathy for his unhappy people: he neither abridged his pleasures nor his His troops were kept in arrears, and his treasury was all but drained. The royal voluptuary, nevertheless, made not the least abatement in the extravagance of his pursuits.

expenses.

In proportion as the king grew tyrannical, the queen became cold; this so irritated the impatient Yougal, that one day, in the vehemence of his indignation, he struck her rudely on the cheek.

The lory, then perched upon the top of its cage (for it was frequently released from confinement), seeing the assault, could no longer contain its rage, but, flying from its perch, seized the nose of the counterfeit monarch in its beak, and tore off the whole cartilage, then, fluttering for an instant, with a scream of triumph darted through a window that happened to be open, and escaped to the roof of the palace, where it was beyond the reach of Yougal's wrath. It was some consolation to the unquiet soul of Veramarken to think that it had left upon its enemy the mark of its revenge, which the tyrant would carry with him to his

grave.

* The monsoon is the rainy season.

"Suppose," thought the feathered penitent, "I should ever be restored to that sainted body which my spirit so unfortunately quitted, shall I not deplore the loss of my nose? But how am I ever to gain possession of my fleshly tenement? There is not the slightest chance of this. The wretch who has taken up his spiritual habitation in the once uncontaminated frame of one of the devoutest of Suniassis, knows too well the advantages of his transmutation to relinquish them."

The miserable lory ruffled its plumes, drooped its head upon its bright crimson breast, closed its eyes, and raised one leg preparatory to taking a short repose over its misfortunes. All would not do ; sleep, that comes to all, hung not upon its weary eyelids, and the unhappy bird was forced to think upon what it had lost by neglecting a young and lovely consort for the society of Asuras, in regions beyond the sun. Whilst occupied by these melancholy reflections a noise caught its ear, which sounded like vehement expressions of rage. Hopping from the roof to the coping of the parapet, and looking down into the spacious court below, it perceived the incensed Yougal issue from the palace, with a large yellow plaster of turmeric upon the spot where the nasal organ lately projected, issuing his orders in a tone of frantic exacerbation, that the lory should be instantly pursued, and its neck wrung.

“If,” he cried, “I have not the head of that treacherous bird before me ere the sun sinks behind yonder forest, every head that has a living tongue in it within these walls shall grin upon spikes for the benefit of the vultures before the next dawn.”

"Cree-cree-cree," cried the lory, and darting upwards, was in a few moments above the clouds. The king grew more frantic than ever; a sudden pang, reminding him of the loss of his nose, rendered him almost beside himself. He raved as if he had been stark mad, stamped, swore, and thumped his attendants with his embroidered slippers; but this producing no sensible impression, he seized the right ear of one of his favourite domestics between his teeth, and bit it with such hearty good-will that the poor fellow dropped on his knees in an agony of reverential alarm, imploring most lustily for a remission of the penalty to which his master was subjecting him. There was evidently no catching the lory, which had secured its escape.

The loss of his nose, instead of awakening the regal tyrant to a proper sense of duty, rendered him the more violent and headstrong. He treated the queen at length with such severity that she avoided his presence altogether, which irritated him to so extreme a degree, that he ordered her to be confined to her apartment and dieted like a criminal.

Meanwhile, the lory having flown above the stars, uttered the mandiram. The soul of Veramarken instantly quitted it, and ascended to the celestial abode of Bhavani, who received the unquiet spirit with that divine courtesy for which she has ever been remarkable among the divinities worshipped by all pious Hindoos. No sooner had the soul of Veramarken abandoned the lory's feathers, than the lifeless bird dropped into the court of the palace, where it was picked up by the unfortunate domestic whose ear had been so severely bitten by his master. The overjoyed menial took the lory to the noseless monarch, who seized it with a grin of savage triumph, and, ordering it to be stuffed with pepper, hung it up in the queen's chamber, as a memorial of accomplished revenge.

It was many weeks before the wound in the king's face healed, and when it did, the cicatrice presented a horrible chasm between his eyes and upper lip, where the olfactory member formerly rested, and which he could not persuade to grow again. Cataplasms of turmeric were in vain applied to induce the natural protuberance to extend itself as formerly. Nothing would do; the rent nostrils gaped hideously, and the mortified tyrant shrank from the reflection of his own face whenever he stood before a mirror, or took his bath in the marble sarcophagus within the palace-garden.

Although the spirit of Veramarken was once more in paradise, in the society of the loveliest of the Asuras, those who at tended upon the incomparable Bhavani, incomparable even among divinities-it was still more miserable than if it had been undergoing the most dreadful inflictions in the abode of Yama, where sinful souls are tortured so variously as to do infinite credit to the ingenuity of that deity's ministers. He wandered about the celestial groves as moodily as if he were in a desert upon earth, instead of being in a paradise above the skies. Bhavani, having summoned him to her presence, thus addressed the ejected soul of her pious adorer-"Spirit of Verámar

ken, the holiest Suniassi that ever paid homage at my shrine, who, when in the body (thy absence from which thou now so grievously mournest), hast lain six hours longer upon a bed of iron spikes, and drunk more putrid water from the sacred Ganges than any penitentiary since the first coming of Menu*, do not let me see thee thus despond. Thou mayest still regain thy former position upon earth, if thou art not too impatient under thy present bereavement. Listen to what I counsel thee, and remember that the infallible wisdom of divinities renders their counsel worth attending to. He who was once thy slave is already a miserable man; he has rendered himself despised by thy subjects, and detested by thy queen. Descend thou to earth, and hover near him in thy invisibility, for it is not unlikely that he, disgusted with his present state, may eject his own spirit, in order to visit the Swerga, when thou mayest take possession of thy then untenanted body, and be as happy as the state of a Suniassi can render thee.'

Veramarken took Bhavani's advice, and immediately descending upon earth, hovered round the head of Yougal, who felt in consequence such a perpetual whizzing in his ears that he was in a state of unceasing torture. Day after day he was tormented with this new visitation, until his life was a positive burthen to him. From constant vexation he grew thin and rickety, as if second childhood had suddenly come upon him. His body became pursy and flaccid, his limbs stiff, his appetite capricious, and his voice hollow. Ulcers broke out in his flesh and drained him to the very marrow. His nights were sleepless, and his days without a beam of joy to gladden them. His withered cheeks were stained with the tears of unuttered grief, and his breast laboured with perpetual sighs. At length his life became so insupportable that he determined to avail himself of the power he possessed of disembodying his harassed spirit, now associated with so much misery, and seek for a while the heaven of Indra, supposing that by this time Veramarken had ceased to entertain any further thoughts of returning to earth. Having, after deliberate reflection come to this determination, he uttered the potent mandiram. In a moment his soul was disengaged from the frame of the Suniassi, which that of

The Noah of the Hindoos and their great lawgiver.

Veramarken immediately entered. The latter's disappointment, however, was extreme at finding himself an object of such hideous deformity. Without a nose, covered with disease from head to foot, detested by his queen, and despised by his subjects, how small was his prospect of happiness! He repaired to the queen's apartment, she shrank from him with disgust; and when he explained to her that his soul had been separated from her for a long interval, and his body possessed by that of his slave, she turned from him with a look of scornful incredulity, which showed she was not to be persuaded to receive as truth a fact, so entirely out of the ordinary course of nature. Poor Veramarken was more miserable than ever. He summoned all the celebrated physicians in his dominions to restore him to health, and to his nose, or rather his nose to him ; but they could not give him back what had been so wantonly dissipated: as for his nose, the sagest among them admitted with one accord, that this was a loss utterly irreparable. The wretched Suniassi now found that by resuming his original form, instead of regaining his lost happiness, he had only secured additional misery, and the melancholy which instantly preyed upon his mind aggravated the infirImities of his frame. He grew hourly worse, and at length began to apprehend that he had merely resumed his body to yield it up a prey to the great conqueror death. This was a grievous affliction, for he had a young wife on whom he doated, and not having yet numbered more than forty years, his meridian of existence being only just passed, he had promised himself a still long interval of enjoyment, having determined to relinquish the severe life of a devotee for the more befitting dignities of a sovereign.

The merciful Bhavani, compassionating his sufferings, condescended to visit him in his palace, invisible to all eyes but his own. "Veramarken,” she cried, with a bland smile, “thou hast sufficiently suffered, and shalt now have thy reward. Obey my injunctions, and thou shalt be happy. So soon as the sun peeps from yonder plain, repair to the queen's chamber, and stand before her in all thy present bodily deformity. Whilst thy ears receive the taunts of her scorn, invoke my name, and instantly the rich glow of youth shall suffuse thy cheeks, which shall swell to the nicest

undulations of beauty. Thy nose shall be restored to such perfection as to baffle the limner's art. Thy limbs shall assume the roundness and proportions of the most admirable symmetry; thy breath shall exhale the perfume wafted from the spicy groves of Arabia the happy ;-in sum thou shalt be the envy of woman, and the idol of thy now detesting queen."

The delighted monarch was revived by these assurances, and as the divinity vanished from his sight, he offered up a mantra of thanksgiving, to which none but a devout Suniassi would give utterance.

According to the injunction of the goddess, he appeared at the time specified before his royal consort, and besought her to look upon him with an eye of pity at least if not of affection. She was moved by the tender humility of his appeal, and bending her beautiful eyes upon him, said in a tone of unwonted gentleness,

"If I have looked upon you with coldness, you must admit that your harshness has provoked it; as, however, you appear sensible that your conduct has been unjustifiable, assure yourself of my forgiveness, though the deformity which your unhallowed indulgences have brought upon you, positively repel my love.

While she was yet speaking, Veramarken uttered the potential mandiram. The queen attracted by his muttering, looked earnestly upon him, when, to her astonishment, his form suddenly rounded, and his flesh assumed the tension of vigorous health: the skin tightened, the muscles protruded, the eyes grew bright, the nose was gradually developed; the whole body quickly exhibited the exactest symmetry, and the Suniassi stood before her in the perfection of youthful beauty. Notwithstanding the change, his identity was not to be mistaken. The marks of his long and holy penances were still upon his body. The queen was amazed, but delight soon overmastering her astonishment, she sprang towards her royal consort and threw herself passionately into his arms. Their happiness was now complete, and the piety of the regal ascetic rewarded.

Meanwhile the spirit of Yougal had been repelled from the Swerga, as unfit for its purity. The wretched soul upon returning to earth was overwhelmed with consternation at finding the Suniassi had once more occupied his own body, in which he was restored to the confidence both of his queen

and of his subjects. The spirit of the slave, after floating about the capital of Veramarken like a pestilential miasm, was compelled to enter the trunk of a lean ox, which was daily driven to a distant tank for water to irrigate the palace garden, being sparingly fed and unsparingly belabored. The groans of Yougal's incarcerated soul were neither pitied nor heeded, and when death released it from

Ir is an extraordinary fact that, of a poet so universally admired in every Christian country as Shakspeare, so little should be known, scarcely more than of Homer and of Hesiod, who wrote upwards of twenty-seven centuries before him. This is the more remarkable, as Shakspeare lived in an age when literature was cultivated with considerable assiduity, and in a country which has ever delighted to distinguish her literary progeny. He was moreover confessedly the most eminent dramatist of his time, and had the unprecedented honour of a solicitation from the Queen to give a new cast to one of the characters of his historical plays, which produced "The Merry Wives of Windsor," upon the whole perhaps the most exquisitely comic of all our author's immortal productions.

That so little is known of Shakspeare has in general been mainly attributed to the remarkable fact, that, unconscious of his marvellous powers, he did not write with any expectation of those glorious master-pieces of his pen surviving the period in which he lived and the purpose for which he designed them; but it is no doubt more to be attributed to the sluggish indifference of his cotemporaries in collecting facts respecting the life of a man ordained to descend to posterity with a reputation unparalleled in the chronicles of literary history. The emulation of cotemporaneous excellence, the jealousy of those who were eclipsed by his success, the vulgar and pitiful spirits with whom Shakspeare had to deal, threw a mist around him which has, to a certain extent, shrouded him from the public eye, though his genius shone through and dispelled them, like an everlasting and

unclouded sun dispersing the noxious vapours from a stagnant lake.

The deplorable modesty of Shakspeare for it is deeply to be deplored, as the result has proved,—in estimating his own works so low and in withholding from the world any account of himself, probably arose, the former from the consciousness that he was a man of but moderate education, with little or no knowledge of the classical writers, then, as now, the study of all well educated persons; the latter, from the fact of his being born in humble circumstances, which probably caused him to refrain from putting forth a name for distinction, which he imagined too humble to deserve it, and not sufficiently elevated by the mere`outward circumstances of birth and social connexions to render it attractive among a people with whom the feudal pride of birth and ancestry obtained to so great a degree that nothing was esteemed highly which did not emanate from such as were far above the ordinary level of the vulgar.

Whatever the cause of that obscurity in which every thing connected with Shakspeare is wrapped, it is unquestionably certain that at this moment there exists no life of him but what is infinitely meagre and unsatisfactory to the last degree, containing for the most part mere assumptions instead of facts, speculation instead of history, and affording us nothing but disappointment instead of that information which delights our hearts while it improves our understandings. We never investigate the labours of those who have endeavoured to throw some light upon the early history of this remarkable man without lamenting how little they have added to the real stock

of information upon a subject which has engaged some of the brightest talents during the last century.

Shakspeare has justly been called the father of the English drama, for before his time, with some few, and very few, exceptions, the stage was devoted to the representation of mere mummeries, such as would now disgrace the fair-booths of the Richardsons and Sadlers, whose itinerant companies address their efforts to no higher order of audiences than clowns and artisans. Up to the reign of Elizabeth the stage was almost exclusively confined to the exhibition of bungling masquerades little superior to the village drolleries which, in most country villages at a distance from the metropolis, now signalize the presence of Christ

The characters of the drama were represented before the time of our immortal bard by persons of a very low grade in society, poorly born and worse educated, and all the female parts were sustained by men. It was the practice then to introduce the lowest ribaldry, the spontaneous effusions of those ignorant and vulgar artists, which was received as wit by their audiences, and frequently applauded in proportion as it was gross and indecent. This practice is indirectly impeached by Shakspeare in Hamlet's address to the players, in which he says, "And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it t."

The earliest kind of drama exhibited in this country was those sacred representations known by the name of "Mysteries." These were played in convents and other sacred places, chiefly for the edification of that cœnobite community, to whom the ordinary recreations of life were denied; though the laity were likewise admitted to these spiritual dramatic exhibitions, in which the characters were sustained by the members of those religious fraternities, monks

*It is the practice in country villages in several counties in England for the rustics to get up a rude sort of drama at Christmas. The parties go from house to house and exhibit their histrionic powers. They are termed mummers. This practice is universal in Devonshire.

+ Hamlet, Act iii. Scene 2.

and nuns frequently mingling in scenes as revolting to the spectator, as they were abominable to the Deity;-acts from the Sacred Scriptures being literally represented as described by the inspired writer; Adam and Eve appearing in Paradise, when they had no other garb than that of their innocence to cover them. Such were considered pious exhibitions calculated to raise the minds of the devout to the contemplation of heavenly things. Men and women appearing in that state of undepraved nature described in the second chapter of Genesis, was looked upon by the holy brotherhoods and sisterhoods under the dominion of papal supremacy, as an act every way worthy of that religion which they professed to believe purified the carnal mind and fitted the lapsed soul for the eternal fruition of Paradise.

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The Mysteries" were the earliest dramas known in Europe, and obtained during the middle ages in all Catholic countries, where they were represented as helps to devotion, though they too frequently tended to pamper the worst passions and to produce a demoralizing effect especially upon the younger auditors; who, upon certain occasions, crowded to witness the most meretricious exhibitions, to which the seal of sanctity was as it were affixed as a sort of voucher for the propriety of those indecent mummeries. These, in fact, continued to form the standard drama of England until they were succeeded by the

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The "Mysteries," or miracle-plays, were performed in this country so early as the twelfth century, probably earlier. The subjects were generally, though not invariably, selected from Scripture, and the representation took place with little or no aid of scenery. "In the year 1110," says Mr. Malone in his historical account of the English stage, as Dr. Percy and Mr. Warton have observed, the miracle-play of Saint Catherine, written by Geoffrey, a learned Norman, afterwards abbot of St. Alban's, was acted, probably by his scholars, in the abbey of Dunstable; perhaps the first spectacle of this kind exhibited in England. William Fitzstephen, a monk of Canterbury, who, according to the best accounts, composed his very curious work