sions teach, and no person can be a model of manhood whose nature is their victim.

The most beautiful portion of the lecture is that devoted to the representation of Othello and Desdemona, in respect to their fitness for each other; and a triumphant answer is given to the many objections to the match on the score of color and character. Mr. Hudson calls it "the chaste union of magnanimity and meekness." In his delineation of Desdemona, he develops the exceeding beauty of this most delicate and exquisite of Shakspeare's women, with uncommon refinement of sentiment and certainty of minute analysis, at the same time a little injuring the effect by snapping his epigrammatic torpedoes in the faces of the champions of woman's rights. This delineation is an illustration of the flexibility with which the writer adapts his style to the tone and character of his subject, and of his singular felicity in exhibiting the pathos of gentleness, and the beauty of deep, strong and quiet affection.

Mr. Hudson, in these lectures on Shakspeare, has made the analysis of every character the occasion of observations on a wide variety of subjects which its nature suggests. He has thus given his philosophy of life, in relation to the practical operation of the passions and beliefs of men; and we think he has been especially successful in treating that important branch of ethics which refers to the passage of virtues into vices, through their connection with pride, vanity, or extravagant enthusiasm. As a large portion of the world's goodness is, like King Richard's frame, but half made up, and offends from its inharmonious and partial character where it is most impressive by its separate qualities, the field open to the ethical analyst is unbounded; and as we have rather ungently touched on some of Mr. Hudson's digressions, it is but just to observe that he has evinced throughout a disposition to disconnect virtue from cant, fanaticism, and conceit; that he has detected with a sure eye, and whipped with an honest ardor, the excellence which is self-conscious, and the purity which is proudly malignant; and that he has exhibited, with a fine union of sagacity and eloquence, the beauty of that humble goodness which seeks to elude the eye, which "vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up." In a period like the present, when conscience rushes to the rostrum and explodes in fifth-rate heroics, and every "puny whipster" of morality mistakes his appetite for notoriety for a call from the seventh heaven to rail at every person wiser and better than himself, such lessons in ethics may not be without their effect, recommended as they are by a vigor and wit as inexhaustible as the folly and fanaticism on which they are exercised. We trust that the present volumes will not be the last in which the author's keen intellect and sturdy character will find adequate expression. He has not, as yet, touched the historical plays of Shakspeare, a sphere of investigation and interpretation where he may win additional honors. In choosing the world's great poet as the text for his inquiries into human nature, he has a subject which, however it may exhaust the resources of criticism, is in itself exhaustless. The present work we consider an evidence rather than the measure of his capacity; and when we next meet him on the open field of literature, we trust to find some extravagances retrenched and some peculiarities suppressed, which now to some extent injure his style, and encumber the movement of his mind.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN.*

THE elegant edition of Sheridan's dramatic works, published by Moxon, betrays one strange blunder, in including the entertainment of The Camp, a feeble farce written by Sheridan's friend Tickell, and altogether unworthy of preservation in any form. The biography furnished by Leigh Hunt possesses little merit beyond an occasional luckiness of phrase and an occasional felicity of criticism. It is written with more than his usual languid jauntiness of style, and with less than his usual sweetness of fancy. Indeed, that cant of good feeling and conceit of heartiness, which, expressed in a certain sparkling flatness of style, constitute so much of the intellectual capital of Hunt's sentimental old age, are as out of place, in a consideration of the sharp, shining wit, the elaborate diction, and polished artifice of Sheridan's writings, as in the narration of the brilliant depravities and good-natured good-for-nothingness of Sheridan's character. Like all Hunt's essays, however, it is exceedingly amusing, even in its vivacious presumption and genial pertness; but a man like Sheridan, the dramatist, the orator, the politician, the boon companion,

"The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall," deserved a less supercilious consideration. Hunt's sketch conveys a far more vivid impression of himself than of his subject.

The prominent qualities of Sheridan's character were ambition and indolence, the love of distinction and the love of pleasure; and the method by which he contrived to gratify both may be said to constitute his biography. From the volatility of his mind and conduct, it would be a misuse of language to say that he had good principles or bad principles. He had no principles at all. His life was a life of expedients and appearances, in which he developed a shrewdness and capacity, made up of talent and mystification, of ability and trickery, which were found equal to almost all emergencies. He most assuredly possessed neither great intellect nor great passions. There was nothing commanding in his mind, nothing deep and earnest in his heart. A good-humored selfishness and a graceful heartlessness were his best substitutes for virtue. His conduct, when not determined by sensuality, was determined by vanity, the sensuality of the intellect; and in both he followed external direction. Yet, such as he was, the son of an actor, indolent, immoral, unlearned, a libertine and a drunkard, without fortune and without connections, he achieved high social, literary, and parliamentary distinction. His life was one long career of notoriety and sensuality. At the age of twenty-six he had written some of the most sparkling comedies in the English language. From that period he became a politician, and eventually was ranked with Burke, Fox, and Pitt, among the most accomplished orators in the House of Commons. No other man with such moral habits, joined to such slender acquirements, ever raised himself to such an elevation by pure force of tact and talent. It might be said that Fox was as dissipated; but then Sheridan, unlike Fox, had not been educated for a legislator; and more than all, he had none of Fox's power of impassioned argumentation, none of his greatness and generosity of soul. Burke, like Sheridan, attained a prominent position in the most aristocratic of parties, without the advantages of birth and connections; but then he had the advantage of being the greatest statesman of his country, and Sheridan could make no pretensions to Burke's force of character and amplitude of comprehension, to his industry, his learning, or to that fiery and flexible imagination which penetrated all with life. It must be allowed that Sheridan approached neither of these men in solid reputation; but as his ambition was but one side of his love of pleasure, the notoriety which immediately succeeded his efforts was all he desired. His vanity fed and his senses gratified, there was little left for ambition to seek, or pleasure to crave. All that there is in immediate fame to intoxicate the possessor, all that there is in fame which can be enjoyed, he obtained with the smallest possible scorning of delights, and the smallest possible living of laborious days.

Sheridan was essentially a man of wit. By this we do not mean that he was merely a witty man, but that wit was as much the predominant element in his character as it was the largest power of his mind. From his habit of looking at life and its duties through the medium of epigram, he lost all sincerity of thought and earnest