lightful thought, that not one of those myriads of once living creatures were made in vain, any more than are the existing species which they respectively represent. Each individual had a certain purpose to answer in the great economy of creation; a purpose which, in the vast majority of cases, is hidden from us in our present state, but which shall be fully revealed when the light of a brighter and better world has chased away the clouds and darkness of the present. It is gratifying to know, that if there are men sufficiently thoughtless and undevout to look on the once animated treasures of the British Museum, without feeling one adoring thought ascend to the throne of the great Creator, and Preserver, and Governor of all, there are others who pay repeated visits to this noble Institution for the special purpose of seeing and worshipping the Supreme Being through the medium of his works. Galen was converted from Atheism to Christianity by viewing the wonderful anatomy of the human frame. I cannot refer to individual instances of similar conversions by means of an inspection of the once animated productions exhibited in the British Museum; but I do think it is no great stretch of fancy, or rather no stretch of fancy at all, to suppose that instances of such conversions have taken place.

It is gratifying to know that the British Museum is yearly becoming an object of increased attention to the public. The number of persons that visited it in 1823, when a parliamentary report was published, was 153,000. In 1836, another parliamentary report was published, and the number that visited it in the previous year was, in round numbers, 250,000. I have not learned the number that visited it last year, but I am convinced it must have been close on 300,000, if, indeed, it was not greater. On the Monday of the week preceding the late coronation, the astonishing number of 10,000 paid a visit to the Museum. On Monday there is always a greater number of visiters than on any other day; a fact which is to be accounted for from the circumstance of two days intervening between the exhibitions of Friday and Monday, while, between the other days on which the institution is open, there is only an interval of one day. One of the officers has mentioned to me that the average number of visiters per day is now about 2,500. This would give for three days each week 380,000 visiters per annum. The new arrangement made last year, extending the time for which the Museum is to be kept open for the public from ten till seven during the summer months, instead of from ten till four, has tended considerably to increase the number of visiters. The taste for such exhibitions ought to be encouraged and extended, by every possible means, by the legislature. They have a softening and ennobling effect on the minds of all who witness them. If the lower classes could only be made to become partial to such sights, every trace of their fondness for prize-fighting, or anything brutal or barbarous, would speedily be obliterated.

In conclusion I have much pleasure in stating, that the administration of the affairs of the British Museum has undergone a very great improvement within the last ten years. The mismanagement in the affairs of the Institution, of which some years ago there were such just grounds of complaint, were principally to be ascribed to

the fact of many of the trustees never attending any of the meetings, or in any way discharging the duties of their office. The parliamentary report of 1836, which gently hinted to such individuals that it would not be amiss if they were to resign and make way for noblemen and gentlemen who would make a principle of discharging the duties pertaining to the office of trustee, has had the best effect. Some have resigned, and others, who formerly paid little or no attention to the affairs of the Institution, are now among the most active and efficient of its governors. A visible improvement has taken place within the last two years. Everything is now seen to the best advantage, and new objects of interest and value are being daily added to the collections in the various departments. If the Museum goes on at the same rapid rate of improvement which it has done for the last two years, it will in a very short time compete with any similar institution in Europe. This ought to be with us an object of national ambition; and it is to be hoped that the government and the legislature will enter into the thing with becoming spirit. An average annual grant of 15,000l. or 16,000l., (which is all that has been given for four years past,) for the purpose of adding to the treasures in the natural history department, is altogether unworthy of a great country. The amount ought to be at least 50,0007. The public money could not only not be applied to a better purpose, but no application of it would meet with a more general or cordial approval.

MUSEA MORIBUNDA.

FROM THE GREEK.

WASTE not on me one pitying line;
Ambition's glorious fate is mine!
With heedless, rapturous haste I flew,
Lured by those eyes of witching blue.
The dazzling sheen betrayed my sight;
And now I sink to endless night.
Mine eyes grow dim; my senses reel;
No fears, no lingering pangs I feel;
No vain regrets-a joyful death I die :
Quenched in the crystal of Miranda's eye.

SHAKSPEARE FANCIES.1

No. II.

DESDEMONA AND FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS.

How shall we compare Desdemona and Mrs. Hemans? To dwell on the good points only of character, affords a much purer pleasure than to enlarge on failings and petty imperfections to which all flesh is heir. Therefore, in alluding to authoresses, we pass over every frailty of which the inquisitive love to hear, making no mention of affectation, self-complacency, envy, jealousy, and other feminine fallings-off, which the gossiping of the day has brought to light. Their poetical and amiable attributes alone render them fit emblems of the women of Shakspeare, who never bestows a fault on any of his heroines. They are not consequently sinless; but we can infer their misdemeanours from circumstances merely, for they are not stated as errors, nor moralised on in mawkish style; and well-chosen incidents, simply sketched by a master-hand, possess many more powers of usefulness than the elaborate lectures of prosing imitators, or the longwinded sermons of fairly-intentioned dullards. In Romeo and Juliet, for instance, we are not in so many words told that Juliet did wrong in marrying without consent of parents, nor that Romeo was faulty in having concealed from the authors of his being the state of his affections, and engagement of his hand; but does not the unhappy consummation of things brought about by their duplicity speak volumes in itself?

Many people read the hapless story of Desdemona, believing her only a little lower than the angels while they do so; that is, if they reflect at all on the characters, and not solely on the occurrences of the piece. Yet may not her undutiful conduct to a fond father lead us to anticipate the attendance of misfortunes on her path? And though, as a wife, she is perfect, her untimely end seems scarcely more than the desert of her unfilial behaviour, especially as, at the discovery of her decease, we are informed of Brabantio's death, whose gray hairs her desertion had brought down with sorrow to the grave. She has not even a probibition of Othello's suit to plead in apology: if Brabantio had been previously addressed on the subject, he must, when aroused by Roderigo and Iago, have instantly suspected the truth, instead of, with implicit confidence in his child, at first entirely discrediting their announcement of her defection, and then, without any preconception that the Moor is her chosen one, remaining wholly dependent on their information.

The short part of Brabantio is an interesting and affecting one. Such a high opinion has he of his daughter, that, even after he has learned her departure, he cannot blame, he will not suspect her; but

1 Continued from vol. xxii. p. 304.

he inquires rather, if there are not charms by which the property of youth and maidhood may be abused; and the person who is capable of estimating excellence in another is always of some worth himself. Very different from the common race of selfish fathers, from such as Barnesley, the man of business, does Brabantio prove himself to be in his salutation of the doge.

"Neither my place, nor aught I heard of business,

Hath rais'd me from my bed; nor doth the general care
Take hold on me; for my particular grief

Is of so flood-gate and o'erbearing nature,
That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,
And it is still itself."

We must not hence quarrel with his patriotism: and man devoid of natural affection will not disinterestedly serve his country. His appreciation of the beauty of his daughter's life evinces refinement in his own mind; still, his very description of the tranquillity of her disposition, the repose of her demeanour, manifests that their intercourse had been reserved. His words

"I am glad at soul I have no other child;

For thy escape would teach me tyranny,"

show the amiability of his temper, and that his government of Desdemona had not been despotic. How these two lines touch the heart— the unaffected demonstration of grief, which could not be hidden—

"But words are words; I never yet did hear

That the bruis'd heart was pierced through the ear.

I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state."

He had no wish to grow sentimental, nor to subject himself to the observation and ridicule of uncongenial, uninterested, and unsympathising auditors. His vexation at the unworthy deception which had been practised on him displays itself in his testy reply to the Duke's proposal that Desdemona should reside with him during the absence of her husband-"I'll not have it so." And an earthly revenge bursts forth in his parting warning

"Look to her, Moor, have a quick eye to see;

She has deceiv'd her father, and may thee."

But we find it easy to make allowances for his fretfulness; only an unfeeling or a proud man could have silently borne a similar trial.

A consideration of the father aptly introduces us to the daughter; for as Desdemona was motherless, she lived more under the influence of her surviving parent. She was tenderly nurtured and affectionately brought up, without companion or confidant, her thoughts being thus left to feed upon their own sweet imaginings, which were not occupied, as she was the child of wealth, by the more vulgar anxieties and exertions incumbent upon those in poorer circumstances. Only so many household duties devolved upon her as to render her, by

their fulfilment, more attractive as a woman, and more capable as a

matron.

"A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush'd at herself."

Is not the very beau-ideal of a fascinating English girl here depicted?-a young Lucilla Edgermond, or Felicia Brown, with deeply thinking, pensive blue eyes, long flaxen hair, and exquisitely fair complexion, tinted by the colouring of the inner leaves of a June rose; a retiring and timid figure; but when the fancy is interested, and absorbed to the oblivion of self, at least of imaginary insignificance, the form and countenance radiant from soul, those soft eyes kindled by genius, those silken tresses glancing sunnily beneath the halo of light which crowns the intellectual brow of this favourite of Heaven.

Mrs. Hemans, like Desdemona, was unhappy in her married life; and, like the former, we may conceive the latter from her childhood to have been a poet. What a tribute to her imaginative ability is paid by the artless Moor in his story of their courtship, when her existence was a lengthened dream of enchantment, and, in idea, she gazed, like Miranda, now on the dire shipwreck of a brave vessel, "who had at least one noble creature in her-now like Xerxes on the rocky brow

t "Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis,"

she strained her eyes to catch the motions of her hero, a new Themistocles of naval fight-now, like Cellini, she was transported to the midst of besieged combatants; and, penetrating the ranks of advancing foes, in their brave leader she discerns her own commander, another Bourbon in her estimation, who scales the ramparts of a second Rome in importance, to her conception; who ascends, approaching near and nearer to the spot whence she palpitatingly observes; until, pierced by a musket-ball, he droops and falls; yet, not being mortally wounded, he rallies, and she ceases for a little while to pant for breath; once again he carries all before him, but not for long-bleeding afresh, he totters, is surrounded, disarmed, seized, and finally purchased to captivity. She listens to the recital of his deeds in the years of bondage, and believes his tales more witty than those of Cervantes; his adventures as romantic, his delineations of caverns and wildernesses, mountains and hollows, cities and plains, cannibals, who devour the flesh of men, and bramins, who will not even taste that of fish, fowl, or quadruped, as faithful, animated, and glowing, as those contained in the far-famed, marvellous, and entertaining histories of her countryman, Marco Polo.

Her ingenuity is discernible in her abandonment of home: she conceived Brabantio might be displeased by her selection of a consortthat he might forbid the continuance of their friendship; and, it may be, fix upon another lover, in order by his means to banish, if possible, the recollection of Othello. Then, she longed to share the dangers of her warrior: if she suffered him, alone, to depart on another expedition, she might lose him for ever, by death or imprisonment;