gers to Delphi report her guiltless. She swoons away, and Paulina gives out that she is dead. But she is secretly conveyed away, after the funeral, and revived. Her little son dies from grief. Sixteen years now elapse, and we are across seas in Bohemia, near the palace of Polixenes, and near where Hermione's infant daughter was exposed, but rescued (with a bundle containing rich bearing cloth, gold, jewels, etc.) by an old shepherd. Antigonus and his ship's crew were all lost, so no trace of the infant could be found. But here she is, the sweetest girl in Bohemia and named Perdita ("the lost one"). A sheepshearing feast at the old shepherd's cottage is in progress. His son has gone for sugar and spices and rice, and had his pocket picked by that rogue of rogues, that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, Autolycus. The dainty Perdita moves about under the green trees as the hostess of the occasion, giving to each guest a bunch of sweet flowers and a welcome. Polixenes and Camillo are here in disguise, to look after Polixenes's son Florizel. After dancing, and some songs from peddler Autolycus, Florizel and Perdita are about to be betrothed when Polixenes discovers himself and threatens direst punishment to the rustics. The lovers fly to Sicily, with a feigned story for the ear of Leontes; and the old shepherd and his son get aboard Florizel's ship to show the bundle and "fairy gold » found with Perdita, expecting thus to save their lives by proving that they are not rePolixenes sponsible for her doings.

and Camillo follow the fugitives, and at Leontes's court is great rejoicing at the discovery of the king's daughter; which joy is increased tenfold by Paulina, who restores Hermione to her repentant husband's arms. Her device for gradually and gently possessing him of the idea of Hermione's being alive, is curious and shrewd. She gives out that she has in her gallery a marvelous statue of Hermione by Julio Romano, so recently finished that the red paint on the lips is yet wet. When the curtain is drawn by Paulina, husband and daughter gaze greedily on the statue, and to their amazement it is made to step down from its pedestal and speak. They perceive it to be warm with life, and to be indeed Hermione herself,-let us hope, to have less strain on her charity thereafter.

THE TEMPEST, one of Shakespeare's very latest plays (1611), written in the mellow maturity of his genius, is probably based on a lost Italian novella or play, though certain incidents are borrowed from three pamphlets on the Bermudas and Virginia and from Florio's Montaigne. The scene is said to be laid in the haunted island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. In the opening lines we see a ship laboring in heavy seas near the shore of an island, whose sole inhabitants, besides the spirits of earth and air typified in the dainty yet powerful sprite Ariel, are Prospero and his lovely daughter Miranda, and their slave, the deformed boor Caliban, an aborigine of the is land. The grave and good Prospero is a luckier castaway than Robinson Crusoe, in that his old friend Gonzalo put into the boat with him not only his infant daughter, but clothes, and some books of magic, by the aid of which both men and spirits, and the very ele ments, are subject to the beck of his wand. He was the rightful Duke of Milan, but was supplanted by his brother Antonio, who with his confederate, the king of Naples, and the lat ter's son Ferdinand and others, is cast ashore on the island. The shipwreck occurs full in the sight of the weeping Miranda; but all hands are saved, and the ship too. The humorous characters are the butler Stephano, and the court jester Trinculo, both semi-drunk, their speech and songs caught from the sailors, and savoring of salt and tar. Throughout the play the three groups of personages, the royal retinue with the irrepressible and malapropos old Gonzalo, the drunken fellows and Caliban, and Prospero with his daughter and Ferdinand,—move leisurely to and fro, the whole action taking up only three hours. The three boors, fuddled with their fine liquor and bearing the bark bottle, rove about the enchanted island, fall into the filthy-mantled pool, and are stoutly pinched by Prospero's goblins for theft. The murderous plot of Antonio and the courtier Sebastian is exposed at the phantom banquet of the harpies. Spellbound in the linden grove, all the guilty parties come forward into a charmed circle and take a lecture from Prospero. General reconciliation. Then finally, Miranda and Ferdinand are discovered playing chess before Prospero's

cell, and learn that to-morrow they set sail for Naples to be married.

on

Two NOBLE KINSMEN. -A most noble and pathetic drama, founded Chaucer's Knighte's Tale,' and first printed in 1634, with the names of Shakespeare and Fletcher on the titlepage as authors. The grand passages show the very style of 'Coriolanus' and of The Tempest,' and are wholly beyond Fletcher's powers: e. g., the magnificent description of Arcite's horse, worthy of the Panathenaic frieze; the Meissonier portraits of the champion Knights' assistants, - the stern, brownfaced prince with long, black, shining hair and lion mien, the massive-thewed blond, and the rest; the portrait of Arcite himself, his eye "like a sharp weapon on a soft sheath,» «of most fiery sparkle and soft sweetness"; or of Palamon's brown manly face and thought-lined brow. And how Shakespearean that phrase applied to old men nearing death,-"the gray approachers»! And who but Shakespeare would have written the lines (so admired by Tennyson) on Mars,—

"Who dost pluck

With hand omnipotent from forth blue clouds The mason'd turrets"?

The under-plot about the jailer's daughter, who goes mad for Palamon's love, is a weak and repulsive imitation of the Ophelia scenes in Hamlet.' The play is about the tribulations of two noble youths who both love the same sweet girl, "fresher than the May," - Emilia, sister of Hippolyta, wife of Theseus. Their love separates them; they were a miracle of friendship, they become bitterest foes. By Theseus's command they select each three friends, and in a trial by combat cf the eight champions, Arcite wins Emilia, but is at once killed by his horse falling on him, and Palamon secures the prize after all.

HENRY VIII., a historical drama by Shakespeare, based on Edward Hall's (Union of the Families of Lancaster and York,' Holinshed's 'Chronicles,' and Fox's Acts and Monuments of the Church. The key-idea is the mutability of earthly grandeur, and by one or another turn of Fortune's wheel, the overthrow of the mighty-i. e., of the Duke of Buckingham, of Cardinal Wolsey, and of Queen Katharine. The action covers a period of sixteen years,

from the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in 1520, described in the opening pages, to the death of Queen Katharine in 1536. It is the trial and divorce of this patient, queenly, and unfortunate woman, that forms the main subject of the drama. She was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, and born in 1485. She had been married when seventeen to Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII. Arthur lived only five months after his marriage, and when at seventeen years Henry VIII. came to the throne (that "most hateful ruffian and tyrant "), he married Katharine, then twenty-four. She bore him children, and he never lost his respect for her and her unblemished life. But twenty years after his marriage he met Anne Bullen at a merry ball at Cardinal Wolsey's palace, and fell in love with her, and immediately conceived conscientious scruples against the legality of his marriage. Queen Katharine is brought to trial before a solemn council of nobles and churchmen. With fine dignity she appeals to the Pope and leaves the council, refusing then and ever after to attend "any of their courts." The speeches are masterpieces of pathetic and noble defense. In all his facts the poet follows history very faithfully. The Pope goes against her, and she is divorced and sequestered at Kimbolton, where presently she dies heart-broken, sending a dying message of love to Henry. Intertwined with the sad fortunes of the queen are the equally crushing calamities that overtake Cardinal Wolsey. His high-blown pride, his oppressive exactions in amassing wealth greater than the king's, his ego et rex meus, his double dealing with Henry in securing the Pope's sanction to the divorce,- these and other things are the means whereby his many enemies work his ruin. He is stripped of all his dignities and offices, and wanders away, an old man broken with the storms of State, to lay his bones in Leicester Abbey. The episode of the trial of Archbishop Cranmer is so pathetically handled as to excite tears. He is brought to trial for heresy by his enemy Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, but has previously been moved to tears of gratitude by Henry's secretly bidding him be of good cheer, and giving him his signet ring as a talisman to conjure with if too hard pressed by his enemies. Henry is so placed as to oversee (himself unseen)

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Cranmer's trial and the arrogant persecution of Gardiner. Cranmer produces the ring just as they are commanding him to be led away to the Tower; and Henry steps forth to first rebuke his enemies and then command them to be at peace. He does Cranmer the bigh honor of asking him to become a godfather to the daughter (Elizabeth) of Anne Bullen; and after Cranmer's eloquent prophecy at the christening, the curtain falls. The setting of this play is full of rich and magnificent scenery and spectacular pomp.

The Vision of Piers Plowman, an

English poem of the fourteenth century, is ascribed, chiefly on the ground of internal evidence, to William Langland or Longland, a monk of Malvern, in spirit a Thomas Carlyle of the Middle Ages, crying out against abuses, insisting upon sincerity as the first of virtues.

This poem belongs to the class of the dream-poem, a characteristic product of his century. Dante had seen all heaven and hell in vision. Gower and the author of Pearl' had dreamed dreams. "The Vision of Piers Plowman' is a curious amalgamation of fantastic allegory and clear-cut fact, of nebulous dreams and vivid pictures of the England of the day. The author is at once as realistic as Chaucer and as mystical as Guillaume de Lorris, the observant man of the world and the brooding anchorite; his poem reflects both the England of the fourteenth century and the visionary, child-like medieval mind.

Internal evidence fixes its date about 1362. Forty manuscript copies of it, belonging for the most part to the latter end of the fourteenth century, attest its popularity. Three distinct versions are extant, known as Texts A, B, and C. The probable date of Text A is 1362-63; of Text B, 1376-77; of Text C, 1398-99. The variations in these texts are considerable. An imitation of the poem called 'Piers Plowman's Crede' appeared about 1393. The author of Piers Plowman› represents himself as falling asleep on Malvern Hills, on a beautiful May morning. In his dreams he beholds a vast plain, "a feir feld ful of folk," representing indeed the whole of humanity: knights, monks, parsons, workmen singing French songs, cooks crying hot pies! "Hote pyes, hote!" pardoners, pilgrims, preachers, beggars, jongleurs who will

not work, japers, and "mynstralles » that sell "glee.» They are, or nearly so, the same beings Chaucer assembled at the "Tabard» inn, on the eve of his pilgrimage to Canterbury. This crowd has likewise a pilgrimage to make. .

They journey through abstract countries, they follow mystic roads in search of Truth and of Supreme Good.»

This search is the subject of an elaborate allegory, in the course of which the current abuses in Church and State are vigorously attacked. The poet inveighs especially against the greed and insincerity of his age, personifying these qualities in Lady Meed, who leads men astray, and tricks them into sin. The poem throws much light upon social and religious institutions of the day. These revelations must, however, be sought for among the strange mist-shapes of allegory.

The poet's vocabulary is similar to that of Chaucer. Several dialects are combined in it, the Midland dialect dominating. The metre is alliterative, long lines, divided into half-lines by a pause. Each line contains strong, or accented, syllables in fixed number, and weak or unaccented syllables in varying number.

About Piers Plowman' there has grown up a considerable body of editorial commentary. The work of Thomas Wright and of Skeat in this field is noteworthy.

Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle, first appeared in Fraser's Magazine, in 1833-34, and later in book form. It is divided into three parts,-introductory, biographical, and philosophical. The first part describes an imaginary book on Clothes: Their Origin and Influence by Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, Professor of Things in General at Weissnichtwo in Germany. The book, the editor complains, is uneven in style and matter, and extraordinarily difficult to comprehend, but of such vigor in places that he is impelled to translate parts of it. The book begins with a history of clothes: they are co-existent with civilization, and are the source of all social and political distinction. Aprons, for example, are of all sorts, from the smith's iron sheet to the bishop's useless drapery. The future church is shown in the paper aprons

of the Paris cooks; future historians will talk, not of church, but of journalism, and of editors instead of statesmen. Man is apt to forget that he is not a mere clothed animal,- that to the eye of pure reason he is a soul. Still Teufelsdröckh does not counsel a return to the natural state, for he recognizes the utility of clothes as the foundation of society. Wonder, at himself or at nature, every man must feel in order to worship. Everything material is but an emblem of something spiritual; clothes are such emblems, and are thus worthy of examination.

The autobiographic details sent to the editor which fill Book ii. came to him on loose scraps of paper in sealed paper bags, with no attempt at arrangement anywhere. A mysterious stranger left Teufelsdröckh, when he was a helpless infant, at the house of Andreas Futteral, a veteran and farmer. Andreas and his wife Gretchen brought the boy up honestly and carefully. As a child he roamed out-doors, listened to the talk of old men, and watched the sunset light play over the valley. At school he learned little, and at the gymnasiums less. At the university he received no instruction, but happened to prefer reading to rioting, and so gained a great deal of information. Then he was thrust into the world to find out what his capability was by himself. He withdrew from the law, in which he had begun, and tried to start out for himself. The woman whom he loved married another, and he was plunged into the depths of despair. Doubt, which he had felt in the university, became unbelief in God and even the Devil,—in everything but duty, could he have known what duty was. He was a victim to a curious fear, until one day his whole spirit rose, and uttering the protest of the "everlasting no," asserted its own freedom. After that he wandered in a "Centre of Indifference,» not caring much, but interested in cities, fields, and books. Life came to mean freedom to him; he felt impelled to "look through the shows of things to the things themselves," -to find the Ideal in the midst of the Actual.

The third book, which deals with the philosophy itself, is much less continuous and clear. In the first chapter, he praises George Fox's suit of leather as the most remarkable suit of its century, since it was a symbol of the equality of

man and of the freedom of thought. Religion is the basis of society: every society may be described as a church which is audibly preaching or prophesying, or which is not yet articulate, or which is dumb with old age. Religion has entirely abandoned the clothes provided for her by modern society, and sits apart making herself new ones. All symbols are valuable as keeping something silent, and, at the same time, as revealing something of the Infinite. Society now has no proper symbols, owing to over-utilitarianism and overindependence. Still a new society is forming itself to rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old. Mankind, like nature, is one, not an aggregate of units. The future church for the worship of these mysteries will be literature, as already suggested by the prophet Goethe. Custom makes nature, time, and space, which are really miracles, seem natural, but we must feel wonder and reverence at them. Our life is through mystery to mystery, from God to God. The chief points, in concluding, to be remembered are: All life is based on wonder; all clothes, or symbols, are forms or manifestations of the spiritual or infinite; cant and hypocrisy everywhere should be replaced by clear truth.

Troubadours and Trouveres, by Har

riet Waters Preston, is an account of the poetry of Provence, old and new. The earlier essays describe the work of the two best-known of the "Félibres," as the school of modern poets of the South of France is called: men who write in the old "langue d'oc,» or Provençal dialect, in opposition to the "langue d'oil," or French tongue, which they do not acknowledge as their language. Miss Preston makes many translations of their verse, which give a vivid presentment of the fire and color and naive simplicity of the originals. Another poet of the South of France, neither Provençal nor French, was Jacques Jasmin, who wrote in the peculiar Gascon dialect, with all the wit and gayety of his race. The forerunners of all these men were the old troubadours, who flourished from the driving out of the Saracens to the end of the crusades, during the "age of chivalry," and who spent their lives making love songs for the ladies of their preference. Their chansons, or songs, so

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simple and so perfect, were invariably on the one theme of love; occasionally they wrote longer pieces, called "sirventes,» which were narrative or satiric. Many charming translations illustrate their manner. The book closes with a chapter on the Arthurian legends, showing what these owe to Geoffrey of Monmouth, to unknown French romances, to Sir Thomas Malory, and finally to Tennyson. Miss Preston's excellent scholarship and rare literary gift combine to make a most entertaining book.

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.

The first part of Wilhelm Meister' was finished in 1796, after having occupied Goethe's attention for twenty years. The central idea of this great novel is the development of the individual by means of the most varied experiences of life. There is no plot proper, but in a series of brilliant episodes the different stages of the hero's spiritual growth are brought before the reader. Wilhelm Meister is a young man with many admirable qualities of character, but passionate and emotional, somewhat unstable, lacking reflection and proper knowledge of the world. The son of a well-to-do business man in a small German town is traveling for his father's house when he falls in with a troupe of strolling comedians. From earliest boy

ambitions. Leaving the actors, he becomes acquainted with some landed proprietors belonging to the lesser nobility of the country. And here the sec ond period of his apprenticeship begins. Meeting people of culture and position in society, he comes into closer touch with real life, and is initiated into the ways of the world. His development is further hastened by finding his son Felix, whom he has never acknowledged. What women and society are still unable to teach him, he now learns from his own child. The awakening sense of his parental responsibilities is the final touchstone of his fully developed manhood. Having thus completed his apprenticeship to life in a series of bitter experiences, he now marries a lady of rank, and turns landed proprietor. The scheme of the novel gave Goethe opportunity to bring in the most varied phases of society, especially the nobility of his time, and the actors. He also discusses different æsthetic principles, especially the laws of dramatic art as exemplified in 'Hamlet.' He also touches on questions of education, and religious controversy, and satirizes somewhat the secret societies, just then beginning to spring up in Germany. (Wilhelm Meister,' in short, gives a richly colored picture of the life of Goethe's time.

a passion which has been nourished by puppet-plays and much reading of dramatic literature and romances. Disgusted with the routine of business, and eager for new experiences, he joins the players, determined to become an actor himself. His apprenticeship to life falls into two periods. The first comprises the lessons he learned while among the players. Brought up in comfort in a respectable, somewhat philistine household, he enjoys at first the free and easy life of his new companions, though as a class they had at that period hardly any standing in society. He becomes passionately attached to Marianne, a charming young actress, who returns his love, but whom he leaves after a while, because of ungrounded jealousy. For a time he thinks he has found his true vocation in the pursuit of the actor's art. But ill-success on the stage, and closer acquaintance with this bohemian life of shams and gilded misery, disillusions him, and reveals the insubstantiality of his youthful

established Nathaniel Hawthorne's fame, and which he wrote in the ancient environment of Salem, was published in 1850, when he was forty-six years old. Its simple plot of Puritan times in New England is surrounded with an air of mystery and of weird imaginings. The scene is in Boston, two hundred years ago: the chief characters are Hester Prynne; her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, the young but revered minister of the town; their child, Pearl; and her husband Roger Chillingworth, an aged scholar, a former resident of Amsterdam, who, resolving to remove to the New World, had, two years previously, sent his young wife Hester on before him. When the book opens, he arrives in Boston, to find her upon the pillory. her babe in her arms; upon her breast the Scarlet Letter «A» («Adulteress »), which she has been condemned to wear for life. She refuses to reveal the name of her partner in guilt, and takes up her lonely abode on the edge of the