blood gushed from her bosom !-Hassan, 'twas Evelina! such as when she sunk at my feet expiring, while my hand grasped the dagger still crimsoned with her blood!" We meet again this night !" murmured her hollow voice! "Now rush to my arms, but first see what you have made me !— Embrace me, my bridegroom! we must never part again !” -While speaking, her form withered away! the flesh fell from her bones! her eyes burst from their sockets! a skeleton loathsome and meagre clasped me in her mouldering arms! Her infected breath was mingled with mine! her rotten fingers pressed my hand, and my face was covered with her kisses!-Oh, how I trembled with disgust !—And now blue dismal flames gleamed along the wall! the tombs were rent asunder! bands of fierce spectres rushed round me in frantic dance!-Furiously they gnashed their teeth, while they gazed upon me, and shrieked in loud yell"Welcome, thou fratricide!-Welcome, thou lost for ever!"-Horror burst the bands of sleep; distracted I flew hither but my feelings-words are too weak, too powerless to express them.-Surely this was no idle dream!-'Twas a celestial warning! 'twas my better angel that whispered"Osmond, repent your former crimes! commit not new ones!"

:

Angela!-Oh! at that name all again is calm in my bosom. Hushed by her image my tumultuous passions sink to rest, and my terrors subside into that single fear, her loss! My heart-strings are twisted round the maid, and ere I resign her, those strings must break. If I exist tomorrow night, she shall be mine. If I exist?-Ha! whence that doubt? "We meet again this night!"- -so said the spectre !-Dreadful words, be ye blotted from my mind for ever!-Hassan, to your vigilance I leave the care of my beloved. Fly to me that instant, should any unbidden footstep approach yon chamber-door. I'll go to my couch again. Follow me, Saib, and watch me while I sleep. Then, if you see my limbs convulsed, my hands clinched, my hair bristling, and cold dews trembling on my brow, seize me, rouse me! Snatch me from my bed!-I must not dream again.—O! faithless sleep, why art thou too leagued with my foes? There was a time, when thy presence brought oblivion to my sorrows; when thy poppy-crown was mingled

with roses!-Now, fear and remorse are thy sad companions, and I shudder to see thee approach my couch! Blood trickles from thy garments! snakes writhe around thy brows! thy hand holds the well-known fatal dagger, and plunges it still reeking in my breast!-then do I shriek in agony! then do I start distracted from thy arms! Oh! how I hate thee, sleep! Friend of virtue, oh! how I dread thy coming!LEWIS's Castle Spectre.

21.-HAMLET'S ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS.

SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you; trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-show and noise. Pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end is-to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image,—and the very age and body of the Time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone or come tardy off, though it may make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the censure of one of which must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably. SHAKSPEARE.

SOLILOQUIES.

1.-LADY RANDOLPH'S SOLILOQUY, LAMENTING THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND AND CHILD.

YE woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom
Accords with my soul's sadness, and draws forth
The voice of sorrow from my bursting heart,
Farewell a while: I will not leave you long;
For in your shades I deem some spirit dwells,
Who, from the chiding stream or groaning oak,
Still hears and answers to Matilda's moan.
Oh Douglas! Douglas! if departed ghosts
Are e'er permitted to review this world,
Within the circle of that wood thou art,
And, with the passion of immortals, hear'st
My lamentation; hear'st thy wretched wife
Weep for her husband slain, her infant lost.
My brother's timeless death I seem to mourn,
Who perished with thee on this fatal day:
To thee I lift my voice; to thee address
The plaint which mortal ear has never heard.
O disregard me not; though I am called
Another's now, my heart is wholly thine.
Incapable of change, affection lies
Buried, my Douglas, in thy bloody grave.

2.-DOUGLAS'S SOLILOQUY IN THE WOOD.

THIS is the place, the centre of the grove;
Here stands the oak, the monarch of the wood.
How sweet and solemn is this midnight scene!
The silver moon, unclouded, holds her way
Through skies, where I could count each little star.
The fanning west wind scarcely stirs the leaves;
The river, rushing o'er its pebbled bed,
Imposes silence with a stilly sound.
In such a place as this, at such an hour,
If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man,
And told the secrets of the world unknown.

HOME.

Eventful day! how hast thou changed my state!
Once on the cold and wintry-shaded side
Of a bleak hill mischance had rooted me:
Transplanted now to the gay sunny vale,

Like the green thorn of May my fortune flowers.
Ye glorious stars! high heaven's resplendent host!
To whom I oft have of my lot complained,
Hear and record my soul's unaltered wish-
Dead or alive, let me but be renowned !
May Heaven inspire some fierce gigantic Dane
To give a bold defiance to our host!
Before he speaks it out, I will accept:

Like Douglas conquer, or like Douglas die.

HOME,

3.CATO'S SOLILOQUY ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

Ir must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!

Else, whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?—
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us':
'Tis Heaven itself that points out—a hereafter,
And intimates-Eternity to man.

Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it.-
Here will I hold. If there's a Power above us,
(And that there is, all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works), He must delight in virtue :
And that which He delights in must be happy.

But when? or where? This world-was made for Cæsar?

I'm weary of conjectures-this must end them.—

[Laying his hand on his sword.

Thus I am doubly armed. My death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me.
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.―
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

4.-HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.

To be or not to be?-that is the question.-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?-To die—to sleep-
No more ?-and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die-to sleep-

To sleep-perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub.-
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.-There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pang of depised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
(That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns) puzzles the will;
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all:
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

ADDISON.

SHAKSPEARE.

5.-HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON HIS MOTHER'S MARRIAGE

WITH HIS UNCLE.

OH that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!