LITTLE CHILDREN. H, what a pretty picture we have this month! Well now, this is nice! Such we can fancy will be the exclamation of some of our readers as they look at the engraving on the previous page. And we should think they were wanting in taste if they did not admire it. The sight of children, if they are nice children like this little boy and girl, is always pleasant to those whose minds are rightly constituted. Grown-up people like to look on little children because it awakens pleasant memories of their happy juvenile days. It ofttimes happens that a child Can make us think of what we were, And back the happy season bring When we were free from grief and care. But the memory awakened may have also a tinge of sadness as well, for It sometimes happen that we see A likeness in that cherub face, "I am fond of children," says the Rev. Thomas Binney. “I think them the poetry of the world, the fresh flowers of our hearths and homes; little conjurors, with their "natural magic," working by their spells what delights and enriches all ranks, and equalizes the different classes of society. Often as they bring with them anxieties, and live to occasion sorrow and grief, we should get on very badly without them. Only think if there was never anything anywhere to be seen, but great grown-up men and women! How we should long for the sight of a little child! Every infant comes into the world like a delegated prophet, the harbinger and herald of good tidings, whose office it is "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children," and to draw "the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.' A child softens and purifies the heart, warming and melting it by its gentle presence; it enriches the soul by new feelings, and awakens within it what is favourable to virtue. It is a beam of light, a fountain of love, a teacher whose lessons few can resist. Infants recall us from much that engenders and encourages selfishness, that freezes the affections, roughens the manners, indurates the heart; they brighten the home, deepen love, invigorate exertion, infuse courage, and vivify and sustain the charities of life. It would be a terrible world, I do think, if it was not embellished by little children. With Mary Howitt we can say, 'My soul blesses the great Father every day, that He has gladdened the earth with little children.' STUDIES OF THE POETS. BY GEORGE PACKER. II. SHAKSPERE. (Continued.) HAKSPERE stands confessedly at the head of all literature. This place he occupies not by the opinion of one generation, or one class of men in various generations, but by the common agreement of all men in every country and age. It is no more necessary to prove the correctness of this judgment than it is to demonstrate that the sun is brighter than the moon, and gives us more light. In pointing out the leading characteristics of his writings, however, our readers will see some of the reasons why he occupies this unique position. We are indeed better able to appraise the value of his genius in the present day than were any of his own contemporaries. To appreciate the dimensions of a large building, or the merits of a fine picture, we are compelled to step back a few paces that the eye may obtain a complete view, and similarly those judgments on the works of great men are the most likely to be correct that are formed at some distance of time. Part of the secret of Shakspere's popularity in his own day may be put down to his catching the spirit of his age, and perhaps pandering a little to its weaknesses and follies. This, however, does not render him popular now, but has become a positive disadvantage; for the very allusions and customs which in his day served to light up his writings and give them piquancy, now only obscure them, and constitute a battle-ground for contending critics. His works have, however, survived all subsequent changes in the spirit of the times, and are popular because they appeal to the human heart in all ages, and in the main represent not what is ephemeral, but what is eternal. The first thing that strikes us is that Shakspere is pre-eminently the poet of nature. He penetrates beneath what is local and transient and fastens on what is permanent and abiding. He holds the mirror up to the human heart, and shows its movements in all the various forms and conditions of life, Hence his characters are animated; they live and move and breathe; the feeling of every one contemplating them is that here we have lifelike reality, and not men of straw. Beggars and princes, courtiers and soldiers, bishops and statesmen pass before us, each one possessing such verisimilitude as seems only possible to writers who have made each character the study of a life. As the various departments of civil or political life are put before us, war and peace, love and hatred, the home and the field, the senate and the court, each has such full-orbed completeness as to suggest an entire life of careful observation spent in its study. Such is the expanse of subjects treated by Shakspere that in reading his works as compared with any other author, we feel as if we had escaped the confined and stifling air of a narrow room, and got upon the hills where the free air is charged with invigorating health for all who breathe it. The perfect men with which other books are familiar are not to be found in Shakspere. It is human life as it is that he represents, and hence we observe defects in his noblest portraits, and something to pity or admire in even the most villainous. In this respect Shakspere stand next to the Bible. We never have either faultless paragons of virtue, or impossible monstrosities of vice, but good and bad men, such as are common to every age, there being something defective in the best, and some redeeming quality in even the very worst. We behold each man from his own standpoint as well as from the standpoint of others; and we thus see how in almost every course of wrongdoing a man practises deceit upon himself before deceiving others. Hence the study of Shakspere makes us acquainted with the marvellous sinuosities of the human heart, and gives us that lore which is the most valuable in the conduct of everyday life, and the resistance of common temptations. Next, Shakspere is above all others the poet of woman, giving us such various and perfect portraits of female character as are to be seen nowhere else. The home has been universally recognized as the sphere of woman's duty, the orbit of her gentle and heavenly path. Hence she is the ordained guardian of society at its very fount and source; for what is society but a multitude of homes in the aggregate ? And though in the present day not a few have arisen who would force her into a more public position, it may yet be maintained that were she to make the nation ring with her eloquence, or to surpass the highest scholars in her learning, or to lead victorious armies across a desolated continent, she would not achieve a position any more elevated or dignified than she now occupies as the queen of the home, forming the minds of her children to virtue, and soothing the heart of her husband, jaded with the worry and struggle of life. But sources are generally hidden and unseen, and it is a necessary condition of the functions she fills that her life is more private than that of man. Hence, as most writers have required some bold subject where there was plenty of action and change to maintain the interest of their productions, the life of woman was, before Shakspere, commonly shunned as a poetic theme. It was for him to seize it, and to present it teeming with life and significance; at the same time scrupulously observing the necessary conditions of its peculiar character. His women therefore are for the most part perfectly womanly, and not, as with other writers who had described them, really men in the guise of women, In the beautiful forms of Miranda, Ophelia, Hermione, Desdemona, Perdita, Imogene, and many others whom I might name, we have not representations of perfect women, for Shakspere did not believe in absolutely faultless women any more than he did in absolutely faultless men. women But we have sweet and affectionate and beautiful "Creatures not too bright or good whose greatness may be traced to home affections and influences as its source, and whose highest ambitions cluster round that sacred shrine, the domestic hearth. All writers before him had in the main concerned themselves with men; it was for Shakspere to deal with the other and not less important or influential half of the world, and flood it with the rich light of his genius; and hence he has been not improperly styled the "absolute creator of female character in literature." Again, though the element of religious feeling and experience never enters into his works, Shakspere plainly shows that he is acquainted with the fundamental facts of Christianity, and vividly sets forth the power of conscience, and the connection that exists between wrong-doing and suffering as cause and effect. When he draws on the future world, and summons spirits on the scene, the ghosts are but the objective realities created by the evil consciences of the men whom they arise to condemn. The light of the Gospel has driven away the delusions of pagan Greece, and such a god as Nemesis is no longer believed in. But retribution is still a truth that human nature needs to be reminded of, and is the subject of many a poet's tale. In Shakspere's most successful villains we see the truth of Scripture, that "he that sinneth, wrongeth his own soul." The justice rendered to wrong-doing is not so complete as that with which a modern three-volume novel winds up, but it is sufficient to show that in this confused world there is yet a moral purpose pursued by Providence through all conflicting events—" a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Our moral sense is satisfied as we come to the catastrophe; and this is undoubtedly one source of Shakspere's power, that on the whole his conclusions harmonise with the utterances of that silent monitor placed in every man's breast. One other characteristic may be named, it is formed by a union of elements very rare. The plots are well conceived and worked out with such completeness as to maintain unflagging interest; the very interruptions that occur only serve to help forward the end proposed, and in the most casual and unconscious manner the noblest sentiments find utterance in the most eloquent words. Many of these sentiments awaken an immediate response within us. By a process more swift than a mere logical one, we feel and know that they are right. Shakspere in this way scatters gold with a lavish hand, and his utterances attain the climax of human wisdom on the thousand and one subjects of human life. Hence his wise words are ingrained in our ordinary language, and few |