No bleak winter wind is so bitter and cold.
The room now seemed to extend in width and in length; the sounds of revelry ceased, and other characters appeared upon the scene. Lady Macbeth, her eyes bending on vacancy, her lips moving convulsively, her voice audible, but in fearful whispers, slept her last sleep of darkness, guilt, and terror. The Weird Sisters danced round their magic caldron, hideous, anomalous, and immortal! The noble Moor ended “life's fitful season,” remorseful and heartbroken. The “Majesty of buried Denmark” revisited “the pale glimpses of the moon.” Ariel, dismissed by Pros-pero, warbled his valedictory strain, and flew to his bright dwelling, “under the blossom that hangs on the bough.” The chiefs and sages of imperial Rome swept along in silent majesty. Lear, on his knees, bareheaded, with heavenward eye, quivering lip, and hands clasped together in agony, pronounced the terrible curse, and in his death realised all that can be imagined of human woe. Shylock, the representative of a once-despised and persecuted race, pleaded his cause before the senate, and lost it by a quibble. Obe-ron, Puck, and the ethereal essences of a Midsummer Night's Dream flitted in the moonbeams. Benedick and Beatrice had their wars of wit and combats of the tongue. The Lady Constance, alternately reproachful, despairing, and frenzied, exhibited a matchless picture of maternal tenderness. Juliet breathed forth her sighs to the chaste stars. Isabella read a lesson to haughty authority, when she asks her brother's forfeited life at the hands of the Duke, worthy of holy seer or sage *; and Ophelia, in her distraction, was simple, touching, and sublime.
* An eminent dignitary of the Church of England was once
discoursing with the author on the morality of Shakspere. He
regretted that the Bard had not spoken on that most glorious
of all subjects, Man's Redemption, beyond a few lines
(exquisitely beautiful) in the first seene of Hamlet. The
author immediately pointed out the following terse, but
transcendant passage from “Measure for Measure.”
“Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And HE that might the 'vantage best have took,
Found out the remedy.”
It would pass the bounds of the most exalted eulogy to
record the prelate's answer, and how deeply affected he was
whilst making it.
Though these soul-stirring scenes were perfectly familiar to Uncle Timothy, and from youth to age had been his morning study and his nightly dream, they had never been invested with such an absorbing reality before, and he stood transfixed, a wondering spectator of the glorious vision,—for such to his aching sight it seemed to be. At this moment, the embroidered arras that hung before the oriel window of the tapestried chamber was slowly drawn aside, and the figure of Shakspere, his eyes beaming with immortality, and his lofty brow discoursing of all things past, present, and to come, stood revealed to view! “Flowers of all hues, and without thorn the rose,” sprung up spontaneously beneath his feet.
And as he walk'd along th' enamell'd bed
Of flow'rs, disposed in many a fairy ring,
Celestial music answer d to his tread,
As if his feet had touch'd some hidden spring
Of harmony—so soft the airs did breathe
In the charmed ear—around—above—beneath?