“And so unsartain’s all our lives.”
Can anything exceed this? The uncertainty of life evidently superinduced the conviction of all other uncertainties, and the sublime poet bears out the intenseness of his impressions by the uncertainty of his spelling! Now, reader, mark the next line, and its context:—
“The very night they were to wed!”
Fancy this: the full blossoming of all their budding joys, anticipations, death, and hope’s accomplishment, the crowning hour of their youth’s great bliss, “the very night they were to wed,” is, with extra syncretic skill, chosen as the awful one in which
“Fate’s scissors cut Giles Scroggins’ thread!”
Now, reader, do you see the subtle use of practical knowledge? Are you convinced of the impotent prescription from knives only? Can you not perceive in “Fate’s scissors” a parallel for the unthought-of host “that bore the mighty wood of Dunsinane against the blood-stained murderer of the pious Duncan?” Does not the fatal truth rush, like an unseen draught into rheumatic crannies, slick through your soul’s perception? Are you not prepared for this—to be resumed in our next?
THE NEW ADMINISTRATION.
FROM OUR OWN COURT CIRCULAR.
Lord Lyndhurst is to have the seals; but it is not yet decided who is to be entrusted with the wafer-stamps. Gold-stick has not been appointed, and there are so many of the Conservatives whose qualities peculiarly fit them for the office of stick, that the choice will be exceedingly embarrassing.