extinguishes all spontaneity, and exchanges the natural out-pouring of love and delight for the niggardly use of a compelled virtue. Such is Angelo ; "who scarce confesses That his blood flows, or that his appetite ls more to bread than stone." Claudio, condemned to death by Angelo, on his way to prison meets his friend Lucio:: Claudio. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty. As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope, by the immoderate use, Turns to restraint." This is the sum of all hygeanic codes, and few there are but can offer a personal illustration. Lucio happily replies "If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for certain of my creditors." At the request of Claudio, Lucio seeks his sister, Isabella, and requires her to ask her brother's life of Angelo. To the entreaties of Lucio she replies A thousand persons might express an idea that, from its prevalence, has grown into a proverb; but none other than genius could invest it with such a powerful apparition. When our doubts stand before us as a personal foe, we wrestle with and overcome them ; but when we consider our fears as a part of ourselves, we excuse the timidity, for a man cannot quarrel with himself. Reading the eloquent arguments of Isabella before Angelo, we are struck with the pliability of her reasoning, assailing Angelo at first with generalities, next rising to the pathetic-the passionate; bursting forth at last with an indignant spirit, she flashes her scorn and contempt upon him, but, withal, displaying the deep affections of her heart, toned down by the sensibilities of the sex. "Isab.-Oh, it is excellent To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. Lucio. That's well said. Isab. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder. Merciful heaven! Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle ;-But man, proud man! Drest in a little brief authority; Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence,—like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, It would be well if reading and learning this speech were made one of our religious duties. Nothing is so fatal to injustice as satire and contempt-write it up in our courts of law, in our halls of justice, in letters of gold by the side of the tables of the Decalogue. As I read, I fancy Isabella with her contracted brow, her eye dilated, her lip curled, her person, like "an embodied storm." I see Angelo stand reproved even in his thoughts.-Angelo, subdued, replies "Why do you put these sayings upon me?" The imperatorial dost thou, is exchanged for the submissive do you.—Angelo's soliloquy is a better sermon than all the homilies of the church. The fourth scene introduces us again to Isabella and Angelo : the whole scene is miraculously fine; each line is a text of truth. Isabella's previous reply to Angelo somewhat offends me that she should scorn the proposal, that she should reproach and threaten the character of Angelo, is natural; but to avail herself of this very proposed crime to save her brother, on the condition of her silence, is, indeed, "holding a candle to the devil." Act the third introduces Claudio in prison visited by the Duke, whose advice to Claudio is admirable; it is incomparably better than the soliloquy of Cato, though in style so simple and unadorned. "Duke. Be absolute for death; either death or life That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art, Of all the agents which assail the body none are so widely fatal as the atmosphere. The celebrated Montesquieu, who pursued the inquiry of climatic influence on both the body and mind, traces the peculiarities of nations to the influence of climate more than to any other cause. The climate of England, from its variability, is productive of the most fatal diseases. How many thousands yearly are victims to consumption! and, what is most melancholy, the evil springs even in the first element of life. With regard to the moral influence, we possess an advantage which does not belong to the cloudless skies of the east. Our world of clouds, with its thousand forms and colours, is alone in its grandeur, with all the magnificence of the ocean, it presents an ever-varying landscape. "England, with all thy faults I love thee still! With dripping rains or wither'd frost, I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies, And fields without a flower, for warmer France The climatic suicidical mania of the English has been hitherto proverbial, but France, of late years, has assumed self-slaughter as an accomplishment, and, like a dramatic hero, makes it a point of study to "die well," If the old apothegm of Solon be correct, the French are philosophers to the last :-" Dici beatus ante obitum nemo debet." We shall find that poor Claudio did not much respect a "perpetual honour:" visited by Isabella she makes known to him the condition of his pardon: "Claudio.-Let me know the point. Isabella.-O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great From man, in whom This is physically false, but morally true. the nervous system is most perfectly developed, down to the polypi, the gradations are marked by a more and more imperfect nervous means. system. It is sufficiently evident that life itself depends upon the same principle in every living creature, and that what we term life, is known only as nervous energy, power, fluid, or element; that sensibility depends on the same cause; and that as instinct rises by degrees up to the highest possible point, so does the nervous system become proportionably developed, and that in reasoning man the perfection is accomplished. It is known that the sensibilities of one differ from another, as the nervous or sanguineous systems are ascendant; that a particular class is muscular, another sanguineous, another nervous, and that their dispositions correspond. The ability to bear pain differs in man and man according to sensibility: some persons of acute nervous sensibility are what may be termed physical cowards; they shrink from every species of danger: while others with an indifference almost stoical, provoke injury by every The same differences are observable in animals. Mode of life will particularly augment either disposition, so that the one shall become a timid effeminate citizen, while the other shall possess all the temerity of an ancient gladiator. The tenacity for life depends entirely upon these causes. Where there is a highly developed, acutely sensitive nervous system, there will be much suffering, and with that suffering a proportionable danger. Thus one man dies under an operation that another cares little for, and suffers less. With animals the same phenomena is observable: the proboscis of the Elephant is acutely sensitive, and of which the animal is peculiarly careful, always raising it above its head when attacking an enemy. As we descend to the polypi and meduse, the suffering is less, the tenacity for life greater; so that a "scotched Snake will be herself again," a lobster deprived of its claws will reproduce them. Thus the amount of suffering is wisely ordained to be as various in degree, as are the animals themselves in structure. Morally, the Poet is right, or otherwise this argument might be adduced as an excuse for cruelty "I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail, Sacred to neatness and repose, th' alcove, Nothing will better prove my allegation, that morally "a beetle suffers as much as when a giant dies," than the argument of Bishop Hall, who in discussing the subject of an equality of happiness hereafter, says "Yet to conceive of these heavenly degrees that the least is glorious, so do these vessels differ, though all are full." The amount is relative to the individual. A man feels more, absolutely, than a worm; but not relative to the capacity for suffering in each. The worm writhes and lives, but its sufferings are as great as they can be, and therefore does he feel, by comparison, as great a pang as when a giant dies. The poet here, by the bye, has, by choosing a giant, thrown the comparison to its utmost limit -Polyphemus to a worm. The discourse hetween Claudio and Isabella continues; how natural is the vacillating feelings of a young, hopeful mind; oscillating between honour and the dread of death. "Claudio.-Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To what we fear of death." How mysteriously, 'sublimely grand is this passage: therein is folded all the philosophy of life and death; the hopes and fears of man, the essentiality of life: let us think awhile, for we have all a personal interest in the subject. The man who could read unmoved, these lines, is less than little-is worse than wicked,-"to die and go we know not where ;" death opens with a mystery-" to lie in cold obstruction and to rot ;" death personified is horrible !—"this sensible warm clay to become a kneaded clod ;" the life, the quick compelling nerves, the rounded form, the eloquent eye, the life, the |