child of the great I AM, and that in these its aspirations it calls Him Father. And as age on age rolls by, and we learn more humbly to bow to him who came to bring life and immortality to light, we shall feel more the truth of that sublime revelation which God early made of himself to his children, when he said to Moses, I Am that I Am.

From what has been said we may perceive that universality is not the gift of Shakspeare alone, but natural to the mind of man; and that whenever we unburthen ourselves of that load of selfishness under which what is natural in us lies distorted, it will resume as its own estate that diversity of being in which he delighted. That which in the poet, the philosopher, or the warrior, therefore affects us, is this higher natural action of the mind, which, though exhibited in one, is felt to be harmonious with all; which imparts to us, as it were, their own universality, and makes us for a while companions of their various life. In the individual act we feel more than that which suffices for this alone; we feel sensible that the blood that is filling one vein, and becoming visible to us in one form, possesses a vitality of which every limb and the whole body are alone the fit expression. This natural action of the mind is ever revealing to us more than we have before known in whatever direction applied, for this alone unconsciously moves in its appointed path; the only

human actor in the drama of existence, save him who is by duty becoming consciously natural, that can show us any good. In its equable and uninterrupted movements, it harmonizes ever with nature, giving the spiritual interpretation to her silent and sublime growth. In the movements of Shakspeare's mind, we are permitted to see an explanation of that strange phenomenon in the government of Him who made us, by which that which is most universal appears to be coincident with that which is most particular. In him we see how it is that the mighty laws which bind system upon system should be the same that stoop to order with exactest precision the particles whose minuteness escapes our vision; that could we but feel aright, we should see that the same principle which teaches us to love ourselves, could not but lead us to love our neighbors as ourselves; that did we love in ourselves what was truly worthy of our love, there would be no object throughout the wide circle of being, whose lot and happiness would not be our own. It is thus by becoming most universal, we at the same time become most individual; for they are not opposed to each other, but different faces of the same thing. But selfishness is the farthest removed of all things from the universality of genius or of goodness. For as the superiority to the objects of sense which the soul naturally has, and which, when lost, love would restore, diminishes;

these senseless objects in their turn become masters; we are the servants of sin, bowing to an idol that our own hands have set up, and sweating beneath the burthens of a despot strong in our own transferred power. Like the ancients we too find a deity in each of the objects we pursue; we follow wealth till we worship Mammon; love, till we see a Venus; are ambitious, till our hands are stained with the bloody rites of Mars. While in the physical world we are waging by our rail-roads and engines a war of utter extermination against time and space, we forget that it is these very things, as motives, that urge us on. We are exhibiting the folly of kingdoms divided against themselves; for, while in the physical world we are driving to annihilation space and time, it is for the very sake of the things of time and sense that we do it. We are thereby excluding ourselves daily from those many mansions which Christ has taught are prepared for us. Our words confess that all things are God's, while our hands are busy in fencing off some corner of the wide universe from which to exclude our brother man.

In the exceptions of our race, in those we have been accustomed to call great, we see universality claimed for them in their minds' own inborn and free-working energies. But others are more free agents, that they may not act unconsciously; and that a conscious natural action when attained may

be the eternal reward of their well doing. The mind which of its own inborn force is natural, is innocent; but that which has been permitted to become so, is virtuous. True virtue would be conscious genius. To minds in both of these states does universality belong; in the one, it is that of the child; in the other, that of manhood. Both are in harmony with nature. In the language of our Lord, they are little children learning to repeat the words they hear the Father utter. It was the same Father that fashioned him who wears a crown, and the shaggy monarch of the forest, who could alone give the corresponding state in the mind of a Shakspeare; which enabled him to be with the ease and naturalness of a Proteus, now 66 every inch a king,” and now to be the lion too, and "roar so as to do any man's heart good to hear him; so that the Duke would say 'let him roar again, let him roar again.' As the spontaneous action of Shakspeare's mind was continually finding an answering expression in the world around it, so must the same action in us, when restored by love, find the same ever-varied forms. We shall become all things to all men. As the wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so passive will the breath of life that God first breathed into us become to his holy will. Life will be a continued worship, for every object will be a

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gift, and every gift an opportunity for love. When all men shall so live and speak, their souls will have consciously become the passive instruments of the Divine will; and will ever tell, in pure and spiritual worship to each other, the works and ways of a common Father. The highest exercise of the human will, will be formed in its assent to the Divine. Genius will be the obedience of the child; virtue, the obedience of the man to the same Universal Parent. The unconscious utterings of our poet will be found verified in himself.

"He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister:
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes. Great floods have
flown

From simple sources; and great seas have dried
When miracles have by the greatest been denied.
But most it is presumption in us, when
The help of heaven we count the acts of men.'

So difficult is it therefore for us to forget ourselves, and to take our neighbor's situation with the same readiness that we hold our own, that we wonder very much at what we call Shakspeare's universality, his power of adapting himself to his characters; and that we see nothing of himself in them. The diffi