His canon'gainst self-slaughter! O heaven! O heaven! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! Oh, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!-Nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this-

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-
Let me not think on't. Frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears; why, she, even she-

O heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer-married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules!

It is not, nor it cannot come to good;

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

THE GUILTY KING'S SOLILOQUY.

6

FROM HAMLET.'

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon it,

A brother's murder! Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestall'd ere we come to fall,

Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?—
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, my own ambition, and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But 'tis not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In its true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can:
What can it not?

Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!

The latter portion of this extract shows that injus

tice meets with the poet's reprobation.

Had the

dramatist lived in our times, he would have found that perjured villains yet exist, and are protected by those by whom they ought to be punished. In relation to this fact we quote the following from a leading article in one of the daily papers. "When," says the writer, "the voluble constable has told his tale, let a whole battalion of rustics come forward to contradict him, if such be their good pleasure, they will but waste their breath upon the empty air. The justice of the peace and the rural policeman are branches of the same executive organization, and it is not to be expected that justice will connive at her own humiliation by taking part in snubbing her right-hand man." We have ourselves known men of respectable connexions, of good education, honesty, and sobriety, sent to prison through the evidence of these accredited constables and their tools, and, moreover, deprived of their property, and to the extent the testimony of such wretches obtained credence, ruined in their character. Is it possible, we ask, that such great villains should retain their freedom, and remain unpunished-villains, who in some instances, have been guilty of repeated perjury-is it possible, we repeat, that such wretches should remain unpunished, while their innocent victims suffer the greatest horrors and indignities? We answer, it is only possible in the view of future judg ment and retribution. Perjury, the boon companion of injustice, is one of the greatest crimes against society. The perjured should be punished with the greatest severity. These are pests in human society,

a "stink in the nostrils of God," having the wicked effrontery to swear by his name, are detested by their immediate acquaintance and connections, and inevitably become an abomination to future generations.

The elegant and judicious Addison, whose observations we always quote with high satisfaction, remarks in the Free-Holder,' that "we may see the just sense the Heathens had of the crime of perjury, from the penalties which they inflicted on the persons guilty of it. Perjury among the Scythians was a capital crime; and among the Egyptians also was punished with death, as Diodorus Siculus relates, who observes that an offender of this kind is guilty of those two crimes (wherein the malignity of perjury truly consists) a failing in his respect to the Divinity, and in his faith towards men."

"If men, who had no other guide but their reason, considered an oath to be of such a tremendous nature, and the violation of it to be so great a crime; it ought to make a much deeper impression upon minds enlightened by Revealed Religion, as they have more exalted notions of the Divinity."

We could pursue this subject by further extracts from this fine writer, but we wish not to digress, or exhaust the patience of our readers.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.

To be, or not to be? that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them ?—To die—to sleep-
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die-to sleep-

To sleep!-perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.-There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
(That undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns), puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution