sities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, etc., and yet we are not offended, but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to show the humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view, than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian who should represent him to the life, before one of the police-offices.

THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET.

(From the "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.")

THE character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility - the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect as in the scene where he kills Polonius; and, again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical; dallics with his purposes till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the king when he is at his prayers; and, by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more fatal opportunity.

The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist" - as Shakespeare has been well called - do not exhibit the drab-colored Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from "The Whole Duty of Man" or from "The

Academy of Compliments"! We confess we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his behavior either partakes of the "license of the time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carying on a regular courtship. When "his father's spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on this point. In the harassed state of his mind he could not have done much otherwise than he did.

LAFCADIO HEARN.

HEARN, LAFCADIO, a Greek-American journalist and narrative and descriptive writer, was born at Leucadia, Santa Maura, Ionian Islands, June 27, 1850. His father, a gallant Irish surgeon of the English army, married a beautiful maiden of the Ionian Isles, where he chanced to be stationed. He was educated in Great Britain and France. His father died in India, and in a spirit of adventure he left home and came to the United States. From the East, where his occupation had been proof-reading, he drifted to Cincinnati; and there, as a reporter, took his first steps in journalism. Finding that the climate was too severe for his health, he went to New Orleans, and engaged in newspaper work there. Becoming greatly interested in Creole life and customs, he issued there his "Gombo Zhèbes," a compilation of quaint sayings and proverbs in the different Creole patois. He contributed translations from the French to the New Orleans "Times-Democrat," and he became a member of the editorial staff. He spent some time in the West Indies, and then he went to Japan, where he took a native wife and became a naturalized citizen of that country, and adopted the name of Y. Koijumi. He opened a school at Matsue, in the province of Udrumo, where he taught English to the Japanese for four years; he then removed to Kumamoto, in the southern island of Kyushyu. Hearn's American publications include an English translation of "One of Cleopatra's Nights" (1882), from the French of Théophile Gautier; "Stray Leaves from Strange Literature," (1884), being an interpretation of certain Eastern stories and legends; "Gombo Zhèbes" (1885); "Some Chinese Ghosts" (1887); "Chita: a Memory of Last Island" (1889); "Two Years in the French West Indies," and "Youma" (1890); "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" (1894); "Out of the East" (1895), and "Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life" (1896); "Gleanings in Buddha Fields" (1897).

THE LEGEND OF L'ÎLE DERNIÈRE.1

(From "Chita: A Memory of Last Island.")

THIRTY years ago, Last Island lay steeped in the enormous light of even such magical days. July was dying; — for weeks 1 Copyrighted, 1889, by Harper & Brothers.