Ophelia. This may be accounted for from an erroneous but general accepted opinion, that the love of Hamlet for Ophelia was deep and profound. He was apparently captivated by her innocence and purity, by her beauty and tenderness of nature. To Hamlet's mind, which is almost spiritual and of a loving and gentle disposition, there must have been something very attractive in Ophelia, as an ideal image of nature and life. There is no evidence of real love in Hamlet portrayed through the play; but, on the other hand, there is tenderness, sorrow and pity for him. The love shown by Ophelia was not reciprocated. He throws aside his supposed love without flinching and without pain, and it vanishes as if it had never existed. His general de meanor is consistent with this. He felt that he had a duty to crush the love existing in Ophelia's heart. He sought her presence in his madness, as if ever eager to show her the fatal truth.

The character has taxed the genius of Booth, Kemble and Kean, by whom different readings were given of the play. In the first-named, an air of fierceness and anger was thrown over the majesty of Hamlet, whereas Edmund Kean in his personification of the character went to the opposite extreme. Henry Irving depicted the character with consummate skill, and gave to the play a reading which stamps his production as the greatest one England has ever seen. He, however, obliterated from his version the final speech made by Hamlet to Laertes, where he excuses himself on the ground of madness. The question, “Was Hamlet mad?" is of great importance.

Ophelia is one of the most touching creations of Shakspere's transcendent genius. Over her character he threw a charm, a brilliant flood of fancy, "sweet as springtime flowers." Hers is a character redolent of feminine gentleness, purity and grace. But, ever true to nature, this great magician and all but inspired poet could not sacrifice truth to fiction, fancy to fact, and he therefore makes this lovesick girl, during her insanity, give utterance to conceptions that never could have suggested themselves to her exquisitely chaste and delicate mind before it was prostrated and perverted by disease. With regard to the character of Ophelia and the place she holds throughout the play, she exhibits all that is young, beautiful, artless, innocent and touching. She is a striking contrast to Hamlet's mother; surrounded by all that is corrupt and wicked, she moves an emblem of spotless purity and love in all the unpolluted loveliness of her nature. As soon as we know her associa

tion with the hero of the play, we know that her fate is doomed, that her path is shadowed with all that is dark and sad. We pity her, and as the play advances, our pity increases and our love for her becomes more intense. The more the question is discussed, the more the play is analyzed, the more convinced we become that nothing but madness could have excused Hamlet's conduct towards Ophelia. It is but a humane acceptation of the situation. His whole character is so noble as to make this the one rational excuse we can find. He is not a character of exemplary virtue, set forth for our guidance, but he is a perfectly dramatic character and absorbs our profoundest attention amidst his vagaries. Had he been assuming madness this could not have been kept up indefinitely, so as to exclude the nobleness of his nature and the reigning impressions in his mind. His very conversation with the gravediggers, though apparently jesting, is in itself a proof of the deepest melancholy still existing in his heart. Garrick, when he produced the play, excluded this scene, wherein exists the very moral of the tragedy.

In conclusion, it may be stated that at the commencement of the play, we see Hamlet in the enjoyment of that greatest earthly blessing, mens sana in corpore sano. On the appearance of his father's ghost his mind becomes unhinged by melancholy, and this condition passes into one of subacute maniacal excitement after the play-acting scene. He is then sent to England as I have previously stated in charge of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and returns perfectly sane, when seen again at the burial of Ophelia. He continues sane during the play, and asks Laertes' pardon for what he has done, being conscious of his previous state, which he openly declares to have been one of madness. This is the only conception which can be given to the character of Hamlet, and the play is full of proofs which one and all negative the assumption that Hamlet was feigning madness.

That Shakspere himself had the utmost reverence for female purity and virtue is evident in all his writings; and although undoubtedly he has, according to the manners of his time, indulged very often in a warmth of expression which would be unsuitable to the present age, he has always drawn a broad distinction between the pure and ideal love, which is founded upon esteem and affection, and that material development of the passion which is common to man and the brute creation. In some of his "Sonnets," and even in the very beautiful though amorous poem of "Venus and Adonis," there are abundant illustrations of the above

remarks; as for instance where, in the last-named work, the youthful and really virtuous huntsman declares, in answer to the impassioned address of the Paphian Queen:

Love cometh like sunshine after rain,

But lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring does always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forgèd lies.

The marriage of Shakspere, although only in his eighteenth year, was unquestionably a great cause, if not the chief cause, of the development of his marvellous intellectual qualities. The copious well of his imagination required only some power to draw up its overflowing waters wherewith to irrigate the barren fields of dramatic literature in the sixteenth century, and the necessity of obtaining a livelihood was the engine which evolved the latent streams.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

and the pure gem of Shakspere's genius, which might have remained concealed had not circumstances revealed its beauty and its brilliancy, was rescued from obscurity by his marriage with Anne Hathaway and his meeting with strolling players at Stratford-upon-Avon.

To a mind like Shakspere's, looking at this period of his life from a psychological point of view, it is quite conceivable that not only the easy and jovial manners of the actors presented great and irresistible attractions, but that the very poor condition of dramatic literature in his time fired his ambition to produce something better than the trash then deemed good enough to be presented to the public. No authentic particulars have been handed down as to the manner in which he spent his time from the age of twenty-one to twenty-five, which must have been in him a period of the greatest intellectual activity, in which he was no doubt occupied either in writing plays himself, or in adapting and improving the works of his predecessors or contemporaries. But from internal evidence it is plain that the representations of the stage, crude and coarse as they were in his youth, inspired him with many of those lofty thoughts which breathe and burn throughout his writings, and which, deriving their source from a microcosm seen in actual life, expanded into those boundless regions of thought and invention in which time and space are annihilated, and in which man and nature are depicted in all their multitudinous aspects, in beauty and deformity,

in light and in darkness, in gayety and in despair, in sunshine and in storm, in space and in infinity, in time and in eternity. "All the world's a stage," as he beautifully expresses it,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.

And again, when Macbeth, at length weary of life and deserted by his friends, exclaims,

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.

How well can we understand that the representation on the stage (sometimes probably in a barn) at Stratford-uponAvon inspired Shakspere's mind with the grandeur and at the same time the weakness and vanity of human things! The actors, repeating high-flown and bombastic lines, attired as kings or heroes, putting off for a time their ordinary dresses and attired in glittering but tawdry colors, and again resuming their shabby habiliments, would readily convey to his mind a picture of the changeful condition of mankind in actual life; while the stage, glowing with artificial light and scenery, or perhaps only tenanted for a time by walking puppets, terminating their brief career of a few hours to sink into darkness and silence, would be to him a type of life and death, not only in man, but in the great scheme of nature herself, and would shadow forth the beauties of creation, the monuments of art, the symmetry of the universe, as the things of an hour and perishable as the scenery of a stage play.

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,-
Leave not a rack behind.

SCIENTIFIC THEOSOPHY.

THE DAWN OF A NEW CIVILIZATION.

BY PROF. JOSEPH RODES BUCHANAN, M. D.

In my previous brief essay, I spoke of the essential revolution in therapeutic science arising from a perfect knowledge of remedies, a perfect diagnosis, and the introduction of three new methods in the treatment of disease suggested by the new physiology of the entire man, all of which will be embraced in the therapeutic science of the college* now organizing, in which we expect to demonstrate many other laws of nature and therapeutic possibilities for the body and soul of man, which mechanical dogmatism neither seeks nor desires to know.

The limits of this essay do not permit any description of the three peculiar methods, but a correct idea of them may be obtained from "Therapeutic Sarcognomy" under which a number have already been trained, which presents the new physiology and its consequent therapeutics.

This medical revolution is one example of the vast enlargement and change in established sciences now approaching, and hereafter to occupy the entire field of vital science, which must be the result if man possesses grander powers than hereditary ignorance and superstition have heretofore allowed him to use. The claim is now presented that man has such powers, and as soon as he learns to use them freely and fearlessly the inherited ignorance and consequent dogmatism of the dark past will be dissipated by the divinity in man. That expression is used, not in any sense akin to theological mysticism, but as the expression of a scientific, available and immensely valuable truth, which must of course force its way with some difficulty through that nearly prohibitory tariff against any large importation from the divine field of limitless knowledge which our posterity are destined to enjoy. The tariff is as firm still as in the last two centuries, but not enforced by formidable punishments, as in the case of Roger Bacon, Bruno and Galileo.

*Physicians who are interested in such a college, and could participate in such an enterprise, are invited to write to Dr. Buchanan, at San Jose, Cal.