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SHAKESPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN.

eyes derive their blessed rays ? Is it a gleam of heaven, or is heaven but the reflect of those eyes? Is that sweet smile in concord with the silent music of the spheres in their unending dance, or is it but the earthly signature 1 of the most super-sensual harmony ? " One day while we wandered in the castle garden of Helsingor, tenderly jesting and wooing, our hearts in the full bloom of hopeful love, it will ever live in my memory how beggarly the song of the nightingales contrasted with the heavenly breathing voice of Ophelia, and how flat and poor the flowers seemed with their variegated faces without smiles, when I by chance compared them with her excelling- sweet mouth. And the fair slender form like wandering grace swept around and near me all as in a dream ! Ah ! that is the curse of weak mortals, that they ever, when a great mischance occurs, vent their ill temper on the best and dearest. And so poor Hamlet, with his reason that glorious jewel flawed, cast himself by a feigned aberration of mind into the most terrible abyss of real madness, and tortured his poor love with scornful jeers. Poor child ! All that was wanting was that the beloved should take her father for a rat and stab 1 Signature, mystical correspondence of the thing created to its archseus or archetypal creator e.g., Siynatura Rerum, of S wedenborg. Tra nslator.