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possessing what seems almost a natural propensity to enjoyment. So situated, I passed my eye around the semicircle of boxes, where the followers of fashion, the possessors of wealth, and the self-sufficient children of pride were vieing with each other in extravagance and excess of worldliness. Here I beheld the noisy belle laughing, and roaring out her words to a supercilious fop. There I looked on the woman of fashion introducing her daughter to notice, by calling the attention of the young men in her neighborhood to the beautiful drop curtain, which they, for their part, had seen long already for patience sake. Here I saw the vulgarminded women and upstart men, looking sideways at the fashionable people, and endeavoring to catch their airs, that they might ape them. What an unenviable and damning position they held in the eye of he even who is not a calm and thoughtful observer of the scene! Their position, let not the humblest man in the world thoughtlessly envy. There sits the homely and wondering countryman, clad with the honest reward of his toil, just beside, and touching the starched and powdered gambler. All ages, all classes, are dispersed among, and mixed up with the crowd of a theatre. Here is the world perfectly in miniature; and who but feels that there is also here the great world of feelings as of bodily presence?

I say, when all was giddy thought, and foolish action, and wondering stare, aye, and glittering nothing, was one, and a woman, young and beautiful, not as others are beautiful, but she was of the rare and individual kind; she had the rose on her cheek, while there was a quiet sadness expressed in her eye, and on her lip was stamped something of sorrow. The position she had assumed was one very dignified.

Her eyes

were frequently fixed very intently on a single spot, and almost with the painful stare of vacancy, thoughtful vagueness—an expression the mind can give to the face; yet it is the face of one by nature very happy, but whom some little circumstance of life has rendered less so, and thence inclined to abstraction. It was evident to me, that she was not as those around her—that her thoughts were not as others' thoughts. She was constituted of the same as they; but the clay in the earth, and that moulded into an exquisite form in the hands of the sculptor, are not more different. One could perceive that she was not suing for notice and general admiration—that she was not desirous of holding here the envied and the exalted place; hence, perhaps, might result her reverie.

The curtain rises, and she assumes a position, the dignity of which I shall not soon forget. Her attention is fixed on the stage, and ere long her eye is riveted on the progressing motion of the play. She had sufficiently excited my interest-therefore, on her, I fixed my attention-determining in my mind to watch into her face, as I would into a mirror, to see young Hamlet.

From the opening of the play, she appeared to be impressed with its mysterious grandeur, and I could imagine that she, too, could fill herself with the spirit of the supernatural, and that she could embrace in her bosom, every emotion that distinguishes the generous, and banish every one from it, that marks the base. I observed that she curled her lip at the first speech of the king; and her face spoke, that it foresaw the hypocrite, in the very first sentence uttered by him-a pleasing bitterness strode across her countenance, she had the old sycophant's heart just before her eyes. Sycophants believe, however, that no one penetrates their feelings-but men do not tell others all

they think about them, any more than they think all the things of them they tell.

It is evident that the first words of Hamlet have won her approbation, for in a single line, he expresses more feeling-he discloses more with respect to himself, to his mother and to human nature-alas! human nature, you must have tell-tales sometimes, few men are honest and fearless enough to tell the downright truth, ah! he is a hero who does it-I say, he expresses more than is ordinarily embodied in a poem of our times in these few words,

"A little more than kin, and less than kind."

Oh, vile poets, who run mad after figures of speech, that seldom convey to our minds any notion of things-and arise from no idea at all-look at this single line of a student of nature; a man of observation, and a child in his own simplicity—it is in a degree appreciated, when well and feelingly enunciated by a good actor, but it should be thought on-in my enthusiasm, I esteem it worth a kingdom. And when his mother, the queen, addresses him as to his behavior since his father's death, think of it, there are five words to express an universal feeling:

"Ay, madam, it is common,"

and I am almost inclined to agree with some despairing genius of another country, that it is almost sacrilege to write after Shakspeare; it certainly is folly. In this fair woman, on whom I had fixed my eye, I observed a gentle movement of the head, indicative of approval, and she seemed to take his sorrows into her own bosom. Then he replies again to her unfeeling answer, in a single, never to be forgotten, line

66 Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not seems,"

He seems to reflect, almost unintentionally, on her base heart, while he is defending himself. There beamed a look of exultation on the countenance on which I was looking, at his chiding her so gently, yet so well; and as he finished his speech, I observed that she not only seemed to sympathise with his feelings, but to the words,

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her heart seemed to return an echo-then thought I, you too, fair woman, have secret sorrow, "which passeth show," and since such be the case, I resolve to read your heart before you leave this place and I shall succeed too, if your face continues so to portray and interpret it, as it has up to this time done for there is a power in the human face of exhibiting expression without the lips giving utterance by sounds and words; this on the stage, is called pantomine, what we should call it off I do not know, but no one can doubt that it exists in real life-why should it not be so? for the capacity of the face, for all expression is accorded to it, and we hear of the nod of assent, the frown of displeasure, the longing glance of coquetry, and the quiet eye of thought. We may go very far into a minute analysis of expression, and we will find that there is a means of expressing the most superficial feelings—this night, I became most thoroughly satisfied of this; for she on whom I gazed with so much pleasure, had a face highly susceptible of expression, and one which then did express-for I consider that all the feelings of the human heart may have an opportunity for their display, in a single play-more especially in a tragedy wellperformed, and one like Hamlet especially-and those emotions that the heart gives assent to, the face will discover to a close and

habitual observer--then I feel a deep interest in finding out the true emotions of she who has won me almost at a glance.

The king speaks-I had already seen her exhibit distaste at the words and acts of this false-hearted man; therefore, there was but a repetition of the expression during his speech-but he is gone all are gone, save Hamlet-he soliloquizes:

"O! that this too, too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew;

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God! O God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

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

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely."

She seemed intensely interested, and if we could love an imaginary hero, how truly would we love him-but he is but an actor, and we have to sympathize not with the man's self, the then hero, but with the idea, the emotion developed by the poet.

To all the questions that Hamlet asks, concerning his father's ghost, she looks inquisitively, and as though she entered into all his feelings. I watched her face, as Ophelia gave her warning to her brother, and thought I could perceive from it, that she, too, had given like advice to a brother-for she smiled and looked around, as though to seek him, to confirm her in it, you might discover that her face approved the worldly wisdom of Polonius in his advice to Ophelia, in regard to the love of Hamlet her feelings, however, were with the trusting Ophelia, and there she was true to woman, and on that account was brighter in my eye. I marked surprise on her countenance, as the ghost entered. I followed the progress of feeling in her soul, as the

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