Page:Sixteen years of an artist's life in Morocco, Spain and the Canary Islands.djvu/81

70 anxious desire and prayer now is, that she may soon be permitted to join him beyond the grave.

What an imposing and thoughtful scene is that of the burial of Ophelia, when the Price of Denmark soliloquizes on the strange destiny of man, and traces the dust of him that kept the world in awe, until, in imagination, he finds it stopping a beer-barrel! And yet the scene, with all its profound emotions and its varied suggestiveness, has also its ludicrous features, when, in admirable fidelity to the strangely mingled web of human life, the two gravediggers interpose with their coarse jests and shallow reflections during the profound meditations of Hamlet. I could not help thinking on this scene of our immortal dramatist, as here, in actual life, I beheld a spectacle and listened to remarks which, if not precisely similar, afforded at least, in many respects, a good parallel. In the midst of the lamentation of woe, and the outpourings of grief in which the heart, doubtless, had its share, I heard the most absurd and ridiculous remarks addressed to the dear departed, apparently under the influence of the most unhesitating belief that he still continued to feel a warm interest in all that pertained, not only to the life, but even to the town and the society he had left. A woman is sitting at one grave, and with the