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364 shadows in the scene of Hamlet, and we cannot free ourselves from the spectral feelings of the night, or from the nightmare pressure of the uncanny gloomy dread, till all is accomplished, and till the air of Denmark, which was redolent of human corruption, is once again made pure. In the first scenes of Lear we are in like manner directly drawn into the strange destinies which are announced, unfolded, and ended before our eyes. The poet here gives us a drama which is more appalling than all the horrors of the world of magic and the realm of ghosts; for he shows us human passion breaking all the bounds of reason, and raging forth in the royal majesty of a monarch's madness—vieing with stormy nature in her wildest commotion. But I believe that here there is an end to the immense power, the wondrous play of will, with which Shakespeare ever masters his material. Here his own genius bears him away, and sways him far more than in Macbeth and Hamlet, where he, with perfectly artistic self-possession, depicts the darkest shadows of the night of the soul mingled with the rosiest gleams of wit, and the brightest and most cheerful still-life by the wildest deeds. Yes, in the tragedy of Macbeth a soft and soothing nature smiles on us ; to the turrets of the towers of the castle where the bloodiest deed is done cleave quiet swallows' nests; a cheerful Scottish summer