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428 still as delicate and dainty as if cut by hand, and which look like the finest jewellery.

If it be hard enough for the French to understand Shakespeare's tragedies, it must be admitted that an appreciation of his comedies is almost utterly denied to them. The poetry of passion is to them intelligible, and they can also to a certain extent comprehend the truth of the characteristic, for their hearts have learned to glow, the impassioned is their own peculiar line, and with their analytical intelligence they can separate every given character into its minutest elements, and calculate the phases or situations into which that character would fall when reduced to the realities of life. But in the magic garden of the Shakespearean comedy all this empirical knowledge is of no avail. At its very gate their understanding fails them, their heart knows nothing definite, and they lack the mysterious divining rod at the touch of which the lock opens. There they stare with amazed eyes through the golden grate, and see how lords and ladies, shepherds and shepherdesses, fools and sages, wander about under the tall trees; how the lover and his loved one rest in the cool shadows and exchange tender