together indiscriminately ages, situations, talents, and recollections. Shakspeare and Dante wrote under very dissimilar circumstances. The English dramatist found a language, not perfect it is true, but at least three-fourths formed, and which had already been employed by distinguished writers both in poetry and prose. This language had become a sort of barbarous and mannered dialect, grotesquely adorned and overcharged with foreign fashions. It may easily be imagined how much Shakspeare must have been annoyed when, in the midst of a vivid conception, he found himself obliged to introduce into his inspired language some affected foreign word. Conceive the colossus, thus obliged to force his feet into little Chinese slippers, struggling against impediments which he burst through like a lion breaking his chains. Dante, who lived two centuries and a half before Shakspeare, entered upon a world in which he found nothing. The last remnants of the Roman society had expired, and had left behind a language, beautiful it is true, but of a dying beauty a language unavailable for the purposes of common life, because it no longer expressed the character, the ideas, the manners, and the wants of the society which had newly sprung up. The necessity of intelligible communication had given birth to a vulgar idiom, which was employed on both sides of the southern Alps, and on two declivities of the eastern Pyrenees. Dante adopted this bastard of Rome, whom the learned and the noble disdained to recognize. He found it wandering in the streets of Florence, fostered at hazard by a republican people, in plebeian and democratic rudeness. He communicated to the child of his choice his own manliness, his simplicity, his independence, his dignity, his melancholy, his holy sublimity, and his wild grace. Dante drew from nothing the interpreter of his talent; he gave being to the language of his genius; he himself constructed the lyre from which he drew forth his melodious strains, like those astronomers who invent instruments with which they measure the heavens. Italian and the Divina Commedia sprang at once from his brain. The illustrious exile simultaneously conferred on the human race a durable language and an immortal poem. MECHANISM OF THE ENGLISH STAGE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. In the dramatic performances of Shakspeare's time, the female characters were represented by young men ; and the actors were not distinguished from the spectators except by the plumes of feathers which adorned their hats, and the bows of ribbon which they wore in their shoes. There was no music between the acts. The place of performance was frequently the court-yard of an inn, and the windows which looked into this court-yard served for the boxes. On the representation of a tragedy in London, the place in which it was performed was hung with black, like the nave of a church at a funeral. As to the means of illusion, some idea may be formed of them from the burlesque picture drawn by Shakspeare in the Midsummer Night's Dream." A man, having his face smeared with plaster, is the wall which intervenes between Pyramus and Thisbe, and he spreads out his fingers to represent the chinks in the wall through which the lovers converse. A lantern, a bush, and a dog, are employed to produce moonlight. In rude dramatic performances of this kind, the scene, without changing, alternately represented a flower-garden, a rock against which a ship was to strike, or a field of battle, where half a dozen miserable-looking soldiers would personate two armies. There is extant a curious inventory of the property of a company of English players; and in this document we find set down, a dragon, a wheel employed in the siege of London, a large horse with his legs, sundry limbs of Moors, four Turks' heads, and an iron mouth, which was probably employed in giving utterance to the sweetest and sublimest accents of the immortal poet. False skins were also employed for those characters who were flayed alive on the stage, like the prevaricating judge in Cambyses. Such a spectacle now-a-days would attract all Paris. But, after all, correctness of scenic accessories and costume is far less essential to the illusion than is generally imagined. The genius of Racine gains nothing by the cut and form of a dress. In the masterpieces of Raphael, the back-grounds are neglected, and the costumes incorrect. The rage of Orestes or the prophecy of Joad recited in a drawing-room by Talma, habited in his own dress, produced not less effect than when delivered by the great actor on the stage, in Grecian or Hebrew drapery. Iphigenia was attired like Madame de Sévigné, when Boileau addressed to his friend the following fine lines: Jamais Iphigénie, en Aulide immolée N'a coûté tant de pleurs à la Grèce assemblée, Accuracy in the representation of inanimate objects is the spirit of the literature and the arts of our time. It denotes the decay of the higher class of poetry and of the genuine drama. We are content with minor beauties when we cannot attain great aims. Our stage represents to perfection the chair and its velvet coverings, but the actor is not equally successful in portraying the character who is seated in the chair. But, having once descended to these minute representations of material objects, it cannot be dispensed with, for the public taste becomes materialized and demands it. In Shakspeare's time, the higher class of spectators or the gentlemen took their places on the stage, seating themselves either on the |