190 ANNUAL REPORT. 



And Florizel, influenced by the same enchantment, ascribes the 



charm to her : 



* * * .< ^iiat you do, 



Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 



I'd have you do it ever. When you sing, 



I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; 



So pray ; and for the ordering your affairs, 



To sing them too.' ' 

 And where, in all literature, is there a finer compliment to womanly 

 grace than this, or one-voiced in honester admiration ? 

 " When you do dance, 



I wish you a wave of the sea that you might ever do 



Nothing but that!" 

 There is such a charm to me in Shakspeare's gardens that I hate 

 to leave them; but with one or two more references, I will pass 

 them by. 



The crime that drapes the pall of tragedy over all the scenes of 

 Hamlet has a darker hue from having been done by taking 

 advantage of the slumbers of the King of Denmark in his orchard, 

 as witness the revelations of the mailed ghost: 

 " 'Tis given out that, sleeping in mine orchard, 



A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark 



Is by a forged process of my death 



Rashly abused. But know, thou noble youth, 



The serpent that did sting thy father's life 



Now wears his crown !" 



And poor Ophelia, in the same tragedy, heart-broken and crazed 

 by the distraction oi her royal lover, and the cruel fate that makes 

 him by a sword-thrust intended for the fratricide king the slayer 

 of Polonious, her father ; how many tears have blotted the page 

 where she prattles in her madness, of her flowers, and running over 

 the list in her Avrapt, wild fancy, sighs at last — 

 " I would give you some pansies, but they 

 All withered when my father died!" 



I must beg to be excused from quite so much as the popular ad- 

 miration for another garden scene in Shakspeare, where, though 



" Orchard walls are steep and hard to climb," 

 young Romeo reaches the garden of the Capulets, and looking 

 up into Juliet's eyes, declares that — 



" Two of the fairest stars in all the heavens 

 Having some business, do entreat her eyes 

 To twinkle in their spheres, till their return." 



This and the dialogue that follows is rather stilted ; the passion 

 loo tropical for Shakspeare's work, and suggests the idea of inter- 



