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The ghost replies,

Do not forget. This visitation

Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.

But procrastination continues to steal away his time, though all occasions, as he remarks himself, inform against him. When he sees young Fortinbras leading an army of twenty thousand men to fight for a piece of ground scarcely large enough to bury their slain,

On a mere phantasy and trick of fame,

his conscience reproaches him with indolence and apathy, who had such excitements of his reason and his blood, and let all sleep. When Hamlet should act, he speculates:

The native hue of resolution

Is sickly'd o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And all his enterprises, from an excess of refinement,
Lose the name of action.

He is degraded in his own estimation by remaining in a state of inactivity and insignificance unworthy of his character. He is conscious of the possession of powers, a capability and godlike reason, which were intended to be exercised, and without which man was reduced to a level with the beasts. But he is withheld by a spell which seems to

him unaccountable.

Whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event,

A thought which quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom,

And even three parts coward. I do not know

Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do

Sith, I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do it.

He resolves once more,

From this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.

Yet he suffers himself to be sent away without any attempt to execute his purposes, and narrowly escapes a snare which his uncle had set for his destruction. Even this new treachery of the king does not rouse him to exertion, and we find him on his return again indulging his favourite humour, and considering too curiously, as Horatio tells

him, the circumstances of poor human nature. Yet in every situation he leads us irresistibly along with him. The melancholy gloom which surrounds him, his profound and penetrating understanding, the proud and lofty elevation of his sentiments, softened by distress and by the delicacy and sensibility of his feelings, excite the mingled emotions of affection, esteem, and admiration, and we regret that a more propitious fate had not placed him in a state better calculated for the exercise of his virtues and his talents.

The catastrophe is produced by a new crime of the king who falls by the hand of Hamlet. The guilty are all punished, and though the death of Ophelia be an exception to the rule of poetical justice, yet we cannot consider that of Hamlet to be so. He is the victim of his own weakness and indiscretion.

According to the sentiment of a celebrated critic, the most proper character for tragedy is that of a person who has been himself the cause of his misfortune, and whose misfortune is occasioned by the violence of passion, or by some weakness incident to human nature. "Such a subject" says he, "disposes us to the deepest sympathy and administers useful warning to us for our own conduct. Who does not sympathise with the distresses, the feelings, the weaknesses of Hamlet, and who does not see the fatal effects of indulging those feelings to excess, and of suffering that weakness to become fixed and habitual."

Could he who drew each change of many-coloured life have omitted to delineate a character so important, and one from which so many instructive lessons may be drawn. An instance of talents, virtue, and spirit, rendered useless by a morbid sensibility; a temper too refined and fastidious to admit of steady and regular conduct: an instance too in a more general view, of the fatal effects of indecision.

The great moralist whose name I mentioned before, has described the folly of procrastination as one of the general weaknesses which in spite of the instruction of moralists and the remonstrances of reason prevail to a greater or less degree in every mind, as the most pertinacious, if not the most violent of the passions, always renewing its attacks, and though often vanquished, never destroyed. He had himself felt the influence of that seducement of the imagination by which we are led to believe that another day will bring some support or advantage which we now want, which is employed in forming resolutions which are soon dissipated, and reconciling ourselves to our own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, we know to be absurd. A habit which the calls of reason and conscience cannot correct, which penetration and discernment serve only to increase, and to bewilder us in the perplexity of various intentions.

The moral of the piece I think is obvious, and in tracing the conduct with a view to ascertain the character of Hamlet, I have had little hesitation in differing in opinion from those who maintain that Shakspeare had drawn a character altogether unnatural, and one which he himself did not understand.

A desire to vindicate a favourite production of a favourite author, has induced me to throw together these remarks, which, though hastily, and, I fear, crudely written, appear to me to be just.

CORRESPONDENCE-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

THE WIFE OF SEGESTES.

THE wife of Segestes in Tacitus is worthy of the canvas. The historian has already given us a picture, and it is the finest ever exhibited since the nativity of genius. I can find nothing in Virgil or Homer equal to it: Creusa and Andromache are viewed with indifference by the side of the wife of Segestes. I behold her coming forth from the besieged castle, firm, inflexible, breathing the unsubdued spirit of her husband; no tear falls from her eye, no lamentation bursts from her lip; but lo! she stands a captive in pensive silence, straining her beating bosom with her hands, and fixing her eyes upon her pregnant womb.

ATTICUS.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

TAHOPHA, OR THE CASSADA PLANT.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

THERE are several different species; but the manioc is what is known and planted in the West India Islands. It is a cold poison; the

roots are roasted, the juice is pressed from them, and the noxious qualities removed by heat. They are then washed and scraped clean, and grated into a tub or trough, after this, they are put into a hair bag, to squeeze out the juice. The meal or farine, is dryed in a hot stone bason and then made into cakes. The root also yields a quantity of starch, which the people of Brasil export in small lumps, under the name of tapioca. In Father Labat's tour to the Antilles, there is a more particular account of this plant. The cakes form a principal part of the food of the French negroes; they are mixt in a pottage consisting of yam, sweet-potato, calilu, a vegetable resembling spinage, and a small quantity of salt fish. This is a savoury dish among the blacks; thousands of acres, round the city of St. Pierre, in the island of Martinique, were planted for the purpose of the negroes, before the revolution. It resembles millet, and is a very nutritive food, though it has not the appearance of it, and in Anson's voyage it is ridiculed under the name of powder of post.

I. S.

QRIGINAL POETRY- -FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

THE FORESTERS;

A POEM:

Descriptive of a Pedestrian Journey to the Falls of Niagara;
In the Autumn of 1803.

By the Author of American Ornithology.

(Continued from Vol. 1, page 544.)

LONG ere the morn had show'd its opening sweets,
We clubb'd our arms and pass'd the silent streets;
Slow o'er the pavement limpingly we tread,

But soon recovering, every ailment fled.
Forward we march, o'er mountains rude and bare,
No decent farm, and even a cabin rare;

Thick wastes of ground oak* o'er the country spread,
While haggard pines sigh dismal overhead.
Lo! the Blue Mountain now in front appears,
And high o'er all its lengthen'd ridge uprears;
Th' inspiring sight redoubled vigour lends,
And soon its steeps each traveller ascends;
Panting we wind aloft, begloom'd in shade,
Mid rocks and mouldering logs tumultuous laid
In wild confusion; till the startled eye

Through the cleft mountain meets the pale blue sky
And distant forests; while, sublimely wild,
Tow'rs each tall cliff to heaven's own portals pil'd.
Enormous gap ! if Indian tales be true,

Here ancient Delaware once thunder'd through,
And roll'd for ages; till some earthquake dread,
Or huge convulsion shook him from his bed.†

Here under rocks, at distance from the road,
Our pond'rous knapsacks cautiously we stow'd,
The mountain's top determin'd to explore,
And view the tracts already travelled o'er;
As nimble tars the hanging shrouds ascend,
While hands and feet their joint assistance lend;
So we, from rock to rock, from steep to steep,
Scal'd these rude piles, suspended o'er the deep,
Through low dwarf underwood with chesnuts crown'd,
Whose crooked limbs with trailing moss were bound.
Eager we brush th' impending bushes through,
Panting for breath and wet with dashing dew;
Cliff after cliff triumphant we attain,
And high at last its loftiest summit gain;
But such a prospect!—such a glorious show!
The world, in boundless landscape, lay below!
Vast colour'd forests, to our wandering eyes,
Seem'd soften'd gardens of a thousand dyes.

• This species of dwarf oak produces great quantities of acorns, which the bears, pigeons, grous, jays, &c. are extremely fond of. It grows to the height of about five feet, very close, and affords good shelter for the deer and bear.

This pass in the Blue Mountain is usually called the Wind Gap. The reader will find some curious conjectures on its formation in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.

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