Is there no intention, for instance, in placing _Prospero_, who forsook the duties of his dukedom for the study of magic, in a desert island, with just three subjects; one, a monster below humanity; the second, a creature etherealized beyond it; and the third a complete embodiment of human perfection? Is it not that he may learn how to rule, and, having learned, return, by the aid of his magic wisely directed, to the home and duties from which exclusive devotion to that magic had driven him? In “Julius Caesar,” the death of _Brutus_, while following as the consequence of his murder of _Caesar_, is yet as much distinguished in character from that death, as the character of _Brutus_ is different from that of _Caesar_. _Caesar’s_ last words were _Et tu Brute? Brutus_, when resolved to lay violent hands on himself, takes leave of his friends with these words: “Countrymen, My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life, I found no man, but he was true to me.” Here Shakspere did not invent. He found both speeches in Plutarch. But how unerring his choice! Is the final catastrophe in “Hamlet” such, because Shakspere could do no better?--It is: he could do no better than the best. Where but in the regions beyond could such questionings as _Hamlet’s_ be put to rest? It would have been a fine thing indeed for the most nobly perplexed of thinkers to be left--his love in the grave; the memory of his father a torment, of his mother a blot; with innocent blood on his innocent hands, and but half understood by his best friend--to ascend in desolate dreariness the contemptible height of the degraded throne, and shine the first in a drunken court! Before bringing forward my last instance, I will direct the attention of my readers to a passage, in another play, in which the lesson of the play I am about to speak of, is _directly_ taught: the first speech in the second act of “As You Like It,” might be made a text for the exposition of the whole play of “King Lear.” The banished duke is seeking to bring his courtiers to regard their exile as a part of their moral training. I am aware that I point the passage differently, while I revert to the old text. “Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam-- The season’s difference, as the icy fang, And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind? Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say-- This is no flattery; these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. Sweet are the uses of adversity.”