"How will it be possible," thought I, "to unravel this intricate question? It is plain these English are a nation of madmen. Oh! could they but take one look at my country, where the will of one man is all in all,--where no man's head is safe on his shoulders for one moment,--where, if he heaps up riches in the course of many years, they may be taken from him in an hour,--where he does not even think for himself, much less speak,--where man is as withering grass of the field, and life as the wind blowing over it; could they but know this, short would be their controversies. They would praise Allah with gratitude for their condition, be content with their fate, and drive all wish of change from their thoughts, as threatening the overthrow of their happiness." SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. III. ROMEO. "Of this unlucky sort our Romeus is one, For all his hap turns to mishap, and all his mirth to mone." _The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet._ "Never," says Prince Escalus, in the concluding distich of Romeo and Juliet, "--was there story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." It is a story which, in the inartificial shape of a black-letter ballad, powerfully affected the imagination, and awakened the sensibilities, of our ancestors, and in the hands of Shakspeare has become the love-story of the whole world. Who cares for the loves of Petrarch and Laura, or of Eloisa and Abelard, compared with those of Romeo and Juliet? The gallantries of Petrarch are conveyed in models of polished and ornate verse; but, in spite of their elegance, we feel that they are frosty as the Alps beneath which they were written. They are only the exercises of genius, not the ebullitions of feeling; and we can easily credit the story that Petrarch refused a dispensation to marry Laura, lest marriage might spoil his poetry. The muse, and not the lady, was his mistress. In the case of Abelard there are many associations which are not agreeable; and, after all, we can hardly help looking upon him as a fitter hero for Bayle's Dictionary than a romance. In Romeo and Juliet we have the poetry of Petrarch without its iciness, and the passion of Eloisa free from its coarse exhibition. We have, too, philosophy far more profound than ever was scattered over the syllogistic pages of Abelard, full of knowledge and acuteness as they undoubtedly are. But I am not about to consider Romeo merely as a lover, or to use him as an illustration of Lysander's often-quoted line, "The course of true love never did run smooth."