This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true! but the critic subsequently declares, that "there is nothing in Ophelia which could make her the object of an engrossing passion to so majestic a spirit as Hamlet." Now, though it be with reluctance, and even considerable mistrust of myself, that I differ from a critic who can thus feel and write, I do not think so:--I do think, with submission, that the love of Hamlet for Ophelia is deep, is real, and is precisely the kind of love which such a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia. When the heathen would represent their Jove as clothed in all his Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed him with the lightnings; but when in Holy Writ the Supreme Being is described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of cherubim, and his emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion, which has revealed deeper mysteries in the human soul than ever were dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and innocence, which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power: and therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring, penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia, with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious. That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness,--that he loves her with a love as intense as can belong to a nature in which there is, (I think,) much more of contemplation and sensibility than action or passion--is the feeling and conviction with which I have always read the play of Hamlet.