As yet, however, he has lacked even the means to get as far as St. Louis. He drinks no more than is good for him. To speak of Gertrude's impressions of Richard would lead us quite too far. Shortly after his return she broke up her household, and came to the bold resolution (bold, that is, for a woman young, unmarried, and ignorant of manners in her own country) to spend some time in Europe. At our last accounts she was living in the ancient city of Florence. Her great wealth, of which she was wont to complain that it excluded her from human sympathy, now affords her a most efficient protection. She passes among her fellow-countrymen abroad for a very independent, but a very happy woman; although, as she is by this time twenty-seven years of age, a little romance is occasionally invoked to account for her continued celibacy. THE GROWTH, LIMITATIONS, AND TOLERATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S GENIUS. In an article on Shakespeare in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little pretension to system in the order of taking them up. The first of these topics is the succession of Shakespeare's works, considered as steps in the growth and development of his powers,--a subject which has already been ably handled by our countryman, Mr. Verplanck. The facts, as far as they can be ascertained, are these. Shakespeare went to London about the year 1586, in his twenty-second year, and found some humble employment in one of the theatrical companies. Three years afterwards, in 1589, he had risen to be one of the sharers in the Blackfriars' Theatre. In 1592 he had acquired sufficient reputation as a dramatist, or at least as a recaster of the plays of others, to excite the jealousy of the leading playwrights, whose crude dramas he condescended to rewrite or retouch. That graceless vagabond, Robert Greene, addressing from his penitent death-bed his old friends Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe, and trying to dissuade them from "spending their wits" any longer in "making plays," spitefully declares: "There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in the country." Doubtless this charge of adopting and adapting the productions of others includes some dramas which have not been preserved, as the company to which Shakespeare was attached owned the manuscripts of a great number of plays which were never printed; and it was a custom, when a play had popular elements in it, for other dramatists to be employed in making such additions as would give