In that school of the tempest; in that one night's personal experience of the misery that underlies the pompous social structure, with all its stately splendours and divine pretensions; in that New School of the Experimental Science, the king has been taking lessons in the art of majesty. The alchemy of it has robbed him of the external adjuncts and 'additions of a king,' but the sovereignty of MERCY, the divine right of PITY, the majesty of the HUMAN KINDNESS, the grandeur of the COMMON WEAL, 'breathes through his lips' from the Poet's heart 'like man new made.' _Kent_. Good, my lord, enter here. _Lear_. Prythee, go in thyself. _Seek thine own ease_. . . . . But, I'll go in. In, boy,--_go first--[To the Fool.]_ You, _houseless_ poverty'-- He knows the meaning of that phrase now. 'Nay get thee in. I'll PRAY, and then I'll sleep.' [_Fool goes in_.] 'Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,'-- There are no empty phrases in this prayer, the critic of it may perceive: it is a learned prayer; the petitioner knows the meaning of each word in it: the tempest is the book in which he studied it. 'How shall your _houseless heads_ and _unfed sides_, Your _looped_ and _windowed raggedness_ defend you From _seasons such as these_? O, I have taken _Too little care of_ THIS. [Hear, hear]. Take physic, POMP; [Hear.] Expose thyself to _feel_ what wretches _feel_, _That thou mayest shake the superflux to them_, _And show the_ HEAVENS _more just_.' That is his _prayer_. To minds accustomed to the ceremonial a religious worship, 'with court holy water in a dry house' only, or to those who have never undertaken to compose a prayer for the king and all the royal family at the hovel's mouth, and in such immediate proximity to animals of a different species, it will not perhaps seem a very pious one. But considering that it was understood to have been composed during the heathen ages of this realm, and before Christianity had got itself so comfortably established as a principle of government and social regulations, perhaps it was as good a prayer for a penitent king to go to sleep on, as could well be invented. Certainly the spirit of Christianity, as it appeared in the life of its Founder, at least, seems to be, by a poetic anachronism incorporated in it.