it palsied the tongue, and only advertised itself in the pathetic eyes which fell to such perusal of Ophelia's face, "and to the last bended their light" on her. Let us try to conceive the situation at the grave. Hamlet has been absent in England during Ophelia's distraction. Returning, he strolls into a churchyard, amuses himself with the old grave-digger, withdraws aside when the train approaches, so as not to be recognized by the King. Then comes the discovery that Ophelia is dead. There was always in Hamlet's brain that time allowed for the transit of a message between his feeling and his deed. The line connected with a great many intermediate tracts, in each of which there was delay. Nothing but an unsyllabled fluid of conjecture passed all along the way. Dead? How? Was that glad girl the one to take her own life? Why? There was just time enough for him to hear that confession of his mother,-- "I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife." What a remembrance, extorted from death, of the old love that he never could conceal from the mother's instinct which was so fond and clear! He listens thus to despair reclaiming former hopes, and it draws his spirit backward, so that the body cannot move and the tongue dare not break this sacred silence of his retrospection. Therefore, Laertes has plenty of time to rant like Pistol in a tavern. His exaggerated action plunges into the grave of Hamlet's reverie and breaks it up. The Prince is forced into disgust at hearing a man vaunt love against his own. All scruples are shrivelled up in anger; and he instinctively assumes the tone he hears. The old ironical disgust for sham makes the imitation perfect. Afterward, to Horatio, he acknowledges that he forgot himself:-- "But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion." And this passion broke open his respect and prudence, and let loose the first cry of his love that had ever reached the ears of others. Else it would have lain buried with Ophelia in the silence of her lover's breast.