m pass! He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.

Hush, strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a
mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his pride, his
grief, his awful tragedy." This view of the subject was altogether new.

The compromise just spoken of--and I must bring to an end my story,
already too long--consisted in the expenditure of the five-dollar piece
in two of the books written by the bestower of that inflammatory coin.
I open the volumes of _Pendennis_ and _Vanity Fair_ which have been
lying at my elbow, and across the title-page of each I see written, in
curiously small and delicate hand, "---- ----, with W. M. Thackeray's
kind regards. April, 1856." These were the books.

H. R.

HAMLET IN A FRENCH DRESS.

If any one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the
blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can
recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of _Hamlet_
done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well
known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular
good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare
wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work.
For which Heaven be praised! for what he has done is sufficient, in all
conscience. Not that his translation is totally devoid of merit. On the
contrary, some passages are admirably rendered, and give the sense and
sound of the original in a manner really remarkable when the difference
between the two languages is considered. But there is such a calm
conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work
faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and
variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible.

For instance, to begin at the beginning, the phrase

Looks it not like the king?

is translated

C'est le roi _tout crache_.

And in the same scene--

Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,

is rendered--

Si, prevaricateur, tu volas des tresors
Par ton ordre enfouis dans le sein de la terre,
De tels fails vous font faire _ecole buissoniere_
A vous autres esprits.

In the next scene we are treated to a small specimen of M. de
Chatelain's genius a