ns, that is the only evidence which ought to be received) he
has no penchant for it. The farmer asks him to join the village dance,
whereupon he indignantly exclaims, "What! I sport a toe among such a set
of rustics!" Upon the whole I am inclined to believe that as a
manufacturer of stays he takes his name from a part of those modish
ligatures called jumps.

A figure of the very first water and magnitude, now makes his
_entre_--the ghost of the late king! and here I must digress awhile, and
like a raw notary's clerk, enter my feeble protest against the tame and
unimpressive manner in which that supernatural personage is permitted to
make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their
decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Daemon (that
diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun
in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-_scent_-iment of blue
flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft
music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in
flames--none but a salamander, or Messrs. Shadrach and company can enact
the part with safety. But when we are presented with a dead Hamlet,
Banquo, or lady Anne, those impressive non-naturals of the poet of
Nature, they walk in as quiet and unadorned as at a morning rehearsal;
marching like a vender of clumsy Italian images, "with all their
imperfections on their head," and an additional load attributable to the
imperfect head of the manager. Remember the lines of the poet:

Another Eschylus appears--prepare
For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair,
In flame like Semele be brought to bed,
Whilst opening hell spouts wildfire at your head.

And let us in future see Shakspeare's ghosts adorned with the proper
paraphernalia and (impernalia) of thunder, hautboys, and brimstone. But
to return--For "eruption to our state;" some people prefer reading
corruption, alleging that most states are corrupt (England, as one of
the present company, of course excepted) but that eruptions are confined
to the towns that border on Mount Vesuvius. But surely, allowing the
observation its full swing, eruption is here the right reading. The
ghost, in a subsequent scene, expressly informs us that he is "confined
to fast in fires," and from his underground repetition of the word
"swear," it is clear that those fires were immediately under Hamlet's
feet. Yes, sir, this identical ghost was the Gu