e
university at Leipsic) says, "Beer exercises on the digestion, on the
circulation, on the nerves, and above all on the whole system, a
beneficial effect."[F]

It would be well if Americans would adopt it instead of the innumerable
harmful beverages which ruin the health and poison the peace of society.

S. G. YOUNG.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: "Quadri della Natura Umana."]

[Footnote B: The local term in Bavaria for a glass of beer.]

[Footnote C: There you will drink good beer.]

[Footnote D: There you drank good beer.]

[Footnote E: A _mass_ equals fifteen-sixteenths of a quart.]

[Footnote F: "Buch vom gesunden und kranken Menschen" (9th edition).]

ON READING SHAKESPEARE.

PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD.

We have followed Shakespeare's course of dramatic production down to the
time when he began to embody in the work by which he earned his bread
and made his fortune the results of an intuitive knowledge of human
nature and a profound reflection upon it never surpassed, if ever
equalled, and which, even if possessed, have never been united in any
other man with a power of expression so grand, so direct, so strong, and
so subtle. "Twelfth Night," "Henry V.," and "As You Like It" mark the
close of his second period, which ended with the sixteenth century. His
third period opens with "Hamlet," which was written about the year 1600.
But here I will say that the division of his work into periods, and the
assignment of his plays to certain years, is only inferential and
approximative. We are able to determine with an approach to certainty
about what time most of his plays were written; but we cannot fix their
date exactly. Nor is it of very great importance that we should do so.
There are some people who can fret themselves and others as to whether a
play was written in 1600 or in 1601, as there are others who deem the
question whether its author was born on the 23d of April in one year,
and died on the same day of the same month in another, one of great
importance. I cannot so regard it. A few days in the date of a man's
birth or death, a few months in the production of a play--these are
matters surely of very little moment. What is important to the student
and lover of Shakespeare is the order of the production of his works;
and this, fortunately, is determinable with a sufficient approach to
accuracy to enable us to know about at what age he was engaged upon
them