ristine purity and beauty, comes
forth from beneath his hand; it reappears like the exquisite remains of
Grecian statuary, which, buried for ages in superincumbent ruins, emerge
pure and unstained in virgin snow, when a renewal of cultivation has
again exposed them to the light. If he were equally great at all times,
he would have been the most perfect dramatist of modern times. But he is
far from being so. At times he is tedious; often dull; it is his great
scenes, such as the last sacrament of Queen Mary, which have gained for
him his colossal reputation, and produce an indelible impression on the
mind of his reader.

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits and we have only got
through half our subject. A noble theme remains: Shakspeare, with the
Romantic drama, will be treated in the Number which is to follow; and
the causes considered which have brought the school, created by such a
master, into the state of comparative mediocrity in which, with some
brilliant exceptions, it is now placed.

FOOTNOTES:

[J] The first wrote _eighteen hundred_ plays, the variety in the plots
of which is so prodigious, that they are the great quarry from which
almost all subsequent dramatic writers have borrowed the elements of
their theatrical pieces.

[K] Euripides was fifteen years younger than Sophocles--the latter being
born in the year 495 B.C., the former in 480; and they thrice contended
for the prize at the public games of Greece.

[L] Miss Cushman's Lady Macbeth is a performance of the very highest
merit, and proves that the genius of the stage is capable of being
matured in transatlantic climes.

[M] At the execution of Doolan and another, for a combination murder
near Glasgow, on May 13th, 1842.

[N] Schiller's dramas are of the modern kind, and the unities are not
strictly observed; but his finer pieces belong more nearly to the
Grecian than the Romantic school.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

NO. III.

MR W. WELLINGTON HURST.

It would probably puzzle Mr William Wellington Hurst, as much as any
man, to find out on what grounds I placed him on the list of my College
friends; for certainly our intimacy was hardly sufficient to warrant
such a liberty; and he was one of those happy individuals who would
never have suspected that it could be out of gratitude for much
amusement afforded me by sundry of his sayings and doings. But so it is;
and it happens, that while the images of many others of my
companion