speaking individuals. Then what variety! What originality! What numbers!
What a gallery has he set before us! No writer but Shakspeare ever
equalled him in this respect. Others may have equalled, perhaps
surpassed him, in the elaborate finishing of some single portrait
(witness the immortal Knight and Squire of Cervantes, Fielding's Adams,
and Goldsmith's Vicar); or may have displayed, with greater skill, the
morbid anatomy of human feeling--and our slighter foibles and finer
sensibilities have been more exquisitely touched by female hands--but
none save Shakspeare has ever contributed so largely, so valuably, to
our collection of characters;--of pictures so surprisingly original,
yet, once seen, admitted immediately to be conformable to Nature. Nay,
even his anomalous beings are felt to be generally reconcilable with our
code of probabilities; and, as has been said of the supernatural
creations of Shakspeare, we are impressed with the belief, that if such
beings did exist, they would be as he has represented them.--_Edinburgh
Review._

* * * * *


MEN COMPARED WITH BEES.

(_From a continuation of "the Indicator," by Leigh Hunt._)


It has been thought, that of all animated creation, the bees present the
greatest moral likeness to man; not only because they labour and lay up
stores, and live in communities, but because they have a form of
government and a monarchy. Virgil immortalized them after a human
fashion. A writer in the time of Elizabeth, probably out of compliment