On the other hand, we may safely attribute to him a deep reverence for antiquity; and we need not doubt that the precept of Solomon, My son, fear thou the Lord and the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change,' Prov. xxiv. 21, approved itself thoroughly to his large heart and marvellous understanding. How just is the sentiment which ascribes to 'Reverence,' or due regard for subordination, the power that keeps peace and order in the world, to borrow the gloss of Johnson upon the words that follow!

Tho' mean and mighty, rotting

Together, have one dust; yet Reverence

(That ANGEL of the world) doth make distinction

Of place 'tween high and low.

Cymbeline, Act iv. Sc. 2.

The same sentiment, in regard to the value and importance of gradations in human society, is enlarged upon and enforced, in Troilus and Cressida, most appropriately, by Ulysses:

Oh, when Degree is shaken,

Which is the ladder to all high designs,

Then enterprise is sick. How could communities

The primogeniture, and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

But by Degree stand in authentic place?

Take but Degree away, untune that string,

And hark what discord follows; each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy.

Act i. Sc. 3.

And where shall we find a more effective protest

against the spirit of innovation and continual change, or the value of antiquity and custom more truly estimated and described, than in what follows? A rash political movement is objected to

As tho' the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifers and props of every word.

Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 5.

The critics have been somewhat puzzled by 'word,' as here used, and have proposed to alter it; Warburton suggesting 'ward,' Johnson Johnsonweal,' and Tyrwhitt 'work.' Had any one of them read the Bible as attentively, and known it as well as Shakspeare did, I imagine he would have recognized the expression as borrowed, probably, from Scripture, where 'word' occurs not unfrequently as put for 'thing.' The Greek pĥua, properly word, and so translated in Matt. xviii. 16-'that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established' -is translated 'thing' in Luke i. 37, 'With God no thing shall be impossible;' in the Prayer Book, Office for Visitation of the Sick, however, the old and more exact translation is retained, 'We know, O Lord, that there is no word impossible with Thee.' The truth is, that word and work, or deed, though very different, as we know, in the case of man, are synonymous with regard to God, and therefore synonymously used in the Book of God.

There are no scenes which our poet appears to have

taken more pleasure in depicting than those in which he satirizes mob-government; whether at Rome, as in Coriolanus, or at London, as in the Second Part of King Henry VI. (see, especially, Act iv. Sc. 2, where Jack Cade is introduced); in both which he teaches us by example, how

Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe.

Comedy of Errors, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Again his moral estimate of a mere worldly politician, without faith in God, as the Governor of the world, may be gathered from an observation of Hamlet, in the grave-diggers' scene, where, when one of the clowns had thrown up a skull, he says—

This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now over-reaches, one that would circumvent God, might it not?

Act v. Sc. 1.

Surely not too bold a supposition, when we consider how statesmen have been known to act in defiance of God's laws.

I have already had occasion, much oftener than I could have wished, to invite my reader's attention to the manner in which omissions and even alterations of our poet's words have been made, in 'The Family Shakspeare.' But what will be thought of the strange obtuseness (for I can call it nothing less) which has changed the name of 'God' into the word 'anybody' in the foregoing quotation— a change by which the ne plus ultra of bathos is fathered upon Shakspeare, and the grand meaning

of the speaker that, however man may scheme and plot for the government of states, God Himself is the only true politician in the universe, is entirely lost!

No one who has not been present at a coronation, or who has not read the authorized Coronation Service, can form a just idea of the punctilious accuracy with which Shakspeare has described what took place at the crowning of Queen Anne Bullen, and was repeated, only with such additions as would be proper for a queen-regnant, on the crowning of our present most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria. I have before me a printed copy of the Form and Order of the Service performed, and Ceremonies observed on this latter occasion; and when I have presented to the reader Shakspeare's description, as we find it in King Henry VIII., I will make some extracts from the said formulary, which may serve to illustrate what our poet has written; none of his critics, so far as I am aware, having said a word upon the matter, which is surely a most interesting one to every British subject. The place is Westminster Abbey :

At length her Grace rose, and with modest paces
Came to the altar: where she kneel'd, and saint-like,
Cast her fair eyes to heaven, and prayed devoutly.
Then rose again, and bowed her to the people;
When by the Archbishop of Canterbury
She had all the royal makings of a queen,
As holy oil, Edward Confessor's crown,

The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems,
Laid nobly on her : which performed the choir,
With all the choicest music of the kingdom,
Together sung Te Deum.

Act iv. Sc. I.

The authorized Coronation Service is divided into A Rubric in the first section will

nineteen sections.

partly explain the first three lines of the foregoing description :

The queen having passed by her throne, makes her humble adoration, and then kneeling at the faldstool set for her before her chair, uses some short private prayer.

The eighth section is entitled 'THE ANOINTING,' which follows immediately after the Queen has kissed 'the Holy Gospel in the great Bible,' and signed the Coronation Oath.' 6 It is commenced with the hymn Veni Creator. Then follows a prayer by the Archbishop for the consecration of the oil, and for the blessing and sanctification of her who is to be anointed therewith. The unction is performed on the crown of the head, and on the palms of both the hands. It was made also on the breast, previously to the two last female coronations of Queen Adelaide and Queen Victoria. The putting on of 'Edward Confessor's CROWN' does not come till the twelfth section, and meanwhile-besides 'THE ROD' (ie., the mace, not to be confounded with the sceptre) and BIRD OF PEACE,' i.e., the Dove, which is delivered into the Queen's left hand, with these words, by the Archbishop:

Receive the rod of equity and mercy; and God, from Whom all holy