belonged to him as a preacher were no less present in his lectures, written and unwritten; and bursts of impassioned eloquence were not infrequent. In Cambridge, his courses at different times included the evidences of natural and revealed religion, the entire field of ethics, the composition and delivery of sermons, and the duties of the Christian pastorate; and, in Meadville, the range of topics was probably still wider. Yet he never appeared in the lecture-room without as faithful preparation and as full command of the ground before him as if he had been limited to some narrow specialty. Here, again, his beauty of holiness, by both example and influence, immeasurably enhanced his fitness for an office in which no teaching power can replace character or compensate for its absence. Dr. Stearns wrote very little for the press; but that little makes us wish that it could have been more. Obliged as he was to put his whole strength into his daily work, and with no ambition other than that of doing his work "as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye," he had neither the ability nor the will for services outside of his always severe and engrossing professional duty. But with his lifelong habits of profound thought, elaborate discussion, and careful writing, there must be among his papers the materials for a volume or volumes which would extend and perpetuate his reputation, and what would have been to him of much greater concern would contribute largely to the instruction and edification of those who cherish the memory of his uttered words. Yet it is less by what a man leaves than by what he is and does that he lives in this world after he seems to die. There are characters that our friend has shaped, souls that he has quickened, lives that he has made availing for the highest uses, voices and hearts that he has attuned to the service of God's altar, powers that he has elicited, trained and guided for the noblest offices of piety and love; and in these he will continue his earthly work for more generations than we can count, while they are weaving for him the amaranthine crown of the life eternal in heaven. A. P. PEABODY. SHAKSPERE'S ETHICS. There is certainly an element of absurdity in an attempt made by one who is neither a scholar nor a critic to say another word about Shakspere. But after reading the interesting and suggestive essay on "The Worship of Shakspere," by Mr. O. B. Frothingham, in the March number of the Century magazine, it seemed to me that it gave occasion for such a word concerning the ethical significance of the Shaksperian writings. Mr. Frothingham considers Shakspere as not only lacking spiritual insight, but as ethically deficient, and quotes the opinions of four critics of different nationalities, and of widely diverse modes of thought, who agree substantially with this verdict. These are M. Taine, Jones Very, Emerson, and one other whose name is not given. I would say at the beginning that I do not seek to set Shakspere on the same pinnacle as that whereon he has been placed by many adoring worshippers, who regard him as a perfectly rounded, symmetrical genius, fully developed in every direction, and an authority on all matters, not only of poetry and philosophy, but of religion, not to say theology. It is worse than useless to pretend that what we know of the life of the man bears out the theory of his possessing in his own character any transcendent or, perhaps, even very exalted motives of action, or that the wisdom of his career was in any way adequate to the expression of his genius as we have it in the plays. It must be also acknowledged that Shakspere, as a writer, was not a spiritual seer; that, as Mr. Frothingham's quotations show, his perception of analogy between heavenly and earthly things was blunt. His light was not from "unproved firmaments," but was the light of common day, by which he saw more of what was really going on in human nature than any other man who ever lived before or since. It is safe to assert that, if Shakspere's mind had dwelt largely upon what are known as the spiritual verities, his dramas would have lost much of that vitality which makes them a perennial source of thought, of delight, and of instruction to the world. He could not do both, and one vision would have dimmed the other. It seems a paltry thing to try to prove that a great genius must be omniscient, in order to render efficient service to mankind. In fact, no such genius has ever existed; and not even he who "saw life steadily, and saw it whole," sounded all the chords of man's complex existence. But to say that Shakspere was defective in spiritual insight, and to pronounce him wanting in the perception of ethical truths, imply two very different things; and perhaps Mr. Frothingham has not sufficiently considered this fact in his judgment of the plays. He says, "The ethical indifference of Shakspere. . . is the moral unconsciousness of a child who has not experienced the difference between good and evil, not of an angel who dwells serenely aloft in the presence of absolute perfection." It is abundantly evident that Shakspere's genius did not dwell in the presence of absolute perfection. On the contrary, it dwelt in the presence of warm, living men and women, who were anything but absolute perfection; but to say that his moral sense has not apprehended the difference between good and evil, it seems to me, is to make a very grave mistake. His morality is unconscious, intuitive, springing not from any deliberate intention to be moral; but his mind reflected with too marvellous an accuracy the conditions and workings of human life, he held too true a mirror up to nature not to be sound and sane ethically, whether he intended it or not. Any one who clearly sees things as they are, even if his mind has never soared into the regions of spiritual speculation, sees the unerring workings of the moral law, never to be evaded, making the wages of sin moral death, and the reward of the virtuous added strength and nobility of soul. Shakspere's characters are neither angels nor devils, as is apt to be the case with the creations of authors of less universal apprehension, but men and women, few of whom are wholly faultless, and fewer still are entirely bad; but good and bad traits are shown in the same character, and, what is still more astonishing in that unanalytical period, we are occasionally permitted to see these traits develop, and reach their natural consummation of good or evil, according to the inevitable workings of the moral law. What a profoundly ethical touch is it, when Macbeth, who in the beginning possesses many noble qualities, was valiant, affectionate, sensitive, after the murder of Duncan loses all possibility of happiness, sinks gradually deeper into sin, and is finally seized with that deadly loathing of life, that soul weariness which declares,— "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Macbeth has neither hope of heaven nor fear of hell from the outset; but he knows well enough that "In these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Desdemona was chaste, delicate, fair, but she was a liar from the beginning; and her untruth is far more potent against her for evil than the fiendish machinations of Iago. The parting words of her father to her husband are,— "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee." Iago's insinuations have no effect on the noble mind of Othello, till he cunningly reminds him that "she did deceive her father marrying you." She lies pitifully, miserably, about the loss of the fatal handkerchief, in a way to kindle suspicion to the utmost; and, with her last breath, she utters a falsehood. It is this weakness that brings both her and her husband to ruin. Is not this in profound accordance with all ethical laws? That the morality of Shakspere is apparently unconscious is what makes him seem, as Mr. Emerson puts it, "inconceivably wise." It is incredible that any man should possess such wisdom, such insight into the workings of temporal affairs, and be at no more trouble either to obtain it or to give it utterance. With the exception of Homer, to whom Mr. Frothingham's comparison of the child who has not experienced the difference between good and evil seems much more applicable, we note in the wisdom of even great geniuses something definite and personal, a touch of labor, of straining after some end, a slight flavor of the schoolmaster who wishes to teach the world its lessons. This is in no whit ignoble; and the lessons may be very high and universal ones, which we sorely need to learn. But when we read Plato, Paul, Dante, Bacon, Browning, Emerson, Carlyle, we perceive, though "standing afar off," that these men are in a sort self-conscious, and reveal that consciousness in their attitude toward this world and the world that is to come; we mark not only the splendor of their genius, but also their own personal idiosyncrasies. We see that they love; but they can also hate, and some of them can hate with bitterness. Each follows his own appointed road, and makes it easier for us to travel through the mazes of the unintelligible world because he has done so; but there are certain paths into which their feet scorn. to enter. Shakspere scorned nothing and nobody. He neither scorned nor denied the spiritual aspect of things, but simply let it alone. He is as tolerant as Nature herself of every possible aspect of human existence. Good and bad, wise and foolish, witty and witless, interest him alike; and he reproduces them with something of Nature's own lavishness and more than Nature's own wit. His extraordinary sympathy baffles and dazzles our narrower vision. If we are of a sort to love the Prosperos, the Imogens, the Dukes in "As You Like It" and "Measure for Measure," the Portias, Hermiones, Hamlets, Rosalinds in real life (provided we have had the incredible good fortune to meet them), our souls turn with loathing and disgust from the |