’Mr. R.H.  DANA has been giving us readings in the English dramatists, beginning with Shakspeare.  The introductory was beautiful.  After assigning to literature its high place in the education of the human soul, he announced his own view in giving these readings:  that he should never pander to a popular love of excitement, but quietly, without regard to brilliancy or effect, would tell what had struck him in these poets; that he had no belief in artificial processes of acquisition or communication, and having never learned anything except through love, he had no hope of teaching any but loving spirits, &c.  All this was arrayed in a garb of most delicate grace; but a man of such genuine refinement undervalues the cannon-blasts and rockets which are needed to rouse the attention of the vulgar.  His naive gestures, the rapt expression of his face, his introverted eye, and the almost childlike simplicity of his pathos, carry one back into a purer atmosphere, to live over again youth’s fresh emotions.  I greatly enjoyed his readings in Hamlet, and have reviewed in connection what Goethe and Coleridge have said.  Both have successfully seized on the main points in the character of Hamlet, and Mr. D. took nearly the same range.  His views of Ophelia, however, are unspeakably more just than are those of Serlo in Wilhelm Meister.  I regret that the whole course is not to be on Shakspeare, for I should like to read with him all the plays.

’I never have met with a person of finer perceptions.  He leaves out nothing; though he over-refines on some passages.  He has the most exquisite taste, and freshens the souls of his hearers with ever new beauty.  He is greatly indebted to the delicacy of his physical organization for the delicacy of his mental appreciation.  But when he has told you what he likes, the pleasure of intercourse is over:  for he is a man of prejudice more than of reason, and though he can make a lively expose of his thoughts and feelings, he does not justify them.  In a word, Mr. Dana has the charms and the defects of one whose object in life has been to preserve his individuality unprofaned.’

ART.

While residing at Providence, and during her visits to Boston, in her vacations, Margaret’s mind was opening more and more to the charms of art.

’The Ton-Kunst, the Ton-Welt, give me now more stimulus than the written Word; for music seems to contain everything in nature, unfolded into perfect harmony.  In it the all and each are manifested in most rapid transition; the spiral and undulatory movement of beautiful creation is felt throughout, and, as we listen, thought is most clearly, because most mystically, perceived. * *

’I have been to hear Neukomm’s Oratorio of David.  It is to music what Barry Cornwall’s verses and Talfourd’s Ion are to poetry.  It is completely modern, and befits