Mr.

I

on presenting himself, said-I beg to return my best and most sincere thanks. cannot accept the magnificent triumph which you achieved yesterday as a tribute of personal respect, or as showing how much you approve of my public conduct, for you have, I know, higher and more noble objects in view. You showed that enthusiasm, you made those extraordinary exertions, you exhibited that excess of zeal, not for the very humble individual who has now the honour of addressing you, but because in me you recognise a very humble but a very earnest supporter of those great principles which we all love in common. I beg to assure you that, justified as I have been by this earnest testimony of your approval, confirmed as I have been in the opinions I have ventured to entertain throughout my life and my parliamentary career, I shall go back to the House of Commons as your representative, there to advocate and support those principles which it is my best wish to encourage and promote in the most uncompromising and unflinching manner. The only paper we can boast of in has done me the honour-and it is a great honourto say that I did not come before you with any professions of political opinion, and said that I merely said in my address, "Here I am again." I am fully aware of the feelings which actuated that journal in making that remark; albeit it had reference to a comic association of youth, Joe Grimaldi, for that was the remark which he made when he presented himself before his mirth-loving audience. But I take it in a more serious light, for in saying so that paper-unwittingly, no doubthas paid me the highest compliment, and has done the greatest justice to your sagacity. Yes, here I am again, and I trust that, so long as I pursue the

same course which I do now, and which has secured your confidence, neither of us shall be ashamed to meet each other face to face. In one of the addresses of the many which I have made to you I took occasion to announce that my confident belief was that the result of this election would be a large majority in favour of the party. But now, my friends, I have not only to congratulate you upon the fulfilment of my prediction, but on something else. You have disposed, so far as your borough is concerned, of that cant and delusion about reaction, and I have the great satisfaction of telling you that the element will be increased, and augmented in the next Parliament. When I had the honour to be nominated the day before yesterday, I pointed out to you what I considered my highest claim to a renewal of your suffrages; the fact that I had been honoured with the confidence of the late a name that can never be mentioned but with a feeling of veneration; and as I am now once more entrusted with your confidence I may be permitted to say one thing more of that great and good man; that shortly before he was taken from us he interested himself most strongly and co-operated with me, as far as I could go with delicacy, in promoting the return of

for

Although I felt, as your sitting member, that a constituency of the independence of might take umbrage had I at once coalesced with at the same time I cannot disguise from myself, or from you, that I rejoice exceedingly at the result which has just been arrived at, for you have returned as my colleague in Parliament a promising gentleman, and also an uncompromising friend of

THE DRAMA.

The Chairman said:-Ladies and gentlemen, I come now to what we sometimes hear called "the toast of the evening"-yes, and the toast of the year; and I may with truth call it the toast of my life. I heartily approve of the idea of this festival. I think the leading events, epochs, and persons of this our earth require their occasional commemoration. Life is stagnant enough-men and women are commonplace enough, to avoid the risk of such disturbances cropping up too frequently. Least of all can the nation which boasts of Shakspeare fear to misplace her homage; and as I think it right that such a celebration should be held, I am not less clear that the right place to hold it in was Stratford-upon-Avon -his own Stratford-upon-Avon-that Stratfordupon-Avon around which all we know of Shakspeare -all except his undying works-is exclusively clustered; here, on about the most central ground of his own fair England, where I cannot but fancy that the whole impress of the scenery and rural life around is so unmistakeably English that we like to be reminded how home-like, and special, and insular was the cradle of that poet by whom we claim the mastery over the universal heart of man,-the password over the earth, and the many worlds beyond it. We are following, too, the good English rule of precedent, which was set for us by the celebration at

Stratford in the last century, mainly under the auspices of him who seems to be universally acknowledged, out of the long line of illustrious players of either sex, dead or living, who have distinguished, and, in some instances, identified themselves with the leading characters of Shakspeare, to have held the foremost place as the interpreter of Shakspeare— David Garrick. But since that well-timed homage of the England of the 18th century to the memory of Shakspeare, with what colossal strides has his fame advanced in the estimation of mankind! In our own country, at the previous period, the public taste still allowed the representation of his plays to be overlaid by the clumsy alterations and tinsel additions of Dryden, of Cibber, and of Garrick himself-Et tu, Brute! I need not point out the gratifying contrast which the reverential and affectionate retention and restoration of the original text, and let me add the scrupulous attention to the whole keeping and chronology of the minutest accessories of the representation, supplies in our days. Then abroad, the middle of the last century was the time when fast and fierce flew the arrows against the alleged barbarism of Shakspeare, aimed from the sarcastic armoury of Voltaire, which did not spare higher things than Shakspeare himself. Consult the first living names in the brilliant literature of France, and mark not how altered, but how reversed, the tone is in which Shakspeare is now spoken of and judged. As to Germany, I believe her boast is that she reveres, understands, and fathers him even more thoroughly than ourselves. I believe I may cite Goethe as the most representative name in the varied and teeming range of German literature; how does he designate Shakspeare ? as the greatest traveller in the journey of life. Happily any en

deavour to define or gauge the genius of Shakspeare would be as much beyond my mark as it would be beyond the limits and requirements of a scene like this. I think he would be a very clumsy worshipper at his immortal shrine who would not admit that his merits and beauties, while they are transcendent, are still unequal, and that in the whole range of his 36 admitted plays, in some of these he not only falls below his own level, but that of several of his contemporaries and successors. But take him in his height, and who may approach him? Presumptuous as the endeavour may appear to classify, there would seem to be few great tragedies which occupy summits of their own-Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, Othello; I feel we may take our stand within that unassailable quadrilateral, and give our challenge to all the world. I feel indeed tempted to upbraid myself when I think of all the outlying realms of strength and comeliness which I thus seem to leave outside; the stately forms of Roman heroes, the chivalry marshalled around our Plantaganet Kings, the wit of Mercutio, Beatrice, and Falstaff, the maiden grace of Imogen and Miranda, Ariel the dainty sprite, Oberon and his elfin Court, the memories of which people the glades of the Ardennes, the Rialto of Venice, the garden of Verona, giving to each glorious scene and sunny shore a stronger lien upon our associations than is possessed even by their own native land. It is time that I should call upon you, in the right of all the recollections which must throng in your own breasts far more copiously and vividly than I could hope to present them to you by the thrill you have felt in the crowded theatre, amid all the splendour of dramatic pageantry-by the calmer enjoyment of your closest leisure-by the rising of your soul when the lines