mios. The Antipholus without the house gets furious—and his anger shapes itself into a paltry device to spite his wife. But the Antipholus within, bewildered, tears himself away from the anxious wife, and from the sister who hath almost made him traitor to himself. Now we see the shadows of two Antipholuses. Each is alike, but yet each is different.

We are now beginning to keep the characters distinct in the mind. When the Antipholus of Ephesus comes upon the scene with his own Dromio, whom he sends for a rope to beat his wife, we see that the two are properly assorted. When the Dromio of Syracuse comes to say the ship is ready, and he is sent for money to pay the importunate goldsmith, we see the course of the 'Errors.' All that follows-the arrest of the man for payment of the chain who had not the chain,—and the demand of the courtezan for her ring from the man who had not the ring—is now clear. The passionate wife the raving husband-the weeping sister-the lunatic's fetters-are all natural consequences of a confusion which would have been mere farce, if the story were not held together by a grave introduction, which the reader will not easily forget, and by a poetical conclusion which reconciles all contradictions.

Ægeon, an aged merchant of Syracuse, has come to Ephesus in search of a lost son. He has spent five summers in farthest Greece, roaming through the bounds of Asia. Ephesus and Syracuse are at deadly enmity; and they each have made a law to admit no traffic in their adverse towns, under the penalty of death or a ransom of a thousand marks. The duke of Ephesus, who sentences Egeon to this forfeiture of life, in default of property, is a kind-hearted man, who would spare him if it were "not against our laws." Kind-hearted men in all countries, and in all ages, have administered bloody and cruel laws, and called them justice. These laws of Ephesus and Syracuse were laws of commercial jealousy, which, under some pretext or other, have long separated nations, and shut up the good gifts of heaven in narrow confines, instead of distributing them amongst all mankind. And for this unholy system Ægeon must die. In the age of Elizabeth goods were confiscated, and ships were burnt, when the government of England, and the government of

the Netherlands, chose to injure the people of either country under the pretence of protecting industry. The penalty of death which Shakspere has imagined as the law of Ephesus and Syracuse, is a covert satire upon the principle of all such enactments-in the same way that hanging for stealing in a dwelling house above the value of five shillings was an awful mockery of every system of penal law that seeks to repress crime by mere terror.

The helpless Ægeon tells his story. He was born in Syracuse, and there he wed. His wealth increased by prosperous voyages; till at the death of his factor, he went to Epidamnum, whither his wife, six months afterwards, followed him, and arrived safe. There she became the joyful mother of two goodly sons, and in the same inn, at the same hour, a poor mean woman was delivered of male twins. These boys (for it was at a period when domestic slavery was tolerated) the merchant bought, and brought up to attend his sons. In a short time they resolved to return home. A storm came on-the sailors deserted the ship, leaving Ægeon, his wife, and the four children, to their fate. On board was a spare mast, and, before the ship sank, the wife of Ægeon, with one of the twins and one little slave, were bound at one end, whilst Ægeon secured himself and the other two children at the other end. They floated straight with the stream, when suddenly their mast was driven against a rock, and splitted in the midst. The wife and her infant charge were picked up, as the husband saw. Egeon, with the children of his care, was succoured by a passing ship, whose crew knew whom it was their hap to save. They returned to their old home; and there the one son, and his attendant, grew up with the father, till at eighteen they determined to set forth in search of their brothers. Egeon was thus separated from all who once formed his family. After two years' fruitless longing, he resolved to seek them. A solitary man, he was now ready to welcome death-and he was to die, if that one day could afford him no help from friends in Ephesus. Here would be the end of his weary pilgrimage-here his place of rest.

It is this story, so beautifully told by the Poet, that furnishes a clue to all the strange 'Errors' that naturally

belong to the resemblance of the pair of twins. All the mistakes are quite within the bounds of possibility. Conflicting evidence as to identity of person is constantly occur ring in legal proceedings. Ulrici, the German critic, says of this series of mistakes of identity, that herein "the truth (not more comic than tragic) is most strikingly impressed upon us, that the knowledge and ignorance of man run so nicely into each other, that the boundary line almost disappears, and that the very convictions which we look upon as the most certain and the best grounded may, perhaps, turn out to be nothing but error or deception." In such cases as that of the Antipholuses and the Dromios the errors arise from imperfect observation. In real life there are indi vidual peculiarities associated with that general resemblance which is so often deceptive in twins. There are peculiarities either of gait, or voice, or dress-and almost always of character. Shakspere has indicated such peculiarities most distinctly in his Dromios and Antipholuscs; and the spectator of the comedy may soon detect them.

The intervention of The Abbess-the lost wife of Ægeon— reconciles all doubts and differences. She was saved, with her son and the twin Dromio, as they floated on the broken mast, by men of Epidamnum; but rude fishermen of Corinth took the children away. Their fortunes were propitious; for being brought to Ephesus by the uncle of the duke, Antipholus found in that duke a generous patron. And now Emilia meets her lost husband, whose life is spared even without ransom, and she finds her children after twentyfive years' separation. It is a new nativity; and there shall be joy at that gossip's feast to which all are invited. Antipholus of Syracuse will marry the "siren," and in the gentleness of his nature, whenever new doubts and difficulties arise in their course, he will say to her,

"Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak.” The Dromio of Syracuse and the Dromio of Ephesus will be no more confounded, as they "go hand in hand, not one before another."