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ISAAC AND SHYLOCK.
Come go with me to Silver Lake,
To that beautiful inland sea,
Where will congregate the wise and great,
Those future guardians of our state,
Who will tell us what to be.
The orator will scrape the skies,
And climb yon mountain's crest;
That starry banner which greets our eyes,
Its folds shall smother his dying sighs,
When borne to the land of rest.
Then ho! for the Fourth at Silver Lake,
And pic-nic under the trees,
For cocoa pies and golden cake,
For good little boys with stomach ache,
And web-foot girls to squeeze.
Hurriedly glancing over the lines I saw that it was not what it should be,and I felt
the blood mount to my hair roots as I discovered that I could not remove the leaf without disfiguring her album. So I closed the book and asked that she would not read my composition until five days hence, when I would be far out on the billowy deep.
We parted, but I felt no relief until that same old buckboard bore me away from the immediate scenes of my first effort at poetry.
KERN HOLLAND.
ISAAC AND SHYLOCK.
The Jew, as well as in the history of the world, has figured prominently in the literature.
Hypatia would be incomplete without the caustic remarks and noble bearing of Raphael, Oliver Twist without Fagin, Ivanhoe without Isaac, and the Merchant of Venice without Shylock.
Although these representatives differ somewhat in minor characteristics, yet a common impulse runs through them all—the hatred of a downtrodden and oppressed nation for their oppressors.
Knocked and buffetted about on every hand, at the same time keenly awake to their injuries, they have descended from a noble people to a cringing horde of money lovers.
Much as the ceaseless tramp of years on the paving stones, wearing away the soft places and causing them, seemingly, to gather in small knots, so the persecution of ages, picking out his finer sensibilities, has made the character of the Jew to rally around one or two strong points.
At long intervals, like mile stones, showing his descent from a noble ancestry, stand truly noble characters. Such were Rebecca, Raphael, and Daniel Deronda. As the representatives of the other and by far the larger class may be taken Shylock as Isaac, Fagin and Miriam. Shylock as depicted in the Merchant of Venice, and Isaac in Ivanhoe, are perhaps the strongest. In these we find very little that is noble, or worthy our most meager praise.
In Shylock it is hard to say which is the strongest characteristic. In the first of the play the reader would without doubt say, avarice; but when Bassanio offers him twice the sum of the bond he says, "If every ducat in six thousand ducats were in six parts and every part a ducat I would not draw them; I would have my bond." This leads the reader to the conclusion that revenge for the insults heaped upon him and upon his nation is his controlling passion.
Isaac is a cringing, detestable creature with but few redeeming features. Intellect-