One, however, of the world's intellectual sovereigns, who lived in the uplands of the imagination, who traversed the gamut of human experience, and of whom we may say, if of any man, " He saw life steadily and saw it whole ;" in dealing with the relation of man ro the civic order, never indulged in illusion -- William Shakspeare. It has often been said to his reproach that his dramas are not instinct with the spirit of liberty ; that he believed in the right of the strongest to rule ; that he deified strength and power ; that he showed contempt for the mob and " rabblement." We cannot go into a discussion of this interesting matter. We must remember, however -- a fact that is often overlooked -- that Shakspeare was not only most extraordinary as a poet, but that he was one of the profoundest moralists that the world has known. His genius was supremely sane, calm, judicial, healthy. He painted men and women as they are. His nobly poised intellect and acute vision saw the realities of life. He knew the exalted possibilities of spiritual excellence to which humanity can rise, and the abysmal depths into which it can sink. He recognized the fact that society is swayed by selfish interests oftener than by a devotion to high ideals. He read history with a microscopic eye. Dowden, one of his most acute interpreters, says, " Shakspeare studied and represented in his art the world which lay before him. If he prophesied the future it was not in the ordinary manner of prophets, but only by completely embodying the present, in which the future was con-