If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages prince's palaces.

I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
When neither is attended; and I think
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.

How many things by season, seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!

How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
A substitute shines as brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as doth an inland brook,
Into the main of waters.

Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and Antonio are as full of deep meaning as of tenderness; and her portrait of a young coxcomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth and spirit which show with what a keen observing eye she has looked upon men and things.

I'll hold thee any wager,

When we are both accoutred like young men,
I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
And wear my dagger with a braver grace;

And speak between the change of man and boy
With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
Into a manly stride; and speak of frays

Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies-
How honourable ladies sought my love,

Which I denying, they fell sick and died;

I could not do with all: then I'll repent,

And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them:

And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell,

That men shall swear I have discontinued school
Above a twelvemonth!

And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity! She half checks herself as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humour: "In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker."-But if it carries her away, it is so perfectly goodnatured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever without offence; and so far, most unlike the satirical, poignant, unsparing wit of Beatrice, "misprising what she looks on."

In fact, I can scarce conceive a greater contrast than between the vivacity of Portia and the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy brilliance, is supremely soft and dignified; every thing she says or does, displays her capability for profound thought and feeling, as well as her lively and romantic disposition; and as I have seen in an Italian garden a fountain flinging round its wreaths of showery light, while the many-coloured Iris hung brooding above it, in its calm and soul-felt glory; so in Portia the wit is ever kept subordinate to the poetry, and we still feel the tender, the intellectual, and the imaginative part of the character, as superior to, and presiding over, its spirit and vivacity.

In the last act, Shylock and his machinations being dismissed from our thoughts, and the rest of the dramatis persona assembled together at Belmont, all our interest and all our attention are rivetted on Portia, and the conclusion leaves the most delightful impression on the fancy. The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick

she puts on her husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which she checks just as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety, show how little she was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are all consistent with her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion, when Portia invites her company to enter her palace to refresh themselves after their travels, and talk over "these events at full," the imagination, unwilling to lose sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay procession from the lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and princely revels, to splendour and festive mirth, to love and happiness.

Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render Portia so delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possible existence we have no doubt: and yet a human being, in whom the moral, intellectual, and sentient faculties should be so exquisitely blended and proportioned to each other; and these again, in harmony with all outward aspects and influences, probably never existed-certainly could not now exist. A woman constituted like Portia, and placed in this age, and in the actual state of society, would find society arm'd against her; and instead of being like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in fire to that multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion. With her the world without would be at war with the world within; in the perpetual strife, either her nature would "be subdued to the element it worked in," and bending to a necessity it could neither escape nor approve, lose at last something of its original brightness; or otherwise—a perpetual spirit of resistance, cherished as

VOL. I.

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