WEPT have we-or in thoughts that lay" too deep for tears"-gazed pale on Juliet, and Ophelia, and Cordelia, and Desdemona-as we saw them in suffering and in sorrow -like fair creatures going to sacrifice-led on-slowly, step by stepor sometimes with a hurried motion -to death. And, one after another, we saw them die. Juliet in distraction, vainly draining the dregs of that fatal cup that had frozen the heart-blood of Romeo-by sharper death expiring on his bosom-and, with her husband, buried in one tomb! Ophelia, her poor wits gone, even like the flowers she scattered, down to the grave on a clear streamlet, floating like a Swan! Cordelia, with "holy water from her heavenly eyes," bathing the brow of her mad father, till, like dew through a smiling calm shed by Mercy, it sank with healing into his brain, and Lear almost "became whole." And we saw him bearing in his daughter from their prison-cell in his arms; and we heard" And my poor Fool is hanged!" his heart-strings crack as he gave up the ghost. Desdemona, the Gentle, the Immaculate, she who

was

"Woo'd, won, nd wed, and murder'd by the Mo!"

Immortal is the memory of the Martyrs. Nor call them beings of an imaginary world. Phantoms are they of this our human life. Knowest thou not that such trials have been undergone by many creatures clothed in the robes of dust-by Christian women purified by the fires of affliction that consumed their bodies but to let their spirits escape to heaven? Embodyings in ideal forms, by genius inspired by a holy faith in the revelation of na

ture, were those loveliest creations, of virtues that have their empire beneath the "common light of day," and are enthroned in many a loveliest bosom alive in the chaste warmth of innocence! 'Tis thus that poetry ministers to religion. The saints in her calendar, are they not holy? And may they not be blamelessly worshipped in spirit and in truth?

Hermione-Imogen-Mirandaye too are Phantoms whose features seem to darken or to brighten with shadow or sunshine of our own clime! How many a widowed and unchilded mother-even some humble Hermione-in dim seclusion wears weepingly, but uncomplainingly, away her long, forsaken, solitary years! Nor ever blessed with sight of those she hath so yearned once more to see, been carried like a fallen statue to the tomb-" palm to palm upon its breast!" Woful, Imogen, were thy wanderings among "antres vast and deserts idle;" most strange thy death-like slumbers in the cave, where those young Nobles of Nature their fair Fidele's corpse with flowers bestrewed; ghastly, on the bosom of what thou thoughtest thy murdered Posthumus, thy half-awakened sleep; and much, ere closed thy weary pilgrimage, thy sobbing heart endured of this hard world's worst grief. But wide over the roaring seas our ships traverse, and many a faithful heart, as young as thine, they bear to journeyings wild and venturous-all in the face of disease and death-in the grim heart of many an uncouth, barbarous land. A wild and wondrous lot was thine, O star eyed daughter of the Enchanted Isle ! Happiness wafted thee away on her wings from that stormy strand, to let thee drop down among thy own new-discovered kind in a far off ha

ven, where Love was to guard thy life in perpetual peace! And doth the earth hold no more such children of lonely Nature, who, under her benign provision, have grown up to miraculous beauty, and brought into cities, like birds by a wind, have won to themselves the eyes of admiration all softened by love!

But Shakspeare rejoiced sometimes to sing a lowlier and a livelier strain to shew our common life with its sunniest southern aspect, all teeming with blossoms and fruitage -blossoms to be woven into wreaths and garlands of joy-fruitage,

"not too bright and good For human nature's daily food;" for fruitage, say at once, females,

"For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and

smiles!"

We are carried in among his-Comedies; and what Bevies of Beauty! We mingle with "the gay creatures of our element," in parlours, and boudoirs, and drawing-rooms, and halls, and gardens, and beneath the porticoes of pillared palaces, among the graces, the elegancies, the ornaments, the decorations, the luxuries, the splendours, the magnificences of life, all made rich by the most rare and exquisite culture. We breathe the air of high life, rightly so called; and hear melodious noises attuned to "fancies high and noble," warbling from lilied throats that tower from full-bosomed busts, and bearing lofty heads all-glorious with thick clustering ringlets, freely confined within "webs of woven air," or fragrant wantoning with the enamoured wind, artlessly, except that their glossy blackness is bedropt with diamonds, or the pale pearls lie subdued amid the glittering auburn. Daughters of gentlemen-ladies indeed-duchesses with coronets-princesses-queens with imperial crowns, who by their native loveliness beautify their state, and whose state dignifies their love liness, making "it a thing so majestical," that the proudest lip would in lowly reverence kiss its footstool, or the hem of its garment,-as the Ap. parition settled into stillness, like a cloud, or went floating by in the colour of sunset,

But we hate exaggeration; and if that paragraph be over gorgeous, pardon it, we pray you, for the sake of "Much ado but Nothing."

But before we get into our critique, if critique it may be called, which critique is none, what meaneth the Lady whose work we use for our text-book, or rather as a well-head with a perennial flow, from which we deduce, whenever the shallower source of our genius runs dry, and divert the "fragrant lymph" into many a meandering rill, till our page smiles green as a variegated meadow a week afore merry hay-time-what meaneth the gracious lady by "Characters of Intellect?" She means that in some women, intellect is the dominant power-the most conspicuous in the constitution of the character. You would not say it was so in Ophelia, though that simple and sunny flower loved to look up to the sky; and though she utters things that would appear to be even the product of genius. You would not say it was so in Cordelia, whose character was all affection, and the loveliest of all affections, filial piety

her thoughts being sentimentsand the performance of duty with her easy and sure as by an instinct. You would not say it was so in Desdemona, the all-accomplished, for she meekly made such total surrender of herself to Othello, with all her feelings and faculties, as could not have been with a woman of high and commanding intellect, though with such there may be total abandonment; but that is very different from surrender. Juliet, again, had fine talents, but she was a passion-kindled child of imagination, with flame-coloured thoughts. But you may say so of Beatrice and Rosalind, and Portia and Isabella, "of whom it is our hint to speak." In them, intellect is ever seen working wonders in unison, more or less beautiful, with the loveliest attributes of the female character. Mrs Jameson classes them together by that designation, because, when compared with others, they are at once distinguished by their mental superiority. "Thus," she says finely," in Portia, it is intellect kindled into exercise, by a poetical imaginationin Isabel, it is intellect elevated by religious principle-in Beatrice, intellect overruled by spirit-in Rosa

dick. Now Benedick, though he have generally the worst of it, is sometimes, we think, the aggressor; and even if he never be, Beatrice knows he is still expecting her attack, of course on his guard, and ready for the assault with foil or rapier.

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It is plain to the dullest eye and meanest capacity, that a (6 mutual inclination had commenced before the opening of the play." They are not in love; but Beatrice thinks him a proper man, and he is never an hour out of her head. I pray you, is SIGNIOR MONTANTO returned from the wars, or no? He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's Fool reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed, for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing?" She knew he was brave as his sword. But the witty witch would have her will, and must be jibing. Leonato, fearing the messenger may have light thoughts of her, says, "You must not be mistaken in my niece; there is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet, but there is a skirmish of wit between them." He was about to return from the wars after some considerable absence; and Beatrice was breathing herself with a little preparatory pastime, and keeping her hand in for the encounter. "In the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his absence, in the pertinacity of her satire, there is certainly," says Mrs Jameson, " great argument that he occupies more of her thoughts than she would have been willing to confess, even to herself." In the same manner, Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy; he shews that he has looked upon her with no careess eye, when he says, "There's her cousin" (Hero's), "an she were not possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the first of May does the last of December." "Possessed by a fury!" language scarcely consistent with the usages of the Parliament of Love. The honourable gentleman ought to have been called to order; he is, at least, fair game. But his praise of her beauty is ex

quisite, and proves that it had thrilled through his heart.

But though Beatrice had a lurking liking for Signior Montanto," we do not believe that she often-if at all-had thought of him as a husband. She enjoyed her own wit too much to think of such a serious matter. And a chaster creature never breathed-not to be cold. Wit was with her a self-sufficing passion. How her fine features must have kindled at its flashes!

"Beat. Who, I pray you, is his companion?

Mess. He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.

like a disease: he is sooner caught than Beat. O Lord! he will hang upon him the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured."

But though Beatrice, if you take our word for it, had never thought of marrying Benedick some evening or other, yet, like all other young ladies, she had considered the subject of marriage in the abstract, and had come to have a very tolerable understanding of its various bearings.

"Leon. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.

Beat. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. Hear me, Hero; wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, is a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave."

There is something very kindly in all this contempt of marriage. Nor did" Lady Disdain" suppose that any rational person would credit her antinuptial asseverations. What superior young lady ever professes a rooted resolution to marry? They all disown "the soft impeachment," and were they believed, the old and

But 'tis different with Benedick. When you hear a man perpetually dinning it into your ears that he is determined to die a bachelor, you set him down at once as a liar. You then begin, if he be not simply a blockhead, to ask yourself what he means by forcing on you such unprovoked falsehood, and you are ready with an answer-" He is in love." He sees his danger. A wild beast, not far off, is opening its jaws to devour him; and to keep up his courage, he jests about horns. Why must Benedick be ever philosophizing against marriage? The bare, the naked idea of it haunts him like a ghost. In spite of all his bravado he knows he is a doomed man. "I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster; but I'll take my oath on it, till he have made an oyster of me, he shall never make me such a fool." He then paints a picture of imaginary excellence, and in the very midst of his fancies he is manifestly thinking of Beatrice"Mild, or come not near her." There flashed upon him the face "of one possessed by a Fury," but yet" beauiful as the first of May."

"I would not marry her," quoth Benedick ("Nobody axed you sir, she said,")" though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed; she would have made Hercules have turned spit; yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her; you shall find her the nfernal Até in good apparel. I would to God, some scholar would conjure her; for, certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell, as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon

purpose, because they would go thither; so, indeed, all disquiet, horror, and perturbation follow her."

Poo-poo-poo-what is all this? She had misused him past all endurance," not thinking that he had been himself; yet really she was not so bitter bad upon him as he says he is manifestly more mortified than any man would have been, if fairly out of love; and believing (oh! the simpleton,) that she spoke her sincere sentiments, he has the folly to say to Don Pedro, "I cannot endure my Lady Tongue." "In "the

But we admire Benedick. him," says Stevens, rightly, wit, the humorist, the gentleman, and the soldier are combined." We admire him so much, that we are delighted to laugh at him, when made the happy victim of that most crafty and Christian plot upon his celibacy, which is followed with such instant and signal success. Benedick is a modest man. He has no suspicion that Beatrice, beautiful as the First of May, (the day is often biting,) cares for him but to torment him; and the moment he is led to believe she loves him, he is ready to leap out of his skin and his vows of celibacy, and without ceremony, even in that condition, to leap into her

arms.

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"Infinite skill," says Mrs Jameson, as well as humour, is shewn in making this pair of airy beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portraits, that of Benedick is by far the more pleasing, because the independence and easy indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and marriage, the satirical freedom of expression common to both, are more becoming to the masculine than to the feminine character. Any woman might love such a cavalier as Benedick, and be proud of his affection; his valour, his wit, and his gaiety, sit so gracefully upon him; and his light scoffs against the power of love are but just sufficient to render more poignant the conquest of this "heretic in dispite of beauty." But a man might well be pardoned who should shrink from encountering such a spirit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had "served an apprenticeship to the taming school." It is observable that the love is throughout on her side, and