sex of Viola-the dignified elegance of Olivia's deportment, except where passion gets the better of her pride-her consistent coldness towards the Duke-the description of that "smooth, discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her householdher generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own distress,—all these circumstances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a subject of reproach. Twelfth Night is a genuine comedy;-a perpetual spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial society men and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that extremes in character or manners can approximate. To blend into one harmonious picture the utmost grace and refinement of sentiment, and the broadest effects of humour; the most poignant wit, and the most indulgent benignity;-in short, to bring before us in the same scene, Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature and to Shakspeare.

A woman's affections, however strong, are sentiments, when they run smooth; and become passions only when opposed.

In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a passion, properly so called; that is, a natural impulse throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling with the very sources of life; a sentiment more or less modified by the imagination; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and again influenced by them. This is the most complex aspect of

love, and in these two characters, it is depicted in colours at once the most various, the most intense, and the most brilliant.

In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, appears more refined; more a sentiment than a passion-a compound of impulse and fancy, while the reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The same remark applies also to Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, love takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece; it is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.

But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a manner latent, if existing; in whom love

ness.

is an unconscious impulse, and imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary principles—as modesty, grace, 1 tenderWithout these a woman is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; with these, though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into the world: they may be perverted by a bad education-they may be obscured by harsh and evil destinies -they may be overpowered by the development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some passion;—but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul, while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its Creator.

Shak

1 By this word, as used here, I would be understood to mean that inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to the good, the beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar, the violent, and the false;-that which we see diffused externally over the form and movements, where there is perfect innocence and unconsciousness, as in children.

speare then has shown us that these elemental feminine qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature; such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist, or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.

Ophelia-poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before her! Like a strain of sad sweet music, which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear-like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms-like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth—like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses—such is the character of Ophelia; so exquisitely delicate, it seems as

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