every aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with Shakspeare and his anachronisms; the learned scorn of Johnson and some of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of Schlegel, seem in this case both superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic oracle and Julio Romano cotemporary-what does it signify? he committed no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a turtle dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is true to the spirit and even to the letter of history: where he deviates from the latter, the reason always may be found in some higher beauty and more universal truth. ALDA. I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic character all the historic testimony I could collect relative to Constance, Cleopatra, Katherine of Arragon, &c. MEDON. Analysing the character of Cleopatra must have been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture. ALDA. Something like it, in truth; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like intercepting the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and subjecting it to a chemical process. MEDON. Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette. What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that ever were-or are? She would put Lady herself to school. But now for the moral. ALDA. The moral!-of what? MEDON. Of your book. It has a moral, I suppose. ALDA. It has indeed a very deep one, which those who seek will find. If now I have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently explained my own views, may I proceed? MEDON. If you please-I am now prepared to listen in WE hear it asserted, not seldom by way of compliment to us women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it appears to me false, and the reverse of a compliment. The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her phy |