"If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed; and through the whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition-the same absence of all display-the same sobriety of speech veiling the most profound affectionsthe same quiet steadiness of purposethe same shrinking from all exhibition of emotion.

"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur,' was a viva voce observation of Madame de Staël, when disgusted by the sentimental affectation of her imitators. This pudeur,' carried to an excess, appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us.

Kent. Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?

Gent. Ay, sir, she took them, and read them
in my presence:

And now and then an ample tear stole down
Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king over her.

Kent. O then it moved her!

Gent. Not to a rage.

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father

Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart,
Cried, Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies-Sisters!
What! i' the storm! i' the night!

Let pity not be believed! Then she shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes;

*

*

*

*

*

Then away she started, to deal with grief alone.'

"Here the last line the image brought before us of Cordelia starting away from observation, to deal with grief alone,'-is as exquisitely beautiful as it is characteristic.

"But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to that scene, in which her poor father recognises her, and, in the intervals of distraction, asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man, are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in any other writer. 'Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty ?

Lear. You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead,

Cor. Sir, do you know me?

Lear. You are a spirit, I know: When did you die?

Cor. Still, still far wide!

Phys. He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.
Lear. Where have I been? Where am I?
Fair daylight?-

I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity
To see another thus. I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands. Let's see;
I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured
Of my condition.

Cor. O look upon me, sir,

And hold your hands in benediction o'er me.
No, sir, you must not kneel.

Lear. Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish, fond old man,
Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with
you,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man,
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is: and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments, nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

Cor. And so I am, I am!

Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray you

weep not:

If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
Cor. No cause, no cause!'

"As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact, can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father are conveyed to their prison

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters ?'

The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet, so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would have uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample meaning into so few and simple words?

"We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears. Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness, being carried to its extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, 'like an engine wrenching our frame of nature from its fixed place,' then, like a redeeming angel, she descends to mingle in the scene, 'loosening the springs of pity in our eyes,' and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are

left only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for heaven -our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!-O who, after sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life prolonged? What! replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?-a crown upon that old grey head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath ?-on which the deep dread-bolted thunders

threes," been done justice to on the luminous page of philosophical criticism. Mrs Montague was a woman of much merit in her day; but, compared to Mrs Jameson, was as an owl to a nightingale. True, that

"Of all the birds that I do see,

The owl is the wisest in her degree;" and her degree was that of a Doctor in Civil Law. The good lady dined out and in on the credit of her criti

cism, and ought to have been thank

ful that she died not of a surfeit. Mrs Jameson, we should guess from

Let him pass! he hates him

That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer.'"

In an introductory dialogue between Alda and Medon (the fair critic and a friend) full of spirit and grace, Medon asks, "do you really expect that any one will read this little book of yours ?" and Alda answers, "no one writes a book without a hope of finding readers, and I shall find a few." But she adds fervently, "out of the fullness of my own heart and soul have I written it. In the pleasure it has given me, in the new and various views of human nature it has opened to me, in the beautiful and soothing images it has placed before me, in the exercise and improvement of my own faculties, I have already been repaid." But Medon asks how she could choose "such a threadbare subject," hinting that Alda has written the book to maintain the superiority of the female sex. Some of Shakspeare's women, he allows, are fit indeed to "inlay heaven with stars;" but very unlike those who at present walk upon the earth.

Many, doubtless, after Medon, will call the "subject threadbare." The heavens themselves have to many eyes a threadbare look-not absosolutely tatter'd, but sorely worn, like the blue surtout-the more's the pity-of a Polish patriot or a Spanish refugee. In the same predicament seem Shakspeare and the sky. But as to nobler optics "the eternal heavens are fresh and strong," so are the songs of the Swan of Avon. Never, till now, have Shakspeare's female characters, except when like stars they "were out in twos and

.and fond of "parlour twilight." She manifestly belongs to no coterie; but there is no society, however distinguished, that her fine genius, talents, and accomplishments, would not grace. In these, her exquisite commentaries on the impersonations of the virtues of her sex, she has "done the state some service," and they will know it. "Long experience of what is called the world, of the folly, duplicity, shallowness, selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon," she well says, "unsettles our youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions, and retire from the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys our belief, it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and happiness; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of goodness; it teaches us to consider self as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which all motives are to be referred. While we are yet young, and the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us a world within, we cannot fairly look on the world without-all things then are good. When we first throw ourselves forth, and meet burrs and briars on every side, which stick to our very hearts; and fair tempting fruits, which turn to bitter ashes in the taste, then we exclaim with impatience, all things are evil. But at length comes the calm hour, when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern their true bearings; when the perception of evil, and sorrow, and sin, brings also the perception of some opposite