lena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought-(and when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature "virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully represented, the distinction between masculine and feminine courage. A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated form a point of honour. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because it is not required of us; it is not one of the means through which we seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you remember Lady Fanshaw putting on a sailor's jacket and his " blue thrum cap,” and standing at her husband's side, unknown to

him during a sea-fight? there she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot. Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her "Good God! that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage of Juliet when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel and Gertrude de Wart, Shakspeare has given us some of the noblest modifications of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.

MEDON.

And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth ?—

My hands are of your colour, but I shame

To wear a heart so white.

And again,

A little water clears us of this deed.

How easy is it then!

If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere firmness of nerve, what is it?

ALDA.

Not that, at least, which apparently you deem it; and you will find, if you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context-take the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian without any qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and tremble; but that which quenched him lent her fire. The absolute necessity for self-command, the strength of her reason, and her love for her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the fear of detection, leaving her the

full possession of her faculties.

Recollect that

the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference of a little water clearing the blood stain from her hand, sees in imagination that hand for ever reeking, for ever polluted; and when reason is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature and womanhood, we behold her making unconscious efforts to wash out that "damned spot," and sighing, heart-broken, over that little hand which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more.

MEDON.

I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender affections and moral sentiments predominate.

ALDA.

You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than placing her among the historical characters.

MEDON.

Apropos to the historical characters, I hope

you have refuted that insolent assumption, (shall I call it?) that Shakspeare tampered inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all historians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old Italian pictures; either they are insignificant, or if properly considered, are really beauties: for instance, every one knows that Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin involves half a dozen anachronisms, to say nothing of that heavenly figure of the Magdalen, in the same picture, kissing the feet of the infant Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have excused this strange combination of inaccuracies; but is it less one of the divinest pieces of sentiment and poetry that ever breathed and glowed from the canvas? You remember too the famous Nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples in the back ground?-In these and a hundred other instances no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under