Bianca UCENTIO. Sacred and sweet was all I saw in LU her. Shakespeare's Women YES, VES, truth is the token of Shakespearian love, no matter what the form may be in which it appears, be it Miranda, or Juliet, or Cleopatra. While I mention these names rather by accident than with intention, it occurs to me that they really represent the three most deeply significant types of love. Miranda is the representative of a love which, without previous influences of any kind, could only develop its highest ideality as the flower of an untrodden soil which only the feet of spirits had trodden. Ariel's melodies have trained her heart, and sensuality has never been known to her, save in the horribly hideous form of a Caliban. The love which Ferdinand awakes in her is therefore not really naïve but of a happy trueheartedness, of an early-world-like, almost terrible purity. Juliet's love shows like her age and all around her, a more romantic mediæval character, and one blooming into the Renaissance; it glitters in colours like the court of the Scaligeri, and yet is strong as of those noble races of Lombardy which were rejuvenated with German blood and loved as strongly as they hated. Juliet represents the love of a youthful, rather rough, but of an unspoiled and fresh era. She is entirely inspired with the sensuous glow and strength of belief of such a time, and even the cold decay of the burial vault can neither shake her faith nor cool her flame. Our Cleopatra !—ah, she sets forth the love of a sickly civilisation-an eye whose beauty is faded, whose locks are curled with the utmost art, anointed with all pleasant perfumes, but in which many a grey hair may be seen, a time which will empty the cup held out to it all the more hastily because it is full of dregs. This love is without faith or truth, but for all that none the less wild or glowing. In the vexed consciousness that this heart is not to be subdued, the impatient woman pours still more oil into it, and casts herself like a Bacchante into the blazing flame. She is cowardly, and yet inspired with desire for her own destruction. Love is always a kind of madness, more or less beautiful, but in this Egyptian queen it rises to the most horrible lunacy. Such love is a raging comet, which with its flaming train darts into unheard-of orbits through heaven, terrifies all even if it does not injure them, and at last, miserably crackling together, is scattered like a rocket into a thousand pieces. Yes, thou wert like a terrible comet, beautiful Cleopatra, and thou didst glow not only into thine own ruin, but wert ominous of evil for those of thy time! With Antony the old heroic Roman spirit came to a wretched end. But wherewith shall I compare you, O Juliet and Miranda? I look again to heaven, seeking for a simile. It may be behind the stars where my glance cannot pierce. Perhaps if the glowing sun had the mildness of the moon I could compare it to thee, O Juliet! And were the gentle moon gifted with the glow of the sun, I would say it was like thee, Miranda ! Heinrich Heine XI SIR WALTER'S LADIES Sir Walter's Ladies N the whole range of these [the Waverley novels] there are but three men who reach the heroic type-Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse: of these, one is a border farmer; another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual power; while his younger men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in his conceptions of men. Whereas in his imaginations of women, -in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora MacIvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, with endless varieties of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find in all a quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to even the appearance of duty, much more to its real claims; and, finally, a patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a momentary error; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, we are just able, and no more, to take patience in hearing of their unmerited success. So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the youth; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches over or educates his mistress. John Ruskin Rebecca THE figure of Rebecca might indeed have compared with the proudest beauties of England, even though it had been judged by as shrewd a connoisseur as Prince John. Her form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shown to advantage by a sort of Eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well with the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest Persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible--all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the most beautiful of the maidens who surrounded her. It is true, that of the golden and pearl-studded clasps, which closed her vest from the throat to the waist, the three uppermost were left unfastened on account of the heat, which something enlarged the prospect to which we allude. A diamond necklace, with pendants of inestimable value, were by this means also made more conspicuous. The feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban by an agraffe set with brilliants, was another distinction of the beautiful Jewess, scoffed and sneered at by the proud dames who sat above her, but secretly envied by those who affected to deride then. "By the bald scalp of Abraham," said Prince John, "yonder Jewess must be the very model of that perfection, whose charms drove frantic the wisest king that ever lived! What sayest thou, Prior Aymer?—By the Temple of that wise king, which our wiser brother Richard proved unable to recover, she is the very Bride of the Canticles!" "The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley," answered the Prior, in a sort of snuffling tone; "but your Grace must remember she is still but a Jewess." (From "Ivanhoe") Di Vernon IT T was a young lady, the loveliness of whose very striking features was enhanced by the animation of the chase and the glow of the exercise, mounted on a beautiful horse, jet black, unless where he was flecked by spots of the snow-white foam which embossed his bridle. She wore, what was then somewhat unusual, a coat, vest, and hat, resembling those of a man, which fashion has since called a riding habit. The mode had been introduced while I was in France, and was perfectly new to me. Her long black hair streamed on the breeze, having in the hurry of the chase escaped from the ribbon |