PART X. Centuries more have passed away,- Was the Golden Fountain playing there, Centuries more have been passing by- The Garden, Bird, Tree, and Fountain's play: And the Talking Bird? he twisted his neck, For he cut it and sold it bit by bit. Its virtue he found-it went to the Trade, And the Yellow Water-where went it away? Is the Birmingham lacquer so much renowned, A century more-and the Churl's cold Ghost And with him there came a Demon host. O they howl with the blasts, as around they fly! Foul Demons and Ghosts each other dodge, Through the casements and hollows of Wind-whistle Lodge. O! Wind-whistle Lodge is an awful place When the Graces lived there 'twas not so, But wore a sunny and smiling face But the Zephyrs came and brought it woe. Then Boreas after the Zephyrs came, And now the wild Winds their Inheritance claim. CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN.* No. IV. CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. SHAKSPEARE. WEPT have we-or in thoughts that lay" too deep for tears"-gazed pale on Juliet, and Ophelia, and Cordelia, and Desdemona-as we saw them in suffering and in sorrow -like fair creatures going to sacrifice-led on-slowly, step by step-or sometimes with a hurried motion -to death. And, one after another, we saw them die. Juliet in distraction, vainly draining the dregs of that fatal cup that had frozen the heart-blood of Romeo-by sharper death expiring on his bosom-and, with her husband, buried in one tomb! Ophelia, her poor wits gone, even like the flowers she scattered, down to the grave on a clear streamlet, floating like a Swan! Cordelia, with "holy water from her heavenly eyes," bathing the brow of her mad father, till, like dew through a smiling calm shed by Mercy, it sank with healing into his brain, and Lear almost "became whole." And we saw him bearing in his daughter from their prison-cell in his arms; and we heard" And my poor Fool is hanged!" his heart-strings crack as he gave up the ghost. Desdemona, the Gentle, the Immaculate, she who was "Woo'd, won, and wed, and murder'd by the M!" Immortal is the memory of the Martyrs. Nor call them beings of an imaginary world. Phantoms are they of this our human life. Knowest thou not that such trials have been undergone by many creatures clothed in the robes of dust-by Christian women purified by the fires of affliction that consumed their bodies but to let their spirits escape to heaven? Embodyings in ideal forms, by genius inspired by a holy faith in the revelation of na ture, were those loveliest creations, of virtues that have their empire beneath the "common light of day," and are enthroned in many a loveliest bosom alive in the chaste warmth of innocence! 'Tis thus that poetry ministers to religion. The saints in her calendar, are they not holy? And may they not be blamelessly worshipped in spirit and in truth? Hermione-Imogen-Mirandaye too are Phantoms whose features seem to darken or to brighten with shadow or sunshine of our own clime! How many a widowed and unchilded mother-even some humble Hermione-in dim seclusion wears weepingly, but uncomplainingly, away her long, forsaken, solitary years! Nor ever blessed with sight of those she hath so yearned once more to see, been carried like a fallen statue to the tomb-" palm to palm upon its breast!" Woful, Imogen, were thy wanderings among 66 antres vast and deserts idle;" most strange thy death-like slumbers in the cave, where those young Nobles of Nature their fair Fidele's corpse with flowers bestrewed; ghastly, on the bosom of what thou thoughtest thy murdered Posthumus, thy half-awakened sleep; and much, ere closed thy weary pilgrimage, thy sobbing heart endured of this hard world's worst grief. But wide over the roaring seas our ships traverse, and many a faithful heart, as young as thine, they bear to journeyings wild and venturous-all in the face of disease and death-in the grim heart of many an uncouth, barbarous land. A wild and wondrous lot was thine, O stareyed daughter of the Enchanted Isle ! Happiness wafted thee away on her wings from that stormy strand, to let thee drop down among thy own new-discovered kind in a far off ha *Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical, and Historical; with fifty vignette etchings. By Mrs Jameson, In two volumes. London: Saunders and Otley, ven, where Love was to guard thy life in perpetual peace! And doth the earth hold no more such children of lonely Nature, who, under her benign provision, have grown up to miraculous beauty, and brought into cities, like birds by a wind, have won to themselves the eyes of admiration all softened by love! But Shakspeare rejoiced some times to sing a lowlier and a livelier strain to shew our common life with its sunniest southern aspect, all teeming with blossoms and fruitage -blossoms to be woven into wreaths and garlands of joy-fruitage, "not too bright and good For human nature's daily food;" for fruitage, say at once, females, "For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles!" We are carried in among his-Comedies; and what Bevies of Beauty! We mingle with "the gay creatures of our element," in parlours, and boudoirs, and drawing-rooms, and halls, and gardens, and beneath the porticoes of pillared palaces, among the graces, the elegancies, the ornaments, the decorations, the luxuries, the splendours, the magnificencies of life, all made rich by the most rare and exquisite culture. We breathe the air of high life, rightly so called; and hear melodious noises attuned to "fancies high and noble," warbling from lilied throats that tower from full-bosom'd busts, and bearing lofty heads all-glorious with thick-clustering ringlets, freely confined within "webs of woven air," or fragrant wantoning with the enamoured wind, artlessly, except that their glossy blackness is bedropt with diamonds, or the pale pearls lie subdued amid the glittering auburn. Daughters of gentlemen-ladies indeed-duchesses with coronets-princesses-queens with imperial crowns, who, by their native loveliness beautify their state, and whose state dignifies their loveliness, making" it a thing so majestical," that the proudest lip would in lowly reverence kiss its footstool, or the hem of its garment, as the Apparition settled into stillness, like a cloud, or went floating by in the colour of sunset. But we hate exaggeration; and if that paragraph be over gorgeous, pardon it, we pray you, for the sake of " Much ado about Nothing." But before we get into our critique, if critique it may be called, which critique is none, what meaneth the Lady whose work we use for our text-book, or rather as a well-head with a perennial flow, from which we deduce, whenever the shallower source of our genius runs dry, and divert the "fragrant lymph" into many a meandering rill, till our page smiles green as a variegated meadow a week afore merry hay-time-what meaneth the gracious lady by "Characters of Intellect?" She means that, in some women, intellect is the dominant power-the most conspicuous in the constitution of the character. You would not say it was so in Ophelia, though that simple and sunny flower loved to look up to the sky; and though she utters things that would appear to be even the product of genius. You would not say it was so in Cordelia, whose character was all affection, and the loveliest of all affections, filial piety her thoughts being sentimentsand the performance of duty with her easy and sure as by an instinct. You would not say it was so in Desdemona, the all-accomplished, for she meekly made such total surrender of herself to Othello, with all her feelings and faculties, as could not have been with a woman of high and commanding intellect, though with such there may be total abandonment; but that is very different from surrender. Juliet, again, had fine talents, but she was a passion-kindled child of imagination, with flame-coloured thoughts. But you may say so of Beatrice and Rosalind, and Portia and Isabella, " of whom it is our hint to speak." In them, intellect is ever seen working wonders in unison, more or less beautiful, with the loveliest attributes of the female character. Mrs Jameson classes them together by that designation, because, when compared with others, they are at once distinguished by their mental superiority. "Thus," she says finely, "in Portia, it is intellect kindled into exercise by a poetical imaginationin Isabel, it is intellect elevated by religious principle-in Beatrice, intellect overruled by spirit-in Rosa lind, intellect softened by sensibility." But how like you Beatrice? You agree with us in disliking satirical, sarcastic women. One reason of our joint dislike is, that their intellectual is almost always as low as their moral character; so that our dislike, you perceive, is a mixture of contempt and disgust. The subject of their supposed wit is the foibles and frailties of their friends. But their friends being, of course, commonplace people, and though vulgar, noways distinguished, even by their vulgarity, from the other vulgar persons with whom they live, their foibles and frailties cannot be such as to furnish matter even for such poor wit as theirs; and instead of any thing of the truly satirical sort, they give vent merely to crude pieces, larger or smaller, of stupid ill-nature, the odour of which is exceedingly unpleasant in itself, and more unbearable from being, nine cases out of ten, accompanied in utterance with a very bad breath, as if the scoffer fed exclusively on onions. But Beatrice is a bright, bold, joyous being, who lives in the best society; and we do not find that she much abuses any but her equalswe may not say her betters, for we find none such in the Play. She is well-born and well-bred, a lady from snood to slipper-the child, if we mistake not, of Antonio, brother to Leonato, governor of Messina. True that her coz, Hero, paints a sad picture of her, while she lies couching in the "pleached bower;" and perhaps there may be too much truth in it; but the limner lays it on thick for a special purpose, and it is a most unfavourable likeness "Hero. But nature never fram'd a woman's heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice: Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her love, As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable: But who dare tell her so? if I should speak, She'd mock me into air; O, she would laugh me Out of myself, press me to death with wit." On overhearing all this, Beatrice exclaims "What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I for pride and scorn condemn'd so much ?" We feel at once, that though proud and scornful more than is quite proper or reasonable in any young lady, Beatrice has not been aware of the degree of her guilt, and that she neither studied the art or science of being disagreeablenor practised it according to its theoretical principles. She has all her life long been saying sharp things from a kindly disposition, from delight in the ludicrous; "give and take," has still been the spirit of her bearing, in skirmish or in pitch-battle; it cannot be said of her, "She laughs at scars who never felt a wound;" Nor take no shape nor project of affection, for, though skilful of fence, no She is so self-endeared. Urs. Sure, I think so; And therefore, certainly, it were not good swordswoman can parry every thrust; and she always contends for victory" selon les regles de la guerre." Of all her butts, the chief is Bene dick. Now Benedick, though he have generally the worst of it, is sometimes, we think, the aggressor; and even if he never be, Beatrice knows he is still expecting her attack, of course on his guard, and ready for the assault with foil or rapier. mu It is plain to the dullest eye and meanest capacity, that a tual inclination had commenced before the opening of the play." They are not in love; but Beatrice thinks him a proper man, and he is never an hour out of her head. I pray you, is SIGNIOR MONTANTO returned from the wars, or no? He set up his bills here in Messina and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's Fool reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt. I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten in these wars? But how many hath he killed, for indeed I promised to eat all of his killing?" She knew he was brave as his sword. But the witty witch would have her will, and must be jibing. Leonato, fearing the messenger may have light thoughts of her, says, "You must not be mistaken in my niece; there is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her; they never meet, but there is a skirmish of wit between them." He was about to return from the wars after some considerable absence; and Beatrice was breathing herself with a little preparatory pastime, and keeping her hand in for the encounter. "In the unprovoked hostility with which she falls upon him in his absence, in the pertinacity of her satire, there is certainly," says Mrs Jameson, " great argument that he occupies more of her thoughts than she would have been willing to confess, even to herself." In the same manner, Benedick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy; he shews that he has looked upon her with no careless eye, when he says, There's her cousin" (Hero's), " an she were not possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the first of May does the last of December." "Possessed by a fury !" language scarcely consistent with the usages of the Parliament of Love. The honourable gentleman ought to have been called to order; he is, at least, fair game. But his praise of her beauty is ex quisite, and proves that it had thrilled through his heart. But though Beatrice had a lurking liking for Signior Montanto," we do not believe that she often-if at all-had thought of him as a husband. She enjoyed her own wit too much to think of such a serious matter. And a chaster creature never breathed-not to be cold. Wit was with her a self-sufficing passion. How her fine features must have kindled at its flashes! "Beat. Who, I pray you, is his companion? Mess. He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio. like a disease: he is sooner caught than Beat. O Lord! he will hang upon him the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God help the noble Claudio! if he have caught the Benedick, it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured." But though Beatrice, if you take our word for it, had never thought of marrying Benedick some evening or other, yet, like all other young ladies, she had considered the subject of marriage in the abstract, and had come to have a very tolerable understanding of its various bearings. "Leon. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband. Beat. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred. Hear me, Hero; wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fan tastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, is a measure full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave." There is something very kindly in all this contempt of marriage. Nor did "Lady Disdain" suppose that any rational person would credit her antinuptial asseverations. What superior young lady ever professes a rooted resolution to marry? They all disown "the soft impeachment," and were they believed, the old and |