III. He deems the daisy not too mean When timid children shelter need. Within your hearts for ev'ry child: The sorrows of the fatherless Have been beneath your care beguiled. Then, hail to sacred Charity, The crowning virtue of the soul !— Hail, hail, Masonic Charity! Till up to heaven our anthems roll Hosanna! Hallelujah -Amen. CORDELIA. "What shall Cordelia do?-Love and be silent." WELL said, true heart! and well thy silent vow was kept! Faithful and elevated natures are ever reserved in the expression of their deepest feelings. The refined exaltedness and passionate earnestness with which the affections of such natures are imbued, render them incapable of mere verbal interpretation; or, if capable of it, they are likely to appear extravagant and insincere when expressed. The ordinary cant (if the expression be allowable) of mere ordinary affections is too poor an expedient for them to descend to as a representative or enunciation of their heart's most intense emotions. The beggary of language can never dress feeling with sufficient delicacy and grace to do at once justice to its loveliness and modesty; therefore words are seldom had recourse to by those who reverence its qualities-they fear to expose this sacred guest of the heart to suspicion or contempt, by asserting its existence through a medium so capable of deceiving, and so often used by the deceitful. It is by the accidents and emergencies of life it is called into exercise and its sterling quality vindicated. The display of profession, though felt to be an im posing and dangerous auxiliary to the machinations of designing rivals, offends the dignity, and alarms the sanctity as well as the jealousy of superior affections; and, in sensitive distaste to the heated artificial atmosphere conjured into existence to stifle the pure and true in feeling, as well as indignant at the mean strait in which they are placed, they retire to the remotest cells of the soul, instead of attempting a degrading competition, deeming the poet's words no heresy to the heart's convictions: "That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming The exterior of coldness and hauteur consequent to this repelling influence forms an advantageous foil to its more meretricious opponent, and leaves a fair field to the manœuvres it has a right to dread, though it cannot descend to circumvent them by adopting similar artifices. Thus, the faithful heart is doomed to a double suffering-that of seeing the object of its tenderness imposed upon by a shallow counterfeit of true affection, and of perceiving its own fidelity and devotion slighted and contemned, if not wholly doubted-without being able to prevent either, unless by the sacrifice of some of the qualities for which it is most entitled to love and faith. Such is Cordelia's position when she is introduced to us, in the contest for paternal favour with the execrable Goneril and Regan, so injudiciously permitted by Lear; and, with a few masterly strokes of the poet's hand, her truly loyal, though somewhat unyielding, nature is revealed-loyal to itself, to truth, and to its consciousness of due devotion to each and every human claim addressed to it. The very integrity, the severe unity of the character, precludes elaboration. Her history (past, present, and future) is told |