instigation. And by the illumination of the "exhalations," the uncertain, fitful light of the lurid lightnings, he reads:

"Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake, and see thyself.

Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress!

Brutus, thou sleep'st: awake!"

He is called. Brutus! All Rome is calling upon him; to awake from his torpor; to see himself—the son of that glorious ancestor, who once before redeemed her. Rome looks to him; to speak! to strike! to redress! And he will not, can not fail her. Brutus is thus exalted, his understanding completely enravished. The last slender moorings that anchored him to the solid earth are snapped asunder; and he is fully launched upon that dread, shoreless ocean of a crime-breeding delusion. A flood-tide of deepest emotion sweeps him onward in its resistless surge: imagination, usurping from reason the guidance, holds him in the current; and the sweetest, purest, holiest affections of the soul drive him headlong into the glad consecration of himself, unreservedly, to the execution of this murderous design:

666

"Shall Rome, etc.' Thus must I piece it out;
Shall Rome stand under one man's awe?

My ancestors did from the streets of Rome

The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king.

'Speak, strike, redress!'- Am I entreated

To speak and strike? O Rome! I make thee promise,
If the redress will follow, thou receivest

Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus."

The spiritual tragedy is wrought: and poor Brutus, completely enthralled, is delivered over to the destinies, to the working out of an awful fate.

NOTE.- Were Brutus now on trial for his life, for example in Germany, under its enlightened code, his case would “fall into the compass" of the following liberal provision (R. G.

B.

$51), "the result of very careful discussion both by physicians and lawyers":

"There is no criminal act when the actor at the time of the offence is in a state of unconsciousness or morbid disturbance of the mind, through which the free determination of the will is excluded."

The question of his guilt, in its subtler windings, would touch closely upon the principle tersely put by Bacon in his opening paragraph: "For purity of illumination and freedom of the will began and fell together." And the world may yet be driven to accept Bacon's conclusion; developed didactically in his Psychology, and in concrete representation, in Brutus.

CHAPTER VIII.

ATHWART the murky atmosphere, so appropriately environing the action in the play, and which is indeed its native element, there streams a beam of sunshine. It is as if a gilded ray from heaven were penetrating the lurid, perverted light that emanates from hell; and the contrast enables us to distinguish both their likeness and their difference.

When that fiend in human form, Richard III., was exercising his satanic fascination over Lady Anne, winning her for his bride, even while they were standing before the bleeding corpse of her beloved husband, whom he had murdered,―

"What! I that kill'd her husband and his father,

To take her in her heart's extremest hate;

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,

The bleeding witness of her hatred by;

Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I no friends to back my suit withal,

But the plain devil, and dissembling looks,

And yet to win her, — all the world to nothing'

Ha!"

the final, transcendent effort which enchained her is thus set forth:

"Lo! here I hand thee this sharp-pointed sword;

Which if thou please to hide in this true breast,

And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,

I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,

And humbly beg the death upon my knee.

[He lays his breast open; she offers at it with his sword.

Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry;

But 't was thy beauty that provoked me,

Nay, now dispatch; 't was I that stabbed young Edward;[She again offers at his breast.

But 't was thy heavenly face that set me on.

[She lets fall the sword,"

and a moment later accepts the ring of espousal.

And again, in the " quarrel scene" between Brutus and Cassius, when Brutus, in his intense anger, shows himself implacable,and deaf to threats, Cassius finally subdues him by the like supreme effort:

"There is my dagger,

And here my naked breast; within a heart
Dearer than Pluto's mine; richer than gold:
If that thou beest a Roman, take it forth;
I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart:
Strike, as thou didst at Cæsar; for, I know,

When thou didst hate him worst thou lov'd'st him better
Than ever thou lov'st Cassius."

Brutus instantly succumbs:

"Sheathe your dagger:

Be angry when you will, it shall have scope;
Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.

O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire;
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

Cassius. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Brutus. And my heart too."

But there is a legitimate fascination; tender, true, potent, of which this satanic fascination is the base perversion. It is the sweet, benign influence of real love. In its grateful exercise, it touches the heart of man, moves the springs of action within him, and gently, but effectually, prevails over his will. This sane, rightful fascination is given appropriate exemplification in the play, in the sway of the loving Portia over Brutus.

Portia is the personification of the noble woman,

devoted wife,

"tender offspring of that rib, refin'd By God's own finger, and by Him assign'd

To be a help and not a hurt to man."

the

She is wrapped up in Brutus, become again one with him, in an united life. And when her regardful eye notes with alarm his evident distraction, moved by her intense solic itude, she concentrates herself upon him; presses him with tender but urgent importunity to disclose to her the cause; for, woman-like, she would share the burden. And Brutus resisting, she thus gently pulls upon the chords that bind them together:

"No, my Brutus ;

You have some sick offense within your mind,
Which, by the right and virtue of my place,
I ought to know of: and, upon my knees,
I charm you, by my once commended beauty,
By all your vows of love, and that great vow
Which did incorporate and make us one,
That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,
Why you are heavy; and what men to-night
Have had resort to you: for here have been
Some six or seven, who did hide their faces
Even from darkness.

Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,
Is it excepted I should know no secrets
That appertain to you? Am I yourself
But, as it were, in sort or limitation;

To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,
And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs
Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,

Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife."

Brutus still proving obdurate, even under such an appeal, Portia, divining the occasion of his resistance, finally vanquishes him by a like supreme effort, in a manifestation both of her constancy and her devotion that is irresistible. But, mark you, this time, it is by the exhibition of a real wound, self-inflicted upon her own person: