ings. His quick perception of the interest he had awakened is a confession of the interest he felt, the state of his mind coming out in his anxiety to know that of hers. And how natural it was that he should thus honestly think he was but returning her passion, while it was indeed his own passion that caused him to see or suspect she had any to be returned! And so she seems to have understood the matter; whereupon, appreciating the modesty that kept him silent, she gave him a hint of encouragement to speak. In his feelings, moreover, respect keeps pace with affection; and he involuntarily seeks some tacit assurance of a return of his passion as a sort of permission to cherish and confess it. It is this feeling that originates the delicate, reverential courtesy, the ardent, yet distant, and therefore beautiful, regards, with which a truly honourable mind instinctively attires itself towards its best object; a feeling that throws a majestic grace around the most unpromising figure, and endows the plainest features with something more eloquent than beauty.

Before passing on from this part of the theme, it may be well to note one item of the forecited speech. Othello says of the lady, “She wish'd that Heaven had made her such a man." A question has lately been raised whether the meaning here is, that she wished such a man had been made for her, or that she herself had been made such a man; and several have insisted on the latter, lest her delicacy should be impeached. Her delicacy, I hope, stands in need of no such critical attorneyship. Othello was indeed just such a man as Desdemona wanted; and her letting him understand this, was doubtless a part of the hint whereon he spoke. She is too modest to be prudish.

The often-alleged unfitness of Othello's match has been mainly disposed of by what I have already said touching his origin. The rest of it, if there be any, may be safely left to the fact of his being honoured by the Venetian Senate, and a cherished guest at Brabantio's fireside. At

all events, I cannot help thinking that the noble Moor and his sweet lady have the very sort of resemblance which people thus united ought to have; and their likeness seems all the better for being joined with so much of unlikeness. It is the chaste, beautiful wedlock of meekness and magnanimity, where the inward correspondence stands the more approved for the outward diversity; and reminds us of what we are too apt to forget, that the stout, valiant soul is the chosen home of reverence and tenderness. Our heroic warrior's dark, rough exterior is found to enclose a heart strong as a giant's, yet soft and sweet as infancy. Such a marriage of bravery and gentleness proclaims that beauty is an overmatch for strength, and that true delicacy is among the highest forms of power.

Equally beautiful is the fact, that Desdemona has the heart to recognize the proper complement of herself beneath such an unattractive appearance. Perhaps none but so pure and gentle a being could have discerned the real gentleness of Othello through so many obscurations. To her fine sense, that tale of wild adventures and mischances which often did beguile her of her tears, a tale wherein another might have seen but the marks of a rude, coarse, animal strength, -disclosed the history of a most meek, brave, manly soul. Nobly blind to whatever is repulsive in his manhood's vesture, her thoughts are filled with "his honours and his valiant parts"; she "sees Othello's visage in his mind"; his ungracious aspect is lost to her in his graces of character; and the shrine that were else so unattractive to look upon is made beautiful by the life with which her chaste eye sees it irradiated.

In herself Desdemona is not more interesting than several of the Poet's women; but perhaps none of the others is in a condition so proper for developing the innermost springs of pathos. In her character and sufferings there is a nameless something that haunts the reader's mind, and hangs like a spell of compassionate sorrow upon the beatings of his heart: his thoughts revert to her and linger

about her, as under a mysterious fascination of pity which they cannot shake off, and which is only kept from being painful by the sacred charm of beauty and eloquence that blends with the feeling while kindling it. It is remarkable that the sympathies are not so deeply moved in the scene of her death as in that where by the blows of her husband's tongue and hand she is made to feel that she has indeed lost him. Too innocent to suspect that she is suspected, she cannot for a long time understand or imagine the motives of his harshness; and her errings in quest of excuses and apologies for him are deeply pathetic, inasmuch as they manifestly spring from her incapability of an impure thought. And the sense that the heart of his confidence is gone from her, and for what cause it is gone, comes upon her like a dead stifling weight of agony and woe, which benumbs her to all other pains. She does not show any thing that can be properly called pangs of suffering; the effect is too deep for that; the blow falling so heavy, that it stuns her sensibilities into a sort of lethargy.

Desdemona's character may almost be said to consist in the union of purity and impressibility. All her organs of sense and motion seem perfectly ensouled, and her visible form instinct in every part with the spirit and intelligence of moral life:

"We understood

Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say her body thought."

It is through this most delicate impressibility that she sometimes gets frightened out of her proper character; as in her equivocation about the handkerchief, and her childlike pleading for life in the last scene; where her perfect candour and resignation are overmastered by sudden impressions of terror.

But, with all her openness to influences from without, she is still susceptive only of the good. No element of impurity can insinuate itself. Her nature seems wrought about

with some subtile texture of moral sympathies and antipa-
thies, which selects, as by instinct, whatsoever is pure, with-
out taking any thought or touch of the evil mixed with it.
Even Iago's moral oil-of-vitriol cannot eat a passage into
her mind from his envenomed wit she extracts the element
of harmless mirth, without receiving or suspecting the ven-
om with which it is charged. Thus the world's contagions
pass before her, yet dare not touch nor come near her, be-
cause she has nothing to sympathize with them, or to own
their acquaintance. And so her life is like a quiet stream
"In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure

Alone are mirror'd; which, though shapes of ill
Do hover round its surface, glides in light,
And takes no shadow from them."

Desdemona's heroism, I fear, is not of the kind to take very well with such an age of individual ensconcement as the present. Though of a "high and plenteous wit and invention," this element never makes any special report of itself; that is, she has mind enough, but very little of mental demonstrativeness. Like Cordelia, all the parts of her being speak in such harmony, that the intellectual tones may not be distinctly heard. Besides, her mind and character were formed under that old-fashioned way of thinking which, regarding man and wife as socially one, legislated round them, not between them; as meaning that the wife should seek protection in her husband, instead of resorting to legal methods for protection against him. Affection does indeed fill her with courage and energy of purpose: she is heroic to link her life with the man she loves; heroic to do and to suffer with him and for him, after she is his; but, poor gentle soul! she knows no heroism that can prompt her, in respect of him, to cast aside the awful prerogative of defencelessness: that she has lost him, is what hurts her; and this is a hurt that cannot be salved with anger or resentment: so that her only strength is to be meek, uncomplaining, submissive, in the worst that his hand may execute.

"Mightier far

Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway

Of magic potent over Sun and star,

Is love, though oft to agony distrest,

And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast."

66

Swayed by this power, our heroine is of course a child to chiding," and sinks beneath her husband's unkindness, instead of having the spirit to outface it.

They err greatly who think to school Desdemona in the doctrine of woman's rights. When her husband has been shaken from his confidence in her truth and loyalty, what can she care for her rights as a woman? To be under the necessity of asserting them is to have lost, and more than lost them. A constrained abstinence from evil deeds and unkind words bears no price with her; and to be sheltered from the wind and storm is worse than nothing to her, unless she have a living fountain of light and warmth in the being that shelters her. But indeed the beauty of the woman is so hid in the affection and obedience of the wife, that it almost seems a profanation to praise it. As brave to suffer wrong as she is fearful to do it, there is a holiness in her mute resignation, which ought, perhaps, to be kept, where the Poet has left it, veiled from the eyes of all save those whom a severe discipline of humanity may have qualified for duly respecting it. At all events, whoever would get at her secret, let him study her as a pupil, not as a critic; and, until his inmost heart speak her approval in regard of all her behaviour towards the Moor, let him rest assured that he is not competent to judge her; and that he has much to learn, before he will be worthy to speak of her. But if he have the gift to see that her whole course in this behalf, from the hour of her marriage to the last groan of the ever-loving, ever-obedient, broken-hearted wife, is replete with the beauty and grace and honour of womanhood; then let him weep, weep, weep for her; so may he depart "a sadder and a wiser man!" As for her unresisting submissiveness, let no man dare to defend it! Assuredly we