I hear some noise within.-Dear love, adieu!

Sweet Montague be true;

Stay but a little, I will come again.

Enter Juliet again.

Jul. If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow, And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay

And follow thee, my love, throughout the world. but if thou mean'st not well,

I do beseech thee

To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.
A thousand times good night.

She enters again.

Hist! Romeo, Hist! Oh for a falc'ner's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again-

Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud,
Else would I tear the cave where echo lies,
And make her voice more hoarse than mine,
With repetition of my Romeo.

Rom. It is my love that calls upon my name.

How wond'rous sweet sound lovers' tongues by

night

Like softest music to attending ears!

Jul. Romeo !

Rom. My sweet!

Jul. At what o'clock to-morrow shall I send to

thee?

Rom. By the hour of nine.

Jul. I will not fail. 'Tis twenty years till then. I have forgot why I did call thee back.

Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.

Jul. I shall forget to have thee still stand there, Remembering how I love thy company.

Rom. And I'll stay here, to have thee still forget, Forgetting any other home but this.

Jul. 'Tis almost morning.

gone,

I would have thee

And yet no farther than a wanton's bird
That lets it hop a little from her hand

And with a silk thread pulls it back again,

So loving jealous of his liberty.

Rom. I would I were thy bird.

Jul. Sweet, so would I;

Yet, I should kill thee with much cherishing

Good night, good night.

sorrow,

Parting is such sweet

That I shall say good night till it be morrow. Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast,

Would, I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest.

I feel confident the reader will forgive me, for extracting so much of this beautiful dialogue. He who has any ear for music, will read this garden scene over and over again. Often as I have perused it (as well as the characters of Ham

C

let and Othello) I even, at this hour, discover new beauties in it as well as them. It is all nature. There is no study-no art in it-no laboured and mawkish effusions of love. The lines are the very eloquence of love and music. Mark the winning gentleness-the girlish sweetness—the timid and shrinking, yet deep and overwhelming fondness of the interesting Juliet; and the unconquerable, enthusiastic, and idolatrous adoration of the heart-smitten Romeo. Never did I read a character where love was so omnipotent-affecttion and constancy so predominant, as in that of Juliet. Eloise, all Voltaire's characters, Cleopatra, even those warm and winning fairy-forms from the voluptuous hand of Byron, fade and shrink before it. Juliet is all love, all gentleness,

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all woman. in Romeo.

Love is her life and being. She lives

She hears, sees, talks, thinks of nothing but "the god of her idolatry." Even from the first moment she talks to him, she gives him her heart, after the insinuating discourse which he uses to her in the ball room. Mark the hurry, the first love, the fluttering fear of

Go ask his name. If he be married

My grave is like to be my wedding-bed.

Even in the ball-room, she cannot contain her

affection for him (for it is still the heart that is speaking) and she instantly enquires the name of the unknown who kissed her hand, and with it took her heart.

He is the ocean to the river of her thoughts.*

In the garden scene the eloquence of Juliet is beyond that of Romeo. Sweet and winning as are his words, there is not so much character in them as those of Juliet's. Here again mark the judgment. Love is woman's life. Should she not therefore be more eloquent on the subject which is in a manner herself? If the reader will look attentively at the entire of this most pleasing drama, he will still find this trait carried throughout all her language. It breathes in warm and

* I have here changed the personal pronouns. I look on this verse to contain the most beautiful metaphor in one line, in the entire compass of English poetry. Recollecting this, I cannot account for the strange taste of the inimitable author of it (Byron) in adding any thing to it. It stands thus in the original,

"She was the ocean to the river of his thoughts Which terminated all."

What use are the three last words. They cannot they do not add to it. Addition spoils the line. Read it without them, (putting the period at "thoughts,") and it is exquisitely beautiful.

vivid sighs in the night scene-glows with truth and fond ardour in the hour of her marriage-and deepens into despair, but changeless affection in the moment of trial and death. Looking at the character in this—in these lights, she is the most interesting of all the heroines of the "divine bard." Ophelia and Desdemona are not to be excepted. It strikes me that correct taste would place Ophelia (before Desdemona) as the second most interesting heroine of his plays. Juliet is, in every respect, pre-eminently the first. She loves--she is crossed in love-her husband is banished-she is commanded to love another-she refuses she entails the curse of her father-the very means she assumes to save her from marrying Paris, brings death not merely to herself, but to the being for whom alone she would live. This catastrophe is highly wrought, and most deeply affecting. And here, her love changes not. Even though there is poison on the lips of her lover, still she hugs-still she kisses him. In this scene the sound of his voice recalls back her fleeting senses. Mark the fondness-the sweetness of the following lines

I know that voice! Its magic sweetness wakes

My tranced soul-I now remember well

Each circumstance-oh, my

lord! my husband!