from the flush and bloom of her young and prosperous existence, and from her fervid imagination. In the casket-scene, she fears indeed the issue of the trial, on which more than her life is hazarded; but while she trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is contemplating the caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one moment on the possibility of disappointment and misery.

Let music sound, while he doth make his choice;

Then if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,

Fading in music: that the comparison

May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And wat'ry death-bed for him.

Then immediately follows that revulsion of feeling, so beautifully characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of this noble crea

ture:

But he may win!

And what is music then?-then music is

Even as the flourish, when true subjects bow

To a new-crowned monarch: such it is

As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
And summon him to marriage. Now he goes
With no less presence, but with much more love
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem

The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy

To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice.

Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine spirit which had never been touched by grief; but the images in which it comes arrayed to her fancy, the bridegroom waked by music on his wedding morn,—the newcrowned monarch,-the comparison of Bassanio to the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of Laomedon,-are all precisely what would have suggested themselves to the fine poetical imagination of Portia, in such a mo

ment.

Her passionate exclamations of delight, when Bassanio has fixed on the right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before. Fear and doubt she could repel ;—the native elasticity of her mind bore up against them; yet she makes

us feel, that as the sudden joy overpowers her

almost to fainting, the disappointment would as certainly have killed her.

How all the other passions fleet to air,

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair,
And shudd'ring fear, and green-ey'd jealousy!

O love! be moderate, allay thy extacy;

In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess :
I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,
For fear I surfeit!

Her subsequent surrender of herself in heart and soul, of her maiden freedom, and her vast possessions, can never be read without deep emotion; for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted woman, are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the princely heiress of Belmont, but the serious, measured self-possession of her address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all concealment superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It is, in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discovers, that besides talents

and powers, she has also passions and affections; when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum of her existence; when she first confesses that her happiness is no longer in her own keeping, but is surrendered for ever and for ever into the dominion of another! The possession of uncommon powers of mind are so far from affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating surprise-I had almost said terror-of such a revolution, that they render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond calculation the sources of feeling; and mingled, they rush together, a torrent deep as strong. Because Portia is endued with that enlarged comprehension, which looks before and after, she does not feel the less, but the more: because from the height of her commanding intellect she can contemplate the force, the tendency, the consequences of her own sentiments-because she is fully sensible of her own situation, and the value of all she concedes-the concession is not made with less entireness and devotion of heart, less confidence in the truth and worth of her lover,

than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any such intrusive reflections-any check but the instinctive delicacy of her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover:

And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay,

And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.*

In Portia's confession, which is not breathed from a moon-lit balcony, but spoken openly in the presence of her attendants and vassals, there is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the artless simplicity of Miranda, but a consciousness and a tender seriousness, approaching to solemnity, which are not less touching.

You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
Such as I am though for myself alone,

I would not be ambitious in my wish,

To wish myself much better; yet, for you,

I would be trebled twenty times myself;

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
More rich; that only to stand high in your account,

I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,

Exceed account: but the full sum of me

Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 2.