the shade?"--to a mountain streamlet, now
smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon
leaping and sparkling in the sunshine--or rather to the very sunshine
itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever
it shines on!

But this impression, though produced by the complete development of the
character, and in the end possessing the whole fancy, is not immediate.
The first introduction of Rosalind is less striking than interesting; we
see her a dependant, almost a captive, in the house of her usurping
uncle; her genial spirits are subdued by her situation, and the
remembrance of her banished father her playfulness is under a temporary
eclipse.

I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry!

_is_ an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and
sporting "under the greenwood tree." The sensibility and even
pensiveness of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness
and gayety afterwards, more graceful and more fascinating.

Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and
notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we
scarcely ever think of her with a reference to them, or associate her
with a court, and the artificial appendages of her rank. She was not
made to "lord it o'er a fair mansion," and take state upon her like the
all-accomplished Portia; but to breathe the free air of heaven, and
frolic among green leaves. She was not made to stand the siege of daring
profligacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of
adverse fortune, like Isabel; but to "fleet the time carelessly as they
did i' the golden age." She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and
tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice;
but to dance on the green sward, and "murmur among living brooks a music
sweeter than their own."

Though sprightliness is the distinguishing characteristic of Rosalind,
as of Beatrice, yet we find her much more nearly allied to Portia in
temper and intellect. The tone of her mind is, like Portia's, genial and
buoyant: she has something, too, of her softness and sentiment; there is
the same confiding abandonment of self in her affections; but the
characters are otherwise as distinct as the situations are dissimilar.
The age, the manners, the circumstance in which Shakspeare has placed
his Portia, are not beyond the bounds of probability; nay, have a
certain realit