nd splendor; she
dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a palace--she clasps her
robe with jewels--she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in
herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than
the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with
the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its
luxuriant beauty.

But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal
figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet
are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they,
like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the
darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is
the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly
be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid
imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius, and
the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as
though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had
drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been
said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not
love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining
amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare--the
noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet--with even less
truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth
Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a
green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when
thinking on the enamored and impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love
keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm
into passion, passion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play
is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the
south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of
the very sap of life.[18] We have indeed the struggle of love against
evil destinies, and a thorny world; the pain, the grief, the a