hree-hours' wife, have mangled it?

With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at
first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse
is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose
energies are yet untried.

Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself.

While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she
clings to it. She appeals to her father--to her mother--

Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak one word!

* * * *

Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month,--a week!

And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the
helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual
dependence--

O God! O nurse! how shall this be prevented?
Some comfort, nurse!

The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these
events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry
Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness
of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does
not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous
amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which
take possession of her mind. She assumes at once and asserts all her own
superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair.

JULIET.

Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE.

Aye, and from my soul too;--or else
Beshrew them both!

JULIET.

Amen!

This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood--

Go, counsellor!
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!

and the calm, concentrated force of her resolve,

If all else fail,--myself have power to die;

have a sublime pathos. It appears to me also an admirable touch of
nature, considering the master-passion which, at this moment, rules in
Juliet's soul, that she is as much shocked by the nurse's dispraise of
her lover, as by her wicked, time-serving advice.

This scene is the crisis in the character; and henceforth we see Juliet
assume a new aspect. The fond, impatient, timid girl, puts on the wife
and the woman: she has learned heroism from suffering, and subtlety from