ht also have adopted these additional circumstances of horror in the
fate of the lovers, and have so treated them as to harrow up our very
soul--had it been his object to do so? But apparently it was _not_. The
tale is one,

Such as, once heard, in gentle heart destroys
All pain but pity.

It is in truth a tale of love and sorrow, not of anguish and terror. We
behold the catastrophe afar off with scarcely a wish to avert it. Romeo
and Juliet _must_ die; their destiny is fulfilled; they have quaffed off
the cup of life, with all its infinite of joys and agonies, in one
intoxicating draught. What have they to do more upon this earth? Young,
innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb: but
Shakspeare has made that tomb a shrine of martyred and sainted affection
consecrated for the worship of all hearts,--not a dark charnel vault,
haunted by spectres of pain, rage, and desperation. Romeo and Juliet are
pictured lovely in death as in life; the sympathy they inspire does not
oppress us with that suffocating sense of horror, which in the altered
tragedy makes the fall of the curtain a relief; but all pain is lost in
the tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture. Romeo's last speech
over his bride is not like the raving of a disappointed boy: in its deep
pathos, its rapturous despair, its glowing imagery, there is the very
luxury of life and love. Juliet, who had drunk off the sleeping potion
in a fit of frenzy, wakes calm and collected--

I do remember well where I should be,
And there I am--Where is my Romeo?

The profound slumber in which her senses have been steeped for so many
hours has tranquillized her nerves, and stilled the fever in her blood;
she wakes "like a sweet child who has been dreaming of something
promised to it by its mother," and opens her eyes to ask for it--

... Where is my Romeo?

she is answered at once,--

Thy husband in thy bosom here lies dead.

This is enough: she sees at once the whole horror of her situation--she
sees it with a quiet and resolved despair--she utters no reproach
against the Friar--makes no inquiries, no complaints, except that
affecting remonstrance--

O churl--drink all, and leave no friendly drop
To help me after!

All that is left to her is to die, and she dies. The poem, which opened
with the enmity of the two families, closes with their reconciliation
over the breathless remains of their children; and no vio