his only daughter as far as
possible from every taint of that world he knew so well? So that when
she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect
purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed
on earth the air of paradise. When her father and her brother find it
necessary to warn her simplicity, give her lessons of worldly wisdom,
and instruct her "to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that
Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the
better to beguile," we feel at once that it comes too late; for from the
moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime and
vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny.
Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young,
and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct
which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was--and I watched
it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its
silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a
few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the
turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up forever. It reminded me then
of the fate of Ophelia; and now when I think of her, I see again before
me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm.
It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with
such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her
person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own
feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she
has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter
the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a
crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather
intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those
few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and
with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems
innate, a part of her being, "as dwells the gathered lightning in the
cloud;" and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and
Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as
distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eye