ing to the
hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion.

Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations
nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can
render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle,
beautiful, and innocent; all are models of conjugal submission, truth,
and tenderness, and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their
husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases;
the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and
the characters, which are as different as it is possible to imagine,
conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of
feeling yet more astonishing.

Critically speaking, the character of Hermione is the most simple in
point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex.
Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude,
Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all
the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess;
consequently she is, as a character, superior to either; but considered
as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste.

Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale.
She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of
beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth.
Her husband on slight grounds suspects her of infidelity with his friend
Polixenes, king of Bohemia; the suspicion once admitted, and working on
a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and
confirmed opinion. Hermione is thrown into a dungeon; her new-born
infant is taken from her, and by the order of her husband, frantic with
jealousy, exposed to death on a desert shore; she is herself brought to
a public trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and
is pronounced innocent by the oracle. But at the very moment that she is
acquitted, she learns the death of the prince her son, who

Conceiving the dishonor of his mother,
Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply,
Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself,
Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep,
And downright languished.

She swoons away with grief, and her supposed death concludes the third
act. The last two acts are occupied with the adventures of her daughter
Perdita; a