stere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the
Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of
the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath
th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our
human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or
maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she
not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her
filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.

FOOTNOTES:

[48]

----The gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult of the soul.

WORDSWORTH.

"Il pouvait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de l'orage sans son
coeur," was finely observed of Madame de Stael in her maturer years; it
would have been true of Hermione at any period of her life.

[49] Winter's Tale, act v scene 11

[50] Only in the last scene, when, with solemnity befitting the
occasion, Paulina invokes the majestic figure to "descend, and be stone
no more," and where she presents her daughter to her. "Turn, good lady!
our Perdita is found."

[51] Act iii, scene 3.

[52] Which being interpreted into modern English, means, I believe,
nothing more than that the pattern was what we now call _arabesque_.

[53] There is an incident in the original tale, "Il Moro di Venezia,"
which could not well be transferred to the drama, but which is very
effective, and adds, I think, to the circumstantial horrors of the
story. Desdemona does not accidentally drop the handkerchief; it is
stolen from her by Iago's little child, an infant of three years old,
whom he trains and bribes to the theft. The love of Desdemona for this
child, her little playfellow--the pretty description of her taking it in
her arms and caressing it, while it profits by its situation to steal
the handkerchief from her bosom, are well imagined, and beautifully
told; and the circumstance of Iago employing his own innocent child as
the instrument of his infernal villany, adds a deeper, and, in truth an
unnecessary touch of the fiend, to his fiendish character.

[54] Consequences are so linked together, that the exclamation of
Emilia,

O thou dull Moor!--That handkerchief thou speakest of
I found by fortune, and did give my husband!--

is sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of his ruin.

[55] Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Giornata, 2