LDA.

Add to these the generous feeling of Viola for her rival Olivia; of
Julia for her rival Sylvia; of Helena for Diana; of the old Countess for
Helena, in the same play; and even the affection of the wicked queen in
Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought--(and
when did he ever think other than the truth?)--that women have by nature
"virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their
sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satirists and
fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is
another thing which he has most deeply felt and beautifully
represented--the distinction between masculine and feminine _courage_.
A man's courage is often a mere animal quality, and in its most elevated
form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because
it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we
seek admiration and applause; on the contrary, we are courageous through
our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our
strength. A woman's heroism is always the excess of sensibility. Do you
remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his "blue thrum
cap," and standing at her husband's side, unknown to him during a
sea-fight? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot.
Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her--"Good God,
that love should make such a change as this!" is applicable to all the
acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage
of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her
own act, till she almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the
sleeping potion; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in
piety and pure strength of affection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel
and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications
of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon.

MEDON.

And what do you call the courage of Lady Macbeth?--

My hands are of your color, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

And again,

A little water clears us of this deed,
How easy is it then!

If this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere
firmness of nerve, what is it?

ALDA.

Not _that_, at least, which apparently you deem it; you will find, if
you have patience to read me to the end, that