acle of the star-strewn firmament,
murmured, in such heaven-like cadence, of the authentic music of heaven.

It is not to be denied that lovely words are spoken to Jessica, and that
almost equally lovely words are spoken by her. Essayists upon the
_Merchant_ have generally accepted her without a protest--so much do
youth and beauty in a woman count in the scale when weighed against duty
and integrity. There is no indication that Shylock was ever unjust or
unkind to Jessica. Whatever he may have been to others he seems always
to have been good to her; and she was the child of that lost Leah of his
youthful devotion whom he passionately loved and whom he mourned to the
last. Yet Jessica not only abandoned her father and his religion, but
robbed him of money and jewels (including the betrothal ring, the
turquoise, that her mother had given to him), when she fled with the
young Christian who had won her heart. It was a basely cruel act; but
probably some of the vilest and cruelest actions that are done in this
world are done by persons who are infatuated by the passion of love.
Mrs. Jameson, who in her beautiful essay on Portia extenuates the
conduct of Jessica, would have us believe that Shylock valued his
daughter far beneath his wealth, and therefore deserved to be deserted
and plundered by her; and she is so illogical as to derive his
sentiments on this subject from his delirious outcries of lamentation
after he learned of her predatory and ignominious flight. The argument
is not a good one. Fine phrases do not make wrong deeds right. It were
wiser to take Jessica for the handsome and voluptuous girl that
certainly she is, and to leave her rectitude out of the question.
Shakespeare in his drawing of her was true to nature, as he always is;
but the student who wants to know where Shakespeare's heart was placed
when he drew women must look upon creatures very different from Jessica.
The women that Shakespeare seems peculiarly to have loved are Imogen,
Cordelia, Isabella, Rosalind, and Portia--Rosalind, perhaps, most of
all; for although Portia is finer than Rosalind, it is extremely
probable that Shakespeare resembled his fellow-men sufficiently to have
felt the preference that Tom Moore long afterward expressed:

"Be an angel, my love, in the morning,
But, oh! be a woman to-night."

When Ellen Terry embodied Portia--in Henry Irving's magnificent revival
of _The Merchant of Venice_--the essential womanhood of th