intuition, without
the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and by the
light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of
love alone. In all the Shakespearian women there is essentially the same
foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are
merely the result of modification of circumstances, whether in Miranda the
maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katherine the queen.

But to return. The appearance and characters of the super or ultra natural
servants are finely contrasted. Ariel has in everything the airy tint
which gives the name; and it is worthy of remark that Miranda is never
directly brought into comparison with Ariel, lest the natural and human of
the one and the supernatural of the other should tend to neutralise each
other; Caliban, on the other hand, is all earth, all condensed and gross
in feelings and images; he has the dawnings of understanding without
reason or the moral sense, and in him, as in some brute animals, this
advance to the intellectual faculties, without the moral sense, is marked
by the appearance of vice. For it is in the primacy of the moral being
only that man is truly human; in his intellectual powers he is certainly
approached by the brutes, and, man's whole system duly considered, those
powers cannot be considered other than means to an end--that is, to
morality.

In this scene, as it proceeds, is displayed the impression made by
Ferdinand and Miranda on each other; it is love at first sight;--

... "At the first sight
They have chang'd eyes;"--

and it appears to me, that in all cases of real love, it is at one moment
that it takes place. That moment may have been prepared by previous
esteem, admiration, or even affection,--yet love seems to require a
momentary act of volition, by which a tacit bond of devotion is imposed,--a
bond not to be thereafter broken without violating what should be sacred
in our nature. How finely is the true Shakespearian scene contrasted with
Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere ludicrous psychological
experiment, as it were, is tried--displaying nothing but indelicacy without
passion.

Prospero's interruption of the courtship has often seemed to me to have
had no sufficient motive; still, his alleged reason--

... "Lest too light winning
Make the prize light"--

is enough for the ethereal connections of the romantic imagination,
although it would not be s