sness.[L]

For my part I cannot believe that, in such an age, such deep
heart-knowledge of pure womanhood could have come otherwise than by the
impression on the child's soul of a mother's purity. I seem to have a
vision of one of those women whom the world knows not of, silent,
deep-hearted, loving, whom the coarser and more practically efficient
jostle aside and underrate for their want of interest in the noisy
chitchat and commonplace of the day; but who yet have a sacred power,
like that of the spirit of peace, to brood with dovelike wings over the
childish heart, and quicken into life the struggling, slumbering
elements of a sensitive nature.

I cannot but think, in that beautiful scene, where he represents
Desdemona as amazed and struck dumb with the grossness and brutality of
the charges which had been thrown upon her, yet so dignified in the
consciousness of her own purity, so magnanimous in the power of
disinterested, forgiving love, that he was portraying no ideal
excellence, but only reproducing, under fictitious and supposititious
circumstances, the patience, magnanimity, and enduring love which had
shone upon him in the household words and ways of his mother.

It seemed to me that in that bare and lowly chamber I saw a vision of a
lovely face which was the first beauty that dawned on those childish
eyes, and heard that voice whose lullaby tuned his ear to an exquisite
sense of cadence and rhythm. I fancied that, while she thus serenely
shone upon, him like a benignant star, some rigorous grand-aunt took
upon her the practical part of his guidance, chased up his wanderings to
the right and left, scolded him for wanting to look out of the window
because his little climbing toes left their mark on the neat wall, or
rigorously arrested him when his curly head was seen bobbing off at the
bottom of the street, following a bird, or a dog, or a showman;
intercepting him in some happy hour when he was aiming to strike off on
his own account to an adjoining field for "winking Mary-buds;" made long
sermons to him on the wickedness of muddying his clothes and wetting his
new shoes, (if he had any,) and told him that something dreadful would
come out of the graveyard and catch him if he was not a better boy,
imagining that if it were not for her bustling activity Willie would go
straight to destruction.

I seem, too, to have a kind of perception of Shakspeare's father; a
quiet, God-fearing, thoughtful man, given to