to love. I
can't class them, therefore,--fate is too strong, and leaves them no free
will.

8. Perdita, Miranda. Rather mythic visions of maiden beauty than mere
girls.

9. Viola and Juliet. Love the ruling power in the entire character: wholly
virginal and pure, but quite earthly, and recognizing no other life than
his own. Viola is, however, far the noblest. Juliet will die unless Romeo
loves _her_: "If he be wed, the grave is like to be my wedding bed;" but
Viola is ready to die for the happiness of the man who does _not_ love her;
faithfully doing his messages to her rival, whom she examines strictly for
his sake. It is not in envy that she says, "Excellently done,--if God did
all." The key to her character is given in the least selfish of all lover's
songs, the one to which the Duke bids her listen:

"Mark it, Cesario,--it is old and plain,
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids, that _weave their thread with bones_,
Do use to chaunt it."

(They, the unconscious Fates, weaving the fair vanity of life with death);
and the burden of it is--

"My part of Death, no one so true
Did share it."

Therefore she says, in the great first scene, "Was not _this_ love indeed?"
and in the less heeded closing one, her heart then happy with the knitters
in the _sun_,

"And all those sayings will I over-swear,
And all those swearings keep as true in soul
As doth that orbed continent the Fire
That severs day from night."

Or, at least, did once sever day from night,--and perhaps does still in
Illyria. Old England must seek new images for her loves from gas and
electric sparks,--not to say furnace fire.

I am obliged, by press of other work, to set down these notes in cruel
shortness: and many a reader may be disposed to question utterly the
standard by which the measurement is made. It will not be found, on
reference to my other books, that they encourage young ladies to go into
convents; or undervalue the dignity of wives and mothers. But, as surely as
the sun _does_ sever day from night, it will be found always that the
noblest and loveliest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature;
and their passions are trained to obey them; like their dogs. Homer,
indeed, loves Helen with all his heart, and restores her, after all her
naughtiness, to the queenship of her household; but he never thinks of her
as Penelope's equal, or Iphigenia's. Practically, in daily life, one o