etic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in 't."

If her faults were a thousand times greater than they are, I could
pardon them all for this one little speech; which proves that
Shakespeare was, I will not say a Protestant, but a true Christian,
intellectually at least, and far deeper in the spirit of his religion
than a large majority of the Church's official organs were in his day,
or, let me add, have been any day since. And this was written, be it
observed, at a time when the embers of the old ecclesiastical fires
were not yet wholly extinct, and when many a priestly bigot was
deploring the lay ascendency which kept them from being rekindled.

Paulina makes a superb counterpart to Hermione, heightening the effect
of her character by the most emphatic contrast, and at the same time
reflecting it by her intense and outspoken sympathy. Without any of
the Queen's dignified calmness and reserve, she is alive to all her
inward beauty and greatness: with a head to understand and a heart to
reverence such a woman, she unites a temper to fight, a generosity to
die for her. But no language but her own can fitly measure the ardour
with which she loves and admires and even adores her "dearest,
sweetest mistress," whose power has indeed gone all through her, so
that every part of her nature cannot choose but speak it, when the
occasion kindles her. Loud, voluble, violent, and viraginous, with a
tongue sharper than a sword, and an eloquence that fairly blisters
where it hits, she has, therewithal, too much honour and magnanimity
and kind feeling either to use them without good cause, or to forbear
using them at all hazards when she has such cause. Mrs. Jameson
classes her, and justly, no doubt, among those women--and she assures
us there are many such--who seem regardless of the feelings of those
for whom they would sacrifice their life.

"I thought she had some great matter there in hand; for she hath
privately, twice or thrice a day, ever since the death of Hermione,
visited that removed house." Such is the speech of one gentleman to
another, as the royal party and all the Court are going to Paulina's
house to see the mysterious workmanship of Julio Romano. Nothing could
better suggest the history of that quiet, placid intercourse, with its
long record of patient, self-rewarding service; a fellowship in which
little needed to be said, for each knew what was in the other's mind
by a better language than words. It is