mand, and used
to it. Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her "queen
o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and
pleasures; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood--a novice of St.
Clare; the power to command obedience and to confer happiness are to her
unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope,
and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at once with golden fruit and
luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath
favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the
dews of heaven. Isabella is like a stately and graceful cedar, towering
on some alpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid the storm. She gives
us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline
of suffering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tempers the natural
vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look
down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when
brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she
shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education.

This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments
of a recluse,--of austerity of life with gentleness of manner,--of
inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashfulness of
deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful
consistency. Thus when her brother sends to her, to entreat her
mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers:

... Alas! what poor ability's in me
To do him good?

LUCIO.

Essay the power you have.

ISABELLA.

My power, alas! I doubt.

In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for
her brother and her sense of his fault; between her self-respect and her
maidenly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesitation "at war
'twixt will and will not:" and when Angelo quotes the law, and insists
on the justice of his sentence, and the responsibility of his station,
her native sense of moral rectitude and severe principles takes the
lead, and she shrinks back:--

O just, but severe law!
I _had_ a brother then--Heaven keep your honor!
[_Retiring._

Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and supported by her own natural
spirit, she returns to the charge,--she gai