even in pure and vestal modesty
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his
exclamation in the sepulchre,

Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair!

there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish
combined. The Friar's description of her approach,

O, so light a step
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!

and then her father's similitude,

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;--

all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate
grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.

And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced,
when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for
another. His visionary passion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline,
forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true--the real sentiment
which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original
story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment;
and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing
us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the
stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in
the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the
lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend
Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is
first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick and pale of
cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times
every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first
entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was
selected to be his fancy's queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and
the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about
"metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,[23]--to
maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk
with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless
desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the
Bayards, the Herberts of the time--all those who were the mirrors "in
which the noble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic
school of gallantry--the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it