g and palpable truth.

Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty
parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief
her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the
excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother
and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles
and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the
confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who
aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how
immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been
lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any
common-place dramatic waiting-woman?--even with Portia's adroit Nerissa,
or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the
sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to
the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of
passion.

The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is
exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We
behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and
weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action
of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged
girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves"
had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those
bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion
at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of
the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those
reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted
contradiction:--

NURSE.

Shame come to Romeo!

JULIET.

Blistered be thy tongue,
For such a wish! he was not born to shame.

Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent
exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:--

Upon _his_ brow Shame is ashamed to sit,
For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd
Sole monarch of the universal earth!

And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to
the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and
self-reproach--

Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name,
When I, thy t