nation would be checked and subdued for the time.

In the soliloquy of the second act, where she is chiding at the nurse's
delay:--

O she is lame! Love's heralds should be thoughts,
That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams,
Driving back shadows over low'ring hills:
Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings!

How beautiful! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense!
She goes on--

Had she affections, and warm youthful blood,
She'd be as swift in motion as a ball;
My words should bandy her to my sweet love,
And his to me!

The famous soliloquy, "Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds," teems with
luxuriant imagery. The fond adjuration, "Come night! come Romeo! _come
thou day in night_!" expresses that fulness of enthusiastic admiration
for her lover, which possesses her whole soul; but expresses it as only
Juliet could or would have expressed it,--in a bold and beautiful
metaphor. Let it be remembered, that, in this speech, Juliet is not
supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante; and I
confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in
those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more
gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful "Hymn to the
Night," breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her
chamber. She is thinking aloud; it is the young heart "triumphing to
itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls
upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost
infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the
imagery and language, that the charm of sentiment and innocence is
thrown over the whole; and her impatience, to use her own expression, is
truly that of "a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may
not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and
fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with
the news of Romeo's banishment; and the immediate transition from
rapture to despair has a most powerful effect.

It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, in the scene with
the Friar, heaps together all images of horror that ever hung upon a
troubled dream.

O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,
From off the battlements of yonder tower,
Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk
Wh