re the crooked appeared straight;
the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I
found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are
complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us:
all may behold, and all judge for themselves.

MEDON.

But all will not judge alike.

ALDA.

No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful truth. We hear
Shakspeare's men and women discussed, praised and dispraised, liked,
disliked, as real human beings; and in forming our opinions of them, we
are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices,
feelings, impulses, just as we are influenced with regard to our
acquaintances and associates.

MEDON.

But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them.

ALDA.

Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we
can do with them what we cannot do with real people: we can unfold the
whole character before us, stripped of all pretensions of self-love, all
disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to
correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various
passions--we can hate, love, approve, condemn, without offence to
others, without pain to ourselves.

MEDON.

In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical
preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and
horror dissect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of
our frame, and all the internal workings of the wondrous machine of
life.

ALDA.

And it is the safer and the better way--for us at least. But look--that
brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me
another illustration. Passion, when we contemplate it through the
medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a
prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate
nature, and analyze its variety of tints; but passion brought home to us
in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the
same ray transmitted through a lens,--blinding, burning, consuming where
it falls.

MEDON.

Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow; but not the most just.
But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?--is the
foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral
s