ch belongs to the whole piece; it
is scarcely a passion or a sentiment, but a dreamy enchantment, a
reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure.

But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as
combined with female nature; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has
portrayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a
manner latent, if existing; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and
imagination lends the external charm and hue, not the internal power; in
whom the feminine character appears resolved into its very elementary
principles--as modesty, grace,[37] tenderness. _Without_ these a woman
is no woman, but a thing which, luckily, wants a name yet; _with_ these,
though every other faculty were passive or deficient, she might still be
herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into
the world: they may be perverted by a bad education--they may be
obscured by harsh and evil destinies--they may be overpowered by the
development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some
passion--but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul,
while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its
Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine
qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when expanded under genial
influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature:
such is Miranda. When thrown alone amid harsh and adverse destinies, and
amid the trammels and corruptions of society, without energy to resist,
or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation.

Ophelia--poor Ophelia! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast
among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the
thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before
her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the
wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear--like the
exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms--like the
snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth--like
the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses--such
is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a
touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and
worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply.
The love of Ophelia, which she never o