sense and low cunning, serve to place in
brighter relief the exquisite refinement, the moral grace, the
unblemished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona.

On the other perfections of this tragedy, considered as a production of
genius--on the wonderful characters of Othello and Iago--on the skill
with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a
word unravels,[54] and on the overpowering horror of the
catastrophe--eloquence and analytical criticism have been exhausted; I
will only add, that the source of the pathos throughout--of that pathos
which at once softens and deepens the tragic effect--lies in the
character of Desdemona. No woman differently constituted could have
excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing
something of that exalted charm, which invests her from beginning to
end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to
the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of
the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft
acquiescence, is not weak; for the negative alone is weak; and the mere
presence of goodness and affection implies in itself a species of power;
power without consciousness, power without effort, power with
repose--that soul of grace!

I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual
power is never felt as a deficiency, nor the absence of energy of will
as impairing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want
of feeling: one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of
rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a
necessary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity
has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred
the loveliness without--no strife of the factitious world without has
disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever
shut out, as if goodness had converted all things to itself; and all to
the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is
exactly that of the character of Desdemona; genius is a rare thing, but
abstract goodness is rarer. In Desdemona, we cannot but feel that the
slightest manifestation of intellectual power or active will would have
injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the
first,--"an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final
sacrifice; all harmony, all grace, all purity,