uality perfectly distinct from the circumstances around
her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in
the most prominent point of view: but with Constance, as with a real
human being, the maternal affections are a powerful instinct, modified
by other faculties, sentiments, and impulses, making up the individual
character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted
for the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and
calls forth our sympathy and our tears; but we infer the rest of her
character from what we see, as certainly and as completely as if we had
known her whole course of life.

That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is
_power_--power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of
pride: the moral energy, that faculty which is principally exercised in
self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient; or
rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of
sensibility and imagination, which lends to the character its rich
poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate.
Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding
its amazing grandeur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the
woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to
desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of
sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, are all
most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based
upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide of passion.
Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and is excited into frenzy
by sorrow and disappointment while neither from her towering pride, nor
her strength of intellect, can she borrow patience to submit, or
fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature,
that Constance is first introduced as pleading for peace.

Stay for an answer to your embassy,
Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood:
My Lord Chatillon may from England bring
That right in peace, which here we urge in war;
And then we shall repent each drop of blood,
That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed.

And that the same woman, when all her passions are roused by the sense
of injury, should afterwards exclaim,

War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war!

That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his