he lattice, with the glowing brown of the warm,
fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried walls. Not less would an Italian look
with a grateful regard on the hill summits, to which he owed, in the
scorching of his summer noonday, escape into the marble corridor or
crypt palpitating only with cold and smooth variegation of the unfevered
mountain veins. In some sort, as, both in our stubbornness and our
comfort, we not unfitly describe ourselves typically as Hearts of Oak,
the Italians might in their strange and variegated mingling of passion,
like purple color, with a cruel sternness, like white rock, truly
describe themselves as Hearts of Stone.

Sec. 36. Into this feeling about marble in domestic use, Shakespere, having
seen it even in northern luxury, could partly enter, and marks it in
several passages of his Italian plays. But if the reader still doubts
his limitation to his own experience in all subjects of imagination, let
him consider how the removal from mountain influence in his youth, so
necessary for the perfection of his lower human sympathy, prevented him
from ever rendering with any force the feelings of the mountain
anchorite, or indicating in any of his monks the deep spirit of
monasticism. Worldly cardinals or nuncios he can fathom to the
uttermost; but where, in all his thoughts, do we find St. Francis, or
Abbot Samson? The "Friar" of Shakespere's plays is almost the only stage
conventionalism which he admitted; generally nothing more than a weak
old man who lives in a cell, and has a rope about his waist.

Sec. 37. While, finally, in such slight allusions as he makes to mountain
scenery itself, it is very curious to observe the accurate limitation of
his sympathies to such things as he had known in his youth; and his
entire preference of human interest, and of courtly and kingly dignities
to the nobleness of the hills. This is most marked in Cymbeline, where
the term "mountaineer" is, as with Dante, always one of reproach; and
the noble birth of Arviragus and Guiderius is shown by their holding
their mountain cave as

"A cell of ignorance; travelling abed.
A prison for a debtor;"

and themselves, educated among hills, as in all things contemptible:

"We are beastly; subtle as the fox, for prey;
Like warlike as the wolf, for what we eat:
Our valor is to chase what flies; our cage
We make our choir, as doth the prisoned bird."

A few phrases occur here and there which might justify the sup