ving to be in the scene of her triumph:
as she goes there prompted by the feelings and duties of a wife, and
for the saving of her husband's honour and peace of mind,--being
resolved that "never shall he lie by Portia's side with an unquiet
soul"; so she gladly leaves when these causes no longer bear in that
direction. Then too, exquisitely cultivated as she is, humanity has
not been so refined out of her, but that in such a service she can
stoop from her elevation, and hazard a brief departure from the
sanctuary of her sex.

Being to act for once the part of a man, it would seem hardly possible
for her to go through the undertaking without more of self-confidence
than were becoming in a woman: and the student may find plenty of
matter for thought in the Poet's so managing as to prevent such an
impression. For there is nothing like ostentation or conceit of
intellect in Portia. Though knowing enough for any station, still it
never once enters her head that she is too wise for the station which
Providence or the settled order of society has assigned her. She would
therefore neither hide her light under a bushel, that others may not
see by it, nor perch it aloft in public, that others may see it; but
would simply set it on a candlestick, that it may give light to all in
her house. With her noble intellect she has gathered in the sweets of
poetry and the solidities of philosophy, all for use, nothing for
show; she has fairly domesticated them, has naturalized them in her
sphere, and tamed them to her fireside, so that they seem as much at
home there as if they had been made for no other place. And to all
this mental enrichment she adds the skill

"So well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best."

Portia's consciousness of power does indeed render her cool,
collected, and firm, but never a whit unfeminine: her smooth command
both of herself and of the matter she goes about rather heightens our
sense of her modesty than otherwise: so that the impression we take
from her is, that these high mental prerogatives are of no sex; that
they properly belong to the common freehold of woman and man; and that
the ladies of creation have just as good a right to them as the lords.
Some of her speeches, especially at the trial, are evidently
premeditated; for, as any good lawyer would do, she of course prepares
herself in the case beforehand; but