up to, nothing to respect outside of themselves. But human virtue does
not grow in this way; and the stream must soon run dry if cut off from
the spring. And I have no sympathy with those who would thus crush all
tender and precious memories out of us, and then give the name of
_freedom_ to the void thus created in our souls. The liberty that goes
by unknitting the bands of reverence and dissolving the ties that draw
and hold men together in the charities of a common life, is not the
liberty for me, nor is it the liberty that Shakespeare teaches. I am
much rather minded to say, with a lawyer-poet of our time,

"If we lose
All else, we will preserve our household laws;
Nor let the license of these fickle times
Subvert the holy shelter which command
Of fathers, and undoubting faith of sons,
Rear'd for our shivering virtues."

It is true, however, that in this play the better transpirations of
character are mainly conducted in the eye of Nature, where the
passions and vanities that so much disfigure human life find little to
stir them into act. In the freedom of their woodland resort, and with
the native inspirations of the place to kindle and gladden them, the
persons have but to live out the handsome thoughts which they have
elsewhere acquired. Man's tyranny has indeed driven them into
banishment; but their virtues are much more the growth of the place
they are banished from than of the place they are banished to.

* * * * *

Orlando is altogether such a piece of young-manhood as it does one
good to be with. He has no special occasion for heroism, yet we feel
that there is plenty of heroic stuff in him. Brave, gentle, modest,
and magnanimous; never thinking of his high birth but to avoid
dishonouring it; in his noble-heartedness, forgetting, and causing
others to forget, his nobility of rank; he is every way just such a
man as all true men would choose for their best friend. His
persecuting brother, talking to himself, describes him as "never
school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts
enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world,
and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am
altogether misprised"; and this description is amply justified by his
behaviour. The whole intercourse between him and his faithful old
servant Adam is replete on both sides with that full-souled generosity