heart
to adore the beauty of youth; yet this blessed old creature is enough
to persuade me that age may be more beautiful still. Her generous
sensibility to native worth amply atones for her son's mean pride of
birth: all her honours of rank and place she would gladly resign, to
have been the mother of the poor orphan left in her charge. Feeling as
she does the riches of that orphan's soul,--a feeling that bespeaks
like riches in herself,--all the factitious distinctions of life sink
to nothing in her regard; and the only distinction worth having is
that which grows by building honour out of one's own virtue, and not
by inheriting it from the virtue of others. So, in her breast,
"adoption strives with nature"; and, weighing the adopted and the
native together in her motherly judgment, she finds "there's nothing
here too good for him but only she"; and "which of them both is
dearest to her, she has no skill in sense to make distinction." Withal
she is a charming instance of youth carried on into age; so that
Helena justly recognizes her as one "whose aged honour cites a
virtuous youth." Thus her Winter inherits a soft warm robe of precious
memories woven out of her Spring: when she first learns of the
heroine's state of mind, the picture of her own May revives to her
eye, the treasure of her maiden years blooms afresh; she remembers
that "this thorn doth to our rose of youth rightly belong"; and has
more than ever a mother's heart towards the silent sufferer, because
she holds fast her old faith that

"It is the show and seal of nature's truth,
Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth."

Well might Campbell say of her, that "she redeems nobility by
reverting to nature."

* * * * *

Johnson delivers his mind touching the young Count as follows: "I
cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram;--a man noble without generosity,
and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves
her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home
to a second marriage; is accused by a woman he has wronged, defends
himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness." A terrible
sentence indeed! and its vigour, if not its justice, is attested by
the frequency with which it has been quoted.

Now, in the first place, the Poet did not mean we should reconcile our
hearts to Bertram, but that he should not unreconcile them to Helena;
nay, that her love should appear th