ng
to bear injury might well be equally strong to remember it.
Therewithal she knows full well that, in so delicate an instrument as
married life, if one string be out of tune the whole is ajar, and will
yield no music: for her, therefore, all things must be right, else
none are so. And she is both too clear of mind and too upright of
heart to put herself where she cannot be precisely what the laws of
propriety and decorum require her to seem. Accordingly, when she does
forgive, the forgiveness is simply _perfect_; the breach that has
been so long a-healing is at length _completely_ healed; for to be
whole and entire in whatever she does, is both an impulse of nature
and a law of conscience with her. When the King was wooing her, she
held him off three months, which he thought unreasonably long; but the
reason why she did so is rightly explained when, for his inexpressible
sin against her, she has locked herself from his sight sixteen years,
leaving him to mourn and repent. Moreover, with her severe chastity of
principle, the reconciliation to her husband must begin there where
the separation grew. Thus it was for Perdita to restore the parental
unity which her being represents, but of which she had occasioned the
breaking.

Such is Hermione, in her "proud submission," her "dignified
obedience," with her Roman firmness and integrity of soul, heroic in
strength, heroic in gentleness, the queenliest of women, the
womanliest of queens. She is perhaps the Poet's best illustration of
the great principle, which I fear is not so commonly felt as it should
be, that the highest beauty always has an element or shade of the
terrible in it, so that it awes you while it attracts.

"If I prove honey-mouth'd, let my tongue blister,
And never to my red-look'd anger be
The trumpet any more."

"Good Queen, my lord, good Queen; I say, good Queen,
And would by combat make her good, so were I
A man, the worst about you."

"For ever
Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou
Tak'st up the Princess by that forced baseness
Which he has put upon 't."

Such are some of the words that boil over from the stout heart of
Paulina,--the noblest and most amiable termagant we shall anywhere
find,--when, with the new-born babe in charge, she confronts the
furious King. He threatens to have her burnt, and she replies
instantly,--

"I care not:
It is an her