ne looked up at him with a singular smile.

"There's a vicious point hit already," she said. "You sympathize with
that proud patrician who does not sympathize with his famished
fellow-men, and insults them. There, go on." He proceeded. The warlike
portions did not rouse him much; he said all that was out of date, or
should be; the spirit displayed was barbarous; yet the encounter
single-handed between Marcius and Tullus Aufidius he delighted in. As he
advanced, he forgot to criticise; it was evident he appreciated the
power, the truth of each portion; and, stepping out of the narrow line
of private prejudices, began to revel in the large picture of human
nature, to feel the reality stamped upon the characters who were
speaking from that page before him.

He did not read the comic scenes well; and Caroline, taking the book out
of his hand, read these parts for him. From her he seemed to enjoy them,
and indeed she gave them with a spirit no one could have expected of
her, with a pithy expression with which she seemed gifted on the spot,
and for that brief moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, that the
general character of her conversation that evening, whether serious or
sprightly, grave or gay, was as of something untaught, unstudied,
intuitive, fitful--when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had
been than the glancing ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem,
than the colour or form of the sunset cloud, than the fleeting and
glittering ripple varying the flow of a rivulet.

Coriolanus in glory, Coriolanus in disaster, Coriolanus banished,
followed like giant shades one after the other. Before the vision of the
banished man Moore's spirit seemed to pause. He stood on the hearth of
Aufidius's hall, facing the image of greatness fallen, but greater than
ever in that low estate. He saw "the grim appearance," the dark face
"bearing command in it," "the noble vessel with its tackle torn." With
the revenge of Caius Marcius, Moore perfectly sympathized; he was not
scandalized by it; and again Caroline whispered, "There I see another
glimpse of brotherhood in error."

The march on Rome, the mother's supplication, the long resistance, the
final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a
nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he
considered his ally's weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final
sorrow of his great enemy--all scenes made of condensed truth a