serious insincerity; even the prudent and innocent subterfuge dies upon her lips, if any severity of accusation has made her timid. Conspicuous mental endowments would perhaps have repelled rather than attracted the Moor; his own plain nature would not have felt easy by the side of a woman of this nature. This genuine manliness is only attracted by the most genuine womanliness, and this again Othello would have found belonging rather to the feeling, than to the witty nature of woman. He would exchange the splendour of all mental endowments for the one characteristic, which belongs to Desdemona, the highest charm of the womanly nature, which Iago names not, because he knows it not, or believes not in it: her humility, her harmless ingenuousness, her modesty, and innocence. Not the breath of an impure thought has ever darkened the mirror of this soul; the mere word of sin, it abhors her to speak; her name is clear and "fresh as Dian's visage". The genuineness of her soul and mind culminates (and this is the highest point of her nature) in a perfect unsuspiciousness, which has taken too deep a root in her for this suspicious world. This unsuspiciousness is the source of all her noble qualities, but it is also the cause of her calumniation and aspersion; in it she raises faults to noble virtues, but she sustains also her virtue in less circumspect demeanour; the very excess of the most innocent consciousness makes her idle and careless of appearance; she never needed the law, and knew of no sin; she might err against many rules of conventional custom, but her heart would be pure from stain, because any infraction of the eternal moral law would be impossible to her; she has no suspicion of other men, and dreams not, that they could

think evil of her; thus by this ingenuousness she obtains her happiness, and through it causes her unhappiness.

It is not every woman who would take the step towards her happiness, which she does; the most conscious design and cunning were alone capable of it, or the unconscious and naïve innocence, which rises to this degree of unsuspiciousness in Desdemona. She has heard "by parcels" the story of Othello's life. The charm which an energetic manly nature exercises upon a healthy feminine soul, has seized her, an affection like that which Ulysses awakens in Nausicaa, is aroused in her. She had shunned the "curled darlings" of Venice, who had wooed her; the deep interest, which she took in the great warrior, directed her eye to him, who was so dissimilar to her in beauty, habits, and years. She had to struggle with the natural disinclination to a being so diverse, and feared to look on him before she learned to love him: an experienced woman who had not like her been deprived of maternal guidance and education would have listened to this first voice of the soul, but not she. The great qualities of Othello's heroic nature prevailed over her, who was of a less sensual nature. She "saw his visage in his mind", her love was not the fruit of a fleeting ebullition of passion, but the slowly ripened admiration of his valour and manly power; she surrendered herself to him with the determination of a perfectly confiding feminine soul, innocent and unmindful she submitted to the ridicule of the world, and endured patiently the trumpet of report. She did not understand the concealment of these powerful emotions in her soul; it is more just to say: it did not occur to her to attempt it. Othello took a pliant hour to dilate his pilgrimage intentively to her. The pity, which according

to Olivia's experience also, is a first step to love, added to her admiration. She gave him "a world of sighs"; and she swore (even in remembrance the Moor deemed it strange and wondrous pitiful), that she wished she had not heard his story. The idea of the burden of difficulties which opposed her love, and of the pain which the destruction of her quiet desires would prepare for her, drew from her this sigh, which she was as little able to restrain. She went still further she wished that heaven had made her such a man, and bade Othello, that if he had a friend that loved her, he should but teach him how to tell his story; and that would woo her. With this hint the maiden proffered herself to him, a being worthy in his estimation to grace an emperor's side. Perhaps with him nothing less than these advances from such a being would have availed, if he was to approach nearer to a woman, for he was little tempted to the service of love and women. The nature of the warrior, designed for action, is, according to general experience, rarely sensual; besides his roving life had never permitted the feeling of domestic repose to gain ground in him. But that he loved Desdemona, he says himself, he would not have relinquished his unhoused free condition. His years have long extinguished in him the first glow of passion. In the evening when Desdemona followed him, he is called to the senate: he will speak one word with her before he goes, and it is but one. In the same night, not enjoying his love, separated from Desdemona, he is to set out for Cyprus, and with both there is not a word of resistance. In the bridal night at Cyprus, they are roused by tumult, and the disciplinarian captain is in all haste and circumspection at his post. He had even solemnly sworn

to the senate, that the presence of his wife would not "taint his serious business", nor his disports corrupt it: much rather, if ever the light-winged toys of love should foil "with wanton dulness" his speculative and active instruments, housewives should make a skillet of his helm, and all indign and base adversities should make head against his reputation. His love is not that love in idleness, which leads Proteus and Romeo into effeminate uselessness, but with regard to the claims of his vocation, he unlooses, as it says in Troilus and Cressida, the amorous fold of Cupid from his neck, and "like a dew-drop from the lion's mane", shakes it to "airy air". Just this Desdemona desires in him; for this she will go with him in war and sea, that he should not be bereft of the deeds for which she loves him. And in this there lies again, that which on his side chains him so heartily to her, which must make him so happy and must dispel in him the night of chaos. Whatever honour the state and people of Venice had shown him, it had only been because they had reaped the advantage from it; it had been, as it were, in spite of his person and the prejudice that weighed heavily upon it. But Desdemona had first and alone loved his personality as the very source of his deeds; and this love came to him from such a being, that it could counterbalance the hatred and envy of the world. With this love there falls a sunshine upon his life, which resolves into perfect harmony every former discord. What wonder, that she afterwards "played the God" with him, and could win him over to all that she wished? that he would not resign her for a world, which heaven might make him of one entire and perfect chrysolite, and offer it in exchange? She is henceforth the place where he can garner up his

heart, where he must live or "bear no life"; she is the fountain (these are all his own words) from the which his current runs, or else dries up.

So much did Desdemona in her innocence do for the man of her admiration and choice; but she does yet more for him, and this more was too much, and led beyond the deceptive limits between happiness and unhappiness. She united herself to him without the knowledge and will of her family, and assents to an elopement from her father's house. The free consent of her father must have appeared to both unimaginable; the pride of Othello, which struggled against stooping and imploring, the mistrust of his darker nature, (a heritage of the old variance,) his regardlessness, the conviction that his services would out-tongue the complaints of the father, the feeling of his indispensableness, co-operated on his side to the step, which she took to please him in the obedience of the already married wife. Thus Othello sails into the harbour of his happiness with a hostile attack, and himself inserts a new discord into the wondrous resolution of the old torments of his soul. Brabantio is indeed a man, who with wounding pride would have set a value upon his Venetian blood in opposition to the Moor. Hardly would he have consented to this union, which would have appeared to him against all rules of nature; he says himself that he would have refused his daughter to the Moor; that if he possessed another child, this experience with the first would have taught him to hang clogs on her. He has the inclination, to insist upon his paternal right and upon the honour of his house even with tyrannical severity; Desdemona's step appeared to him a revolt and a treason of the blood; superstitious as he is,