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By Root 19324 0

to others, that it stirs no tumults in her; for her nature is manifestly fitted up and furnished with all tender and gentle and womanly feelings; only she has the force of mind to control them, and keep them all in the right place and degree. "They are the patient sorrows that touch nearest." And so, under the worst that can befall, she remains within the region of herself, calm and serenely beautiful, stands firm, yet full of grace, in the austere strengths of reason and conscious rectitude. And when, at her terrible wrongs and sufferings, all hearts are shaken, all eyes wet, but her own, the impression made by her stout-hearted fortitude is of one whose pure, tranquil, deep-working breast is the home of sorrows too big for any eye-messengers to report:

"Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains."

The delineation keeps the same tone and texture through all its parts, but the sense of it is specially concentrated in what she says when the King winds up his transport of insane fury by ordering her off to prison:

"Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodg'd here which burns Worse than tears drown. 'Beseech you all, my lords, With thoughts so qualified as your charities Shall best instruct you, measure me;—and so, The King's will be perform'd!—'Beseech your Highness, My women may be with me; for, you see, My plight requires it.—Do not weep, good fools; There is no cause: when you shall know your mistress Has deserv'd prison, then abound in tears, As I come out.—.... Adieu, my lord: I never wish'd to see you sorry; now I trust, I shall."

And her character is answerably reflected in the minds of the King's chief counsellors, whose very swords seem stirring with life in the scabbards, and yearning to leap forth and vindicate the honour of their glorious Queen, but that awe of the crown restrains them.

Her last speech at the trial is, I am apt to think, the solidest piece of eloquence in the language. It is like a piece of the finest statuary marble, chiselled into perfect form; so compact of grain, that you cannot crush it into smaller space; while its effect is as wholesome and bracing as the atmosphere of an iced mountain when tempered by the Summer sun. The King threatens her with death, and she replies,—

"Sir, spare your threats: The bug which you would fright me with I seek. To me can life be no commodity: The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went: my second joy, And first-fruits of my body, from his presence I'm barr'd, like one infectious: my third comfort, Starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast, The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth, Hal'd out to murder: myself on every post Proclaim'd a strumpet; with immodest hatred, The child-bed privilege denied, which 'longs To women of all fashion: lastly, hurried Here to this place, i' the open air, before I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege, Tell me what blessings I have here alive, That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed. But yet hear this; mistake me not: My life, I prize it not a straw; but for mine honour, Which I would free, if I shall be condemn'd Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else But what your jealousies awake, I tell you 'Tis rigour, and not law."

Noble simplicity of the olden time, when the best and purest of women, with the bravest men in presence, thought no shame to hear themselves speaking such plain honest words as these!

The Queen's long concealing of herself has been censured by some as repugnant to nature. Possibly they may think it somewhat strained and theatrical, but it is not so: the woman is but true to herself, in this matter, and to the solid and self-poised repose in which her being dwells. So that the thing does not seem repugnant to nature as individualized by her reason and will; nor is her character herein more above or out of nature than the proper ideal of art abundantly warrants. For to her keen sensibility of honour the