2 I might conduct thee,

I might bring thee to the house of my mother (who) brought

me up;1

I might give thee to drink of spiced wine,

Of wine of the pomegranate.

(Aside.)

340

(She rises to retire.)

3 (Yea,) his left arm might be under my head, And his right arm might embrace me.

ACT (day) VI.

(Part) Scene I. (Chapter viii, 4.)

TIME. Marriage day-Early morning.

PERSON AND PLACE. Solomon, without the Palace or Harem.

SOLOMON.

4 I adjure ye, O ye daughters of Jerusalem!

Why should ye awake, why should ye arouse
My beloved until she herself pleases?

(Exeunt.)

(No one appearing Solomon withdraws.)

(Part) Scene II. (Chapter viii, 5-12.)

345

TIME. Later in the day, after the consummation of the marriage ceremonies. PERSONS AND PLACE. Ladies in the Palace-Solomon and Shulamith approaching -Attendants in the distance.

LADIES.

5 Who is this coming up from the open field,

Leaning upon her beloved?

(Solomon and Shulammith continue to approach, conversing as follows :)

SHULAMMITH.

Under the citron-tree' did I arouse thy (love;)

There thy mother gave me thy pledge;

There she that bore thee pledged thee (to me ;)

350

1 Query. “My nurse or "teacher;" but better as we have given it. Attending to the gender, and supplying the pronominal subject, removes the difficulty in this word.

2 Or, "supported by."

Query. Had Solomon first accidentally seen Shulammith seated under a citrontree, and thus his love been first aroused? Did this lead to an overture through the queen-mother, and a pledge on her part in behalf of the king? (Compare I Kings ii, 11-25.)

6 Place me as a seal upon thy heart,

7

As a seal upon thine arm;

For fierce as death is love,

Unyielding as the grave is jealousy;

Its flames are flames of fire, the fire of Jehovah.'
Many waters cannot avail to quench true love,
And rivers of water cannot wash it away.

355

If a man would give all the wealth of his house for (true)

love

They would thoroughly despise it.

8 We have a younger sister,'

And her breasts are immature.

What shall we do for our sister

In the day when inquiry is made for her?

360

(She pauses.)

365

SOLOMON.

9 If she be a wall,'

We will build upon her a turret of silver ; And if she be a door,5

We will surround her with boards of cedar."

SHULAMMITH, (musing aside.)

10 I am a wall,

And my breasts like towers;

870

Therefore was I in his eyes as a finder of peace ;7
(Yet was I not without a dower of value, for)

11 Solomon hath a vineyard near Baal-Hamon,

He intrusted that vineyard to keepers;

375

A man brought for its fruits a thousand shekels of silver. (And not less valuable than this is my dower, for)

'Lightning.

As if to turn aside the mind from the subject of jealousy Shulammith resumes the conversation, introducing as a subject what was naturally suggested by her own marriage.

That is, if she be without protection, beauty, etc. Turrets were both for ornament and protection.

That is, we will supply the lack of personal attractions by wealth.

That is, attractive; an open way to pleasure, and (query) too easy of access. That is, we will render her still more attractive by means of ornaments and perfumes, not by means of this enlarged dower, and will surround her with protective and restraining influences.

"Or, "prosperity;" that is, as one who would bring prosperity.

12 My vineyard, that which was personally mine own,
(Is worth') a thousand, O Solomon, to thee,
Though two hundred belong to the keepers of its fruit.

(Enter companions and retainers of Solomon equipped for the chase.)

380

SOLOMON, (catching the words "vineyard,” “fruits," etc., and seeing his associates assembled and impatient for the chase.)

13 O thou that dwellest in the gardens,'

My associates are hearkening for thy voice;"
Let me also hear it.

SHULAMMITH.

14 Fly, my love, and be thou like a roe, or a young antelope, Upon the mountains of aromatics.

(Exeunt omnes.)

ART. IV.-ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

THE early part of the present century gave to England and the world two remarkable women, Charlotte Brontè and Elizabeth Barrett. The latter was born in London in 1809; the former in 1816 at Thornton, in Yorkshire. Elizabeth looked out first upon the fog, smoke, and din of the metropolis; Charlotte made her earliest acquaintance with the flowers and fields. Their other circumstances and their subsequent experiences were not less unlike. Elizabeth Barrett was reared, if not in affluence, at least in circumstances far removed from the pressure of want; and although some of her life was passed in the country, the greater part was spent in London, where, amid the assiduities of her friends, she struggled with failing health and accomplished her extraordinary literary labors. Charlotte was the daughter of a Yorkshire curate, and her road lay

1 Or, "nets;" that is, "its net profits are," etc.

• Or query, O thou that dwellest in thought; that is, whose thoughts are occupied with gardens, fruits, vineyards, etc.

4

"Command," "permission,"-"to give the word to go."

• Q. d. Away, then, I give the word-fly, show thy superiority, thy agility in the chase.

through poverty and self-denial. By turns a charity scholar, a teacher, a governess, and in all circumstances a sharer in the lowly fortunes of her family, she, too, constantly wrought in the fields of literature. But the two spirits were so akin that, by however different paths, they could not fail to meet upon the planes of fame. The comparison and contrast is instructive, as showing at once the power and weakness of merely external circumstances. The last is indicated by the fact that they both attained the highest rank hitherto among women, while the first is shown by the different moulds into which their minds have run. The temper and spirit is the same the forms are diverse. Elizabeth Barrett was the profounder student and deeper thinker; Charlotte Brontè the closer observer and more accurate reflector. Consequently the poetess was more imaginative and metaphysical; the novelist more practical and descriptive. The first said what she thought and felt; the second described what she saw and experienced. Elizabeth, though by no means unobservant of nature, had comparatively few opportunities to be conversant with what she was formed to love. Charlotte was in constant contact with natural objects, which she saw in a kind of phantasmagoria of strange human experiences, and of which she preserved an accurately drawn though sometimes wierdly-shaded outline. Of the two, Elizabeth loved pure nature most, as her poetic tendency evinces; and the charming scraps of observation and feeling which her works afford show what a garland would have adorned every page if she had lived among lakes, forests, and fields. She said:

I dwell amid the city ever.
The great humanity which beats
Its life along the stony streets,
Like a strong and unsunned river
In a self-made course,

I sit and hearken while it rolls.

But she longed for another scene:

I am gone from the peopled town!
For now another sound, another vision
My soul's senses have.

O'er a hundred valleys deep,

Where the hills'

shadows sleep.

green

I have traveled, I have found

The silent, lone, remembered ground.

Alas! that all development seems destined in this world to be unsymmetrical. These women were gloriously enlarged spiritually, but they were physically dwarfed, and by various disabilities of heritage and circumstance were clogged while they lived, and cut off in their prime. Will the time ever return-that "statelier Eden" again-when the advanced spirit and the redeemed body shall be rematched in this world, to be sweetest music to noblest words? If so, it will certainly be by the cultivation of the nobler part, which, by the very law that lies under the being of God-the devotement of the stronger to the weaker-will lift up its earthly adjunct to sit with it on its high places. A genuine spiritual growth in both or either sex will lead to those physical reformations, without which such lights as those of Elizabeth Barrett and Charlotte Brontè are like flaming lamps in lanterns of tissue.

There can be no hesitation in assigning the rank of these two women in advance of their sex. Hannah More belonged to a past century. But were she now living she would form no exception; while Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Jameson, and even the highly endowed author of Adam Bede, must be acknowledged, notwithstanding their various powers, to occupy a lower rank. For maturity of thought, breadth of observation, acuteness of perception, inductive strength, and that insight and grasp of mind which gives the utmost availability to love of truth, and without which these qualities are but latent forces, Elizabeth Barrett and Charlotte Brontè are peerless both in old and modern times. The evidence of superiority in the spiritual realm, so far as that realm is open to us, is not to be found in fitful flashes of the mind, but in a continuous and increasing light. This is true, therefore, of genius; and the test establishes the superiority of these twinned spirits. There are moderate minds that preserve their low level through life, and in writing many books, if they do not rise above it, neither do they sink much below. But there are no other examples within our knowledge of literary women who, starting from so high a point as that of either Miss Barrett or Miss Brontè, have not only fully sustained their flight,