plaints were an injurie, vertuous ladies, for they concluded with their good fortune, and everlasting fame; but for that her offence grew neyther of frayltie, free wyl, or any motion of a woman, but by the meere inforcement of a man, because she would not staine the modest weedes of her kynde, shee attired her selfe in the habit of a page, and with the bashfull grace [of] a pure virgin, she presented wicked Promos Andrugioes precious ransome."

There are many who, influenced by the unfounded notion that because Desdemona was chaste and modest she was also passionless, shame-faced and constrained, consider this passage to mean that Desdemona wished that heaven had made her of as bold and adventurous a spirit as Othello's story showed him to be. Not so, evidently. She wishes that heaven had made such a man for her. Is this immodest? If it be, it is much less so than her direct request to Othello, which he thus repeats in the next few lines:

"She thanked me;

And bade me if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story
And that would woo her."

Could any thing be plainer, except a direct avowal of love in explicit terms? Brabantio's understanding of Desdemona's wish is evident enough. He exclaims,

"I pray you hear her speak;

If she confess that she was half the wooer," &c.

Is it not plain that long before Othello found the "pliant

hour" Desdemona was sick at heart with love for him? "Subdued" ere that, to "the very quality of her lord," she was ready to do any thing, short of positive wrongperhaps even that to obtain his love; as after her marriage she was ready to suffer any thing to retain it.

"Des. That I did love the Moor to live with him,

My downright violence and storm of fortunes

May trumpet to the world."

Some, the acute and learned Mr. Dyce among them, would read with the quarto of 1622, scorn of fortunes." This is comparatively commonplace, un-Shakesperian, and inconsistent with the "downright violence," which precedes it. The authentic text should not be disturbed. Desdemona means that she went, as we say, 'right in the teeth' of fortune.

There can be but few of my readers who have not seen Hildebrandt's picture of Othello and Desdemona, which seems to me one of the most fascinating of modern pictures, and without exception the most painful. To see such a love as Hildebrandt has painted in Desdemona's eyes, given by such a woman to a great grinning negro with rings in his ears, is surely enough to convert any one to Calhounism. True, some women might be supposed to find consolation in the fact that the rings are rubies, but not such a woman. as this Desdemona. Had the painter in his mind the famous comparison, "like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear?" It would seem so. But this reminds me that Shakespeare

nowhere calls Othello an Ethiopian, and also does not apply the term to Aaron in the horrible Titus Andronicus; but he continually speaks of both as Moors; and as he has used the first word elsewhere, and certainly had use for it as a reproach in the mouth of Iago, it seems that he must have been fully aware of the distinction in grade between the two races, although his notion of their distinctive traits was perhaps neither very true nor very clear. Indeed, I could never see the least reason for supposing that Shakespeare intended Othello to be represented as a negro. With the negroes, the Venetians had nothing to do, that we know of, and could not have, in the natural course of things; whereas, with their over-the-way neighbors, the Moors, they were continually brought in contact. These were a warlike, civilized and enterprising race, which could furnish an Othello: whereas the contrary has always been the condition of the negroes. I am aware that John Quincy Adams endeavored to prove that Othello was a negro, and that Retzsch has made him so in his Outlines; but to me the Ex-President seems to reason with less than his usual acumen, and the great draughtsman, no less than Hildebrandt, to fail in embodying Shakespeare's noble captain.

The reasons for supposing Othello to be a negro, are few and are easily set aside, which is not the case with those which show him to be a Moor. The most conclusive of the former is Roderigo's calling Othello in the first Scene," thick lips;" but this is the result of Shakespeare's want of exact information. He had doubtless never seen either a Moor or a negro, and might very naturally confuse their physiological traits; but a man of his knowledge and penetration could not fail to know the difference between the position and the character of the nation which built the Alhambra, and that which furnished their stock in trade to the Englishmen, who, when he wrote Othello, were supplying the

plantations in the West Indies with slaves, and soon after his death introduced negro slavery into Virginia. In addition to this epithet, "thick lips," there are several allusions to Othello, as having the visage of the devil, as black, and as being, therefore, the very reverse of attractive to a woman like Desdemona. But this proves nothing; for Shakespeare has applied these identical epithets to so eminent and undeniable a Moor as the Prince of Morocco. In the Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 2, Portia says, upon the announcement of the royal Moor,--" if he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil I had rather he would shrive me than wive me." He himselt prays her, "Mislike me not for my complexion ;" and she, when he has selected the wrong casket, says, "May all of his complexion choose me so ;" and yet he was not jetty Thick, like a negro, but tawny; for the stage direction, in Act II. Sc. 1, in the quartos, is-Enter Morochus, a tawny Moor, all in white. Plainly, then, the devilish visage, attributed to Othello, and the assumed repulsiveness of his color, makes him out, in Shakespeare's estimation, only a Moor, and not even a very black Moor, at that.

But there is direct evidence that he was a Mauritanian, and one of lofty lineage. Iago, in his ribald shouting under Brabantio's window in the first Scene of the play, calls Othello "a Barbary horse;" and the Moor himself, when defending his conduct in regard to Desdemona (Act I. Sc. 2.) says:

And in Act IV. Sc. 2, the following passage plainly points out Mauritania as the native place of Othello, whither he

was about to retire after a soldier's life, to spend with Desdemona, in repose, the mellow autumn of his days.

"Iago. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice, to depute Cassio in Othello's place.

Rod. Is that true? why, then Othello and Desdemona return again to Venice.

Iago. O, no; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some accident; wherein none can be so determinate, as the removing of Cassio."

But, to return to the picture of the great Dusseldorf artist, which has vitality and force enough to be made the text for an essay upon the play,-Hildebrandt's Othello has, in addition to the Congo features, the negro gaudiness of dress and extravagance of action. He is repulsive, and we wish to see a solid wall built up between him and the lovely lady who looks upon him with such overflowing but perverted love. This Desdemona is thought by many, if not by the majority, to be too womanly, too earnest, too passionful, too splendid. Desdemona is a character which can hardly be embodied by a painter with the certainty of winning very general approval. Such is the interest she inspires, that almost every imaginative mind has formed to itself its own ideal of her, any deviation from which by an artist will be deemed a blemish. But I must dissent from the opinion entertained by many on this point, and defend the painter's conception. I think that her character is misconceived by the objectors. Because her father speaks of her "delicate youth;" calls her a "maiden never bold; of spirit still and quiet," and says that she was "so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy, curled dearlings of our nation," some seem to think her a good little girl, who spoke when spoken to, said 'sir,' washed the cups and saucers after breakfast, and had serious thoughts of entering a convent.