with us? If you are, there is no time left for delay in showing it.-While Brutus and Cassius whisper apart, a few words of talk among the other conspirators, as to the place of sunrise, indicate dawn of the fatal day, and end in a stage group, that speaks to the eye, of cloaked conspirators, from among whom a sword points directly to the Capitol, which in the play is throughout taken as the place of the assassination. To the group so formed Brutus approaches, ready to join hands with the conspirators. He will have no oaths, no cruelties, and the weight of influence in men of noble character is shown, here and in later scenes, by the readiness of all who are about him to be ruled by the opinion of Brutus. Cassius is ready to ask Cicero to stand with them. Casca says, "Let us not leave him out." Cinna says, "No, by no means. Metellus adds, "O let us have him." Brutus dissuades, and Cassius says, leave him out; " and Casca says, "Indeed, he is not fit." Decius asks, "Shall no man else be touched, but only Cæsar?" Cassius then, with good practical insight from the point of view of the conspiracy, urges that Mark Antony will be found a shrewd contriver if he outlive Cæsar. He too should fall. Brutus dissuades, and although

"Then

Cassius says, "Yet I fear him," he is spared, with the comment of Trebonius, "There is no fear in him; let him not die; for he will live, and laugh at this hereafter."

The eighth hour of the day now dawning is appointed for the murder. Caius Ligarius is named as one who has been hardly used by Cæsar and might join them. “He loves me well," says Brutus. "Send him but hither, and I'll fashion him;" and at the close of the scene, when he enters it is to emphasise the influence of a high character upon surrounding men. Ligarius has risen from a sick-bed at the call to Brutus.

Brutus says to him:

"O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,
To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick."

To which his answer is

"I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand
Any exploit worthy the name of honour."

But before the scene so closes, Portia has followed Brutus into the orchard, urging that she may share the secret that has troubled his mind, changed his manner, brought strange men at night to converse with him, 66 some six or seven that did hide their faces even from the darkness." Her urging brings

out the deep music of the love that is between them. "You are," he says, "my true and honourable wife, as dear to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart." And she had not pleaded in vain for fullest confidence, when Ligarius knocked at the door.

"O ye gods!

Render me worthy of this noble wife! [Knocking.
Hark, hark! one knocks :-Portia, go in awhile;
And by-and-by thy bosom shall partake

The secrets of my heart :

All my engagements I will construe to thee,
All the charactery of my sad brows."

In the second scene of the Second Act, portents, dreams, and persuasions of his wife cause delay, and almost withhold Cæsar from the Capitol, to which he is drawn by flatteries of those who lead him to his death. There is no flattery from Brutus; the only words he speaks have for him dread significance: "Cæsar, 't is stricken eight." His closing thought is of repugnance to hypocrisy, when Cæsar says to the conspirators surrounding him :

"Good friends, go in, and taste some wine with me; And we, like friends, will straightway go together, '

And the reflection of Brutus is—

"That every like is not the same, O Cæsar,
The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon."

Then the act ends with Artemidorus waiting to warn Cæsar; and Portia at her house-door, who has learnt the secrets of her husband, which fill all her mind and heart with a wife's over-wrought passion of love and anxiety for Brutus. The two passages that bring Portia herself into the story, are thus made to give deep and full expression to the strength of the home love between her and Brutus. The Third Act opens with Cæsar on his passage to the Capitol, and in the Capitol surrounded by the Senate. He has not listened to the warnings on his path. One not in league with the conspirators wishes them, as he passes, success in their enterprise, and then proceeds to speak with Cæsar. There is a dramatic movement of anxiety as they hurry their preparations in swift speech together; but Cæsar "doth not change," and they are not betrayed. Then as the conspirators gather about Cæsar-surrounding him as if joined in support to the plea of Metellus Cimber for the recall of his brother Publius from banishment from the midst of the swords that in another minute will be drawn to slay him, Cæsar, with his last breath, Assumes the god, and says:

"I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true-fixed and resting quality

There is no fellow in the firmament.

The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks,
They are all fire, and every one doth shine;
But there's but one in all doth hold his place :
So in the world,—'t is furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;
Yet in the number, I do know but one

That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshak'd of motion."

To Cinna, further urging, he cries, "Hence! wilt thou lift up Olympus?" And in this mood the earthly god becomes a bleeding piece of clay.

Upon the tyrannicide follows the revolutionary cry, "Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!" With hands washed in the blood of Cæsar, the conspirators cry "Peace," and look to be remembered as "the men that gave their country liberty."

But as they sowed they reap. Antony proves, as Cassius feared he would, 66 a shrewd contriver." Having sent before him a true promise, though ingeniously misleading, that he would follow Brutus if Brutus could resolve him "how Cæsar hath deserved to lie in death," Antony is received generously by Brutus, who, confident in the purity of his own purpose, has no doubt that he can prove all to have been done for the common good. But Cassius joins to the argument of Brutus touching