another is what we find her because too high-minded, too recherché in her gentle and educated tastes, to have been satisfied with any one of her so-called "offers." She has never condescended to marry. For although it

may be true, on the one side, that when a sensible and worthy man asks a woman to become his wife, he pays her the highest compliment in his power;-no man is entitled to suppose that condescension in the matter of marrying is a prerogative of his own gender. It is not to wives and mothers only that honour pertains. What more loveable sight in the world than that of the middleaged unmarried daughter who keeps house for an aged and feeble father, who soothes his declining years, overflowing with all dutiful affections, prays for him, and would lay down her life for him? The most repulsive female characters in Shakspere are the two ungrateful daughters, Goneril and Regan (in Lear);- the most heavenly one is their unmarried sister Cordelia.

Not that Shakspere was an admirer of feminine celibacy. Varied as are the stories of the plays, those, again to quote Mr. Halliwell, "in which the genial sunshine of his warm heart is invested, where his humanity becomes tender, and his imagination glowing, are his loveplots," those, in a word, which are designed to end in matrimony. When he wishes to describe, in a single phrase, the characteristics of woman after she becomes a wife, they are "her sweet perfections" (Twelfth Night, i., 1). No principle is more constantly illustrated by Shakspere than that the reciprocal and active love of men

and women originates, and assures, and gives completion to what Goethe calls their Blessedness. Whether designed or accidental, it is impossible to determine, but the fact remains that one of the most profoundly original characters in the whole of Shakspere, as regards substantial feminine love, is that one whose sweet name implies that she Blesses-light-hearted, mirthful, sprightly Beatrice,— Beatrice, who, as a maid, could not endure to be left out of anything that was going on in the way of lively business, such as was calculated to give pleasure to those around her. Following close upon this comes the illustration on the feminine side, of the transfiguring power of love. Rosalind is a girl up to the time when she becomes alarmed for Orlando's safety. Then her simple interest in him changes on the instant into yearning emotion, one remove only from the marital.

To put anything of our own into Shakspere, or to make him appear to mean more than he intends, would be taking a liberty, as already said, beyond excuse or justification. It is legitimate, nevertheless, to consider that whatever he did say, was said designedly. Granting this, the circumstance is noteworthy that while nearly every one of his principal female characters has a Christian name that can scarcely be accounted English-necessarily so, in most cases, because of the foreign scene of the play-Portia, to wit, Miranda, Juliet, Ophelia, Hermione, Helena, Hero, Viola, Perdita, Desdemona;—when he does want an English name, and this for the type of a good, modest, courteous, and loveable woman of the middle

social rank, neither princess nor plebeian, he goes for it to his own wife. "Sweet Anne Page" is distinguished also for her common-sense,-"Good mother, do not marry me to that fool."

Almonds are mentioned in Troilus and Cressida, v., 2:-"The parrot will not do more for an almond,” words probably conveying some kind of proverbial signification, now forgotten. The profound antiquity of the esteem in which this fruit was held, beginning, as was natural, in one of its native countries, the "land of Israel," is illustrated in the history of Joseph and his brethren. Allusions to it in classical literature are scanty, nevertheless, though the singular beauty of the tree, when in full bloom, meets with occasional notice; and this may have been known to Shakspere, who was not the man to overlook anything that would attract the author of the Faery Queene,

Like to an almond-tree ymounted hye

On top of green Selinis all alone,

With blossoms brave bedecked daintily.-I., 7, xxxii.

In the Elizabethan age almonds were much in demand for the making of "marchpanes," the antetype of the modern macaroon, a sweet very evidently esteemed alike by high and low, since in Romeo and Juliet we have from one of the latter class, thoughts of his "Susan" notwithstanding,-"Save me a piece of marchpane" (i., 5).

The Orange, though not comparing with the almond in respect of historical fame, had by the time of Shakspere become quite as common in southern Europe, whence it

would seem to have been abundantly imported, for in Coriolanus, ii., I, though the scene is laid in Rome, we are of course to understand a reference to London ways and characteristics, including the litigant street "orangewife." No mention of this queenly fruit occurs in the classical authors, the "golden apples" of ancient mythology having been quinces; nor is there any notice of it in literature before the time of the Arabian authors of the tenth or eleventh century, with whom the orange first appears. The original conveyance of the tree from northern India may be assigned to a period some little earlier. Very soon after this it was carried to Sicily and Spain, and in due course to Italy and the south of France, the diffusion coming partly of Moorish conquest, partly of the old Venetian commerce, and in some degree, probably, of the enterprise of homeward-bound Crusaders, though in matters of this nature we must be careful not to accredit those steel-clad warriors overmuch. The very name of the fruit is oriental, being no other, Max Müller tells us, than the Arabic naranj, which represents in turn an Aryan word. The initial n was retained in the original Latinised name, anarantium, afterwards changed, apparently because of the golden hue, into aurantium, and from this last, the transition, in France, into "orange," was easy and natural. The loss of the eastern initial n has a curious counterpart in the history of the name of the adder, which is properly, by derivation, "a nadder." When the fruit was first brought to England is not known. The earliest mention of it, as

regards this country, appears to be in Queen Eleanor's household expense book for A.D. 1290, where it is said that she purchased from a Spanish ship which came to Portsmouth "vii poma de orenge.”

In the Midsummer Night's Dream the hue of the rind helps upon two occasions to describe a colour, very happily, in particular, in Bottom's little song about the birds::

The ousel-cock, so black of hue,

With orange-tawny bill;

The throstle, with his note so true,

The wren with little quill.-(iii., 1.)

"Quill," a word ultimately derived from calamus, a reed, refers to the sweet, high-pitched, piercing note, similar to the reed-music heard that immemorial summer's eve when The sun on the hill forgot to die,

The lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

Came back to dream on the river,—

the note which Shakspere had plainly learned so well how to distinguish amid the songs of other birds, and which for our own parts always make one wonder how so much sound can be poured forth from so small a body. The other mention of this colour occurs in i., 2, "Your orange-tawny beard." It seems to have been considered one of ill-promise in mankind, since Beatrice, in Much Ado, playing upon Seville, the name of the Spanish city whence the fruit was partly received, says jocularly of Count Claudio, that he is "civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion" (ii., 1).