תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

until suspense verges upon agony, is not for effect merely; it is necessary and inevitable.

2. She has two objects in view: to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out of her own wealth ten times over. She must be understood, from the beginning to the end, as examining with intense anxiety the effect of her words on the mind and countenance of the Jew; as watching for that relenting spirit which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion.

3. She begins by an appeal to his mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence which, with an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from heaven:" but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert than do these heavenly words upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks

his avarice:

"Shylock, there's thrice thy money offered thee!" Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to his avarice and his pity:

"Be merciful!

Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond."

4. All that she says afterward-her strong expressions, which are calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves-the reflections she interposes-her delays and circumlocution, to give time for any latent feeling of commiseration to display itself-all, all are premeditated, and tend in the same manner to the object she has in view. Thus:

"You must prepare your bosom for his knife.
Therefore lay bare your bosom !"

These two speeches, though apparently addressed to Antonio, are spoken at Shylock, and are evidently intended to penetrate his bosom. In the same spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh, and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready:

"Have by some surgeon', Shylock', on your charge,
To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed' to death!
Shylock. Is it so nominated in the bond'?

Portia. It is not so expressed-but what of that`?
'Twere good you do so much, for charity`."

5. So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew, that she calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His gentle, yet manly resignation-the deep pathos of his farewell, and the affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio

"Commend me to your honorable wife'!

Say how I loved' you, speak me fair in death," etc.

are well calculated to swell that emotion which, through the whole scene, must have been laboring suppressed within her heart.

6. At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no longer; and when Shylock, carrying his savage bent "to the last hour of act," springs on his victim-" A sentence! come, prepare!" then the smothered scorn, indignation, and disgust burst forth with an impetuosity which interfere with the judicial solemnity she had at first affected, particularly in the speech,

"Therefore prepare thee to cut off the flesh.

Shed thou no blood; nor cut thou less, nor more,
But just a pound of flesh: if thou tak'st more,
Or less, than a just pound-be it but so much
As makes it light or heavy in the substance',
Or the division of the twentieth part

Of one poor scruple'; nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair',

Thou diest`, and all thy goods are confiscate."

But she afterward recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler scorn and a more self-possessed exultation.

7. It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this marvelous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock; we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the under-current of feeling working in her mind throughout. The terror and the power of Shylock's character his deadly and inexorable malice-would be too oppressive, the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double source of interest and contemplation. MRS. JAMESON.

LESSON V.-THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

1. A MONK, when his rites sacerdotal were o'er,
In the depth of his cell with his stone-covered floor,
Resigning to thought his chimerical brain,
Once formed the contrivance we now shall explain;
But whether by magic's or alchemy's powers
We know not; indeed, 'tis no business of ours.

2. Perhaps it was only by patience and care,

At last, that he brought his invention to bear:

In youth 'twas projected, but years stole away,

And ere 'twas complete he was wrinkled and gray;
But success is secure unless energy fails;

And, at length, he produced THE PHILOSOPHER'S SCALES.

3. “What were they'?" you ask; you shall presently see:
These scales were not made to weigh sugar and tea;
Oh no; for such properties wondrous had they,
That qualities, feelings, and thoughts they could weigh;
Together with articles small or immense,

From mountains or planets to atoms of sense.

4. Naught was there so bulky but there it would lay,
And naught so ethereal but there it would stay,
And naught so reluctant but in it must go-

All which some examples more clearly will show.
5. The first thing he weighed was the head of Voltaire,
Which retained all the wit that had ever been there;
As a weight, he threw in a torn scrap of a leaf,
Containing the prayer of the penitent thief;
When the skull rose aloft with so sudden a spell,
That it bounced like a ball on the roof of the cell.

6. One time he put in Alexander the Great,

With the garment that Dorcas had made, for a weight,
And, though clad in armor from sandals to crown,
The hero rose up, and the garment went down.

7. A long row of alms-houses, amply endowed

By a well-esteemed Pharisee, busy and proud,
Next loaded one scale; while the other was pressed
By those mites the poor widow dropped into the chest;
Up flew the endowment, not weighing an ounce,

And down, down the farthing-worth came with a bounce. 8. By further experiments (no matter how),

He found that ten chariots weighed less than one plow;
A sword with gilt trapping rose up in the scale,
Though balanced by only a tenpenny nail;
A shield and a helmet, a buckler and spear,
Weighed less than a widow's uncrystallized tear.

9. A lord and a lady went up at full sail,

When a bee chanced to light on the opposite scale;
Ten doctors, ten lawyers, two courtiers, one earl,
Ten counselors' wigs, full of powder and curl,
All heaped in one balance and swinging from thence,
Weighed less than a few grains of candor and sense;
A first water diamond, with brilliants begirt,

Than one good potato just washed from the dirt;
Yet not mountains of silver and gold could suffice

One pearl to outweigh-'twas THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE.
10. Last of all, the whole world was bowled in at the grate,
With the soul of a beggar to serve for a weight,
When the former sprang up with so strong a rebuff,
That it made a vast rent and escaped at the roof!

When balanced in air, it ascended on high,

And sailed up aloft, a balloon in the sky;

While the scale with the soul in 't so mightily fell,

That it jerked the philosopher out of his cell.-JANE TAYLOR.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

PART VI.

CIVIL ARCHITECTURE.

LESSON I. GRECIA

GRECIAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.

1. ARCHITECTURE is the art of contriving and constructing buildings; and, when the term is used without a qualifying adjective, the designing and building of civil and religious edifices, such as palaces, mansions, theatres, churches, courts, bridges, etc., is intended; and it is called civil, to distinguish it from naval and military architecture.

2. The architecture of the Greeks, and of their successors the Romans, is generally divided into certain orders, whose names characterize the several modes in which these people constructed the façades,1 or fronts of their temples. Thus the Greeks had three prominent orders or styles of architecture, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian; each of which, as may be seen on the opposite page, may be represented by a single column, together with the base or platform on which it rests, and the roof-like covering which it aids in supporting.

3. Certain definite proportions, supposed to combine the highest degree of grace and beauty, were assigned to each. The crowning superstructure of an order is called the entablature,2 and is divided into architrave,3 frieze, and cornice (see opposite page). The Doric order, as used by the Greeks, and as seen in its best specimen, the famous Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, at Athens, was without a base; yet the Romans not only gave it a base, but, changing some of its features, they constructed from it another order, called the Tuscan.

4. The Ionic, the second of the Grecian orders, not only has a base, and a capital and entablature differing from the Doric, but the shaft of its column is lighter and more graceful in its proportions. The volutes, or curves of its capital, introduce a new element of beauty. Their design is said by some to have been suggested by the curls of hair on each side of the human face, and by others to have been taken from the curling of the bark of a rude upright post, caused by a crushing weight laid upon it.

5. The third Grecian order is the ornate Corinthian, which is conspicuous for the beauty of its capital, and the exceeding grace and symmetry of all its parts. The invention of this

« הקודםהמשך »