"O, were it but my life

I'd throw it down for your deliverance

As frankly as a pin."

Then Claudio begins to waver, to weigh the sin, at last to put his whole pitiful soul into her name, ‘O Isabel.' But she will strengthen him even now.

One

The whole righteous woman's soul leaped up in those short words. What was 'fear?' She did not know what it meant.

"Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful."

But 'the shamed life?'

rent to goodness. Never.

The life that would be abhor

from the one she loved best,

Not even the piteous appeal

"Ay: but to die and go we know not where❞

could move her. She could trust her Claudio to God: she could not trust herself to sin. Only for his blindness, for his sadness, for his unbelief, for his bright young life that must be laid down, for his abject fear of the unknown which was dark to him, though bright to her, she cries,

"Alas! alas!"

Then came the tempter, drawing nearer as a serpent. "Sweet sister, let me live."

And Isabella starts as if stung: the one human being

C

whom she loved and trusted in had failed her: all life seems blotted out for her; only heaven remains. That wild cry was not against Claudio, the Claudio she had played with, had loved, had believed in, would have died for; it was against the sin which has come so close.

"O you beast!

O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch !
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

Die, perish.

Take my defiance.

'Tis best that thou diest quickly."

The plot that follows in the story by means of which Angelo is brought to justice and Claudio is rescued, does not accord with our modern ideas. We wonder how Isabella could lend herself to it, but we must recollect the difference between the coarse turbulence and sensuality of that day and our own more cultured times. When a holy monk suggested the plan, Isabel, the obedient daughter of the Church, could see no harm in it. "I have spirit to do

Anything that appears not foul
In the truth of my spirit."

The love for Claudio has re-asserted itself. She will do anything except sin against her soul to save him. Her despair when she believes Claudio dead, her cries to the Duke for vengeance on Angelo, show plainly enough her human side. How terribly pathetic is the assertion uttered out of her sorrow,

"Truth is truth

To the end of the reckoning."

and her appeal to the Duke from the one thought and hope that helped her,

"As thou believest

There is another comfort than this world.”

She, poor soul, who had only comfort now to look for, comfort which she sought in ministering to a woman lonely and forsaken as herself. Yes; here is the change that is wrought, here is the moral growth. The Isabella that befriends Mariana is a nobler and a higher woman than she who first came out of the convent to plead for Claudio. From her own suffering she has risen into the higher life, which finds its only good in doing good, its perfect joy in others' joy. Is there any nobler touch in the drama than that which answers to Mariana's pleading that Isabel will kneel by her to ask for mercy for Angelo. The Duke says,

"Her brother's ghost would break his paved bed

And take her away in horror”

if she asked for the life of his murderer, but Mariana is a desperate woman, and she has tested Isabel's character ; she knows its sympathy, its unselfishness.

Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me,

Hold up your hands, say nothing; I'll speak all."

Surely the Duke is testing this woman's heart to the uttermost when he says,

"He dies for Claudio's death"

And yet Isabel kneels by Mariana

"Most bounteous sir,

Look, if it please you on this man condemned

As if my brother lived: I partly think

A due sincerity governed his deeds

Till he did look on me: since it is so,

Let him not die," &c.

They are the last words Shakspere makes her speak: he leaves her with a divine light shining on her face. The joy which follows in Claudio being given back to her, and the love of the heart which had understood her even at the bitterest moment of her life is too sacred for words.

And which of George Eliot's women shall we call to stand by Isabella's side? Though their stories differ so widely, let us seek her in the old Italian library, with the sunlight falling on her golden hair, and her sweet voice reading from the Latin book to her blind father. In the world of fiction we shall find no purer and no grander spirit than that of Romola.

The story of Romola is wholly one of progression. It is the life history of a soul. The description of her when Tito first enters her presence is not unlike our ideal of Isabella when Lucio finds her in the convent. 'She was standing by her father at her full height, in quiet 'majestic self-possession, and the most penetrating 'observer would hardly have divined that this proud, 'pale face at the slightest touch on the fibres of affection 'or pity would become passionate with tenderness, or

'that this woman who imposed a certain awe on those 'who approached her, was in a state of girlish simplicity 'and ignorance concerning the world outside her 'father's books.' In another place we read, 'It was 'hardly possible to think of her beauty as anything but the necessary consequence of her noble nature.' The words of the Duke about Isabella recur to us, 'The hand 'that hath made you fair hath made you good, and grace 'being the soul of your complexion shall keep the body ' of it ever fair.'

6

And the contrast from the beginning between Romola and Tito is as marked as that between Isabella and the men around her. Romola is devoted to her father; Tito deserts his. Tito dislikes all sorrow and suffering; Romola lives in an atmosphere of both. How touching is the way in which Romola confides in Tito as he meets her going to visit her cast-off brother, when she, not knowing how her words sting him, 'and interpreting all things largely like a mind pre'possessed with high beliefs,' fancies that he sympathises with her. At the death-bed of her brother, at the vision of herself told by his dying lips, at the voice of Savonarola, Romola's spiritual consciousness becomes quickened. Good, pure, unselfish, she had been before, but now the unseen life takes a deeper hold upon her the vision of death had altered the daylight for her for evermore,' but it was that the perfect day, the light of self-renunciation might dawn. 'It was a sudden 'opening into a world apart from that of her life-long