entrusts her with its best duty, so Cordelia does not burst into a rage against the wickedness of her sisters, when she hears how King Lear has been driven out and despised, but at once resigns herself to patience in the affliction, "like," as says one who has seen her at that moment, to "Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears Were like a better day." There are other personages in the play, who affirm the reality of good against the false assertion of it: the pure and faithful Kent, the loyal though unintelligent Gloucester, the brave Edgar, the weak but honest Duke of Albany, the husband of Goneril, who says: "Where I could not be honest, I never yet was valiant." Finally the perfidious Edmund, when he sees himself near death, hastens to accomplish a good action and to pay homage to virtue. But all these belong to the earth: Cordelia is on the earth, earthly herself and mortal, but she is made of celestial substance, of purest humanity, which is therefore divine. It has occurred to me to compare her with the Soul, whom Friar Jacob likened to the only daughter and heiress of the King of France, and whom her father, for that he loved her infinitely, had adorned "with a white stole," and her fame flew "to every land." No greater spiritual triumph can be conceived than that of Cordelia, throughout the drama, from the first scene to the last, although she first appears as denied and rejected by her father, and later, when she comes with arms to the aid of the unfortunate Lear against the infernal sisters and the treacherous Edmund, is conquered, thrown into prison and there strangled by the hangman. Why? Why does not goodness triumph in the material world? And, why, thus conquered, does she increase in beauty, evoke ever more disconsolate desire, until she is finally adored as something sacred? The tragedy of King Lear is penetrated throughout with this unexpressed yet anguished interrogation, so full of the sense of the misery of life. The king, acquiring new sensibility in his madness, as though a veil had been withdrawn from before his eyes, sees and receives for the first time in himself, suffering humanity, weeping and trembling, like a child, defenceless, ill-treated. The fool, who accompanies him, sings, along with much else, his prophecy to the effect that when calumnies cease, when kings are punished, and usurers and thieves give up their trade, then all the kingdom of Albion will be in great confusion. But the sorrow of sorrows is that of Lear, when, having found Cordelia, he dreams of being ever after at her side, adoring, and sees the prison transformed into a paradise: they will sing, he will kneel before her, they will pray, and tell one another ancient tales. But she is brutally slain before his eyes and her dead body lies in his arms, as he vainly strives to reanimate it, and he too dies, uttering the last cry of desperation: "Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never!--"