It is well known that the Merchant of Venice is founded on two different tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner, Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady of Belmont with her magic potions, who figures in the Italian novel. With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licentious part of the story, which some of his contemporary dramatists would have seized on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible; and he has substituted the trial of the caskets from another source.[9] We are not told expressly where Belmont is situated; but as Bassanio takes ship to go thither from Venice, and as we find them afterwards ordering horses from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste, overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friuli mountains or the Euganean hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this, Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original possessor, has placed his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and enchantment. From the four quarters of the earth they come To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now, For princes to come view fair Portia; The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head Spits in the face of heaven is no bar To stop the foreign spirits; but they come As o'er a brook to see fair Portia. The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend, her disguise, and her deportment as the young and learned doctor, would appear forced and improbable in any other woman but in Portia are the simple and natural result of her character.[10] The quickness with which she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the circumstances; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and nothing appears forced--nothing as introduced merely for theatrical effect.