Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any common-place dramatic waiting-woman?--even with Portia's adroit Nerissa, or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of passion. The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves" had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of passion at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted contradiction:-- NURSE. Shame come to Romeo! JULIET. Blistered be thy tongue, For such a wish! he was not born to shame. Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:-- Upon _his_ brow Shame is ashamed to sit, For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth! And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and self-reproach-- Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it? With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose energies are yet untried. Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself. While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompass her, she clings to it. She appeals to her father--to her mother--