Did it never strike you in reading "The Tempest," that Ariel is not so supernatural as Miranda? We may be sure that Ferdinand so thought, in that rapture of wonder when her soul first shone on him through her innocent eyes; and afterwards when he asks, "I do beseech you (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers) What is your name?" And doubtless there was a more marvellous melody in her voice than in the mysterious magical music "That crept by him upon the waters, Allaying both their fury and his passion With its sweet air." Shakespeare, indeed, in his transcendently beautiful embodiments of feminine excellence, the most exquisite creations in literature, passed into a region of sentiment and thought, of ideals and of ideas, altogether higher and more supernatural than that region in which he shaped his delicate Ariels and his fairy Titanias. The question has been raised whether sex extends to soul. However this may be decided, here is a soul, with its records in literature, who is at once the manliest of men, and the most womanly of women; who can not only recognize the feminine element in existing individuals, but discern the idea, the pattern, the radiant genius of womanhood itself, as it hovers, unseen to other eyes, over the living representatives of the sex. Literature boasts many eminent female poets and novelists; but not one has ever approached Shakespeare in the purity, the sweetness, the refinement, the elevation, of his perceptions of feminine character,--much less approached him in the power of embodying his perceptions in persons. These characters are so thoroughly domesticated on the earth, that we are tempted to forget the heaven of invention from which he brought them. The most beautiful of spirits, they are the most tender of daughters, lovers, and wives. They are "airy shapes," but they "syllable men's names." Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia, Viola, Perdita, Miranda, Desdemona, Hermione, Portia, Isabella, Imogen, Cordelia,--if their names do not call up their natures, the most elaborate analysis of criticism wilt be of no avail. Do you say that these women are slightly idealized portraits of actual women? Was Cordelia, for example, simply a good, affectionate daughter of a foolish old king? To Shakespeare, himself, she evidently partook of divineness; and he hints of the still ecstasy of contemplation in which her nature first rose upon his imagination, when, speaking through the lips of a witness of her tears, he hallows them as they fall:-- "She shook the holy water from her heavenly eyes."