[Footnote 14: We do not forget nor undervalue the labors of Schlegel and Tieck; the dissertation upon "Hamlet" in "Wilhelm Meister;" the admirable contributions through several years to the "Jahrbuch der Shakspeare-Gesellschaft;" the articles in the "Shakspear-Museum" and other German periodicals; the edition of Shakspeare translated by such men as Bodenstedt, Delius, Gildemeister, Herwegh, Heyse, &c., many of them distinguished for poetic talent. The attack by Benedix upon the "Shakspeare mania" has brought out excellent comment from Noiré and Dr. Wagner. Wagner's editions of the plays, with notes and commentary, are good: so is Dr. Jacob Heussi's "Hamlet." The essays of Karl Elze, of E. Hermann, Kreyssig, V. Friesen, Otto Ludwig, and several other contributors to the _Jahrbuch_, cannot be neglected by scholars of Shakspeare: they are sharply distinguished from the dilettante work of Fulda and others, and from the subjective excess of the writers named above in the text. The English lover of Shakspeare cannot afford to indulge an indiscriminate dislike of the German revival. The Shakspeare-Lexicon of Dr. Schmidt is a magnificent piece of work.] [Footnote 15: Fleay's "Shakspeare Manual," p. 25, a most serviceable book.] [Footnote 16: In a volume entitled "Woman and her Era."] [Footnote 17: Antigone, 792, Ἑρωϛ ἁνἱκατε μἁχαν.] PORTIA. PORTIA. In the elements which compose the character of Portia, Shakspeare anticipated, but without intention, the intellect of those modern women who can wield so gracefully many of the tools which have been hitherto monopolized by men. But the same genius which endowed her with a large and keen intelligence derived it from her sex, and, for the sake of it, he did not sacrifice one trait of her essential womanliness. This commands our attention very strongly; for it is the clew which we must start with. She is still a woman to the core of her beauty-loving heart. Coming home from the great scene in Venice, where she baffles Shylock, and swamps with sudden justice the scales that were so eager for the bonded flesh, she loiters in the moonlight, marks the music which is floating from her palace to be caressed by the night and made sweeter than by day. Her listening ear is modulated by all the tenderness she feels and the love she expects; so she gives the music the color of a soul that has come home to wife and motherhood, till her thoughts put such a strain upon the vibrating strings that they grow too tense, and threaten to divulge her delicate secret. So she cries,-- "Peace! Now the moon sleeps with Endymion, And would not be awak'd."