Still, it gives us pleasure when the best gifts are surprised, captured, seized away to consecrate privacy and become a fount of noble inheritance. Their publicity shall thrill and elevate a later age. "When virtue leaps high in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty spring of nobleness, and find it far off in the dear breast of some mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the summer's dew into fair, sweet humanity, which now gladdens the face of man in all the city streets." Or if, in middle life, some truth, some moral, claims a woman's hand, and offers second marriage, men will gladly listen to a tone whose grave, sweet temper, pitched by first love and married happiness, pervades all her experience. So Portia, who could, when it was needed, "turn two mincing steps into a manly stride," doffs the lawyer's robe, and, returning, is met by music and conducted to a palace that was not till then a home. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 18: Sometimes in Shakspeare the word _fancy_ means a genuine passion: here it hints only at a passing sentiment.] HELENA; OPHELIA. HELENA. The character of Helena, in "All's Well that Ends Well," furnishes a striking contrast to Ophelia, and tempts the student of Shakspeare to bring both types of womanhood into one field of view. Ophelia loves the Lord Hamlet, who is her "expectancy and rose of the fair state,"--one to be proud of, cling to, and adore. But, when her father's interference begins to draw her into the contrary current which sweeps her life away, she develops no power of resistance. Even her love is not strong enough to stem the stream that rushes suddenly from subterranean caves to cover her feet and climb to her heart. She has no will for withstanding her father's resolution: her passion has not yet ventured out of its girlish stage, to gather strength and be a threat to her docility. She submissively returns the Prince's cherished words and presents, lets the old father rule her, and goes crazed.