but they all have this in common, that their virtues sit easy and natural upon them, as native outgrowths, not as things put on:  there is no ambition, no pretension, nothing at all boastful or fictitious or pharisaical or squeamish or egoish in their virtues; we never see the men hanging over them, or nursing and cosseting them, as if they were specially thoughtful and tender of them, and fearful lest they might catch cold.  Then too, with all these men, the good they do, in doing it, pays itself:  if they do you a kindness, they are not at all solicitous to have you know and remember it:  if sufferings and hardships overtake them, if wounds and bruises be their portion, they never grumble or repine at it, as feeling that Providence has a grudge against them, or that the world is slighting them:  whether they live or die, the mere conscience of rectitude suffices them, without further recompense.  So that the simple happiness they find in doing what is right is to us a sufficient pledge of their perseverance in so doing.  Now all this is, in its degree, just the ideal of virtue which Christian morality teaches and exemplifies.  For so the right way of Christian virtue is when a man’s good deeds are so much a matter of course with him, that he thinks not of himself for having done them.  As bees when they have made their honey; as birds when they have carolled their hymn; as the vine when it has produced its clusters; so it is with the truly good man when he has done a good act:  it suffices him that he has borne his proper fruit; and, instead of calling on others or even himself to note what he has done, he goes right on and does other good acts, just as if nothing had happened.

But if all this be true of the Poet’s men, it is true in a still higher degree of his women.  Here it is that the moral element of the Beautiful has its fullest and fairest expression.  And I am bold to say that, next to the Christian religion, humanity has no other so precious inheritance as Shakespeare’s divine gallery of Womanhood.  Helena, Portia of Belmont, Rosalind, Viola, Portia of Rome, Isabella, Ophelia, Cordelia, Miranda, Hermione, Perdita, Desdemona, Imogen, Catharine of Arragon,—­what a wealth and assemblage of moral beauty have we here!  All the other poetry and art of the world put together cannot show such a varied and surpassing treasure of womanly excellence.  And how perfectly free their goodness is from any thing like stress!  How true it is in respect of their virtues, that “love is an unerring light, and joy its own security!” They are wise, witty, playful, humorous, grave, earnest, impassioned, practical, imaginative; the most profound and beautiful thoughts drop from them as things too common and familiar to be spoken with the least emphasis:  they are strong, tender, and sweet, yet never without a sufficient infusion of brisk natural acid and piquancy to keep their sweetness from palling on the taste:  they are full of fresh, healthy sentiment, but never at all touched with sentimentality:  the soul of romance works mightily within them, yet never betrays them into any lapses from good sense, or any substitutions of feeling for duty.