The entrance of the conspirators to the house of Brutus at midnight is rendered very impressive.  In the midst of this scene we meet with one of those careless and natural digressions which occur so frequently and beautifully in Shakespeare.  After Cassius has introduced his friends one by one, Brutus says: 

     They are all welcome. 
     What watchful cares do interpose themselves
     Betwixt your eyes and night?

   Cassius.  Shall I entreat a word? [They whisper.]

   Decius.  Here lies the east:  doth not the day break here?

   Casca.  No.

   Cinna.  O pardon, Sir, it doth; and yon grey lines,
     That fret the clouds, are messengers of day.

   Casca.  You shall confess, that you are both deceiv’d: 
     Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,
     Which is a great way growing on the south,
     Weighing the youthful, season of the year. 
     Some two months hence, up higher toward the north
     He first presents his fire, and the high east
     Stands as the Capitol, directly here.

We cannot help thinking this graceful familiarity better than all the formality in the world.  The truth of history in Julius Caesar is very ably worked up with dramatic effect.  The councils of generals, the doubtful turns of battles, are represented to the life.  The death of Brutus is worthy of him—­it has the dignity of the Roman senator with the firmness of the Stoic philosopher.  But what is perhaps better than either, is the little incident of his boy, Lucius, falling asleep over his instrument, as he is playing to his master in his tent, the night before the battle.  Nature had played him the same forgetful trick once before on the night of the conspiracy.  The humanity of Brutus is the same on both occasions.

       —­It is no matter;
   Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber. 
   Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
   Which busy care draws in the brains of men. 
   Therefore thou sleep’st so sound.

OTHELLO

It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity.  That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness.  It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond ourselves, in humanity as such.  It raises the great, the remote, and the possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near.  It makes man a partaker with his kind.  It subdues and softens the stubbornness of his will.  It teaches him that there are and have been others like himself, by showing him as in a glass what they have felt, thought, and done.  It opens the chambers of the human heart.  It leaves nothing indifferent to us that can affect our common nature.  It excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the temptation of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by