Shirley

mispronounce.«
    »I am to be the teacher then, and you my pupil?«
    »Ainsi, soit-il!«
    »And Shakspeare is our science, since we are going to study?«
    »It appears so.«
    »And you are not going to be French, and sceptical, and sneering? You are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to refuse to admire?«
    »I don't know.«
    »If you do, Robert, I'll take Shakspeare away; and I'll shrivel up within myself, and put on my bonnet and go home.«
    »Sit down; here I begin.«
    »One minute, if you please, brother,« interrupted Mademoiselle, »when the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always sew. Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery; you may get three sprigs done to-night.«
    Caroline looked dismayed. »I can't see by lamp-light; my eyes are tired, and I can't do two things well at once. If I sew, I cannot listen; if I listen, I cannot sew.«
    »Fi, donc! Quel enfantillage!« began Hortense. Mr. Moore, as usual, suavely interposed.
    »Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. I wish her whole attention to be fixed on my accent, and to ensure this, she must follow the reading with her eyes; she must look at the book.«
    He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back of Caroline's chair, and thus began to read.
    The very first scene in »Coriolanus« came with smart relish to his intellectual palate, and still as he read he warmed. He delivered the haughty speech of Caius Marcius to the starving citizens with unction; he did not say he thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to feel it so. Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile.
    »There's a vicious point hit already,« she said, »you sympathize with that proud patrician who does not sympathize with his famished fellow-men, and insults them: there, go on.« He proceeded. The warlike portions did not rouse him much; he said all that was out of date, or should be; the spirit displayed was barbarous, yet the encounter single-handed between Marcius and Tullus Aufidius, he delighted in. As he advanced, he forgot to criticise; it was evident he appreciated the power, the truth of each portion; and, stepping out of the narrow line of private prejudices, began to revel in the large picture of human nature, to feel the reality stamped upon the characters who were speaking from that page before him.
    He did not read the comic scenes well, and Caroline, taking the book out of his hand, read these parts for him. From her he seemed to enjoy them, and indeed she gave them with a spirit no one could have expected of her, with a pithy expression with which she seemed gifted on the spot, and for that brief moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, that the general character of her conversation that evening, whether serious or sprightly, grave or gay, was as of something untaught, unstudied, intuitive, fitful; when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had been, than the glancing ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem, than the colour or form of the sun-set cloud, than the fleeting and glittering ripple varying the flow of a rivulet.
    Coriolanus in glory; Coriolanus in disaster; Coriolanus banished, followed like giant-shades one after the other. Before the vision of the banished man, Moore's spirit seemed to pause. He stood on the hearth of Aufidius's hall, facing the image of greatness fallen, but greater than ever in that low estate. He saw »the grim appearance,« the dark face »bearing command in it,« »the noble vessel with its tackle torn.« With the revenge of Caius Marcius, Moore perfectly sympathized; he was not scandalized by it; and again Caroline whispered, »There I see another glimpse of brotherhood in error.«
    The march on Rome, the mother's supplication, the long resistance, the final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he considered his ally's weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final sorrow of his great enemy; all scenes made of condensed truth & strength, came on in succession, and carried with them in their deep, fast flow, the heart and mind of reader and listener.
    »Now, have you felt Shakspeare?« asked Caroline, some ten minutes after her cousin had closed the book.
    »I think so.«
    »And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you?«
    »Perhaps I have.«
    »Was he not faulty as well as great?«
    Moore nodded. »And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What