and in clearest self-consciousness mistress of her deeds. Julia loves and thinks and acts Desdemona loves, feels and obeys not her own will, but the stronger impulse. Her admirable excellence lies in this, that the bad can in no respect act on her noble nature like the good. She would certainly have remained in the palazzo of her father, a modest child fulfilling household duties; but the voice of the Moor was heard, and though she looked down she saw his countenance in his words, in his stories of his life, or, as she says, in his soul, and this suffering, magnanimous, beautiful white face of the soul wrought on her heart with irresistibly attracting magic. Yes, her father, the dignified and wise Brabantio, was quite in the right; she was so bound in chains of magic that the timid, tender child felt herself drawn to the Moor, and had no fear of the hideous black mask which the multitude regarded as the face of Othello.
Julia's love is active, that of Desdemona passive. She is the sunflower, herself unconscious that her head is ever turned toward the high star of day. She is a true daughter of the South—tender, sensitive, patient, like those slender, great-eyed lights of women who beam so lovingly, so softly and dreamily, from the Sanscrit poems or plays. She ever reminds me of the Sakuntala of Kalidasa, the Indian Shakespeare.
