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SHAKESPEARE'S MAIDENS AND WOMEN.

mona followed the Moor, so Imogene Postbomuk That is woman's way. We may remark in Jessica a certain timid shame which she cannot over- come when she must put on a boy's dress. It may be that in this we recognise the remarkable chastity which is peculiar 1 to her race, and which gives its daughters such a wonderfully lovely charm. The chastity of the Jews is perhaps the result of an opposition which they always main- tained against that Oriental religion of sense and sensuality which once nourished among their neighbours the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Babylonians in rankest luxuriance, and which in continual transformation has survived to the present day. 1 The Jews are a chaste, temperate, I might say an abstract race, and in purity of morals they are most nearly allied to the Ger- manic races. The chastity of the women among Jews and Germans is perhaps of no real value in itself, but its manifestation makes the most 1 Eigcn, own, proper. Eiycns, particularly, especially. a Of all which charming chastity and opposition to sensual worship, Heine elsewhere in many places expresses a very sin- cere detestation ; as, for instance, in the " Rabbi of Bacharach," where he unquestionably portrays himself as the Spanish Jew, and declares that if he had lived of old in Judea he would have skipped over some fine morning to jolly Babylon. As he cer- tainly would have done. And it may be also remarked, as regards the next sentence, that it is hardly consistent to declare that anything can be in itself worthless and yet always produce marvellous results ! Translator.