Tresham.

Guendolen.

Well?

- With lacking wit.

Tresham. He lacked wit? Where might he lack wit, so

please you?

Guendolen. In standing straighter than the steward's rod And making you the tiresomest harangue,

Instead of slipping over to my side

And softly whispering in my ear, "Sweet lady,
Your cousin there will do me detriment

He little dreams of: he's absorbed, I see,

In my old name and fame - be sure he'll leave
My Mildred, when his best account of me

Is ended, in full confidence I wear

My grandsire's periwig down either cheek.

I'm lost unless your gentleness vouchsafes"

Tresham. . . . "To give a best of best accounts, yourself, Of me and my demerits." You are right!

He should have said what now I say for him.

Yon golden creature, will you help us all?

Here's Austin means to vouch for much, but you

You are

.

.. what Austin only knows! Come up,

All three of us: she's in the library

No doubt, for the day's wearing fast. Precede!
Guendolen. Austin, how we must-!
Tresham.

Must what? Must speak truth,

He's out of your good graces, since forsooth,
He stood not as he'd carry us by storm
With his perfections! You're for the composed
Manly assured becoming confidence!

Get her to say, "to-morrow," and I'll give you

I'll give you black Urganda, to be spoiled

With petting and snail-paces. Will you? Come!

The story of the love of Mildred and Mertoun is the universally human one, and belongs to no one country or no one period of civilization more than another, but the attitude of all the actors in the tragedy belongs distinctively to the phase of moral culture which we saw illustrated in the youth of Sir Philip Sidney, and is characteristic of English ways of thinking whenever their moral force comes uppermost, as for example in the Puritan thought of the Cromwellian era.

The play is in a sense a problem play, though to most modern readers the tragedy of its ending is all too horrible a consequence of the sin. Dramatically and psychically, however, the tragedy is much more inevitable than that of Romeo and Juliet, whose love one naturally thinks of in the same connection. The catastrophe in the Shakespeare play is almost mechanically pushed to its conclusion through mere external blundering, easily to have been prevented. Juliet saw clearly where

Mildred does not, that loyalty to a deep and true love should triumph over all minor considerations, so that in her case the tragedy is, in no sense, due to her blindness of vision. In the "Blot," lack of perception of the true values in life makes it impossible for Mildred or Tresham to act otherwise than they did. But having worked out their problem according to their lights, a new light of a more glorious day dawns upon them.

The ideal by which Tresham lives and moves and has his being is that of pride of birth, with honor and chastity as its watchwords. At the same time the idol of his life is his sister Mildred, over whom he has watched with a father's and mother's care. When the blow to his ideal comes at the hands of this much cherished sister, it is not to be wondered at that his reason almost deserts him. The greatest agony possible to the human soul is to have its ideals, the very food which has been the sustenance of its being, utterly ruined. The ideal may be a wrong one, or an impartial one, and through the wrack and ruin may dawn larger vision, but, unless the nature be a marvelously developed one the storm that breaks when an ideal is shattered is overwhelming.

It would be equally true of Mildred that, nurtured as she had been and as young Eng

lish girls usually are, in great purity, even ignorance of all things pertaining to life, the sense of her sin would be so overwhelming as to blind her to any possible means of expiation except the most extreme. And indeed may it not be said that only those who can see as Mertoun and Guendolen did that genuine and loyal love is no less love because, in a conventional sense, it has sinned, only those would acknowledge, as Tresham, indeed, does after he has murdered Mertoun, how perfect the love of Mildred and Mertoun was. flourishes only when insincerity tricks itself out in the garb of love, and on the whole it is well that human beings should have an abiding sense of their own and others insincerity, and test themselves by their willingness to acknowledge their love before God and man. There are many Mildreds but few Mertouns. It is little wonder that Dickens wrote with such enthusiasm of this play that he knew no love like that of Mildred and Mertoun, no passion like it.

Sin

One does not need to discuss whether murders were possible in English social life. They are possible in all life at all times as long as men and women allow their passions to overthrow their reason. The last act, however, illustrates the English poise already referred