"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;

For I mine own gain'd knowledge should profane,

If I should time expend with such a snipe,

But for my sport and profit."

Cassio he considers to be not merely unskilled in war, but a fool :

"For while this honest fool

Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes," &c.

Othello is an ass in his estimation :

The "inclining" Desdemona he utterly despises, as one who fell in love with the Moor merely for his bragging, and telling fantastical lies. His wife he calls a fool; and, with these opinions of his great superiority of wisdom and intellect, he commences operations to enmesh them all, as if they were so many puppets. It would be & strange thing indeed, he reflects, if I were to permit myself to be ir. sulted, and my rights withheld, by such a set of idiots, whom I car wind round my finger as I please.

He seated him in the seat of the scorner, a character which he whe is accounted the wisest of men continually opposes to that of true wisdom. "Seest thou," says Solomon, in the Proverbs copied out by the men of Hezekiah, King of Judea, which, whether they be inspired or not, are aphorisms of profound and concentrated wisdom,-"seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him."* And the career of Iago ends with his own destruction, amid the abomination set down in another chapter of Proverbs as the lot of the scorner. The jealousy of Othello is not more gradually and skilfully raised and developed than the vengeance of Iago. first angry enough, no doubt; but he has no defined project. He follows the Moor to take advantage of circumstances to turn them to his own use. Nothing of peculiar malignity is thought upon: if he can get Cassio's place, he will be satisfied.

"Cassio's a proper man; let me see now,

To get his place."

At

The marriage and the sight of Desdemona point out to him a ready way of accomplishing this object. The thought occurs suddenly, and he is somewhat startled at first. He asks himself with eager repetition,

"After some time, to abuse Othello's ear,
That he is too familiar with his wife."

But it still alarms him:

I have it-it's engender'd: Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light."

* Prov. xxvi. 12. "The scorner is an abomination to men," occurs in chap. xxiv. 9.

The plot is not matured even when they all arrive at Cyprus.

"Tis here, but yet confused-

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used."

When once fairly entered upon, however, it progresses with unchecked rapidity. He is himself hurried resistlessly forward by the current of deceit and iniquity in which he has embarked. He is as much a tool or passive instrument as those whom he is using as such.

Some critics pronounce his character unnatural, as not having sufficient motive for the crimes he commits. This is not wise. He could not help committing them. Merely to put money in his purse, he gulled Roderigo into a belief that he could assist the poor dupe in his suit to Desdemona. There is no remarkable crime in this. Nor can we blame him for being angry at being somewhat scornfully passed over; we can, at all events, enter into his feelings when he wishes to undermine one whom he considers unworthily preferred to him, and to obtain a place which he thinks should be his own, if patronage had been justly dispensed. It was a base thing, indeed, to malign a lady, and possess her husband with jealousy; but he could not have calculated on the harvest of death and crime which the seed of suspicion that he was sowing was destined to bring up. When he makes Cassio drunk, he only anticipates that he will put him in such action as may offend the isle. When framing the device that is to destroy the lieutenant, no thoughts of murder arise before him.

He has no regard for the feelings of Othello, but dreams not that he will kill Desdemona, whom he says he loves. As for the lady herself, his low estimation of woman would of course lead him to think but little about her peace and quiet. He excuses himself, besides, by referring to the rumour that Othello had given him cause to be jealous. It is plain that he does not pretend to lay any great stress upon this; nor can we suppose that, even if it were true, it would deeply affect him; but he thinks light of women in general, and has no respect whatever for his wife. Indeed, Othello does not hold Emilia in much esteem; and her own conversation with Desdemona, as she is undressing her for bed (act iv. scene 3), shows that her virtue was not impregnable. The injury, therefore, Iago was about to do Desdemona, in lessening her in the respect of her husband by accusing her of such an ordinary offence as a deviation from chastity, and one which he did not visit with any particular severity on his own wife, must have seemed trivial. He could not have been prepared for the dire tempest of fury which his first hint of her unfaithfulness aroused in the bosom of Othello. Up to that moment he had done nothing more than gull a blockhead, and endeavour by unworthy means to undermine a rival; trickery and slander, though not very honourable qualities are not of such rare occurrence in the world as to call for the expression of any peculiar indignation, when we find them displayed by a clever and plotting Italian.

They have, however, led him to the plain and wide path of damnation. He cannot retract his insinuations. Even if he desired, Othello will not let him :

66

Villain, be sure you prove my love a whore."

[We may observe that he still, though his suspicions are so fiercely

VOL. III.

4

roused, calls her his love. It is for the last time before her death. After her guilt is, as he thinks, proved, he has no word of affection for her. She is a convicted culprit, to be sacrificed to his sense of justice.]

"Be sure of it give me ocular proof:
Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul,
Thou hadst been better have been born a dog
Than answer my waked wrath.

Make me to see 't, or, at the least, so prove it,
That the probation bear no hinge, nor loop
To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!"

Iago, therefore, had no choice but to go forward. He was evidently not prepared for this furious outburst; and we may acquit him of hypocrisy when he prays Othello to let her live. But Cassio must die:

"He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly."

A more urgent reason immediately suggests itself:

"And besides, the Moor

May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril.
No he must die."

The death of Desdemona involves that of Roderigo :

"Live Roderigo?

He calls me to a restitution large

Of gold and jewels, that I bobb'd from him

As gifts to Desdemona,

It must not be."

Here is the direct agency of necessity.

He must remove these men. Shortly after, to silence the clamorous testimony of his wife, he must kill her. He is doomed to blood. [As some other considerations on this point occur to us, we will defer the conclusion of our remarks on the character of Iago, and reserve them for another paper.]

THE SON TO HIS MOTHER.

BY SAMUEL LOVER, ESQ.

THERE was a place in childhood that I remember well,

And there, a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell ;
And gentle words and fond embrace were given with joy to me,
When I was in that happy place upon my mother's knee.

When fairy tales were ended, "Good night!" she softly said,
And kiss'd and laid me down to sleep within my tiny bed;
And holy words she taught me there,-methinks I yet can see
Her angel eyes, as close I knelt beside my mother's knee.

In the sickness of my childhood, the perils of my prime,
The sorrows of my riper years, the cares of ev'ry time;
When doubt or danger weigh'd me down, then pleading, all for me,
It was a fervent prayer to Heaven that bent my mother's knee!

And can I this remember, and e'er forget to prove
The glow of holy gratitude-the fulness of my love?
When thou art feeble, mother, come rest thy arm on me,
And let thy cherish'd child support the aged mother's knee!

A PILGRIMAGE TO SEVILLE CATHEDRAL.

Quien no ha visto Sevilla,
No ha visto maravilla!

He who to Seville has not been,
Nought wonderful has ever seen!

Old Saying.

"Vedi Napoli e poi mori !"—" See Naples, and then die !" exclaim the Neapolitans. The same fond admiration of their city has suggested the above extravagant couplet to the Sevillanos. Nevertheless, who that has seen the Cathedral, the Alcazar, the remains of Roman and Arabian architecture, and the venerable picturesque city itself, can deny that Seville is verily a wonder? The Cathedral alone would justify this boast.

The Cathedral, or Iglesia Mayor, as it is commonly called, is in fact the primary object of interest in Seville, whether we regard the antiquity and singularity of its Moorish tower, the Giralda, or the magnificence of the more modern Gothic temple. The morning after my arrival I hastened to view it, and found it as far surpassing my most sanguine expectations as it did the many cathedrals I had previously beheld, both in my own country and on the Continent.

Externally, it presents a strange mixture of Arabian, Gothic, and modern Spanish architecture, which assimilates greatly to the Italian. Yet the tout-ensemble is striking, and the Gothic part-the church itself -is both rich and majestic in a high degree.

The stranger, on entering, is struck with amazement at the immen. sity of the edifice. When he casts his eye down the vast aisles, where arch beyond arch, and column beyond column, stretch away in dim perspective, or when he raises it to the gigantic pillars towering to support the vaulted roof, more than a hundred feet above his head, he feels rooted to the spot, overpowered by the burst of majesty. Then, as he continues to survey the aisles, which, (illumined only by the light struggling through the coloured windows, and playing here and there in variegated rays on pavement and pillar, or streaming, as from a point, through a far-off door,) are wrapt in a twilight gloom; as he contem. plates the dark figures of the priests gliding noiselessly by, the sable forms of the suppliants prostrate before the altars around, the deep and solemn silence, or occasionally the still more solemn echoes of prayer -a feeling of awe creeps through his soul which heightens the sense of immensity already experienced, into a sublimity such as few works of man are capable of inspiring. I question if the Pyramids themselves -which are but mounds in the vast expanse of desert, where art is lost in the grandeur of nature,-can, independently of their antiquity, produce so imposing an effect as a Gothic temple like this.

But let him enter for the first time-as was my good fortune-during the performance of high mass, when the grand altar is lighted up by a thousand candles, whose blaze is reflected and multiplied by huge mirrors of burnished silver,-when the body of the church is filled with lowly worshippers-when the deep silence is broken only by the voice

of the priest at the altar, or by the echoes of his footsteps. On a sud. den the great organ bursts into a solemn anthem, the choristers accompany it with their sweet voices,-the music swells and rolls through the building, till each column, each arch, seems alive with a devotion which he cannot fail to experience stealing into his own bosom. Then, when on the ringing of a bell the consecrated Host is raised on high, and the whole congregation, as one man, sink on their knees, or throw themselves prostrate in adoration; then he finds himself seized with kindred feelings, and, in spite of his better judgment, is prompted to cast himself forward an.ong the crowd of suppliants. Thus it was with me. Overpowered by the grandeur of the scene, tthe solemnity of the place, the sublime strains of devotion still echoing through the aisles, I was hurried away by the impulse of the moment, and found myself bending the knee when I least intended.

If there ever were one spot above others where the effect of ecclesiastical pomp and ceremony upon the senses might be mistaken for the religion of the intellect and heart, or where superstition appears divested of absurdity, and assumes the garb of humble and sincere piety -Seville Cathedral is that spot.

This superb edifice was founded, in the year 1401, on the site of the ancient Mosque, and was dedicated to the Virgin, in acknowledgment of her services in rescuing the city from the infidels. It took more than a century to complete the structure. Its proportions of four hundred and twenty feet in length, by two hundred and ninety-one in breadth, constitute it the largest Gothic cathedral in Spain. Indeed the old saying, “La de Toledo, la rica; la de Salamanca, la fuerte; la de Leon, la bella; la de Sevilla, la grande-That of Toledo, the rich; that of Salamanca, the strong; that of Leon, the beautiful; that of Se. ville, the great,"- -or the other,

"Toledo en riqueza,
Compostela en fortaleza,
Leon en sotileza,
Sevilla en grandeza—"

"Toledo in wealth; Compostela in strength; Leon in airiness; Seville in magnitude,"-determines its superiority in this respect. It is in the form of a Latin cross, has five aisles, and is surrounded by numerous chapels. *

Four rows of enormous clustered columns, eight in each row, separate the aisles, and were hung, when I first saw them, from capital to base, with crimson damask, streaked with yellow, the trappings of the recent festival of Corpus Christi. They are forty-two feet in circumference, and, to use the words of an old chronicler," appear rather towers than pillars." The roofs of the centre nave and transept rise one hundred and thirty-four feet from the pavement; those of the side aisles are thirty-eight feet lower. The centre aisle contains the choir and the grand altar.

The choir is a large church in itself, in the heart of the Cathedral, enclosed on three sides by screens, and open on the east towards

*Rodrigo Caro, in his "Antiguedades de Sevilla," page 53, says that this cathedral contains no less than eighty-two chapels and altars. I counted fortythree within the body of the edifice, exclusive of the high altar and those in the sacristy and large church of the Sagrario.