in colour consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How
perfectly did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how
beautifully he has exemplified it in Juliet!

So shews a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her follows shews!

Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are
all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all
discord; all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial
life. Juliet, like Portia, is the foster-child of opulence and
splendour: she dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a
palace--she clasps her robe with jewels--she braids her hair with
rainbow-tinted pearls; but in herself she has no more connexion with
the trappings around her, than the lovely exotic transplanted from
some Eden-like climate, has with the carved and gilded conservatory
which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty.

But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or
harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the principal
figures and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the
costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most
opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and
Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are
they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid
the darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of
humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade
of character in each, tends to the developement of the sentiment which
is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can
possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the