women usually are, by difference of rank and situation. The
difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as
open, their minds are separated from each other by signs as plain
and as little to be mistaken as the complexions of their husbands.

The movement of the passion in OTHELLO is exceedingly different from
that of MACBETH. In MACBETH there is a violent struggle between
opposite feelings, between ambition and the stings of conscience,
almost from first to last: in Othello, the doubtful conflict between
contrary passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time,
and the chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of
different passions, the entire and unforeseen change from the
fondest love and most unbounded confidence to the tortures of
jealousy and the madness of hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it
has once taken thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, but
grows stronger and stronger at every moment of its delay. The nature
of the Moor is noble, confiding, tender, and generous; but his blood
is of the most inflammable kind; and being once roused by a sense of
his wrongs, he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity
till he has given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his
despair. It is in working his noble nature up to this extremity
through rapid but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its
height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles,
in painting the expiring conflict between love and hatred,
tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse, in unfolding the
strength and the weaknesses of our nature, in uniting sublimity of
thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion
the various impulses that agitate this our mortal being, and at last
blending them in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion,
impetuous but majestic, that 'flows on to the Propontic, and knows