to the consistency of the various testimony than could be altogether
counterbalanced by the negation of her own experience. Now I will tell you
what I most admire in the play: it is the reconciling power of the poet. He
brings together such marvellous contrasts, without a single shock or jar
to your feeling of the artistic harmony of the conjunction. Think for a
moment--the ordinary commonplace courtiers; the lovers, men and women in
the condition of all conditions in which fairy-powers might get a hold of
them; the quarrelling king and queen of Fairyland, with their courtiers,
Blossom, Cobweb, and the rest, and the court-jester, Puck; the ignorant,
clownish artisans, rehearsing their play,--fairies and clowns, lovers and
courtiers, are all mingled in one exquisite harmony, clothed with a night
of early summer, rounded in by the wedding of the king and queen. But I
have talked enough about it. Let us get our books."

As we sat in Connie's room, delighting ourselves with the reflex of
the poet's fancy, the sound of the rising tide kept mingling with the
fairy-talk and the foolish rehearsal. "Musk roses," said Titania; and the
first of the blast, going round by south to west, rattled the window. "Good
hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow," said Bottom; and the roar of the waters
was in our ears. "So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently
entwist," said Titania; and the blast poured the rain in a spout against
the window. "Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells," said
Theseus; and the wind whistled shrill through the chinks of the bark-house
opening from the room. We drew the curtains closer, made up the fire
higher, and read on. It was time for supper ere we had done; and when
we left Connie to have hers and go to sleep, it was with the hope that,
through all the rising storm, she would dream of breeze-haunted summer
woods.