iv

ADDRESS.

affections, and taught by the force of feeling when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it."

To embody such conceptions-to give to each exquisite creation a "local habitation" in the mind's eye-is the object of the present work. Artists of the highest reputation have been engaged to produce characteristic portraits of the great Shakspeare Heroines, to show them "not mere poetical abstractions, nor, as they have been termed, mere 'abstractions of the affections':

But common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by God, and tempered by the tears
Of angels to the perfect form of-woman."