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PORTIA.

41

would not have lent a life-long credence to that voice of honor?

“	You are my true and honorable wife,
	As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
	That visit this sad heart.”

It is the same voice that tells the moral of his life in the last words—

“Countrymen,

My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life,

I found no man but he was true to me.”

It was not wonderful that it should be so.

Shakspeare, however, was not content to let Portia rest her plea for confidence on the essential nature of the marriage bond;

“	I grant I am a woman; but withal,
	A woman that lord Brutus took to wife.
	I grant I am a woman; but withal,
	A woman well reputed—Cato's daughter.
	Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
	Being so fathered and so husbanded?”

And afterwards in the very scene where Brutus is suffering under that “insupportable and touching loss,” the death of his wife, Cassius pleads—

“	Have you not love enough to bear with me,
	When that rash humor which my mother gave me
	Makes me forgetful?
Brutus.—	Yes, Cassius; and henceforth,
	When you are over-earnest with your Brutus,
	He'll think your mother chides and leave you so.”

As indeed it was a frequent belief among the ancients, as with our Indians, that the body was inherited from the mother, the soul from the father. As