quent eventful intercourse. It is evident, I think, that the sad and new experience of affliction has subdued the insolence of her pride and the violence of her will; for she comes now to seek him out, that she may at least participate his misery. She knows, by her own woful experience, the torment which he undergoes, and endeavors to alleviate his sufferings by the following inefficient reasonings :—

"How now, my lord - why do you keep alone?

Of sorriest fancies your companions making?

Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on.

Should be without regard.

Things without all remedy
What's done, is done."

Far from her former habits of reproach and contemptuous taunting, you perceive that she now listens to his complaints with sympathizing feelings; and, so far from adding to the weight of his affliction the burden of her own, she endeavors to conceal it from him with the most delicate and unremitting attention. But it is in vain; as we may observe in this beautiful and mournfnl dialogue with the physician on the subject of his cureless malady: "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" &c. You now hear no more of her chidings and reproaches. No; all her thoughts are now directed to divert his from those sorriest fancies, by turning them to the approaching banquet, in exhorting him to conciliate the good will and good thoughts of his guests, by receiving them with a disengaged air, and cordial, bright, and jovial demeanor. Yes; smothering her sufferings in the deepest recesses of her own wretched bosom, we can not but perceive that she devotes herself entirely to the effort of supporting him.

Let it be here recollected, as some palliation of her former very different deportment, that she had probably from childhood commanded all around her with a high hand; had uninterruptedly, perhaps, in that splendid station, enjoyed all that wealth, all that nature had to bestow; that she had, possibly, no directors, no controllers, and that in womanhood her fascinated lord had never once opposed her inclinations. But now her new-born relentings, under the rod of chastisement, prompt her to make palpable efforts in order to support the spirits of her weaker, and, I must say, more selfish husband. Yes; in gratitude for his unbounded affection, and in commiseration of his sufferings, she

suppresses the anguish of her heart, even while that anguish is precipitating her into the grave which at this moment is yawning to receive her.

The Banquet.-Surrounded by their court, in all the apparent ease and self-complacency of which their wretched souls are destitute, they are now seated at the royal banquet; and although, through the greater part of this scene, Lady Macbeth affects to resume her wonted domination over her husband, yet, notwithstanding all this self-control, her mind must even then be agonized by the complicated pangs of terror and remorse. For what imagination can conceive her tremors, lest at every succeeding moment Macbeth, in his distraction, may confirm those suspicions, but ill concealed, under the loyal looks and cordial manners of their facile courtiers, when, with smothered terror, yet domineering indignation, she exclaims, upon his agitation at the ghost of Banquo, “Are you a man?" Macbeth answers :—

Dying with fear, yet assuming the utmost composure, she returns to her stately canopy; and, with trembling nerves, having tottered up the steps to her throne, that bad eminence, she entertains her wondering guests with frightful smiles, with over-acted attention, and with fitful graciousness; painfully, yet incessantly, laboring to divert their attention from her husband. While writhing thus under her internal agonies, her restless and terrifying glances toward Macbeth, in spite of all her efforts to suppress them, have thrown the whole table into amazement; and the murderer then suddenly breaks up the assembly by the following confession of his horrors :

"Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer cloud,
Without our special wonder? You make me
Even to the disposition that I am,

When now I think you can behold such sights
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blanched with fear.

Rosse. What sight, my lord?"

What imitation, in such circumstances as these, would ever satisfy the demands of expectation? The terror, the remorse, the hypocrisy of this astonishing being, flitting in frightful succession over her countenance, and actuating her agitated gestures with her varying emotions, present, perhaps, one of the greatest difficulties of the scenic art, and cause her representative no less to tremble for the suffrage of her private study than for its public effect.

It is now the time to inform you of an idea which I have conceived of Lady Macbeth's character, which perhaps will appear as fanciful as that which I have adopted respecting the style of her beauty; and, in 'order to justify this idea, I must carry you back to the scene immediately preceding the banquet, in which you will recollect the following dialogue :

"Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife;

Thou knowest that Banquo and his Fleance live.

L. Mac. But in them Nature's copy's not eterne.
Mac. There's comfort yet-they are assailable.
Then be thou jocund; ere the bat has flown
His cloistered flight-ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-born beetle, with his drowsy hums,

Hath rung night's yawning peal-there shall be done

Mac. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed. Come, unfeeling night,
Scarf up the tender, pitiful eye of day,

And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond

Which keeps me pale. Light thickens, and the crow
Makes way to the rooky wood.-

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
While night's black agents to their prey do rouse.

Thou marvellest at my words - but hold thee still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill."

Now, it is not possible that she should hear all these ambiguous hints about Banquo without being too well aware that a sudden lamentable fate awaits him. Yet, so far from offering any opposition to Macbeth's murderous designs, she even hints, I think, at the facility, if not the expediency, of destroying both Banquo and his equally unoffending child, when she observes that, "in them Nature's copy is not eterne." Having, therefore, now filled the measure of her crimes, I have imagined that the last appearance of Banquo's ghost became no less visible to her eyes than it became to those of her husband. Yes, the spirit of the noble Banquo has smilingly filled up, even to overflowing, and now commends to her own lips the ingredients of her poisoned chalice.

The Fifth Act.—Behold her now, with wasted form, with wan and haggard countenance, her starry eyes glazed with the ever-burning fever of remorse, and on their lids the shadows of death. Her everrestless spirit wanders in troubled dreams about her dismal apartment; and, whether waking or asleep, the smell of innocent blood incessantly haunts her imagination:—

"Here's the smell of the blood still.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten
This little hand."

How beautifully contrasted is the exclamation with the bolder image of Macbeth, in expressing the same feeling

:

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash the blood
Clean from this hand?"

And how appropriately either sex illustrates the same idea!

During this appalling scene, which, to my sense, is the most so of them all, the wretched creature, in imagination, acts over again the accumulated horrors of her whole conduct. These dreadful images, accompanied with the agitations they have induced, have obviously accelerated her untimely end; for in a few moments the tidings of her death are brought to her unhappy husband. It is conjectured that she died by her own hand. Too certain it is, that she dies, and makes no VOL. III.-10

sign. I have now to account to you for the weakness which I have, a few lines back, ascribed to Macbeth; and I am not quite without hope that the following observations will bear me out in my opinion. Please to observe, that he (I must think pusillanimously, when I compare his conduct to her forbearance) has been continually pouring out his miseries to his wife. His heart has therefore been eased, from time to time, by unloading its weight of wo; while she, on the contrary, has perseveringly endured in silence the uttermost anguish of a wounded spirit.

"The grief that does not speak,

Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."

Her feminine nature, her delicate structure, it is too evident, are soon overwhelmed by the enormous pressure of her crimes. Yet it will be granted, that she gives proofs of a naturally higher-toned mind than that of Macbeth. The different physical powers of the two sexes are finely delineated, in the different effects which their mutual crimes produce. Her frailer frame, and keener feelings, have now sunk under the struggle-his robust and less sensitive constitution has not only resisted it, but bears him on to deeper wickedness, and to experience the fatal fecundity of crime.

"For mine own good - all causes shall give way.

I am in blood so far stepped in, that should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

Henceforth, accordingly, he perpetrates horrors to the day of his doom. In one point of view, at least, this guilty pair extort from us, in spite of ourselves, a certain respect and approbation. Their grandeur of character sustains them both above recrimination (the despicable accustomed resort of vulgar minds) in adversity; for the wretched husband, though almost impelled into this gulf of destruction by the instigations of his wife, feels no abatement of his love for her, while she, on her part, appears to have known no tenderness for him, till, with a heart bleeding at every pore, she beholds in him the miserable victim of their mutual ambition. Unlike the first frail pair in Paradise, they spent not the fruitless hours in mutual accusation.