leaving some of the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt whether he even felt or perceived them; and this masterly criticism stops short of the whole truth-it is a little superficial, and a little too harsh.

In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is represented as the ruling motive, an intense over-mastering passion, which is gratified at the expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine feeling. In the pursuit of her object, she is cruel, treacherous, and daring. She is doubly, trebly dyed in guilt and blood; for the murder she instigates is rendered more frightful by disloyalty and ingratitude, and by the violation of all the most sacred claims of kindred and hospitality. When her husband's more kindly nature shrinks from the perpetration of the deed of horror, she, like an evil genius, whispers him on to his damnation. The full measure of her wickedness is never disguised, the magnitude and atrocity of her crime is never extenuated, forgotten, or forgiven, in the whole course of the play. Our judgment is not bewildered, nor our moral feeling insulted, by the sentimental jumble of great crimes and dazzling virtues, after the fashion of the German school, and of some admirable writers of our own time. Lady Macbeth's amazing power of intellect, her inexorable determination of purpose, her superhuman strength of nerve, render her as fearful in herself as her deeds are hateful; yet she is not a mere monster of depravity, with whom we have nothing in common, nor a meteor whose destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never removed from our Own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our sympathies; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last still linked with her sex and with humanity.

so far

This impression is produced partly by the essential truth in the conception of the character, and partly by the manner in which it is evolved; by a combination of minute and delicate touches, in some instances by speech, in others by silence; at one time. by what is revealed, at another by what we are left to infer. As in real life, we perceive distinctions in character we cannot always explain, and receive impressions for which we cannot always account, without going back to the beginning of an

acquaintance, and recalling many and trifling circumstances-looks, and tones, and words; thus to explain that hold which Lady Macbeth, in the midst of all her atrocities, still keeps upon our feelings, it is necessary to trace minutely the action of the play, as far as she is concerned in it, from its very commencement to its close.

We must then bear in mind, that the first idea of murdering Duncan is not suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband; it springs within his mind, and is revealed to us, before his first interview with his wife, before she is introduced or even alluded to.

MACBETH.

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,

Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor-
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?

It will be said, that the same "horrid suggestion" presents itself spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter; or rather, that the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for empire into a quenchless flame. We are prepared to see the train of evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to her through the medium of her husband; but we are spared the more revolting idea that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than we should suppose, when we hear people pitying "the noble nature of Macbeth," bewildered and goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the instigation of his wife.

It is true that she afterwards appears the more active agent of the two; but it is less through her pre-eminence in wickedness than through her superiority of intellect. The eloquence-the fierce, fervid eloquence with which she bears down the relenting

and reluctant spirit of her husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his objections, her artful and affected doubts of his courage the sarcastic manner in which she lets fall the word coward-a word which no man can endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a woman he lovesand the bold address with which she removes all obstacles, silences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admiration are strangely mingled.

LADY MACBETH.

He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?

MACBETH

Pr'ythee peace:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

LADY MACBETH.

What beast was it then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?
Where you durst do it, there you were a man;
And to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both;
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it were smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn, as you
Have done to this.

МАСВЕТн.

If we should fail,

LADY MACBETH.

We fail.*

But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we'll not fail.

Again, in the murdering scene, the obdurate inflexibility of purpose with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of

*In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons adopted successively three different intonations in giving the words we fail. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation-"we fail?" Afterwards with the note of admirationwe fail! and an accent of indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word we-we fail! Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true reading-we fail. with the simple period, modulating her voice to a deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once-as though she had said, "if we fail, why then we fail, and all is over." This is consistent with the dark fatalism of the character and the sense of the line following, and the effect was sublime almost awful

their project, and her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by absolute depravity of disposition and ferocity of temper. This impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady Macbeth displays the most savage and relentless determination, are so worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the woman before us in all her dearest attributes, at once softening and refining the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her husband for his weakness

From this time

Such I account thy love!

Again,

Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, &c.

1 have given suck, and know how tender 'tis

To love the babe that milks me, &c.

comes that

And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror unexpected touch of feeling, so startling, yet so wonderfully true to

nature.

Had he not resembled my father as he slept,

I had done it!

Thus in one of Weber's or Beethoven's grand symphonies, some unexpected soft minor chord or passage will steal on the ear, heard amid the magnificent crash of harmony, making the blood pause, and filling the eye with unbidden tears.