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 have nothing in common, nor a meteor we whose destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far 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. 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 con cerned 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. Ifill, If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, "horrid sugges It will be said, that the same tion " 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 Wierd Sisters on the mind of her husband, kindling the latent passion for empire into a quench less 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 the woman he loves-and the bold address with which she removes all ob stacles, 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? We will proceed no farther in this business : Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon. LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since, At what it did so freely? From this time |