"Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both."

The conduct of Lady Macbeth, by the way, throughout their joint career, may, I think, be cited as a corroboration of my argument. Be it remembered, she has never seen the witches, she has only heard of them; and yet she plunges into the scheme with more vehemence, more unmitigated cruelty, than her partner-the tempted and the swayed being : the simple account of the prophecy at once overbears and consolidates her determination in their unmatured project. Lady Macbeth has not a single misgiving from the moment the plot is entertained. With unparalleled sublimity of language she ejaculates:

"Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold!'"

No such language as this is put into the mouth of the man. She goes beyond him in purpose, having no other spur than her own cruel nature, and tremendous impulse of WILL. I think I may conclude, therefore, that Shakespeare, having availed himself of the weird machinery, made it wholly subservient to dramatic effect; the double use to which he has put it, resembling the Two Times of the Action which occur

in some of his dramas; and which the author of the "Noctes" (Professor Wilson) so ingeniously detailed in Blackwood's Magazine, in his series of papers entitled "Dies Boreales." Had Shakespeare intended to insist upon the uncontrolled potency of those beings, he would have brought it to bear upon Lady Macbeth also; and, moreover, he would not have wholly rescued Banquo, who was equally tempted with his fellow-soldier. There could then have been no misapprehension as to his design. Of the personal character of Lady Macbeth, in the teeth of all her unmitigated cruelty, amounting almost to a violation of nature, Shakespeare redeems himself, (as he does in every charge,) by giving us one solitary touch of human sympathy, even in her conduct. I need hardly note the well-known instance, where she says, (speaking of the old king, Duncan,) “Had he not so much resembled my father, as he slept, I had done it!" And, like all violent natures, she is the first to give way; the mental energy has worn out the physical one, and both become diseased. If this be not Nature, and at once an awful lesson, I should be glad to have one more home-striking pointed out to me.

The employment of the fearful agency of the witches in swaying the destinies of those whom they fascinated, and after destroyed, has been resorted to by Shakespeare but once in the course of his numerous productions; and with that sublime effort he (as usual) preoccupied and exhausted his subject. The statement respecting Middleton's drama of the "Witch," asserted, and for some time believed to be the precursor of "Macbeth," has been proved to be a chronological error. Had it been otherwise, however, the merit of originality must still have been awarded to Shakespeare, for his treatment of the weird creations, who are totally distinct beings from the squalid, ribald hags of the other poets.

One of the grandest images out of the thousand that are to be quoted from this play is the exclamation made by Banquo

to Macbeth, upon the vanishing of those beings at their first interview with them on the heath. In astonishment, he exclaims :

"The earth hath bubbles as the water has,

And these are of them: whither are they vanish'd?

"Macb. Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted As breath into the wind."

Nothing can surpass this for vividness and intensity of description. Had the poet himself witnessed the scene, he could have made no more of the event; and this is the prerogative of imagination, to "give to airy nothing a local habitation"an absolute identity.

It has been objected to the incantation scenes in Macbeth, that the subjects and language in them are revolting. They are so; nothing, however, can be more irrational than to take exception against them on that score. The witches are an impersonation of those qualities which are antagonist to all that is gentle, and lovely, and peaceful, and good. They are loathsome abstractions of the "evil principle," and are the precursors, as well as providers of all the stormy passions that shake this poor citadel of man. They represent the repulsive as well as the cruel propensities of our nature; every one, therefore, who is a slave to his lower passions, is spellbound by the "weird sisters ;" and this, I have little doubt, was the moral that Shakespeare intended to read to his brother mortals: for, we should bear in mind that Macbeth was, by nature, an honourable and even generous man; but as he was unable to withstand the impulse of an unworthy ambition, and could not resist the sneers of his uncompromising partner, he rushed into that bottomless hell of torment -a guilty and an upbraiding conscience. What can be more affecting than his self-reproaches after he has made his first step in the blood of a fellow-creature? That dreadful voice

ringing in his ears-"Still it cried, Sleep no more! to all the house." His piteous anguish to his help-meet in crime— "Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!" Then his envy of his victims:

"Duncan is in his grave;

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

And next, his bitter regret for his lost good name, and its attendant peace of mind :—

"I have liv'd long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

And lastly, as the climax of horror, when he has become stupefied with the pressure of remorse, calamity, and despair, he enquires "What is that cry?" and adds:

"I have almost forgot the taste of fears:

The time has been, my senses would have cool'd

To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair

Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir

As life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors:
Direness familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me."

A more terrific picture of a mind recoiling on itself, and effecting its own retribution, who shall quote? Oh, let the over-zealous purist, when he proceeds to question the morality of Shakespeare, turn to and reflect upon the homily he has preached against cupidity, injustice, and cruelty, in the most unhappy career of Macbeth.