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defpondency of repentance. In Macbeth, the amiable and congenial fentiments of humanity and compaffion, a sense of duty, and a regard to the opinions of mankind contended with ambition. Their efforts were ineffectual, but their principles were not extinguished. Formerly, they warned and intreated; but, when the deed is perpetrated, and no adverfary is opposed to them, they return with violence, they accufe and condemn. Macbeth, alarmed by his feelings, now operating without controul, reflects with aftonishment on his conduct; and his foul, darkened with horror, fhudders and is confounded at the atrocity of his guilt. He feels himself the object of univerfal hatred and indignation. Religious fentiments, formerly weak and difregarded, are animated by his confufion; and, borrowing their complexion from his present temper, they terrify and overwhelm him. Amazed at the atrocity of his own pro

ceedings,

ceedings, confcious of perfidy and injuftice, and of the refentment they will excite; apprehenfive, that both heaven and earth are stirred up against him, his fancy is haunted with tremenduous images, and his foul diftracted with remorfe and terror.

I have done the deed :-Did'ft thou not hear a noife? There's one did laugh in his fleep, and one cried, Murther!

That they did wake each other; I ftood and heard them.

One cried, God bless us! and, Amen! the other;
As they had feen me with these hangman's hands
Liftening their fear, I could not say, Amen,
When they did fay, God bless us.

But wherefore could not I pronounce, Amen?
I had moft need of bleffing, and Amen
Stuck in my throat.-

Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep.

Still it cry'd, Sleep no more! to all the house;
Glamis bath murder'd fleep; and therefore Cawdor
Shall fleep no more, Macbeth fhall fleep no more.

Macbeth, elevated with high and aspiring wishes, dazzled with the glare of royalty,

E 4

royalty, and inftigated by keen ambition, cherisheth opinions bordering on impiety; and, thoughts of retribution in a future ftate of exiftence feeming to affect him flightly, he would "jump the life to come." But, having perpetrated the bloody deed, every noise appals him ; and, when others prefer their orisons to heaven, he cannot fay Amen.

If impelled by irregular and headftrong paffions, we not only tranfgrefs the limits of rectitude, but are guilty of heinous acts of oppreffion and violence, reflecting on the fentiments of mankind, and measuring them by our own, we imagine ourselves no lefs abhorred by the fpectator, than by the fufferer. Confcious of our crimes, and apprehenfive of the resentment and indignation they have neceffarily excited, we dread the punishment they deferve, and endeavour to avoid it. By fufpicion and distrust, the neceffary offspring of treachery, the

foul

foul is for ever tormented. Perfidious ourselves, we repofe no confidence in mankind, and are incapable of friendfhip. We are particularly fearful of all those to whom eminent virtue and integrity have given a strong fenfe of injuftice, and to whom wisdom and intrepidity have given power to punish. Prompted by our fears, we hate every amiable and exalted character, we wage war with the virtuous, and endeavour, by their deftruction, to prevent our own. So tyrannical is the dominion of vice, that it compels us to hate what nature, having ordained for our benefit, has rendered lovely, and recommended to our efteem.

To be thus, is nothing,

But to be fafely thus :-Our fears in Banquo

Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature

Reigns that, which would be fear'd. 'Tis much he

dares,

And, to that dauntlefs temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To

To act in fafety. There is none but he,
Whose being I do fear: and under him
My genius is rebuk'd.

Whoever poffeffes high ideas of the rights of mankind, of the sanctity of friendship, and of the duty we owe to legal authority; whoever with these poffeffes a heart fufceptible of tenderness and of compaffion, will have a higher sense of injury and injuftice than men of colder complexions, and less ftrongly impressed with the importance of focial duties. Therefore, if a man of uncommon fenfibility, adorned with amiable and beneficent difpofitions, mifled by fome pernicious appetite, commits acts of cruelty and oppreffion, he will be more apt, by reflecting on his own conduct, to conceive the resentment and indignation it excites, than men of a different temper. Reflecting on the compaffion and refentment that would have arifen in his own mind, on the view of crimes fimilar to thofe

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