lashes the husband into revolt against, and extermination of the murderer.

The other feature in Macduff's character that has been noticed, his honesty of speech,-shines conspicuously in the conference between himself and Malcolm, to whom he has fled in England, for the purpose of assisting him in his design to regain the crown of his inheritance. The whole management of this dialogue is eminent for the subtlety with which the dispositions of the two men are sustained. Malcolm is wary, and suspicious of his new adherent; and, in the sequel, gives good reason for being so. He says:

"What you have spoke, it may be so perchance; This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues, Was once thought honest; you have lov'd him well; He hath not touch'd you yet. I am young; but something

You may discern of him through me; and wisdom

To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb

To appease an angry god."

Macduff bluffly answers :—

"I am not treacherous.
"Mal.

But Macbeth is.

A good and virtuous nature may recoil

In an imperial charge. But, crave your pardon,
That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose:
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;
Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so."

Not only is Shakespeare the closest of all reasoners, but the web of his argument is always of a golden tissue.

The Prince next upbraids him with deserting his wife and child-"those precious motives, those strong knots of love" -without leave-taking; and he adds

"I pray you, let not my jealousies be your dishonours, But mine own safeties; you may be rightly just Whatever I shall think."

Macduff can bring no antidote to these surmises against himself; in accordance, therefore, with his impetuous nature he attempts no excuse, but cuts short the conference with

"Fare thee well, lord;

I would not be the villain that thou think'st
For the whole space that's in the tyrant's grasp,
And the rich East to boot."

Malcolm, still unsatisfied, and reasonably so, notwithstanding the other's asseveration, (for the greatest defaulters make the loudest protests,) adopts a third course to try the integrity of Macduff's nature, by taxing himself with vicious propensities. He describes himself as being lustful, avaricious, covetous of the wealth of others, quarrelsome, and treacherous. His object is to discover whether Macduff be a spy from the usurper, or, at best, a mere worldling, who had come over to the old legitimacy, knowing the instability of the new dynasty, and which he had hitherto served. With an excess of candour, therefore—and yet consistent with youth-after the detail of his own vices, he puts it to the new partisan whether it were patriotic and just to substitute one tyrant for another. "If such a one be fit to govern," he concludes, "speak: I am as I have spoken." Now the indignant honesty of Macduft bursts forth, and stands revealed.

"Fit to govern! No! not to live!

O Scotland, Scotland! O nation miserable!
With an untitled tyrant, bloody sceptred,

When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?

Since that the truest issue of thy throne

By his own interdiction stands accus'd,

And does blaspheme his breed.

Fare thee well:

These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself

Have banish'd me from Scotland. Oh, my breast,
Thy hope ends here."

This hearty and unequivocal declaration has blown from the firmament of the Prince's mind all clouds of doubt and suspicion. It is pleasant to contemplate the smile at heart with which he must recognise the success of his scheme; and his good fortune, too, in securing at least one true friend to his cause, in which that of his native land is involved. Malcolm's last speech comes upon us like the morning sun into one's room, after darkness and perplexing dreams. It is precisely the effusion which would afford relief to a young and generous nature, rendered prematurely distrustful by snare and stratagem. I scarcely could name a more cheering contrast than is presented to us in this scene, coming, as it does, against the previous reiterated stunnings of treachery, cruelty, and bloodguiltiness. The young Prince joyously exclaims:

"Macduff! this noble passion, child of integrity," &c. -Act iv., sc. 3.

Malcolm's diction is marked throughout by princely eloquence, and a beautiful moral rectitude. It is he who in the fourth scene of the play makes that fine speech, relating the death of the rebel chieftain, the thane of Cawdor. It concludes:

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it: he died
As one that had been studied in his death;
To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,
As 'twere a careless trifle."

Of the porter-scene in Macbeth's castle, writers have been at variance; some denouncing it utterly, and Coleridge going even so far as to assert that " unquestionably" it is not

Shakespeare's. With the full deferential feeling upon me in such a presence, I cannot but think that it is accurately the poet's manner. And not the less is it his, from its being so closely conjoined with the late scene of the assassination and terror; because such associations are constantly recognised in real life. The American editor, (Hudson,) in a masterly comment on this tragedy, gives full justification to the speech of the porter. He says: "This strain of droll broad humour oozing out, so to speak, amid a congregation of terrors, has always in our case deepened their effect; the strange, but momentary diversion causing them to return with the greater force."

It may be thought that I ought to include among the "subordinate characters" in this consummate romantic tragedy those awful anomalies, the Witches-agencies employed in this our Gothic Drama, as the Fates and the Furies were in the ancient Greek Drama; each impersonation being strictly in harmony with the faith, the spirit, and the design of both ages of the world-their history, poetry, and architecture. The witches of this drama, however, can scarcely be said to be (in the strict sense) "subordinate" members of the dramatis persona, seeing that, by their power and control, and by their influence, the poison of diabolism was infused into the mind of the hero. They are the prime movers of his whole future course of action, and by their will he is urged on with blind impulse and delusion to his eternal ruin. It may be well, however, upon this point to note again the consistency of moral action in the poet. Although he has made the witches to assume a supremacy over the mind of Macbeth, yet a careful reader of the play will, I think, perceive that they have only done this when they found that mind prepared to commit the crime of murder. He was an instrument of mischief ready made to their hands, and they turned it to full account, and with a double purpose. They stimulated him;

they "pricked the sides of his intent;" they prompted and confirmed him in his design upon the life of King Duncan; then they wound him in their devil's web, and finally sacrificed him. By this arrangement in the plot, the grandeur of the moral is enhanced. Had Macbeth been made the mere passive instrument of this principle of evil, without any power of self-control, he would have claimed no other feeling than that of sympathy and commiseration; and this was by no means the intention, or indeed the moral code of Shakespeare. The witches were supernatural and master-agents in the plot; but they were never intended to be the partners, still less the rivals of Omnipotence. We are to bear in mind that they addressed the two men at the same time-both ambitious men-and cast upon each the seeds of temptation. That one only was ensnared is a proof, I think, that Shakespeare meant to give due sway to the freedom of the will; and that the soil of Macbeth's mind was apt for maturing that seed. Also, that his after course of action was but the result of a foregone conclusion should appear from his sudden selfbetrayal, (as at an abrupt presentation of his own preconceived idea, when the witches first hailed him as king,) noted by Banquo's words:

"Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?"

And again, afterwards, by the rejoinder of his wife, when his mind for the moment misgives him, and he repents of his purpose:

"We will proceed no farther in this business.

He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions of men;"

and she retorts upon him,—

"What beast was 't, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?”