receiving with great modesty; and professing still greater devotedness to his king.

Your highness' part

Is to receive our duties; and our duties

Are to your throne and state, children and servants;
Which do but what they should, by doing every thing
Safe towards your love and honor.

Nor is it in public stations alone, that the social virtues of this man are seen. His wife, who is his bosom friend, and is represented as possessing remarkable discernment and energy of character, draws his portrait, in lovely colors, which are stronger because she seems to blame them.

Yet I do fear thy nature,

It is too full of the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way; thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,
That thou wouldst holily; wouldst not play false
And yet wouldst wrongly win.

It is evident, if such a man becomes abandoned, it must be through the influence of some strong temptation, addressed to some evil principle dormant in his heart, which may be the root alike of virtues or vices, as the occasion may be.

Accordingly, Macbeth is tempted by the powers of hell, and by his wife; and both of them, with great

art, suit their suggestions to the weak side of his character. The witches meet him on a blasted heath with predictions, which set before him his future honors without suggesting the means by which they should be obtained. This temptation is managed with great art, inasmuch as it involves one prediction which is immediately to be fulfilled; and that, too, without any crime or agency on the part of Macbeth. He becomes Thane of Cawdor without any guilt; and thus a possible door of hope is left open that he may reach the crown without soiling his hands in blood. But the case is doubtful; the king has sons,—is yet alive,—and a crown is a prize, which is seldom innocently obtained, except by the lawful heir. Macbeth is thrown into deep musings; and, though he does not resolve to commit a crime, he makes no resolution against it. The idea of murder crosses his mind; he is agitated; and these are no good symptoms.

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? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings;

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is

But what is not.

The last thought is most beautifully expressed; though the poet has pushed the energy of language

to its utmost limits. He means to say,-I am so lost in those ideal visions; the future honors of a kingdom have so absorbed my mind; that my imaginations have become realities, and my real state is nothing. Such was the strong desire of this ambitious heart to attain its end.

Now it may be laid down as a maxim, that, when some great prize is before us to be obtained by doubtful means, and we shuffle out of sight the means and think only of the end,-we are in a most dangerous state. The mind, whatever palliations it may offer to itself, is beginning to incline the wrong way. We are in the exact situation of our first parents, when they gazed at the forbidden fruit and forgot the command of God.

Thus far Shakspeare appears as a moralist. But he now rises almost to the standing of a theologian; and his instructions assume the awful solemnity which is found only in the Bible. One would hardly believe it possible, that such principles of the closest religion would be introduced on the stage with so little appearance of departing from the histrionic path. We have always been told by the teachers of religion, that the law of God,-a sacred regard to his authority, -is the only principle that can carry us through the crossing interests, which meet us in the shock of life. The virtue, which is based on interest, will vary as that interest varies; and the man, who loves the praise of men more than the praise of God, will act

only as his fellow creatures applaud or condemn. He will regard the outside of his character more than the state of his heart; and his seeming goodness is only ambition in a moral dress. Such characters abound in the world; such virtues deceive innumerable hearts. Human nature has often the sweetest flowers spread over its depravity, and, what is wonderful, these very posies are nourished by vice. Hence we find the man changes with circumstances. He is the same idolater, but he changes the image which is the object of worship; and it is useful, to tell the young and thoughtless, that that virtue which has no hold on futurity and no reference to God, is sure in time, to fall from its foundation. Christianity is a new passion; and it enables us to overcome the temptations of life, because we love something better. perfectly philosophic; the mind is like balances; and, if the temptations of life are powerful weights in one scale, they can only be overcome by a more powerful weight in the other,-supreme love to God.

This is

Shakspeare has introduced Macbeth, in a soliloquy, in which the contending principles are at war in his heart. Behold a most interesting spectacle! Behold a sinner pausing on the brink of his crimes! It is an awful moment. What will be the result? Will the better principle prevail? Will his good Angel come down to drive away the suggestions, and break the passions, which impel him to crime? No; the battle is decided before it is begun. He is careful to inform

us that he lays religious principle out of the question ; and such a man must fall. He is like a besieged city with batteries thundering at every'gate, and provisions and powder exhausted. That man is sure to yield to temptation, who jumps the life to come.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly; if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease, success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,—
But hereupon this bank and shoal of time—
WE'D JUMP THE LIFE TO COME.

Such was the theology of Shakspeare; he had no system, but it was forced upon him by his rapid and intuitive knowledge of the human heart. Though Macbeth is conscious that life is but a bank and shoal, he is willing to give up every principle for its transient and perishing rewards. Who now will say that a man's religious faith does not have some control over his actions? Believe it, ye licentious, on the authority of Shakspeare. Real faith is a mental view; and our mental views govern us. A man, who has eyes, is influenced in his walk, by the prospect before him; and, in moral things, that prospect is future truth.

But it seems that one lucid interval returns; Macbeth resolves not to commit the crime, and this resolution is grounded, not on religious principle, but on some compunctious visitings of nature. Even the good purposes that cross his mind rest upon no solid