This he expresses boldly-"But let both worlds disjoint and all things suffer, ere we will eat our meat in fear." Further than this the pestilence of selfishness could not spread its infection. Lady Macbeth is here beginning to lose her influence. She does not share all her husband's thoughts. When moody, he retires from her, finding possibly that her beauty brought him no comfort. There existed a consciousness between them which acted like the contrary of attraction. They read the record of their guilt in each other's faces. The last scene but one in which Lady Macbeth appears to us in person is at the banquet, where she is surrounded by lords and thanes, but has no female companion or attendant. Are we from this to understand that she scorned the society of women-that ambition had so far unsexed her that she had no relish for anything but politics and intrigues of state? Nowhere, however, does she show to greater advantage than at this banquet. She beholds her husband disturbed by supernatural agencies; but her spirit never quails for an instant. Nothing daunts her. When the whole court is disturbed by the king's vagaries-when suspicion and fear look through every man's eyes-when she hears Macbeth holding discourse with an invisible substance-she preserves the unshaken serenity of her mind, and the ruby on her cheek is never blanched for an instant. She exhibits the ne plus ultra of self-possession the proud dignity which springs not from place, or birth, or station, but from the individual character. She was born to rule, because superior to all around her; though crime had cast a blot on her 'scutcheon. When the guests retire, we expect to hear her chide Macbeth, but pity for his infirmities subdues her anger, and she only bids him go sleep and forget it. I may here remark that, with all Shakspeare's genius, he fails to impart life to the courtiers of Macbeth, who in this scene appear like so many automatons. The king and his wife fill the scene, as it were, and throw every one who approaches them into shadow. The effect might have been more powerful had the reality of a banquet been presented to our minds. Before the murder and the spectre come in to scare away festivity, the guests seem almost deprived of the power of speech, and do not even whisper aside to each other. Some critics may defend this, or even discover perfection in it, but to me it appears a defect. Our imagination is now left to conjecture how it was with Lady Macbeth, what she thought, what she suffered, what she feared in time and in eternity, before her mind became completely unhinged under the dread visitation of insanity. We behold her no more on the stage as a woman; for when she appears in her night-clothes, washing the imaginary stains of blood from her hands, or bearing the taper which her senses needed not, she is little better than a corpse endued with the power of utterance. "Doctor.-I have two nights watched with When was it she last walked ? you, but can perceive no truth in your report. "Gentlewoman.-Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, and afterwards seal it, and again return to bed: yet all this while in a most fast sleep. receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the "Doctor. A great perturbation in nature! to effects of watching.-In this slumbrous agitation, besides her walking, and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say? "Gentlewoman.-That, sir, which I will not report after her. "Doctor.-You may, to me; and 'tis most fit should. you "Gentlewoman.-Neither to you, nor any one; having no witness to confirm my speech. "Enter LADY MACBETH, with a taper. Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close. "Doctor.-How came she by that light? "Gentlewoman.-Why, it stood by her; she has light by her continually; 'tis her command. "Doctor.-You see, her eyes are open. "Gentlewoman.-Ay, but their sense is shut. "Doctor.-What is it she does now? how she rubs her hands. Look "Gentlewoman.-It is an accustomed action known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. with her, to seem thus washing her hands; I have 66 Lady M.-Yet here's a spot. "Doctor.--Hark, she speaks: I will set down what comes from her to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. “Lady M.—Out, damned spot! out, I say!One; two; why, then 'tis time to do 't-Hell is murky!-Fy, my lord, fy! a soldier and afear'd? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?-Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? "Doctor.-Do you mark that? hand. Oh! oh! oh! "Doctor.--What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged. "Gentlewoman.--I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body. "Doctor.-Well, well, well "Gentlewoman.-'Pray God it be, sir. "Doctor. This disease is beyond my practice: Yet I have known those who have walked in their sleep, who have died holily in their beds. "Lady M.-Wash your hands, put on your night-gown look not so pale:-I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave. Doctor.--Even so ? Lady M.-To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the door. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand: What's done, cannot be undone : To bed, to bed, to bed. (Exit Lady M.) 'Doctor.-Foul whisperings are abroad: Unnatural deeds 66 Do breed unnatural troubles: Infected minds "Gentlewoman.--Good night, good doctor. This whole scene is full of extraordinary suggestions. When Macbeth, engaged in preparations for civil strife, had ceased to be constantly by her side, her power of self-dependence would seem to have broken down immediately. She could not sleep without a light in her bedroom, and the overwrought mind put the body in motion even after the senses had yielded to the ordinary influence of sleep. I have known of a similar case, in which a lady, who had contributed to her husband's death, could never sleep without persons in the room with her. She had consequently a relay of maids, who, when her husband was away, sat up in turn at her bed-side, and these she would often terrify by waking suddenly with sharp screams, and in convulsive muscular agony. Her seducer, with whom she lived, died before her, and the interval between his death and her own was one terrific display of the power of conscience. When Macbeth is hemmed round by enemies in his castle of Dunsinane, he is startled by a cry of women from the inner chambers. He inquires what it signifies, and is told the queen is dead; upon which, with affected "Wherefore was that cry? Seyton.-The queen, my lord, is dead." "Macbeth.-She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word.-To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in his petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." Afterwards, through the intervention of Malcolm, Shakspeare insinuates that Lady Macbeth had laid violent hands on herself, and was her own executioner. Thus this impetuous and fiery spirit, once so full of hope and ambition, degenerates, under the corroding influence of remorse, into a species of idiocy, and is ultimately quenched in suicide. -an instructive, but appalling lesson! Throughout this play, more, perhaps, than in any other, not excepting even "Hamlet," we obtain glimpses of a philosophy which, on some future occasion, I may develop. An idea which forms one link in the chain occurs in Banquo's speech to Fleance :- Banquo.-Hold, take my sword. - There's Their candles are all out.-Take thee that too. husbandry in heaven, [Giving his dagger. A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers! Restrain me in the cursed thoughts that nature Gives way to in repose!-Give me my sword!" Steevens has a note on the passage which indicates a finer perception than he usually displays, though he does not seem to have observed all that Shakspeare intends to express. Banquo says he is afraid to sleep, because in that state he has to struggle with those tempters of the night, mentioned again in "Cymbeline," which prompt him to murders, such, perhaps, as that of Duncan and Macbeth. These are the evil spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, and are gifted with the power to try men sleeping or waking, though they succeed only with those who wilfully entertain their suggestions. Milton represents Satan at the ear of Eve pouring disturbing dreams into her soul, and Shak- | impartial rays over palace and hovel, on the speare would seem to insinuate that the same pure spring and on the fetid pool, and conevil intelligences which assumed the shape of tract no pollution by the process; and he weird sisters on the blasted heath came in-endeavored to make his fancy imitate the visibly to Banquo in his sleep to excite him to crime. This leads me to make, ere I conclude, another observation. All readers must have felt, that one of the most peculiar and powerful charms of Shakspeare's poetry lies in the communication which his soul appears to be carrying on before us with the invisible world. No other writer, if we except, perhaps, Plato, scems to be so completely imbued with spirituality. He threw up the pinnacles of the material universe, till they touched the spiritual, and effected, as it were, a mingling of the two worlds. His imagery appears often to be bathed in supernatural light, and to glitter with the dew of heaven. Even natural agencies assume, at his bidding, metaphysical qualities, and claim affinity with celestial things. Nor is there in this any inconsistency with what we find elsewhere in his writings, where he throws the splendor of his genius over gross and offensive images, which, in themselves, would be revolting. In him they seem to be introduced, because they are in nature; and because he thought it perhaps no sin to speak of anything which God has made. He saw the sun shine with Titan, and range over the whole face of earth and society, without succumbing to the evil influences of either. No man's writings make us so completely feel, that the little circle in which we move in this world, is encompassed by another, invisible but not unfelt. With him, we occasionally walk out of reality into this sphere of dreams and visions, spectres and apparitions, and all that spiritual machinery by which the thoughts of some men are moulded, as it were, into greatness, and impressed with the image and superscription of God. I find, consequently, more religion in him than in a thousand homilies. His spirit, every now and then, treads the empyrean, whither also those who habitually converse with him must ascend. His mind was as limitless as the universe. He knew not what he believed, because he knew not what was possible, but had a faith as boundless as omnipotence. He felt that, in this only, it is given to man to equal his Creator, in that he can believe whatever he can do. This divine principle accordingly pervades the whole works of Shakspeare, who, of all men, past or present, is perhaps the furthest from a skeptic. PROCRASTINATION. IF Fortune, with a smiling face, Strew roses in our way, BY CHARLES MACKAY. When shall we stoop to pick them up? But should she frown with face of care, When shall we grieve, if grieve we must? If those who've wronged us own their faults, When shall we listen and forgive? But if stern Justice urge rebuke, And warmth from memory borrow, When shall we chide, if chide we dare? If those to whom we owe a debt Are harmed unless we pay, When shall we struggle to be just? To-day, my love, to-day. But if our debtors sue for grace, If Love, estranged, should once again But if she would indulge regret, Or dwell with by-gone sorrow, For virtuous acts and harmless joys But care, resentment, angry words, From the North British Review. MEMOIRS OF CASTLEREAGH. Memoirs and Correspondence of Viscount Castlereagh, second Marquess of Londonderry. Edited by his brother, CHARLES VANE, Marquess of Londonderry, G.C.B., &c. London: 1848. THE present circumstances of Ireland have attracted our attention to the documents contained in the "Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh." The amount of positive information, in any true sense new to the public, is far less than we had anticipated. Much, however, that had been floating about unfixed is here authenticated or disproved. A good deal that had been misrepresented is corrected, or the means of correction supplied. The activity of those who war against the established institutions of society is sustained by an untiring impulse. Those who are satisfied with things as they are, or contemplate improvements in institutions chiefly as the result of the improvement of those by whom they are administered, are impatient of the dogmatic and disputative spirit when it is disposed to disturb our enjoyments by vindications which, however well-meant, we feel to be unnecessary and intrusive--and thus the voice of assailants will for a while win an undeserved triumph. The character of Lord Castlereagh has suffered more from these causes than that of any other public man of our times. The object of Lord Londonderry's publication is, by such documents as he possesses illustrative of Lord Castlereagh's official life, to place his brother's character in a true light. The history of the earliest period of Castlereagh's life was more frequently brought before the public in accounts of the Irish Rebellion by the families of the defeated party than in any other way, and their language was naturally colored by their feelings. When Lord Castlereagh was taunted in 1817 as the perpetrator of savage cruelties, in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, cruelties utterly alien to his nature, and which in point of actual fact, he was the chief person to terminate, Mr. Canning indignantly asked, "If the Legis lature has consented to bury in darkness the crimes of rebellion, is it too much that rebels, after twenty years, should forgive the crime of being forgiven?" Without imputing to Tone, and M'Nevin, and such writers, any desire to falsify the real facts of the case, and while forming our notion of the scenes in which, very much from their own accounts, it is plain that they had not the means of knowledge which would enable them to represent truly either the motives or the acts of the Government. Of the crimes of the leaders of the Irish insurrections of 1798 and 1803, we think it impossible to form an exaggerated estimate, as whatever be the real or supposed wrongs which armed resistance would redress, no wrong can be so great-no evil so hopelessly intolerable, as the disturbance of the settled order of society. A nation must be all but unanimous to justify Revolution. The strong opposition with which the measure of a legislative union with Great Britain was regarded at the time by the weaker island, and the continued agitation for its repeal, kept alive a feeling of resentment against the chief instruments in carrying it out, and to this we owe the remarkable fact, that to this hour it is difficult to form any distinct notion of the character of Lord Castlereagh or Lord Clare. If the family of Lord Clare possess the means of bringing the history of that remarkable man before the public, or if even the few fugitive pamphlets in which his speeches, during the period in which he swayed the destinies of Ireland, were printed, could be collected and published with such notes as, after an interval of fifty years, are necessary to render them fully intelligible, something would be done for the history of the country that in a few years will be impossible. Mr. Wills in his Lives of ter. derry when he undertook this voluminous compilation, which, if continued on anything like the scale on which it has been commenced, must, we should think, reach some twentyfive or thirty volumes. Four are devoted to the time of his brother's Irish Secretaryship; the two first of which (the Part now published) relate to the years 1798 and 1799. The work opens with a biographical memoir. We omit the links which connect the Londonderry Stewarts with the kings of Scotland, and descend at once from the heights on which Lord Londonderry would the county of Down in the Irish Parliament, and who was the first Marquess of Londonderry. Robert was twice married; first to Frances, second daughter of Lord Hertford ; of this marriage Lord Castlereagh was the only surviving issue. His second wife, sister of Lord Camden, was the mother of our author. Distinguished Irishmen-Mr. Grattan in the Memoirs of his father-Mr. Madden in his Life of Emmet-and the author of "The Gallery of Illustrious Irishmen," in the Dublin University Magazine, have each preserved many traits of the Irish Chancellor's characBut what we want and wish are his own speeches and letters-anything actually and entirely his own. Differing with him in many things-agreeing with him perhaps in nothing, we feel in all that we have seen of him the stamp of indomitable power-a man whose image should not be lost. With respect to Lord Castlereagh, it is to be regret-place us to Robert Stewart who represented ted that the delay of bringing his biography before the public has occasioned irreparable loss. Lord Londonderry, who himself writes a memoir of his brother prefixed to these volumes, tells us, that after a communication with Sir Walter Scott, whom he wished to engage in the task, a series of private letters, extending over twenty-five years, was confided to the care of the late Dr. Turner, bishop of Calcutta. The vessel that sailed for India with the bishop's effects was lost,and in it the letters of Lord Castlereagh, and, we presume, other materials collected to illustrate his life. His official correspondence was scarcely more fortunate. The executors of Lord Castlereagh (we call him throughout by the name by which he will be remembered in history) thought the papers might be public property, and claimed as such by the Government. For the purpose of releasing themselves from responsibility, they placed them under the control of the Court of Chancery, from which, after long delays, and what Lord Londonderry describes as "the highly honorable and straightforward conduct of Lord Palmerston," a great mass of papers, public and private, were delivered to him. On examination of the documents," he adds, “I regret to say that I discovered many chasms and losses." In short, anything that any one for any purpose might wish concealed, is not to be found in the volumes now before us. We do not believe that a single new fact, with reference to any one concerned either in the suppression of the rebellion or the furtherance of the legislative union, is communicated. There is nothing that throws any light on the secret history of either. The correspondence is the correspondence of the Irish secretary's office, after every document of any peculiar interest has been withdrawn. Many of the letters cannot even be regarded as the letters of the persons whose names are officially attached to them. The passion of authorship must have been strong with Lord London Robert, our hero, was born in 1769. He received his early education at Armagh; and, at seventeen, was entered of St. John's College, Cambridge. He appears to have remained there but a year, or a year and a half. His tutor, writing to Lord Londonderry in 1840, describes him as remarkably successful in his college examinations. At his third half-yearly examination, the last which he passed, "he was first in the first class." After leaving college, he made the Grand Tour; and on his return, commenced political life by a successful contest against the Downshire family for the representation of the county of Down. At the hustings he gave a pledge to support Reform. This was in 1790. When, in 1793, the Catholics were admitted to the elective franchise, he said, that he thought this a sufficient Reform. "For a few sessions he voted generally with the Opposition. However, the turbulent development of the state of Ireland rendered it necessary for him to come to more decided conclusions. Accordingly, when the system of strong measures was adopted by the Irish Administration, in order to silence rebellion by terror, or extinguish it by severity, we find Lord Castlereagh among the warmest of its supporters.”—Vol. i. p. 9. Lord Londonderry passes rapidly over his brother's public life in Ireland, leaving the documents given in his volumes to speak for themselves. When Lord Camden succeeded Earl Fitzwilliam as Viceroy, with Pelham as Chief Secretary, an incautious or intemperate speech of Pelham's in the House of Com |