windows know not what they see--the body reels, lapses, sinks, and at full length smites the floor. SEWARD. Well said--Chairman of the Quarter-sessions. BULLER. Nor, with all submission, my dear Sir, can I think you treat your favourite murderess, on this trying occasion, with your usual fairness and candour. All she says, is, "Help me hence, ho!" Macduff says, "Look to the Lady"--and Banquo says, "Look to the Lady"--and she is "carried off." Some critic or other--I think Malone--says that Macbeth shows he knows "'tis a feint" by not going to her assistance. Perhaps he was mistaken--know it he could not. And nothing more likely to make a woman faint than that revelling and wallowing of his in that bloody description. NORTH. By the Casting Vote of the President--_Feint_. TALBOYS. Let's to Lunch. NORTH. Go. You will find me sitting here when you come back. SCENE II. SCENE--_The Pavilion._ TIME--_after Lunch_. NORTH--TALBOYS--BULLER--SEWARD. NORTH. Claudius, the Uncle-king in Hamlet, is perhaps the most odious character in all Shakspeare. But he does no unnecessary murders. He has killed the Father, and will the Son, all in regular order. But Macbeth plunges himself, like a drunken man, into unnecessary and injurious cruelties. He throws like a reckless gamester. If I am to own the truth, I don't know why he is so cruel. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero-- BULLER. What do we know of Nero? Was he mad? NORTH. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero; but he seems to be under some infatuation that drags or drives him along. To kill is, in every difficulty, the ready resource that occurs to him--as if to go on murdering were, by some law of the Universe, the penalty which you must pay for having once murdered. SEWARD. I think, Sir, that without contradicting anything we said before Lunch about his Lordship or his Kingship, we may conceive in the natural Macbeth considerable force of Moral Intuition. NORTH. We may. SEWARD. Of Moral Intelligence? NORTH. Yes. SEWARD. Of Moral Obedience? NORTH. No. SEWARD. Moral Intuition, and Moral Intelligence breaking out, from time to time, all through--we understand how there is engendered in him strong self-dissatisfaction--thence perpetual goadings on--and desperate attempts to lose conscience in more and more crime. NORTH. Ay--Seward--even so. He tells you that he stakes soul and body upon the throw for a Crown. He has got the Crown--and _paid for it_. He _must_ keep it--else he has bartered soul and body--for nothing! To make his first crime _good_--he strides gigantically along the road of which it opened the gate. TALBOYS.