and was beloved wherever she went; so sensitive, so sympathising, so sedulous, so studious of the wants of those by whom she was surrounded, so disinterestedly patient; she had but one peculiarity to distinguish her from an angel of light--it was an unfortunate propensity to poison people! We read in the _Causes Célèbres_, of a Bluebeard who slew a succession of wives by tickling them till they died in convulsions; and at once we are reminded of that populace who are said to partake of the natures of the ape and the tiger. The people who, for more centuries than are included in the events of European history, have been resolved into the mysterious classification of castes, produced those equally mysterious criminals the Thugs, for whose deeds our so utterly different habits and ideas are quite incapable of finding or conceiving a motive. Our own country produced the assassinations of Rizzio, Regent Murray, and Archbishop Sharpe--all pregnant with marked national characteristics; aristocratic pride, revenge of wrong, and fanatical fury. We propose to offer for the amusement or instruction--which he pleases--of our reader, a few more records of Scottish crimes, not probably all so conspicuously known to the general reader as the three we have just alluded to, yet not, we trust, without something to commend them to notice, as characteristic of the country and the age in which they were respectively enacted. The raw materials from which we propose to work out our little groups, are the records of our criminal trials; and yet we feel an insuperable inclination to begin with a name not certainly unknown, yet not to be found in the proceedings of the Court of Justiciary--Macbeth, King of Scotland. Perhaps we might consider it a sufficient reason for holding his case equivalent to a trial, that before a tribunal called the Public Opinion, he has been tried, and that at the instance of such a public prosecutor as never opened his lips in any court of law--one whose accusation has carried a conviction deep into the very heart of literature, whence no archæological evidence, and no critical pleading will ever eradicate it. Nor would we desire to touch it: let Macbeth the murderer remain to all time the most powerful picture of temptation, leading its victim through crime into the hideous shadows of remorse, that human pen has ever drawn. But there was an actual prose Macbeth, as different from the ideal as the canvass bought by Raphael of some respectable dealer in the soft line, was from the Transfiguration which he afterwards painted on it. With _him_, being but a simple historical king, we may take liberties; and the liberty we propose to take on the present occasion is that of vindicating his character. Vindications are fashionable; and since Catiline and Machiavelli, Richard III., and Philip II. have been vindicated, why not Macbeth? We shall say 'tis our humour to whiten him, and no man can say it is a criminal or mischievous one.