The Electra of Sophocles comes nearer to Lady Macbeth as a poetical conception, with this strong distinction, that she commands more respect and esteem, and less sympathy. The murder in which she participates is ordained by the oracle--is an act of justice, and therefore less a murder than a sacrifice. Electra is drawn with magnificent simplicity and intensity of feeling and purpose, but there is a want of light, and shade, and relief. Thus the scene in which Orestes stabs his mother within her chamber, and she is heard pleading for mercy, while Electra stands forward listening exultingly to her mother's cries, and urging her brother to strike again, "another blow! another!" &c. is terribly fine, but the horror is too shocking, too _physical_--if I may use such an expression: it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions--the irresolution of Macbeth, the bold determination of his wife, the deep suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within, and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to the fancy, even when not visible on the scene--throw a rich coloring of poetry over the whole, which does not take from "the present horror of the time," and yet relieves it. Shakspeare's blackest shadows are like those of Rembrandt; so intense, that the gloom which brooded over Egypt in her day of wrath was pale in comparison--yet so transparent that we seem to see the light of heaven through their depth. In the whole compass of dramatic poetry, there is but one female character which can be placed near that of Lady Macbeth; the MEDEA. Not the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy,[121] nor the Medea in a hoop petticoat of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea,--the Medea of Euripides.[122] There is something in the _Medea_ which seizes irresistibly on the imagination. Her passionate devotion to Jason, for whom she had left her parents and country--to whom she had given all, and Would have drawn the spirit from her breast Had he but asked it, sighing forth her soul Into his bosom;[123]