Here, then, we have successful guilt. Painted by a historian, perhaps she might have excited the envy of the lowly. We should have seen her surrounded by splendor and luxury. The glittering crown upon her brow—a circle of courtiers bending around her—as she presided at state councils or gay banquets. The historian would have shown her situation, and we might have exclaimed, “see how guilt triumphs.” But Shakspeare gives us a view into her heart—her secret thoughts—her midnight dreams. If any thing could heighten the picture as he had previously drawn it, it would be these few words, “_Here’s the smell of the blood still._” The _smell_ of the blood! How deeply imbued is her imagination with the ideal! The heart sickens at it. Great as has been the crime, we are compelled to acknowledge that the poet has at a glimpse shown us the process of a penalty as great, and, with a sweetness of art peculiar to him and nature, has mingled, with our abhorrence which would be too violent by itself, a certain touch of sympathy and when that beautiful and heart-rending exclamation falls with almost the last life-drops from her utterly subdued and crushed heart— All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh! We pity and utter a prayer for mercy which the guilty lips of the sufferer dare not form themselves. The remark of the gentlewoman is as applicable to _a class_ of characters as that of Lady Macbeth. I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body. This is the voice of innocence—lowly, self-congratulating innocence. The humble dependant of the royal household is made to feel the immeasurable advantage a peaceful conscience affords over all the passing and hollow gauds of the world. She sees what a mockery are rank, wealth, power, fame—when bought by the sacrifice of that greatest of all treasures—a quiet heart. She will go gladly, after this—that honest lady, on her obscure path, turning to her God with a deeper reverence and love. She will pour out her heart to him in gratitude that she has escaped the temptations of life thus far, and humbly implored him to watch continually over her steps, to strengthen her good resolutions, to teach her to subdue her passions, and to lead her safely through the pit-falls of her mortal pilgrimage. It seems almost impossible to carry the scene farther, but the poet does so. The mind of the reader, stretched to a too strong tension, is relieved by the few, broken yet calm expressions of the two watchers whose health and hearts’ ease also afford a contrast which sets off more strikingly the state of the wretched lady thus floating by us like a rudderless wreck sweeping onward with a resistless current to the brink of some vast cataract or yawning and unfathomless Maelstrom.