“And that which should accompany old age, As _honor, love, obedience, troops of friends_, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.” Always the world bounds his hopes and his fears. The original viciousness of his nature is also betrayed by the readiness with which, once embarked in the career of crime, he plunges in headlong. The very morning of the murder of the king, he stabs in their sleep the two grooms of the chamber, then Banquo and Fleance (which latter escapes by chance.) He rushes on from murder to murder with the rabid fury of a hound maddened with the taste of blood. He adopts the direst principles of action, _Mac._ “From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand.” Surprises the castle of Macduff, and massacres his wife, his babes, “And all the unfortunate souls That trace him in his line.” That Shakspeare meant to draw, in this remarkable portraiture, a worldly character unsupported by _religion_, is evident from the _tone of piety_ which runs through the other characters. The gentlewoman’s “Heaven knows what she has known,” and her “pray God it be well.” The doctor’s “God, God forgive us all!” Macduff’s “Did Heaven look on And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls: Heaven rest them now.” This is the oft repeated apprehension of a pious heart which fears still its own weakness, and finds, in the inscrutable and most awful visitatings of God a merited blow—a chastener of its still corrupt desires—a lesson to unlink it yet more from its grasp on mortality. Immediately again Macduff prays to heaven—and in the same page Malcolm says: “Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the _powers above_ Put on their instruments.” Another instance of the pure christian piety with which the poet invests his good characters, and of which he deprives his bad ones, telling strongly for Dr. Ulrici’s theory, occurs in the third scene of the fourth act, where Malcolm, the heir to the throne, in order to try Macduff, represents himself as being full of vices. Macduff replies, “Thy Royal Father Was a most _sainted King_; the Queen, that bore thee,— _Oftener upon her knees than on her feet_.” In his answer, Malcolm uses the expression, full of pious reverence: “But _God above_ Deal between thee and me,” &c. And still another, the morning after the murder, when Macduff says: “In the _great hand of God I stand_,” &c. ----- [4] _Vide a future_ ¶. * * * * * THE DAUGHTERS OF DR. BYLES. A SKETCH OF REALITY. BY MISS LESLIE.