_Enter Lady Macbeth._ _Duncan._ See, see! our honor’d hostess! The love that follows us, sometime is our trouble, Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you, How you shall bid God yield us for your pains, And thank us for your trouble. _Lady._ All our service, In every point twice done, and then done double, Were poor and single business, to contend, Against those honors, deep and broad, wherewith Your majesty loads our house: for those of old, And the late dignities heap’d up to them, We rest your hermits. _Dun._ Where’s the Thane of Cawdor? We cours’d him at the heels, and had a purpose To be his purveyor: _but he rides well_; And his _great love_, sharp as his spur, hath holp him To his home before us: _fair and noble hostess_, We are your guest to night. _Lady._ Your servants ever Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt, To make their audit at your highness’ pleasure, Still to return your own. _Dun._ Give me your hand: Conduct me to mine host; _we love him highly_, And shall continue our graces towards him. By your leave, hostess. When I read the sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth, I think that the most perfect piece of writing ever seen in profane literature. When I fall upon the above, it appears to me that is the most delicate and exquisite in the whole range of our author’s works. Is it possible that the same tremendous hand which painted the royal tigress, at length cowed by the aspect of another world, has drawn, with a pencil of air, this lovely and inexpressibly soft scene, where the perfume of a balmy atmosphere is fresh and soothing on your forehead, and in your nostril, and where the eye as well as the smell and ear (for I can hear the breeze murmur among the green branches, and the screams of joy uttered by those temple-haunting birds as they chase each other down the air,) is filled with delight. What a warm and living picture it is, with the fewest possible words! An old castle pleasantly situated—its massive turrets look down over a peaceful, rural scene, the pure-scented air recommending itself sweetly and nimbly to our gentle senses! Who that has spent six or eight hours of the early morning at a sedentary occupation, in a room, till the senses were wearied and the limbs ached with sitting—and the lungs played languishingly and the blood moved sluggishly—and the pulse beat feebly with exhaustion—who has not, on going forth, felt this soothing sensation, as some pleasant landscape spread its tranquil and soft-colored beauties before his eye, some picturesque building broke the sameness of the picture by its bold outlines in the foreground, the ever happy birds darting about the house eaves—and the life-breathing, cool, odorous air filling his veins with sweet impulses, stirring all that is agreeable in his heart, cooling the