Remark here the people collected in a circle beneath the dark frowning battlements of the war-like castle now bathed in summer light, and in the natural ease and gentle satisfaction of their hearts discussing such beautiful trifles as, however graceful and soothing, the busy warriors of those rude times had but small time to occupy themselves with. Who are they? what are their fates? Alas they are but too striking types of their fellow creatures who in the midst of life are in death. Duncan’s hours are numbered. Beneath the walls of the castle which his aged eyes survey with such admiration—whose strong turrets and picturesque buttresses are now painted with the golden light of a calm summer afternoon—which he expects to enter to a banquet, and from which he intends to go forth in the morning with renewed hope and happiness—beneath those dire walls in a few hours is to take place a scene, the farthest possible removed from his suspicions, and he is to be called, like Hamlet, without any reckoning, into the presence of his God. Thus under the crushing and unpausing hand of Destiny the good and the bad go down alike in a world through which _he_ will pass most easily who builds his hopes elsewhere. Banquo too is a good man. You even perceive, in those few words, that he has a delicacy of nature which has perhaps preserved him pure from contaminating influences and illusive temptations. He too is marked, without demerit of his own, to go down beneath the wheels of the dreadful impending event. He too, in a few brief days, is doomed to be cut off—thrust headlong into eternity, while guilt remains unhurt and triumphs in the successful execution of all its plans. For Macduff—the pious—lion-hearted—affectionate Macduff, is prepared a fate, if possible, yet more awful. His castle—the scene of many a happy hour, many a fond and merry family sport, is about to be surprised. His wife, his babes “savagely slaughtered,” “wife, children, servants,” all that could be found, fiercely drawn down into the general ruin which the sinful heart of one man spreads around him. How truly is mortality painted in these events! How plainly we see what stuff life is made of! and how sternly are we taught the folly of supposing the end of man to be “here, on this bank and shoal of time.” Malcolm, Donalbain, Rosse, and Angus, driven from their country by terror of the bloody tyrant—(now the beloved and trusted of all)—and lastly Lenox, whom we find at a later period in attendance on Macbeth, and the witness of his bursts of guilty and ferocious desperation, but at length joined with the advancing enemy.