the humiliating truth that _selfishness_—deepening, from the mere instinct of preservation, into various shades of meanness, dishonesty and crime, is the _great passion_ of the world. Men are often intellectually and politically great notwithstanding it and perhaps in consequence of it, but no one is morally great without escaping from its earth-attracting and inglorious influence. This passion increases in the bosom of the bad, in proportion to the greatness of the object. In the precincts of a court, (although it is a vulgar error to suppose virtue and disinterestedness may not exist there also,) it becomes more condensed—more profound, more plausibly disguised, but more quietly and universally pervading than elsewhere. In a royal circle nearly every other feeling is extinct, and the pressure for favor and the sacrifice of minor (and how much more graceful and noble) considerations at the shrine of courtly or fashionable ambition are, to the observing eye, very visible beneath the glittering surface of society. The king _knows_ no body. He has no opportunity of seeing, hearing or judging. The good and the bad address him alike in the language of homage and adulation, and he comes at last to lose his natural sympathies with the human race—to regard them as inferiors—machines, cattle. To him they are so. Before him they are contemptible. They too often lay aside in his presence, and in proportion as they approach his throne, their claims to respect and their habits of candor, dignity and goodness, and a crowd of people are rarely presented to a king without their overvaluing some things and undervaluing others most lamentably. At the same time the sovereign himself, however good and great he may be, cannot well be considered without a certain degree of regret and commiseration, when one reflects that the hypocrisy always more or less existing in polite society is redoubled in his presence, and that he has always lived and is destined ever to continue to live in a mist. The unveiled face of human nature he is doomed never to see. He is continually trusting things which nearly concern him to men of whom he knows literally nothing. Then Duncan with his kingly credulity hears his murderer declare— _Macbeth._ The service and the loyalty I owe In doing it pays itself. Your highness’ part Is to receive our duties; and our duties Are to your throne and state, children and servants: Which do but what they should by doing every thing Safe toward your love and honor. It is worthy of remark here, and is another instance of the exhaustless room there is in these plays for the observation of ages, that while Macbeth, who is ready crouched like a ferocious leopard to leap upon his prey, is warm and ardent in his expressions of loyalty and submission, Banquo, who is that somewhat rare character a really _honest man_, says but very few words to his sovereign.