Jezebel would aggrandize empire, which her unlawful marriage thereto had jeoparded. Lady Macbeth will run the risk of an unlawful marriage with empire, if she may thereby aggrandize it. Jezebel is insensible to patriotic feelings,--Lady Macbeth to civil and hospitable duties. The Zidonian woman braves the vengeance of Jehovah,--the Scotch woman dares the Powers of Darkness; the one is incited by the oracles of Baal,--the other by the predictions of witches. Lady Macbeth has more intellectual force,--Jezebel more moral decision; Lady Macbeth exhibits great imagination,--Jezebel a stronger will. As the character of Lady Macbeth is said to be relieved by the affection she shows for her husband, so is that of Jezebel by her tenderness for Ahab. The grandness of the audacity with which Jezebel sends after the prophet Elisha, saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time," has its counterpart in the lofty terror of the invocation which Lady Macbeth makes to the "spirits that wait on mortal thoughts,"-- "Fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and the passage of remorse! . . . . Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers!" But the last moments of these excessive characters are singularly contrasted. Jezebel scoffs at approaching retribution, and, shining with paint and dripping with jewels, is pitched to the dogs; Lady Macbeth goes like a coward to her grave, and, curdled with remorse, receives the stroke of doom. If Shakspeare and the Old Testament are a just manifestation of human nature, the New is so different, its representation would seem to be almost fanciful or fallacious; or if the latter be accepted, the former would seem to be discarded. But both are faithful to the different ages and phases of man. The one is a dispensation of force,--the other of love; the one could make nothing perfect,--but the bringing in of a better covenant makes all things perfect. Through the tempest and storm, the brutality and lust of the Greek tragedians, and even of the barbarous times on which Shakspeare builds many of his plays, through the night of Judaical back-slidings, idolatry, and carnal commandments, we patiently wait, and gladly hail the morning of the Sun of Righteousness. The New Testament is a green, calm, island, in this heaving, fearful ocean of dramatic interest. How delightful is everything there, and how elevated! how glad, and how solemn! how energetic, and how tranquil! What characters, what incident, what feeling! Yet how different! So different, indeed, from what elsewhere appears, that we are compelled to ask, Can this be that same old humanity whose passions, they tell us, are alike in all ages, and the emphatic turbulence of which constitutes so large a portion of history?