Let us take him then as he is first presented to us. He is a hero. This character also remains with him throughout. It is heroism which urges him to deeds of high daring, which prompts his mind to its lofty conceptions of greatness, which struggles long and hard with his conscience, but at last plunges him in guilt, propelling him deeper and deeper into it, and called out in its utmost grandeur and intensity in braving the cowardice of remorse. But with the hero’s bravery and lion strength, there is united also the “milk of human kindness,” and the tenderest pity; for who, other than he who copied from his own breast, would have conceived of it thus, even when it opposed directly his designs. And _pity_, like a _naked newborn babe_, Striding the blast, or heav’ns cherubim, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. But above all, as a hero he “is not without ambition.” Yet he is also “without the illness should attend it.” Naturally noble and ingenuous, his ambition up to this time had been rather than any thing else, an aimless, generous aspiring after that which should fill his own capacity, and sought no other reward for manly deeds than the doing them. It was consistent also with a state of high and pure moral feeling, as is not that which has always an end in view, and is always planning and plotting for it. Accordingly, we find it combined in him with great purity and ingenuousness of heart. “What he would highly, that would he holily.” Still it was dangerous, and, no guide to itself, was liable to take shape and direction from any conjunction of circumstances. Until now, however, he had gone with it securely and uprightly. He seems to have been kept in the path of duty and honor by the generous impulses of his nature, and perhaps more, with his peculiar openness, by the favorable influence of his kinsman the “good king Duncan,” whom he heartily loves and admires.