with great judgment he began with all the vehemence of desperation; then, overcome by terror, dropped his voice lower and lower, till the last words were tremulous and inarticulate. Then, uttering a subdued cry of mortal horror, he suddenly cast his mantle over his face and sank back half-lifeless on his seat. He thus produced the most apalling effect. As man, you felt tremblingly with him, that our most daring courage can oppose nothing to the terrors of another world;--you saw no trace of the stage-hero, who troubles himself little about nature; and playing only to produce effect on the galleries, seeks his highest triumph in an ascending scale of noise and fury. Macready was admirable, too, in the last act; in which conscience and fear are equally deadened and exhausted, and rigid apathy has taken the place of both; when the last judgment breaks over the head of the sinner in three rapidly succeeding strokes,--the death of the Queen, the fulfilment of the delusive predictions of the witches, and Macduff's terrific declaration that he is not born of woman. What had previously tortured Macbeth's spirit--had made him murmer at his condition, or struggle against the goadings of his conscience,--can now only strike him with momentary terror, like a lightning flash. He is weary of himself and of existence; and fighting, as he says in bitter scorn, 'bear-like,' he falls at length, a great criminal--but withal a king and a hero. Equally masterly was the combat with Macduff, in which inferior actors commonly fail;--nothing hurried, yet all the fire, nay, all the horror of _the end_,--of the final rage and despair. I shall never forget the ludicrous effect of this scene at the first performance of Spiker's translation at Berlin. Macbeth and his antagonist set upon each other in such a manner, that, without intending it, they got behind the scenes before their dialogue was at an end; whence the words "Hold--enough!" (what went before them being inaudible,) sounded as if Macbeth was run down and had cried, (holding out his sword and deprecating any further fighting,) "Leave off--hold--enough!" Lady Macbeth, though played by a second-rate actress,--for, alas! since the departure of Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neil there is no first rate--pleased me better in her feeble delineation of the character, than many would-be-great 'artistes' of our fatherland, whose affected manner is suited to no single character in Shakspeare. I do not, however, entirely participate in Tieck's well-known view of this character. I would fain go still deeper into it. Scarcely any man understands how the love of a woman sees _every thing_ solely as it regards or affects the beloved object; and thence, for a time at least, knows virtue or vice only with relation to him.