ric
shock ran through the house, when Rosse exclaimed, in answer to "Stands
Scotland where it did?"

Alas, poor country;
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave: where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rent the air,
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern extasy: the dead man's knell
Is there scarce asked, for who; and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying, or ere they sicken.

Each word struck the sense, as our life's passing bell; we feared to look
at each other, but bent our gaze on the stage, as if our eyes could fall
innocuous on that alone. The person who played the part of Rosse, suddenly
became aware of the dangerous ground he trod. He was an inferior actor, but
truth now made him excellent; as he went on to announce to Macduff the
slaughter of his family, he was afraid to speak, trembling from
apprehension of a burst of grief from the audience, not from his
fellow-mime. Each word was drawn out with difficulty; real anguish painted
his features; his eyes were now lifted in sudden horror, now fixed in dread
upon the ground. This shew of terror encreased ours, we gasped with him,
each neck was stretched out, each face changed with the actor's changes--
at length while Macduff, who, attending to his part, was unobservant of the
high wrought sympathy of the house, cried with well acted passion:

All my pretty ones?
Did you say all?--O hell kite! All?
What! all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell swoop!

A pang of tameless grief wrenched every heart, a burst of despair was
echoed from every lip.--I had entered into the universal feeling--I
had been absorbed by the terrors of Rosse--I re-echoed the cry of Macduff,
and then rushed out as from an hell of torture, to find calm in the free
air and silent street.

Free the air was not, or the street silent. Oh, how I longed then for the
dear soothings of maternal Nature, as my wounded heart was still further
stung by the roar of heartless merriment from the public-house, by the
sight of the drunkard reeling home, having lost the memory of what he would
find there in oblivious debauch, and by the more appalling salutations of
those melancholy beings to whom the name of home was a mockery. I ran on at
my utmost speed until I found myself I knew not how, close to Westminster
Abbey, and w