ch rather thou dost fear to do,
Than wishest should be undone_. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;
And chastise with the valor of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical[114] aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal

Nor is there any thing vulgar in her ambition: as the strength of her
affections lends to it something profound and concentrated, so her
splendid imagination invests the object of her desire with its own
radiance. We cannot trace in her grand and capacious mind that it is the
mere baubles and trappings of royalty which dazzle and allure her: hers
is the sin of the "star-bright apostate," and she plunges with her
husband into the abyss of guilt, to procure for "all their days and
nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom." She revels, she luxuriates in
her dream of power. She reaches at the golden diadem, which is to sear
her brain; she perils life and soul for its attainment, with an
enthusiasm as perfect, a faith as settled, as that of the martyr, who
sees at the stake, heaven and its crowns of glory opening upon him.

Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both, by the all-hail _hereafter_!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant!

This is surely the very rapture of ambition! and those who have heard
Mrs. Siddons pronounce the word _hereafter_, cannot forget the look, the
tone, which seemed to give her auditors a glimpse of that awful
_future_, which she, in her prophetic fury, beholds upon the instant.

But to return to the text before us: Lady Macbeth having proposed the
object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eye
steadily upon it, soars far above all womanish feelings and scruples to
attain it, and stoops upon her victim with the strength and velocity of
a vulture; but having committed unflinchingly the crime necessary for
the attainment of her purpose, she stops there. After the murder of
Duncan, we see Lady Macbeth, during the rest of the play, occupied in
supporting the nervous weakness and sustaining the fortitude of her
husband; for instance, Macbeth is at one time on the verge of frenzy,
between fear and horror, and it is clear that if she loses her
self-command, both must perish:--

MACBETH.

One cried, _God bless us!_ and, _Amen!_ the other,
As they had se