tions, and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside the veil which
hides the uncertainty of the future. He is not equal to the struggle with
fate and conscience. He now "bends up each corporal instrument to the
terrible feat;" at other times his heart misgives him, and he is cowed and
abashed by his success. "The deed, no less than the attempt, confounds
him." His mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, and full of
"preternatural solicitings." His speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles
on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths.
In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a
distrust of his own resolution. His energy springs from the anxiety and
agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing forward on the objects of his
ambition and revenge, or his recoiling from them, equally betrays the
harassed state of his feelings,--This part of his character is admirably
set off by being brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose
obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her the ascendancy
over her husband's faultering virtue. She at once seizes on the
opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of all their wished-for
greatness, and never flinches from her object till all is over. The
magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her guilt. She
is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate.
She does not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Gonerill.
She is only wicked to gain a great end; and is perhaps more distinguished
by her commanding presence of mind and inexorable self-will, which do not
suffer her to be diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak
and womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want of natural
affections. The impression which her lofty determination of character
makes on the mind of Macbeth is well described where he exclaims,

----"Bring forth men children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males!"

Nor do the pains she is at to "screw his courage to the sticking-place,"
the reproach to him, not to be "lost so poorly in himself," the assurance
that "a little water clears them of this deed," shew anything but her
greater consistency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition furnishes
ribs of steel to "the sides of his intent;" and she is herself wound up to
the execution of her baneful project with the same unshri