play with a Dummy!_'

ON A PASSAGE IN MACBETH.

'Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.'

MACBETH.

Let us put on one side for a few moments the horrid midnight murder of the
gracious Duncan. Let us suppose of the buried majesty of Scotland,

----'Upward to Heaven he took his flight,
If ever soul ascended!'

Let us for the moment imagine Mrs. Siddons to have been the veritable Lady
Macbeth, and acknowledge that never was man more powerfully tempted into
evil, nor more deeply punished with his fall from Virtue, than this, the
Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor. My concernment in this Essay is neither
with his virtue, nor his fall. I neither come to praise, nor bury Caesar:

'Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get _thee_ to bed.'

In the reading I desire should be here given to the language of the
immortal bard, it will be perceived that the last pronoun is made
emphatic. 'Get _thee_ to bed.'

The household of the castle of Macbeth, excited and disturbed as its
members had been throughout the day by the unexpected arrival of the King
of Scotland at Inverness, are now subsiding into rest. The King has
retired. His suite are provided for in various parts of the quadrangle;
and all the tumultuary sounds of preparation and of festive enjoyment have
followed the departed day; and Banquo charged with a princely gift to the
Lady Macbeth under the title of _most kind hostess_, from her confiding
and now slumbering monarch, has paid his compliments and gone.

Now comes the deeper stillness, and the witching hour of that eventful
night; and the noble Thane, having gone the rounds of his hushed castle to
place all entrances under both watch and ward, turns to his torch-bearer,
the last remaining household servant of the train, and dismisses him with
the message I have read. The words excite no surprise in the mind of the
attendant. He receives the command and departs upon his errand; to deliver
it as had doubtless been his office before, and then retire for the night:

'Go, bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell.'

Admired Editor, I have now that to say in thine ear that may possibly
startle thy preceptions, shock thy wishes, and for the moment interfere
with thy store of tragick recollection. I would have thee imagine with me