All that's bright must fade;

The brightest still the fleetest.'"

In regard to the character of Lady Macbeth, Mr. Maclay considered that Mrs. Jameson had fallen into the too common error of biographers, who, in their zeal for their subject, are not content with placing personages, naturally subordinate, in the back-ground of the picture, but even of employing, in reference to them, false lights and colors, to give the greater prominence to the object of their idolatry. In reply to much depreciation of Macbeth, in contrast with Lady Macbeth, he observes:

"The courage and ambition of 'the weaker husband,' as, with no sort of propriety, he is called, were even greater than hers, who stood unmoved by those visionary terrors which threw down the judgment of her guilty partner, and so fearfully shook 'his whole state of man.'

"But this courage and ambition dwelt within a bosom from which that honor which showed what 'became a man'—that loyalty to one who had borne his faculties so meek—that generous love of fame, which shrunk from forfeiting so soon' the golden opinions bought from all sorts of people'-had not yet been expelled.

"When these good principles were finally driven out, and the deed which they strove to prevent was executed, he could still reply, when his savage wife taunts him with the question, "Are you a man?'

“Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that

Which might appal the devil.'

"The frequency with which Lady Macbeth charges her husband with a lack of courage, almost unconsciously impresses us with the belief that, as regards that quality, no comparison can be drawn between the two. We receive her reproaches as truths, losing sight of the plain fact that the charge of cowardice was urged, not because she herself believed it, for this could not have been the case, but because it was wonderfully calculated to change the aspect of the deed he meditated, and to withdraw his mind from the contemplation of the gratitude, the affection, the loyalty which he owed the gracious being who had 'honored him of late,' and in whose defense he felt he

"Should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife himself.'

Unlike his wife, Macbeth embraced within the objects of his faith and reverence the administration of that Moral Governor who has proclaimed himself, throughout the whole course of his providence, the avenger of blood.

"It is this belief in a higher intelligence, whose peculiar province it is to see things as they are, that clothes conscience with so much of its power to scourge the hapless victim who has disobeyed its mandates and defied its authority.

"It was not any weakness, not any want of courage, but this belief, which wrung with anguish the soul of Macbeth ere yet the bloody instrument of his crime was thrown from his hands. It was this, when describing the horrid scene to his wife, and telling her of the two lodgers, one of whom, in his sleep, cried God bless us! and Amen! the other, which induced him to utter the pathetic exclamation,

6

"I had most need of blessing, and Amen

Stuck in my throat.'

"We know not whether it was the design, but it assuredly is the tendency, of many of the observations of the authoress, to exalt our conceptions of the character of the wife at the expense of that of the husband.

"The criticism, too, employed to show that the expressions used by some preceding commentators in describing Lady Macbeth are unwarrantably harsh, is merely verbal. Is it a proof that she was not naturally cruel or savage because the torchlight which fell upon the countenance of the sleeping Duncan, and revealed its resemblance to that of her own father, prevented her from being the principal instead of the accessary in his murder? No. We bow before this redeeming trait in a relentless nature. But the wild flower, seen blooming upon some rugged acclivity, impresses the beholder, by its strange and unrelieved loneliness, with a deeper conviction of the sterility of the soil over which it sheds its sweetness.

"This solitary excellence, which Shakspeare has so casually, yet so happily introduced in his portraiture of Lady Macbeth, serves, by its very singularity, to bring into clearer view the dark lines in her character. It is the shaded medium through which we see more distinctly how completely the evil has eclipsed the better part of her nature. Foster, in one of the best essays that was ever written, says, that the good angel

of Macbeth would have succeeded in wresting the dagger from his hand, if the pure demoniac firmness of his wife had not shamed and hardened him to the deed.

"To this, exception has been taken by Mrs. Jameson, who gives, as an argument against our belief in this firmness, the remorse and death of Lady Macbeth. But do we hesitate to call that firmness demoniac which enabled the guilty emperors of Rome, without one compunctious visiting of conscience, to wade through the blood of their countrymen? Yet terror and remorse mingled largely with the rage and cruelty of Nero. In the silence of their chamber, conscience resumed its throne in the breast of these haughty despots, and, like Lady Macbeth, they were filled with those thick-coming fancies that kept them from their rest."*

"Again the authoress remarks:

"Lady Macbeth, having proposed the object to herself, and arrayed it with an ideal glory, fixes her eyes 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.'

"We ask, is this so? Did she stop there? When filled with gloomy apprehensions, Macbeth exclaims,

"Oh! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife;

Thou knowest that Banquo and his Fleance live,'

who is it that darkly adds,

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"But in them nature's copy's not eterne?'

Macbeth had already determined upon the deed, from the commission of which the pretty plain hint here given by no means acted as a restraint. Knowing the disposition of his wife, he resolved to keep her in ignorance of the steps by which he contemplated to cut off Banquo. It was his design to gratify her

Suetonius has left us a graphic description of the sleepless nights of the monster Caligula. In his wretchedness he wandered up and down the vast corridors of his palace, looking anxiously for the first streak of dawn, and imploring its coming. When he did sleep, which was usually not more than two or three hours of the night, his rest was broken by most terrific phantoms, "ut qui inter ceteras pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem secum, videre visus sit." The meanest slave that trembled at his tread could adopt the language of Lady Macbeth's attendant, "I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body."

by evincing that a spark of the demoniac resolution which glowed in her breast had been communicated to his, and that he could commit a second murder without the external promptings which impelled him to the first. Hence, never doubting the applause with which the news of the crime would be received, he says,

"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,

Till thou applaud the deed.'"

Mrs. Jameson, at the conclusion of a beautiful parallel which she had drawn between the Electra of Sophocles and Lady Macbeth, had observed, that the only female character in the whole compass of dramatic poetry which can be placed near Lady Macbeth was the Medea; "not the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy, nor the Medea, in hooped petticoat, of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea-the Medea of Euripides." To this remark Mr. Maclay replies:

"This is genuine criticism, and that, too, clothed with rich drapery of poetry. But, with reference to the Medea (the Latin one), we believe it is much easier to call it 'vulgar' and 'voluble' than to prove it to be so. This wholesale condemnation of a work, the merit of which is felt by some, how stoutly soever it may be denied by others, is always unjust, and generally proceeds from a want of that careful examination which many are weak enough to imagine the only door of truth. That the Medea, like the other Latin tragedies modeled after the Greek, is faulty in regard to action, and is chargeable with some of the sins which do most easily beset an imitation, we at once concede. To counterbalance these, however, it contains scenes which awe the soul like the sough of a tempest.

"The last chorus before the fifth act, in which Medea is compared to a lioness robbed of her whelps, roaming through a jungle of the Ganges, is a noble strain of poetry; nor can any one possessed of ordinary sensibility fail to admire the language in which Medea requests Jason to allow her children to accompany

her into exile:

"Contemnere animus regias, ut scis, opes

Potest soletque: liberas tantum fugæ

Habere comites liceat, in quorum sinu

Lacramas profundam. Te novi nati manent.'

"It has been too much the fashion to speak of the Greek drama as all perfection and the Latin as all extravagance.

Schlegel, in one of his lectures on Dramatic Literature, makes some remarks on the Roman tragedy which are perceived to be erroneous, not less from their shallowness or want of depth, than from their cloudiness or want of meaning. Now let the truth be spoken: if in Euripides we find a commendable attention to the element of action, we also find, in many instances, the chorus having no apparent connection with the plot, and, like shreds of canvass torn by the gale, flying loose from the texture into which it should have been woven. If, on the other hand, we see in the Medea of Seneca deficiency in regard to action, we also see the chorus rising naturally out of the play, and serving, while it unfolds its plan, to enhance its interest."

About this period Mr. Maclay was admitted to the practice of the law, to the study of which he diligently devoted himself. Both his acquired information and the resources of a vigorous mind were soon called into play as counsel in a trial for murder in the Court of Sessions in the city of New York, in which he is said to have acquired much reputation.

His client, in resisting an apprehended attack, it appears, had struck his antagonist, a man of powerful frame, a blow upon the head with an iron rule, which resulted in death. In this trial he was associated with Ogden Hoffman, whose brilliant eloquence has so often moved courts and juries at his will, and rendered him "facile princeps" among forensic pleaders.

To Mr. Maclay was committed the care of opening the case to the jury. In the discharge of this duty, he did not content himself with the bare enumeration of the facts expected to be proved for the defense.

Familiar with these, he not only scrupulously abstained from any statement which was not abundantly sustained by the testimony subsequently given, but also from that more pardonable exaggeration so customary with counsel, but with which juries seldom sympathize, because a case is presented before them in all its aspects, and their minds have not become distorted by the frequent contemplation of one view of it.

A luminous statement of the facts, set forth in their most natural order-the order of their occurrence-a calm commentary upon them, and an apt application of the law in support of the conclusions upon which a verdict was asked, together with an impassioned appeal to the jury in vindication of the right of