still, however sins might offend and declare the contrary in the elect? Malcolm, in the simulated account of himself, says:

Nay, had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.

This is the natural state often laid down by Shakspere, and no man is allowed to exercise the power of mischief beyond his little circle, and nature repairs the breach as soon as made. When Malcolm gives his real character, it is such as Shakspere's 'I would not betray devil to his fellow.' Rosse says

of the murdered family of Macduff:

No; they were well at peace when I did leave 'em.

Malcolm says :—

Be comforted.

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.

Macduff, as he had spoken in general of heaven, so he does consistently with his own particular grief:

Did Heav'n look on,

And would not take their part?

This sentiment was twice repeated in Hamlet, was in the preceding play of Othello, is to be found elsewhere, is most fully developed in Titus Andronicus, and there is evidence to prove it was considered blasphemous even by the writers themselves of such passages. Whether it was Shakspere thought some religious apology necessary; but he makes Macduff in his own case repeat the sentiment of Malcolm about the lamb; that the innocent, in the ways of Providence, have to die for the guilty. Shakspere teaches in this, as in other instances, that revenge, not justice, is all that mortals expect from heaven and the Deity; that He is busy in doing ill, not preventing it or doing good, and that is all that can be asked of Him by his followers. When Macduff, therefore, accuses heaven of seeing and not interfering in the destruction of his family, he is made to say that God has done it for his sins, and Malcolm tells him to bear it like a man,

seek revenge, and be the instrument of the powers above. Macduff then only asks of heaven the opportunity of satisfying it. It may be said, that Shakspere shows his belief in divinity, its attributes, and religion, by introducing these subjects; but, apart from the necessity of keeping within general character, all blasphemers take religion for granted in order to abuse it, by following it to what they consider its consequences; and, in the effects of its doctrines, they would disprove it; they would say it could not be so; that there was no Providence. That there is no Providence, is the inference to be drawn from all such passages, which upbraid a higher power for its non-interference-which says, in fact, it is not exercised. Any admission of it afterwards is only to detract from its co-operation. Other writers in their works have, and Voltaire in his plays has, attacked religion under the same guise. It is this system of the infidels which has made Lord Brougham, in acknowledging the intentions of Voltaire, use the curious argument that he is not a blasphemer-that no man can be who abuses that which he does not believe in; the believer only, according to him, can be a blasphemer. This would make Shakspere a blasphemer if he did believe, and every religious sect, according to the interpretations of each other on the untruth of their respective doctrines with regard to belief. Shakspere makes Macduff end with one of his sneers in the Richard III. style. He says of Macbeth, if he 'scape, heaven forgive him too;' taking vengeance into his own hands, and railing at Providence for its non-interference; which, having shown here no judgment yet, might not hereafter. He impertinently prescribes to it, that it may forgive Macbeth in the world to come, if he does not execute justice on him here below.

Lady Macbeth, in her sleep-walking, refers to the impossibility of life after death :-I tell you yet again Banquo's buried; he cannot come out of his grave.'

Angus says for him, and Macbeth himself, that he has lost the love of others, which, natural to man, must seek, in the fulfilment of his nature, morality, and the social duties, its return. Having gained the object of his ambition, and lost this love, he confesses himself sick, and, as it were, dead. Is not this moral enough? When he asks the Doctor

Caust not thou minister to a mind diseased?

the Doctor, who had said she more wanted a divine than a physician, answers him :—

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.

One would think, therefore, that these expressions were intended to apply more to spiritual and moral, than physical remedies. When he is told the queen is dead, he says she should have died, when she might have seen her life of ambition arrive at a better fulfilment. He then proceeds to the following general reflections upon life and death:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
Who struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more! it is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing!

Amid seeming revolutions, past and anticipated catastrophes, eras, pagan and Christian, in human events, futurity creeps on in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; instead of gods arising from the decay of mortals, all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. The light of revelation, faith and hope, according to Shakspere, have shown us fools the way to dusty death. This life, that Christians humbly imagine gives evidence of the attributes of eternity, signifies nothing, is a tale told by an idiot; and by whom is the tale said to be told but by its maker? Mortals possessed with the thought of immortality, briefly end in being no more, nothing. How often have we been told by Shakspere that we are fools, death's fools, and here we have it repeated with one of the material epithets usually assigned to the end of man-dusty. Earth has its bubbles, and without thinking of ghosts, we are but walking shadows-we cease to be reflected as those reflections of matter cease to be. We have again Jaques's all

the world's a stage, and all the men are players,' with parts as brief as at the Blackfriars, or in the Globe on Bankside. There we had the last scene of his sad eventful history, sans everything; but here of his hopes we have the stern echo of Shakspere's materialism, which, like an owl amidst ruins, cries no more.

There are three lines of Catullus, which have always been supposed to express his disbelief in a future state, if not his atheism. In this speech of Macbeth we have a similarity of idea in the opening line, an exact translation of two words in the second, and the last contains, word for word, the constant expressions, elsewhere, of Shakspere on death:

Soles occidere et redire possunt,
Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetuo una dormienda.

The lights of heaven go out and return.
When once our brief candle goes out,
One night is to be perpetually slept.

The conclusion of Macbeth's speech is similar to a line in the Troad of Seneca :

Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.

After death nothing is, and death itself is nothing.

Campbell might have written of Shakspere those celebrated lines on atheism, where he speaks of the brief candle as 'momentary fire,' which 'lights to the grave his chanceerected form.' When Shakspere attacks superstition, as in the case of Voltaire, it is difficult to say that it is not directed against all religion. Macbeth has delivered a speech on the mockery of existence, the cessation of all hope, and the willingness to part with as much as to keep life. But now the promises of superstition begin to fail him :

-I pull in resolution, and begin

To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend.

I'gin to be a-weary of the sun,

And wish the estate o'the world were now undone.

But though willing that all and himself should end, and thinking that nothing in his own or the life of others, or in the state of this world, was worth retaining, yet hatred, the

passion he had exchanged for love, he

will satisfy in killing till he is killed, and he will have his fate fulfilled without making himself the instrument of it. We might imagine Shakspere had been reading the ancients, and that the Roman plays were the next to come, when he says:-

Why should I play the Roman fool, and die

On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them.

The resolute Macbeth, on the question of to be or not to be, thus makes a proper answer to the infirmity of purpose. Hamlet, when he had such business on hand, should have attended to it in executing justice on others, as Macbeth seeks to die in having it executed on himself. Macduff invokes Fortune with the same levity he did heaven to give him a meeting with Macbeth :

Let me find him, Fortune!

And more I beg not.

For a moment the failure of all superstitious confidence 'cows' Macbeth :

And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,

That palter with us in a double sense;

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope.

The miraculous, under which he suffered, is thus exposed in his end. Dying, Macbeth is made to curse the instruments and machinery of religion as well as witchcraft. It seems, after the speech of Macbeth on life, its expectations and disappointments, that these latter passages applied to the Christian idea of a charmed life under a never ending futurity of existence, as if it were never to be commenced, never to be realised, any more than in those promises which had deceived Macbeth-in persuading him he was to live the lease of nature, when he had acted so contrary to its laws. Depicting Richard II. looking for support to Scripture, and brought to his ruin, Shakspere made him, in his end, draw the same conclusion with regard to the Saviour's words, the Bible, the book of truth and salvation, that Macbeth delivered with regard to the evil counsel and promises of the witches.