integral; they contained no opposing principle which might impede their progress in evil or embitter success; so that murder itself, when apparently a necessary step to the attainment of an object, was consonant, not contrary to their nature. It was not so with their lords, who, in comparison with each fiend-like queen," were

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"Full o' the milk of human kindness."

Ahab evidenced this after his victory over the Syrians. Benhadad, to whom he had formerly been a vassal, then sent ambassa dors to him girded with sackcloth, and with ropes on their heads, to petition for his life, and Ahab said, "Is he yet alive? he is my brother ;" and "he made a covenant with him, and sent him away."

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Again: It was by yielding to the delusions of the weird sisters" that Macbeth laid the foundation of his after crimes and sorrows; their spells and promises clouded his mind like emanations from the pit of darkness, which needed but the influence of his wife to quicken into substantial evil. So it

was with Ahab: he too sought to wizards, and them that had evil spirits; "and did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up." In the grand crime of each, the murder of Naboth and of Duncan, the parallel is minute and unbroken. Macbeth, who was only a Thane, coveted "the golden round of sovereignty." Ahab, who already a king, had no need to desire a crown, was disquieted for a neighbour's vineyard; a proof, by the way, how little it is the intrinsic worth of an object which regulates the desires of an unsanctified heart. Both "would wrongly win," yet in the first instance would "not play false;" one took his disappointment in sullen silence, the other was almost persuaded to rest satisfied as Glamis and Cawdor. Then appear the master spirits. Lady Macbeth thus taunts her hesitating Thane, and with the hardihood of guilt without fear, developes the purpose which he has desired without conceiving.

"Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem;

Letting I dare not, wait upon I would?
Macb. If we should fail-
Lady M.

We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep,
(Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey
Soundly invite him,) his two chamberlains
Will I with wine and wassel so convince,
That memory, the warder of the brain,
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie, as in a death,
What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon
His spungy officers; who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?"

Precisely in this spirit does Jezebel address Ahab:-"Dost thou now govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry: I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders, and to the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth; and she wrote

in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people: and set two men, sons of Belial, before him, and bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God, and the king; and then carry him out and stone him, that he may die." The two monarchs resemble each other in their closing scenes. As dangers increase, and the hope of repulsing his enemies diminishes, Macbeth clings with desperate faith -to the words of those who 'paltered with him in a double sense :'-and Ahab, seduced by false prophets, goes up against Ramoth-Gilead, where destruction awaits him. The phrenzy with which the former receives the messengers who bring tidings of the enemy's approach, corresponds with the hatred which the latter expresses for Micaiah, the true prophet, "who did not prophesy good concerning him, but evil." Ahab and Macbeth resemble each other also in the brave spirit which flashes forth just before the end of life; a last ray of kingliness in one, and a burst of old knightly feeling in the other.

Macb.

I'll not yield

To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited by the rabble's curse,
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last.

"And Ahab said to his chariot-man, Turn thine hand, that thou mayst carry me out of the host, for I am wounded. And the battle increased that day, howbeit the king of Israel stayed himself up in his chariot against the Syrians till the evening; and about the time of the sun-setting he died." Their queens also die in a resembling spirit; one, having "painted her face and tired her head," is killed with scoffing on her lips; the other expires without one "compunctious visiting," which might prove that remembrance at last awoke remorse.

Let me now direct your attention to an individual scene in the same tragedy, and a Scripture narrative,-the announcement to Macduff, of his family's murder; and to David, of the death of Absalom. The spirit and construction are essentially the same, and it is interesting to see how closely a first-rate

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