hearing a Sermon read in which there was a striking account of the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment, was very much alarmed, and said she hoped it would not be in her time. The Decalogue has no terrors, and the Book of Revelations no charms for them. They will be damned, but they will steal and lie, and bear false witness against each other; or if they do not, it is the fear of being hanged, or whipped, or summoned before the Justice of the Peace, and not of being called to account in another world, that prevents them. They are of the earth, earthy. They take thought only for the morrow; or rather, conform to the text-Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.' There is not a greater mistake, or a more wilful fallacy, than the common observation, that the lower orders are kept in order (and can only be so) by their faith in religion. They have no more belief in it practically than most of their betters, who propose to keep them in order by it, have speculatively. The ignorant and destitute are restrained from certain things by the fear of the law, or of what will be said of them by their neighbours; and as to other things which are denounced by Scripture, but to which no penalty attaches here, they think if they have a mind to do them, and chuse to go to hell for it, they have a right to do so. That is their phrase. It is nobody's business but their own. It is (generally speaking) the absence of temptation or opportunity, and not an excess of religious apprehension, that keeps them within the pale of salvation. Their self-will balances their fear of the Devil, and when it comes to the push, the present motive turns the scale, and the flesh proves too hard for the spirit. Burns's old man in the Cottar's Saturday Night must pass for a very poetical character, at least in this part of the country. We see constant accounts in the papers, in the case of malefactors that have come to an untimely end, that it was owing in the first instance to the want of religion, to the habit of swearing and Sabbath-breach. The same account would hold equally true of those who are not hanged: for if all but the godly and sober among the lower classes came to the gallows, the population would soon be thinned to a surprising degree. "Twould thin the land Such numbers to string on Tyburn tree.' As to the regular church-going peasantry, there can be no great difference as to religious light and feelings between them and their forefathers in the time of Popery, when the service was performed in Latin, as it is at present in most foreign countries. The only religious people (except as a matter of outward shew and ceremony) are sectaries; for the instant religion becomes a subject for serious thought and private reflection, it produces differences of opinion, which branch out into as many speculative fancies and forms of worship, as there are differences of temper or accidents of education.1 This, however, is the exception, not the rule, in the present state of things-now that zeal is no longer kindled at the fires of persecution, and that Acts of Uniformity no longer throw the whole country into a ferment of opposition. The missionaries and fanatics sometimes indeed set up a methodist chapel, where the staid inhabitants go in an evening to spite the parson of the parish, or to while away an hour or so; or perhaps a melancholy mechanic has a serious call and holds forth, or a pining spinster, moved by the spirit to listen to him 'Anon as patient as the female dove, but the younger and healthier sort make a sport of it as of any other fantastical innovation; throw owls and skeletons of kites and carrion crows into the place of worship; and make a violent noise all the time the parson is preaching, to drown the nasal twang of evangelical glad-tidings, and the comfortable groans of the faithful.-All this while there is no end of the bastard-getting and swearing: and a girl, after having had three or four children by the same man, or by different men (as it happens), and who is as big as she can tumble again, is at length asked in church, without much scandal or offence to the community. It is a new topic for the village, and is excused on that account. It is, besides, an evidence quashed; and whatever others may take it into their heads to do, she need not talk. Liberality flourishes; a good example is set; and the species is propagated with as little trouble and formality as possible. The parson gets something by the christening, and the apothecary has a finger in the pie. This is a state of things which ought to be reformed-but how or when? 1 It is observed and perhaps justly that the members of the Established Church are the pleasantest sort of people to deal with. Dissenters are more soured by the leaven of religion. The others do not trouble themselves enough about it to come to a conclusion of their own, or to quarrel with other people who do. They are religious merely out of conformity to the practice of the age and country in which they live, and follow that which has authority and numbers on its side. MR. MACREADY'S MACBETH. : The Examiner.] [June 25, 1820. MR. MACREADY's Macbeth, which he had for his benefit, and which he has played once or twice since, is a judicious and spirited performance. But we are not in the number of those who think it his finest character. Sensibility, not imagination, is his forte. Natural expression, human feeling, seems to woo him like a bride; but the ideal and preternatural beckon him only at a distance and mock his embraces. He sees no dim, portentous visions in his mind's eye; his acting has no shadowy landscape back-ground to surround it; he is not waited on by spirits of the deep or of the air; neither fate nor metaphysical aid are in league with him; he is prompter to himself, and treads within the circle of the human heart. The machinery in Macbeth is so far lost upon him there is no secret correspondence between him and the Weird Sisters. The poet has put a fruitless sceptre in his hand, -a curtain is between him and the air-drawn dagger with its gouts of blood'; he does not cower under the traditions of the age, or startle at thick-coming fancies.' He is more like a man debating the reality, or questioning the power of the grotesque and unimaginable forms that hover round him, than one hurried away by his credulous hopes, or shrinking from intolerable fears. There is not a weight of superstitious terror loading the atmosphere and hanging over the stage when Mr. Macready plays the part. He has cast the cumbrous slough of Gothic tragedy, and comes out a mere modern, agitated by common means and intelligible motives. The preternatural agency is no more than an accompaniment, the pretended occasion, not the indispensable and all-powerful cause. It appears to us then, that this excellent and able actor, struck short of the higher and imaginative part of the character, and consequently was deficient in the human passion, which is the mighty appendage to it. We thought Mr. Macready in a manner conscious of this want of entire possession of the character. He was looking out for new readings, transposing attitudes and stage effects, trying substitutes and experiments, studying passages instead of reciting them, rehearsing Macbeth, not being it. His performance of it was critical and fastidious: you would say that he was considering how he should act the part, so as to avoid certain errors or produce certain effects-not that he ever flung himself into the subject, and swam to shore, safe from carping objection, and above the reach of all praise. Mr. Macready does not often imitate other actors, but he endeavours not to imitate them, and that 's almost as bad. He should think of nothing but his part, and rely on nothing but his own powers. Singularity is not excellence. If to follow in the track of others shews a servile genius and pitiful ambition, neither is it right to go out of the strait road merely because others travel in it- but still to follow nature is the rule'—John Kemble was the best Macbeth (upon the whole) that we have seen. There was a stiff, horror-stricken stateliness in his person and manner, like a man bearing up against supernal influences; and a bewildered distraction, a perplexity and at the same time a rigidity of purpose, like one who had been stunned by a blow from fate. Mr. Kean is great only in one scene, that after the murder of Duncan; his acting also consists only in the direct embodying of human passion, and is entirely 'docked and curtailed' of the sweeping train of poetical imagination. On the evening we saw Mr. Macready's Macbeth Mrs. Faucit played Lady Macbeth, and acted up to that arduous part with great spirit and selfpossession; and Mr. Terry was the representative of Macduff. The only fault of this gentleman's acting is its slowness. The words fall from his lips, like pendent drops from icicles. A speech, as he gives it, is equal to twa lang Scotch miles.' This not only causes a stagnation and heaviness in the sentiments, but often cuts the sense in two. Thus in the exclamation which Macduff utters on hearing of the slaughter of his children, Oh Hell-Kite, all?' Mr. Terry paused at the hyphen, as if to take time to think, and by this means made it like an apostrophe to Hell,' adding the other syllable of the word, which determined the meaning and direction of his thoughts, afterwards. Mr. Egerton as usual played Banquo, and makes as solid a Ghost as we would wish to encounter of a winter's eve. David Rizzio we have not been able to get a peep at: but a friend whispered us that it was poor, and we see it is praised in the New Times! On Friday Miss Stephens had a bumper for her benefit. The entertainments were the Lord of the Manor, a Concert, and the Libertine. In the first, Mr. Duruset from indisposition, and after making one feeble effort, omitted the songs, by the indulgence of the audience; after that, we do not see why he should be required to go through the rest of the part, for he has not a speaking face.' Jones's Mr. Contrast is a striking, fulsome fop. But he makes foppery not only an object of laughter, but of disgust; and perhaps this is going beyond the mark intended. We would recommend to our readers to go and see Mr. Liston's Moll Flagon by all means. It is irresistible. We may say of it with the poet 'Let those laugh now who never laugh'd before, And those who still have laugh'd now laugh the more.' Mrs. Salmon's singing in the Concert was 'd'une pathetique à faire fendre les rochers,' and Miss Stephens's Echo song seemed sung by a Spirit or an enchantress. We were glad to hear it, for we have an attachment to Miss Stephens on account of 'auld lang syne (we like old friendships better than new), and do not wish that little murmuring syren Miss Tree to wean us from our old and artless favourite. -Those were happy days when first Miss Stephens began to sing! When she came out in Mandane, in Polly, and in Rosetta in Love in a Village! She came upon us by surprise, but it was to delight and charm us. There was a new sound in the air, like the voice of Spring; it was as if Music had become young again, and was resolved to try the power of her softest, simplest, sweetest notes. Love and Hope listened, as her clear, liquid throat poured its delicious warblings on the ear, and at the close of every strain, still called on Echo to prolong the sound. They were the sweetest notes we ever heard, and almost the last we ever heard with pleasure! For since then, other events not to be named lightly here, but thoughts of which can never from the heart'-' with other notes than to the Orphean lyre,' have stopped our ears to the voice of the charmer. But since the voice of Liberty has risen once more in Spain, its grave and its birth place, and like a babbling hound has wakened the echos in Galicia, in the Asturias, in Castile and Leon, and Estremadura, why, we feel as if we had three ears again' and the heart to use them, and as if we could once more write with the same feelings (the tightness removed from the breast, and the pains smoothed from the brow) as we did when we gave the account of Miss Stephens's first appearance in the Beggar's Opera. Life might then indeed know the return of spring,'-and end, as it began, with faith in human kind!— GUY FAUX The Examiner.] [November 11, 1821. GUY FAUX is made into the figure of a scare-crow, a fifth of November bug-bear, in our history. Now that Mr. Hogg's Jacobite Relics have dissipated the remains of an undue horror at Popery, it may seem the time to undertake the defence of so illustrious a character, who has hitherto been the victim of party-prejudice and national spite. Guy Faux was a Popish Priest in the reign of James 1., and for his unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the House of Lords, and blow up the English Monarchy, the Protestant Religion, and himself, at one stroke, has had the honour to be annually paraded through the streets, and burnt in effigy in every |