there has been much of needless confusion. Now moral action, like vision, presupposes two things, a condition and a cause. Light and visual power are both indispensable to sight: there can be no vision without light; yet the cause of vision, as every-body knows, is the visual power pre-existing in the eye. Neither can we walk without an area to walk upon; yet nobody, I suppose, would pronounce that area the cause of our walking. On the contrary, that cause is obviously within ourselves; it lies in our own innate mobility; and the area is necessary only as the condition of our walking. In like manner both will and motive are indispensable to moral action. We cannot act without motives, any more than we can breathe without air; yet the cause of our acting lies in certain powers and principles within us. As, therefore, vision springs from the meeting of visual power with light, so action springs from the meeting of will with motive. Surely, then, those who persist in holding motives responsible for our actions, would do well to remember, that motives can avail but little after all without something to be moved.

One of the necessary conditions of our acting, in all cases, is a belief in the possibility and even the practicability of what we undertake. However ardent and lawless may be our desire of a given object, still a conviction of the impossibility of reaching it necessarily precludes all efforts to reach it. So fully are we persuaded that we cannot jump over the moon, that we do not even wish, much less attempt to do it. Generally, indeed, apprehensions and assurances more or less strong of failure and punishment in criminal attempts operate to throw us back upon better principles of action; we

make a virtue of necessity; and from the danger and difficulty of indulging evil and unlawful desires, fall back upon such as are lawful and good; wherein, to our surprise, nature often rewards us with far greater pleasures than we had anticipated from the opposite course. He who removes those apprehensions and assurances from any wicked enterprise, and convinces us of its safety and practicability, may be justly said to furnish us motives to engage in it; that is, he gives us the conditions upon which, but not the principles from which, our ac tions proceed; and therefore does not, properly speak ing, deprave, but only developes our character. For example, in ambition itself, unchecked and unrestrained by any higher principles, are contained the elements of all the crimes necessary to the successful prosecution of its objects. I say successful prosecution; for such ambition is, from its nature, regardless of every thing but the chances of defeat: so that nothing less than the conviction or the apprehension that crimes will not succeed, can prevent such ambition from employing them.

MACBETH.

Now, in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth the Weird Sisters find minds pre-configured and pre-attempered to their influences; and their success seems owing to the fact, that the hearts of their victims were already open to welcome and entertain their suggestions. Macbeth, by his great qualities, his valour, his able conduct and admi-. rable success, has won for himself not only the highest rank but one in the kingdom but the first place in the

confidence and affection of his sovereign. What principles his great actions have hitherto sprung from, whether from loyalty or ambition, is uncertain: if from loyalty, then he is probably satisfied from ambition, he is only inflamed, and the height he has reached prepares him for projects to mount up higher. This point, so uncertain to us, is known to the Weird Sisters. They look not only into the seeds of time but into the seeds of Macbeth's character; and they are enabled to cast his horoscope and predict his fortune, partly by what they see before him, and partly by what they see within him At his meeting with them Macbeth's mind, unstaid by principle, flushed with recent victory, and thirsting for glory the more for the glory he has just been winning, is in a proper state for generating or receiving superstitious impressions, especially if those impressions offer any encouragement to his ruling passion. They have but to engage his faith in their predictions; and this readily follows from the condition in which they find him.

Critics have differed a good deal as to the origin of Macbeth's purpose to usurp the crown by murdering the king. That this purpose originates with Macbeth himself, I can find no room for doubt. The promise of the throne by the Weird Sisters is no more an instigation to murder for it, than the promise of wealth in similar circumstances would be an instigation to steal for it. To a truly honest, upright man such a promise, in so far as he trusted in it, would obviously preclude the motives to theft; and his argument at worst would be, that inasmuch as he was destined to be rich he had nothing to do but sit still and wait for the riches to come. If, how

ever, he were already a thief at heart, and restrained from actual thieving only by prudential regards, he would naturally construe the promise of wealth into a promise of impunity in theft, and accordingly go to stealing. Such appears to be the case with Macbeth. Having just received two promises, namely, that he should be thane of Cawdor and that he should be king, he proceeds forthwith to argue against the probability of either event; as men often argue against what they wish to find true. His argument is this:-

"The thane of Cawdor lives,

A prosperous gentleman; and, to be king,
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor."

Now, he has just fought and defeated the thane of Cawdor as a rebel and a traitor, and therefore knows that in all probability his life and title are forfeit to the state; and he seems to spy a sort of hope that he may be Cawdor sure enough; and if so, then why not king? Presently, however, come messengers from the king to greet him thane of Cawdor; and this literal fulfilment of one promise confirms at once his faith in the other promise: this, trusted home, at once "enkindles him unto the crown." Upon this confirmation the pre-existing elements of his character immediately gather and fashion themselves into the purpose in question. The assurance of the crown becomes to him only an assurance of impunity in crime. Thus

"Oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths;

Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence."

The Weird Sisters, then, put nothing into Macbeth, but only bring out what was already there. They seem drawn to him, indeed, by the secret sympathy which evil naturally has with evil :

"By the pricking of their thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes ;"

and it is this knowledge that invites their prophetic greeting. They saw the seeds of murder sleeping within him, and ready to germinate into purpose as soon as breathed upon by the hope of success and impunity. To inspire him with this hope was all they had to do,— a task made easy by the fact, that men are apt to believe what they so earnestly desire to have true; and no sooner have they opened upon him the prospect of success than the germs of wickedness within him forthwith begin to sprout and grow.

"Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good :-If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth?

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion,
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature ?"

Some, however, have maintained that the wicked