eyes. She fatally resolves that Glamis and Cawdor shall be also that which the mysterious agents of the Evil One have promised."
Lady Macbeth then gives the wonderful analysis of her husband's character, "Yet I do fear thy nature is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way"; proving him to be of a temper so irresolute as to require "all the efforts, all the excitement, which her uncontrollable spirit and her unbounded influence over him can perform."
"When Macbeth appears, she seems so insensible to everything but the horrible design which has probably been suggested to her by his letters, as to have entirely forgotten both the one and the other. It is very remarkable that Macbeth is frequent in expressions of tenderness to his wife, while she never betrays one symptom of affection towards him, till, in the fiery furnace of affliction, her iron heart is melted down to softness." This was the side by which Mrs. Siddons had taken such a grasp of the character of Lady Macbeth. It was by bringing into prominence this softer side of her character that, while thrilling her audience with horror, she at the same time brought tears to their eyes with an immense awe-struck pity. She always held their interest by the human touches which she brought into as much prominence as possible.
Alluding to the lines:—
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me,
she says: "Even here, horrified as she is, she shows herself made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly savage creature. The very use of such a tender allusion in the midst of her dreadful language, per-
