conspiracy was a thesis proposed to the reason; the warfare was an issue for physical bravery and force. On the contrary, in this, as all the rest, with the Teutons, who were treacherous by impulse, and honest but by reflection. It was above seen, that to turn towards, and to ward off a blow, were denoted, in their idiom, by one and the same term. "Beware of your first impulses," said Talleyrand, to a Celtic people, "they will probably be generous, and therefore impolitic"; a Gothic Talleyrand would have cautioned against the second, knowing the first would take care of themselves. The first encounter of the great Roman general just mentioned with a Teutonic people, under Ariovistus, is marked by a repeated attempt to assassinate him; while, on the other hand, the race could never, even to the present day, combine by other than confederacies, that is, unions merely physical, or rude conglomeration,

The conduct, too, it must be owned, was rather conformable. Instead of meeting or standing the invasions of Cæsar, the Germans only thought of drawing him into their wildernesses. It is thus that Arminius, though educated by the Romans, was inspired to entrap Varus and his three unfortunate legions into what is the most treacherous and savage butchery on record, although ranked among the "great battles of the world" by an English author. Civilis and Stilicho repeated the trick. There were also in these islands some traces of the kind, as, for example, Aimsbury, Mullaghamast, and Glencoe; to say nothing of the quack physicians kept in Ireland by Queen Elizabeth, to contrive poisoning the native chiefs who got too wary to be entrapped. India, too, the other day, threw all these in the shade, by a massacre, of which the baseness outdid even the perfidy. But all this has its excuse in the description of Mela-the principle of force, which is the justice of a warrior race. "Dolus aut virtus quis in hoste requirat ?" said Virgil, respecting the morals of warfare. But while an English writer may be pardoned this apology, it cannot be denied that there has thus been some foundation for the famous French rallying cry about the perfide Albion.

not by rational combination. Thus the Teuton becomes frank, as the Celt cautious, but deliberately. And both the facts are direct consequences from the general theory. The Gothic organism, being concentred in the individual, is instinctively distrustful of all things external, and is brought to treat them candidly but through reflection on the expediency. The organism of the Celt has its centre in society; he is therefore impulsively communicative and confiding, and must be thrown back by experience upon the individual, to derive caution from the reason, as the Teuton does from instinct.

Both

To apply this double aspect of the Celtic character to the case: The Irish have for ages been so trampled down by brute force, that reason or any other moral agency has had no play; they therefore naturally fell back desperately on the instincts of the character, precisely as the Gauls did in the case of open warfare. The Scotch had by their unity maintained themselves more honourably, and thus extorted treatment which left calculation useful. Hence the character has here retained it, though perhaps strained to that excess at which the Celtic elasticity is rather broken than bent. the phases are fully normal alone in the Frenchman; who, while in his public conduct the most rationally cautious, is in his feelings, as in his face, the most unsinister man in Europe. The latter trait, without its natural correction from the former, was what prompted or permitted the "broad words" of Macduff, his impulsive demonstrations of horror at the death of Duncan, and his inability to dissemble so far as dining with Macbeth. So infinitely delicate are the congruities of the great painter, who is fancied by the critics to have dashed through such things at haphazard, but

L

who wrought with the conformity and collectivity of crystallization.

But the main feature of the character of Lennox himself is the Celtic innuendo combined with the caution. It is the well-known frondeur spirit of French history and Paris salons. Indeed, this circumspective conduct and compensatory criticism is the source of the political timidity ascribed the French. If they were silent, the superficial would not think them discontented; but when they murmur without acting, it is fancied to be cowardice. The seeming cowardice is, however, that precisely of Lennox, and even of Macbeth himself

that is, the cowardice of "consequences." consequences." As a race of sociability, the Celts instinctively rest on sympathy; live individually, like Pope's spider, along the lines of the social tissue. They are, then, delicately careful not to commit themselves to action, until assured by their presentiments or calculations of being supported. Hence the failures of the Irish, in their revolutionary tentatives, for want of confidence in their leaders to embody this consensus. The honest Teuton, on the contrary, who lives no farther than his own skin-or from the "conscience" that sits his council to the "castle" that shells his family-can feel no reason for refraining, when incommoded by the outer world, from that virulence of speech, which is called manly independence. The nervous action of conspiracy and organization have no meaning to him. He feels entitled to look for social reparation but to himself, and to the aid of any others who may have the same motives. He looks, with his own Hobbes, upon society as a state of warfare, in which all is to be wrested more or less by dint of muscle; and thus his mode

of combination is by "meeting" and by scolding-that is, exhibiting and advertising the mass of muscle on his side. Compare accordingly, in frequently analogous conditions, the fierce and spluttering tirades of Hamlet with the stinging slyness of the speech of Lennox.

The incidental and menial personages could shew little characterising. Yet there are even here some traits, but the more probatory for their casualty. A practical example of the rationalistic recklessness which Celtic impersonality was seen to sink to in its abuse, is found depicted eulogistically by Malcolm to the King, in his account of the death of the rebel chieftain of the Isles:

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it. He died,
As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 't were a trifle.

Act. i. sc. 4.

The same Malcolm is also made to act the national caution, in his pretexts to Macduff for declining the throne.

It was remarked that the inducements proposed to others by Macbeth were, like his own motives, always social or unmercenary. To Banquo he offers the temptation of but "honour." Even the doctor he would stimulate, not by fees, but by applause-a substitute which would be scarce effective in our age of commerce. But the climax of this trait is represented in the low ruffians whom he procures to perpetrate the murder of Banquo, and eggs on, not with money or other profit, which he never mentions, but with an artfully contrived story of social wrongs to them from the victim. It is the feature which the leading organ of English

feeling, the Times newspaper, describes as the "insane disinterestedness" of the Irish; because these, in their elections, fight and vote for some abstraction, instead of driving, like the English, a "snug business" in the suffrage. The imputation is profoundly characteristic of the two races. The con

trast is confirmed by the calendar of crime, which with the English turns chiefly upon personal acquisition, with the Irish upon social vindication, just or otherwise. And that the poet had this principle before him systematically, may be placed beyond all question by only recollecting, how Richard III. tempts his agents for a like purpose. "I will love thee and prefer thee for it," says he even to Tyrrell, who was an upper agent in the murders, and a "gentleman."

In fine, the principal gentilitial attribute, the Reasoning, is pushed to its last test in the child of Lady Macduff. Perhaps the subtlety and force of reason were in some part intended to paint the naïve rectitude observed in the youthful mind. But in the interesting scene of this shrewd "prattler" with his mother, there is something more than Shakespeare would have given to that principle. There is nothing of the same keenness in the analogous exhibition of the boyish Duke of York, in Richard III. The Scotch boy, then, must be regarded as an acmé to the demonstration.

5. There are certain other general distinctions between the personages, which, though rather things of colour than of character, maintain the principles. The first of these in point of importance is piety; which, in accordance with the theory, is represented by the poet, as entirely to the credit of the Gothic play and race. The name of religion, or even of