The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-11 00:00:00

" ' Excuse me, sir,' cried Paul, 'if I venture to give a
reply to the, question. With all Lady Macbeth's faults,
I would marry her myself to-morrow.'
"Indeed,' exclaimed Fanny, looking him archly in the
face.

" That is,' answered Paul, hesitatingly, and blushing
deeply-6 that is supposing I loved nobody else.'
" Mr. Westland was so earnestly engaged in gazing
upon Fanny, that he did not notice Paul's confusion. I
am very much struck by the novelty of your ideas, Miss
Wilkinson,' said he, but know not how to reconcile
them with the general impression to the contrary.
Everybody entertains a horrid idea of Lady Macbeth.
She appears to their imagination robed as it were in
sanguine vapour, and surrounded by the steams of blood.
In looking on her little white hand, they behold nothing
but the ruddy, damning spot upon it. They forget alto-
gether that she is a woman, a young and beautiful
woman ; a wife and a mother. How is this ? lam
unable to explain it to myself.'
" And what is difficult to you,' answered Fanny, ' a
man of education and acquainted with the world, must
be impossible to me. Yet I fancy I have a sort of dim
perception of how the thing may come to pass.'
"‘ Pray favour me with it, Miss Wilkinson.'
" observed she, I think there are two reasons
which may account for the prevalence of a false impres-
sion. First, people usually see the play before they read
it, and it is oue of the tricks of the stage to seize upon
the most terrible emotions, to associate them with a par-
ticular tragic character, and to rivet as it were the minds
of the audience with the single point in the development
of that character which is the most likely to produce the
deepest effect on the feelings and on the memory.
Second, people only see Lady Macbeth during her
moments of excitement and during her connexion with
crime. They forget all her gentler hours. they never
picture her to themselves with her baby on her knee, or
affectionately attending upon the father whom it is clear
she deeply loved, or embracing tenderly the husband of
her choice. These things the poet for his own purposes
has kept out of sight, and the public, for the most part,
can only see what is palpably placed before them. latn, of
course, arguing as it Lady Macbeth were a real woman.
We do not see all that goes necessarily to the making up
of so lofty a character—so intellectual, so self dependent,
so full of sovereign will, so imaginative, so resolute ;
daring, yet kind and affectionate. We only behold the
single vice which blots the fair scutcheon. But this ap-
pears wrong to me, and shows that in criticising Shak-
Zipere we often lose sight of the principles upon which
our judgments should be based.' "
The other papers in the Mirror are all of high
merit.

DOUGLAS JERROLD.

" Twiddlethumb Town," by the— Editor, is con-
tinued in this number in the true Pantagruelian
spirit ; and next in merit to this, although its merit
is of a very different order, is " The Old Mathema-
tician, a Sketch from the Life." It is a sweetly told
simple tale, which might have been an episode in the
" Vicar of Wakefield. The other papers are scarcely
wurthy the high reputation of this Magazine.