Re-enter LADY MACBETH.

Lady M. My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white. [Knock.] I hear a knocking At the south entry:-retire we to our chamber.

A little water clears us of this deed:

How easy is it then! Your constancy

Hath left you unattended. [Knocking.] Hark! more knocking: Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,

And show us to be watchers.-Be not lost

So poorly in your thoughts.

Macb. To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. [Knock.] Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, would thou couldst!

(278.) TRUE ELOQUENCE.

When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasionswhen great interests are at stake, and strong passions excitednothing is valuable, in speech, farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from afar. Labour and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it-they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirt, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object-this, this is eloquence; or rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence-it is action, noble, sublime, god-like action.-Lovell.

(279.) CORONATION OF INEZ DE CASTRO.

[Inez de Castro was a Castilian lady, famous for her beauty and her misfortunes. Don Pedro, son of Alphonse, fell in love with and secretly married her. The king on discovering the union demanded that the prince should abandon her, and on his son refusing, caused Inez to be slain in 1335. On succeeding to the throne, two years afterwards, Don Pedro executed summary vengeance on her murderers, caused the body of Inez to be disinterred, and crowning her remains, proclaimed her his queen.]

There was music on the midnight;

From a royal fane it rolled,

And a mighty bell, each pause between,
Sternly and slowly tolled.

Strange was their mingling in the sky,

It hushed the listener's breath;
For the music spoke of triumph high,
The lonely bell, of death.

There was hurrying through the midnight

A sound of many feet;

But they fell with a muffled fearfulness

Along the shadowy street:

And softer, fainter, grew their tread,

As it neared the minster gate,
Whence a broad and solemn light was shed

From a scene of royal state.

Full glowed the strong red radiance

In the centre of the nave,
Where the folds of a purple canopy
Swept down in many a wave;
Loading the marble pavement old
With a weight of gorgeous gloom,

For something lay 'midst their fretted gold,
Like a shadow of the tomb.

And within that rich pavilion,
High on a glittering throne,
A woman's form sat silently
'Midst the glare of light alone.

Her jewelled robes fell strangely still-
The drapery on her breast

Seemed with no pulse beneath to thrill,

So stonelike was its rest!

But a peal of lordly music

Shook e'en the dust below,

When the burning gold of the diadem
Was set on her pallid brow!

Then died away that haughty sound,

And from the encircling band

Stepped prince and chief, 'midst the hush profound, With homage to her hand.

Why passed a faint, cold shuddering

Over each martial frame,

As one by one, to touch that hand,
Noble and leader came?
Was not the settled aspect fair?
Did not a queenly grace,
Under the parted ebon hair,
Sit on the pale still face?

Death! death! canst thou be lovely

Unto the eye of life?

Is not each pulse of the quick high breast
With thy cold mien at strife?

—It was a strange and fearful sight,
The crown upon that head,

The glorious robes, and the blaze of light,
All gathered round the dead!

And beside her stood in silence
One with a brow as pale,

And white lips rigidly compressed,
Lest the strong heart should fail:
King Pedro, with a jealous eye,
Watching the homage done,
By the land's flower and chivalry,
To her, his martyred one.

But on the face he looked not,

Which once his star had been;

To every form his glance was turned

Save of the breathless queen:

Though something, won from the grave's embrace,

Of her beauty still was there,

Its hues were all of that shadowy place,

It was not for him to bear.

Alas! the crown, the sceptre,

The treasures of the earth,

And the priceless love that poured those gifts,
Alike of wasted worth!

The rites are closed-bear back the dead
Unto the chamber deep!

Lay down again the royal head,
Dust with the dust to sleep!

There is music on the midnight

A requiem sad and slow,

As the mourners through the sounding aisle
In dark procession go;

And the ring of state, and the starry crown,

And all the rich array,

Are borne to the house of silence down,
With her, that queen of clay!

And tearlessly and firmly

King Pedro led the train;

But his face was wrapt in his folding robe,
When they lowered the dust again.

Tis hushed at last the tomb above-
Hymns die, and steps depart:

Who called thee strong as Death, O Love?
Mightier thou wast and art.—Mrs. Hemans.

(280.) MR. BRIGHT ON WAR.

Right Hon. John Bright, b. 1811, eminent statesman; one of the firm of John Bright and Brothers, cotton spinners, Rochdale. Was president of the Board of Trade from 1868 to 1876, and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1873 and 1874, and reappointed to the latter office in 1880. Elected Lord Rector of the Glasgow University 1880. Previous to his election he was chiefly known as an active member of the Anti-cornlaw League.

What is war? I believe that half the people that talk about war have not the slightest idea of what it is. In a short sentence it may be summed up to be the combination and concentration of all the horrors, atrocities, crimes, and sufferings of which human nature on this globe is capable. But what is even a rumour of war? Is there anybody here who has anything in the funds, or who is the owner of any railway stock, or anybody who has a large stock of raw material or manufactured goods? The funds have recently gone

down ten per cent. I do not say that the fall is all on account of this danger of war, but a great proportion of it undoubtedly is. A fall of ten per cent. in the funds is nearly eighty million pounds sterling of value, and railway stock having gone down twenty per cent. makes a difference of sixty million pounds in the value of the railway property of this country. Add the two-one hundred and forty million pounds--and take the diminished prosperity and value of manufactures of all kinds during the last few months, and you will understate the actual loss to the country now if you put it down at two hundred million pounds sterling. But that is merely a rumour of war. That is war a long way off-the small cloud no bigger than a man's hand; what will it be if it comes nearer and becomes a fact? And surely some men ought to consider whether the case is a good one, the ground fair, the necessity clear, before they drag a nation of nearly thirty millions of people into a long and bloody struggle for a decrepit and tottering empire, which all the nations in Europe cannot long sustain. And mind, war now would take a different aspect from what it did formerly. It is not only that you send out men who submit to be slaughtered, and that you pay a large amount of taxes; the amount of taxes would be but a feeble indication of what you would suffer. Our trade is now much more extensive than it was, our commerce is more expanded, our undertakings are more vast, and war will find you all out at home by withering up the resources of the prosperity enjoyed by the middle and working classes of the country. You would find that war in 1853 would be infinitely more perilous and destructive to our country than it has ever yet been at any former period of our history. There is another question which comes home to my mind with a gravity and seriousness which I can scarcely hope to communicate to you. You who lived during the period of 1815 to 1822 may remember that this country was probably never in a more uneasy position. The sufferings of the working-classes were beyond description, and the difficulties, and struggles, and bankruptcies of the middle classes were such as few persons have a just idea of. There was scarcely a year in which there was not an incipient insurrection in some parts of the country, arising from the sufferings which the working-classes endured. You know very well that the government of the day employed spies to create plots, and to get ignorant men to combine to take unlawful oaths, and you know that in the town of Stirling two men, who but for this diabolical agency might have lived good and honest citizens, paid the penalty of their lives for their connection with unlawful combinations of this kind.