IN HIM CONFIDING.

IN HIM CONFIDING.The clouds hang heavy round my way,I can not see;But through the darkness I believeGod leadeth me.’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,While all is dim;To close my weary, aching eyes,And follow him.Through many a thorny path he leadsMy tired feet;Through many a path of tears I go,But it is sweetTo know that he is close to me,My God, my guide.He leadeth me, and so I walkQuite satisfied.THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION.ByProf.W. T. HARRIS.V.—EGYPT, PHŒNICIA, JUDEA.Egypt.—According to Bunsen, Egypt is the middle place in the world’s history. It is connected directly with the West or Europe, and as directly with the East or Asia.It is the only country in the great continent of Africa that forms a link in the history of the world. What education is to be found in the other parts of Africa, we have seen in our first chapter on education in the savage tribe. Of course we reckon the Abyssinian Christians, loosely, in this designation of Egypt, and consider Carthage as a part of Phœnician civilization.Egypt is properly a link in the chain of Asiatic civilization, although geographically located in Africa. Its history is full of interaction with the Semitic peoples of Western Asia, and we find it often in relation with the Hebrews, the Arabians, and the Phœnicians, and even with the far-off nations of the Euphrates and Tigris. Finally the Persians conquer the country under Cambyses, and Egypt is henceforth Persian, then Macedonian, then Roman, then Saracen, and finally a Turkish dependency.The river Nile is the essential feature of Egypt, more particularly the circumstance of its annual overflow and subsidence. There is little or no rain in Egypt in all the region from the mouth of the Nile up to the last tributary it receives on its way down from the highlands of Abyssinia. Northward from that branch (the Atbara) the Nile valley is eight hundred miles long, and the Nile itself with all its windings flows 1,300 miles, to its mouth.The copious rains and snows in the mountainous countries at the south supply fertility by the annual inundation, which begins in June, attains its greatest height in September, and then subsides so that the farmers of Egypt can sow their grain on the waters in October, and by November, when the waters have subsided, the green blades of wheat are seen everywhere sprouting through the slimy deposit left by the river. In March there is an abundant harvest. Living was so cheap in Egypt that the cost of bringing up a human being to his twentieth year was not more than four dollars.The Egyptian finds it possible to conquer nature and make it serve him. He builds canals and dykes and regulates the overflow of the Nile so as to get the utmost service from the fertilizing power of the rich soil that the Nile brings down to him. Observation of nature necessary for the purpose of utilizing the rise of the Nile, leads him to a knowledge of astronomy, the construction of calendars, and hydraulic engineering. He understands irrigation, the construction of canals, dams and reservoirs. He invents the science of geometry because he has to use the art of surveying in order to recover his farm after the inundation, and fix its boundaries. Difficulties that occur in locating farms that are liable to be washed away by new channels cut through by freshets, as well as by the covering up and destruction of old landmarks, lead to a more careful system of laws on the subject of landed property, as well as rights and privileges appertaining to its use, than we can find elsewhere in ancient times.The greatest contrast exists between the day, which is very hot and bright with light both direct and reflected, and the night, which is very dark and cool.In contrast to the natural changes which annually prevail, making Egypt first a vast sea of water and then a blooming garden, the people of Egypt strive for permanency.Their struggle to control nature is their perpetual education. They build enormous architectural structures—temples and pyramids. They love the past and will preserve it if possible. The pyramid is a gigantic tomb, for the high priest who is the king.Not only the king but all good Egyptians shall have their bodies embalmed and preserved. Their mummies shall be saved from decay in the gigantic tombs of the hillside, above the reach of the Nile floods.Egypt invented the writing by hieroglyphics, and developed out of that system of picture-writing two other systems of writing, the Syllabic and Alphabetic. Doubtless the Phœnicians borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptians, and diffused a knowledge of it among the peoples living around the Mediterranean Sea.The priestly caste hold the directive power of Egypt, They administer the education, and rule in the counsels of the state, and give character to whatever is Egyptian.The idea of death is ever present with the Egyptian. There seems to be some faint idea of its spiritual meaning in their religion.The god Osiris dies, slain by Typhon, and yet proves himself triumphant over death, and attains perfect individuality after it. In East India there is transmigration of souls as a punishment for the exercise of appetites and desires in the life here. The properly prepared soul reaches extinction in Brahm or in Nirwana. In Egypt, too, transmigration punishes the individual by delaying his ascent into the heaven of Osiris, wherein he may become a companion to that god. While his body does not decay he need not be born again in another body, and if embalmed properly, he can avoid transmigration until he lives again with Osiris.Egyptian religious ideas are in advance of Persian in the doctrine of evil. The evil is not a principle of such power that it is invincible by the Lord of the good.The thought of death and the death-court which would decide whether the individual had lived worthily or not, was the greatest educational influence in Egypt.If the death-court decided that the deceased was worthy, his body should be embalmed, and this saved him from transmigration and secured him ultimate residence with Osiris.Hieroglyphics can not express clear abstract ideas, but only symbols of ideas. Symbolic thought is not sufficient for science. The Egyptian expresses his ideas in the form of enigmas or riddles. The Sphinx is the most adequate expression of his mind. It has the form of a human bust placed on the body of a lion, rising out of a rock. It expresses the question of its soul: “What is man? Is he only a natural being who, like the rock or the animal, belongs to nature only, and does not escape from it—or does he rise out of it and attain to individual immortality, outlasting all the forms of nature?”Egypt contributed to the spiritual development of all other lands. It is the great stimulator to the unfolding of mind in Greece and Rome, and all other nations about the Mediterranean. It is the great schoolmaster, not in morals and religion, but in scientific thinking. And yet it did not itself furnish the completed sciences, but only the limits and beginnings of science.Greek literature abounds in exaggerated accounts of the learning and wisdom of Egypt, and of its appliances for education. We should believe that the Egyptian priesthood constituted a sort of university of philosophy, history, and science.Arithmetic, geometry, surveying, and mensuration, civil engineering, language, and writing, and, according to some accounts, music formed the chief branches of their education, which varied with the caste. There were scientific schools for the priests and warriors, at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. The education of the common people was at a low standard. Plato tells us that the children of theEgyptians learned to read in classes. Diodorus says that the artisans in particular were taught reading and writing; and this we may readily believe, when we see that so many inscriptions had to be made on the walls of buildings, and on papyrus rolls. It seems that the trades and arts were learned by children from their parents.The women looked after the out-of-door affairs, while the men did the housework, and especially cared for the training of the children and the work at the loom.Arithmetic was taught by games and plays, such as trading apples or pieces of money, guessing at the number of grains of wheat concealed in the hand, or by arranging pupils in military lines.Children went barefoot and almost naked, the climate being very mild. Psammeticus (B. C. 650) sought to introduce foreign ideas, especially Greek and Phœnecian, apparently thinking that something could be gained from those peoples. Foreign languages were taught under his reign, but not in other ages.The sight of what is strange stimulates us to wonder and reflection. Herodotus, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the wisest of the Greeks speak with reverence of that part of their education received in Egypt.After Alexandria was founded by the Macedonian Greeks, as the commercial emporium of the world, Egypt became more than ever a center for the collection and distribution of learning and wisdom for the West and for the East.The Ptolemies cultivated mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar and history. The great museum founded by them in 322 B. C., furnished for two hundred years a sort of dwelling-place and university for the Greek investigators who resorted to Egypt. Even after Christianity had become the established religion under the Romans, Alexandria remained a chief seat of theological controversy.In this museum there were several large courts surrounded by colonnades opening inward, and seats under the shady trees and by cool fountains, were placed for the scholars. The dwellings of the learned teachers were near by. The famous library was in the court most retired from the street, and free from interruption. There the busy scribes copied out the treasures of the library for the libraries of other lands.The astronomical observations carried on here surprise us.The length of a degree on the surface of the earth was measured as accurately as the perfection of their instruments permitted, and the circumference of the earth was calculated by this means. The fact that the earth is round seems to have been well known long before. Eratosthenes, the superintendent of the Alexandrian Library, about two hundred years B. C., computed the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 51' and 20?, and also measured the distance between Syene and Alexandria, and the difference in latitude, by observations on the sun and stars. This gave him data for the calculation of the size of the earth, which he made to be about thirty thousand miles.Phœnicia.—Along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on the narrow sea-coast at the foot of the Mountains of Lebanon, were a series of commercial and manufacturing cities, the seat of the Phœnecians. Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Berytus, Tripolis, Aradis were places of great security on the land side, and afforded great security on the seaward side to the shipping of their merchants. The manufacture of metallic goods, glass, linen textures, dyed with the wonderful Tyrian purple, furnished the home productions wherewith to obtain the coveted articles of foreign peoples. Phœnicia was the land of industry and adventurous sailors. The tin from Cornwall, and the amber even from the Baltic were brought home through stormy seas and used in manufactures. The trains of camels loaded with Phœnician wares pierced the deserts and arrived at the great cities on the Euphrates. Cyprus, Crete, Carthage, Gades (Cadiz) were settled by Phœnician colonies. In commerce writing is indispensable, and the Phœnician borrowed the art of writing from Egypt and spread it widely over the world.For a commercial people the education was of a utilitarian character, especially arithmetic and writing, the commercial arts. The moral training was peculiar, inasmuch as the Phœnician wished to train the youth into roving habits, and to root out early that affection for home and parents that would injure the quality of the sailor. The child was not trained to reverence parents and home. His religious worship, too, was peculiar. He celebrated the pain of his gods. Melkarth was worshiped as a hero who had gone through great and useful labors like Hercules and become a god. Indeed Hercules is just the Greek copy of Melkarth, and was doubtless borrowed from the Phœnicians. The worship of Adonis by a sort of funeral commemoration of his death—loud lamentations and sad ceremonies—prevailed here also. We must note again that this worship of pain in Phœnicia, as well as the reverence for death in Egypt betokens a deeper insight into the mysteries of the relation of the human nature to the divine nature than we could find existing among the Persians or the Hindoos.The Phœnicians obtained and held a “quarter” set apart for their trading colony in cities wherever they could gain a footing. They introduced luxuries among rude peoples, and found their profit in catering for them. They united producer and consumer, and used deceit and cunning, and (whenever necessary or useful) violence, but always for the promotion of trade.They carried their forms of religious worship with their wares, and must have met with considerable success in introducing it among the Celtic peoples in Western Europe, if the Druid religion was a Phœnician importation among them, as seems likely.The Phœnician concealed his discoveries under mythical narrations calculated to frighten away the sailors of other peoples from the places he had discovered. The fearful worship of the fire-god Moloch, to whom they sacrificed especially children, laying them in his red-hot arms while the mothers standing by were not allowed to express their pain at the spectacle by cries, seems to have been a powerful means of educating by religious ceremonial the parental and filial indifference necessary for the training of this people of commercial adventurers.The Oriental and African education thus far considered does not seem to have had much respect for the individual man as such.Of all Asiatics the Hebrews are the most interesting to the modern world. These as Jehovah’s chosen people will hold the place of honor throughout all time. They are preëminently the educated people, because educated by Jehovah; and preëminently the educators, because it is through them that the world has been taught the personality of God.Judea.—Out from among a Chaldean people, of Sabæan religion, worshipers of the heavenly bodies, went Abraham, and founded a people that should reveal the true God to all nations.At first there was a nomadic or herdsman’s life of his people; then the Egyptian bondage, a training in the highest civilization of that time. The chosen people were to learn agriculture and the arts, and leave off the herdsman’s life. Then in the promised land comes the development of the city life under the kings. The patriarchal, the agricultural, and the urban phases of life make up the national forms. Then there is the captivity to Babylon in which takes place another phase of the education of this people. Finally, under the Roman dominion, there is born the Desire of all Nations in Bethlehem, and the career of the Hebrews as a chosen people is at an end.The Jew educated his children with the utmost tenderness and care, for they were the gift of Jehovah, and should be consecrated to him by education in his law and in the teachings of the prophets.It is impossible to conceive of any other education of so powerful a character or of so spiritual and ennobling a tendency as the education of the Jewish child in the history of the dealings of Jehovah with his forefathers. His national history revealed the direct relation of man to God.God is a teacher. He reveals his will to men. The consciousness of being God’s people educated those colossal individualities the patriarchs, the great national leaders, and the prophets. Their biographies furnish types of character that have a pedagogical value for all time.With his idea of God as a father, the Jew becomes the most humane of all peoples. His respect for bodily life, his humanity toward widows and orphans, his institution of the Jubilee year, the scape-goat, the laws against cruelty to animals, have been a great lesson to modern civilization.The Psalms of David that celebrate God’s greatness, goodness, providence, patient kindness and forgiveness, present for all time the expression of what is most comforting and most purifying to the human soul.The Egyptian and Phœnician spirit is limited by nature. The Jewish is elevated above it. He conceives God as pure causality;—the creator of the world;—the sun and stars are not his special revelation and in no respect to be reverenced by man.Man is greater than nature because he is chosen by the Almighty as his friend, and unconscious nature is not worthy such a destiny. Righteousness is honor of God, and mere ceremony is not. Mere nature is not adequate to the revelation of the divine. It is not the hurricane nor the earthquake that reveals God, but the small voice that speaks to man’s spirit and reason. The human heart is the place for God, but the sun and moon are not his incarnations.Finally the Jew conceives of the unity of humanity in one people, who shall all worship the One Personal God. Nationality, talent, caste, work, accidents of any sort are all indifferent compared with knowledge of the true God and subjection to his will. The God of the Jewish people is not a special, national God over against the gods of other nations. He is the One only God and all others are false gods, mere wood and stone, mere things. Thus for the Jew there is the doctrine that all people descend from Adam created by Jehovah. The Prince of Peace shall come to heal the nations, and his character shall be holiness—not physical strength, or beauty, or great size, or dignity of bearing, but holiness and humility and patience. He shall take upon himself infirmities and disgrace in order to redeem the world. He will be the Messiah.Here is the greatest educational idea ever conceived in this world!SONG.BySirJOHN DENHAM.Morpheus, the humble god that dwellsIn cottages and smoky cells,Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,And though he fears no prince’s frown,Flies from the circle of a crown.Come, I say, thou powerful god,And thy leaden charming-rod,Dipt in the Lethean lake,O’er his wakeful temples shake,Lest he should sleep and never wake.Nature, alas! why art thou soObligèd to thy greatest foe?Sleep that is thy great repast,Yet of death it bears a taste,And both are the same thing at last.TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.By CHARLES LAMB.MACBETH.When Duncan the Meek reigned King of Scotland, there lived a great thane, or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the king, and in great esteem at court for his valor and conduct in the wars; an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel army, assisted by the troops of Norway, in terrible numbers.The two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious from this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures, like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence: and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of “Thane of Glamis.” The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures, but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of “Thane of Cawdor,” to which honor he had no pretensions! and again the third bid him, “All hail!king that shalt be hereafter!” Such prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew that while the king’s sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of riddling terms, to belesser than Macbeth and greater! not so happy, but much happier!and prophesied that though he should never reign, yet his sons after him should be kings in Scotland. They then turned into air, and vanished: by which the generals knew them to be the weird sisters, or witches.While they stood pondering upon the strangeness of this adventure, there arrived certain messengers from the king, who were empowered by him to confer upon Macbeth the dignity of Thane of Cawdor. An event so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches astonished Macbeth, and he stood rapt in amazement, unable to make reply to the messengers; and in that point of time swelling hopes arose in his mind, that the prediction of the third witch might in like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign in Scotland. Turning to Banquo, he said, “Do you not hope that your children shall be kings, when what the witches promised to me has so wonderfully come to pass?” “That hope,” answered the general, “might enkindle you to aim at the throne: but oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.” But the wicked suggestions of the witches had sunk too deep into the mind of Macbeth, to allow him to attend to the warnings of the good Banquo. From that time he bent all his thoughts how to compass the crown of Scotland.Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purposes of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the flattering prophecy.It happened at this time that the king, who, out of his royal condescension, would oftentimes visit his principal nobility on gracious terms, came to Macbeth’s house, attended by his two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and a numerous train of thanes and attendants, the more to honor Macbeth for the triumphal success of his wars. The castleof Macbeth was pleasantly situated, and the air about it was sweet and wholesome, which appeared by the nests which the martlet, or swallow, had built under all the jutting friezes and buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage: for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honored hostess, lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles; and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the serpent under it. The king, being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside him. He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made presents, before he retired, to his principal officers; and among the rest, had sent a rich diamond to Lady Macbeth, greeting her by the name of his most kind hostess.Now was the middle of the night, when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men’s minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when Lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband’s nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition. She had won him to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution: and she feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane than her own) would come between and defeat the purpose. So with her own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king’s bed; having taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge. There lay Duncan, in a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offense to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favors of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men, and how would those honors be stained by the reputation of so foul a murder!In these conflicts of the mind Lady Macbeth found her husband, inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken, sleepy grooms. And with the valor of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up courage to the bloody business.So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood. But when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand. Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king’s room, whom he despatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the murder, one of the grooms who slept in the chamber, laughed in his sleep, and the other cried, “Murder,” which woke them both: but they said a short prayer; one of them said, “God bless us!” and the other answered, “Amen,” and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who stood listening to them, tried to say “Amen” when the fellow said “God bless us!” but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it. Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, “Sleep no more: Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life.” Still it cried, “Sleep no more,” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem their guilt.Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements to such a deed were so much more forcible than poor silly grooms could be supposed to have, and Duncan’s two sons fled. Malcolm, the eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest, Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.The king’s sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.Though placed so high, Macbeth and his queen could not forget the prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king, yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been so remarkably brought to pass. For this purpose they made a great supper, to which they invited all the chief thanes; and among the rest, with marks of particular respect, Banquo and his son Fleance were invited. The way by which Banquo was to pass to the palace at night, was beset by murderers appointed by Macbeth, who stabbed Banquo; but in the scuffle Fleance escaped. From that Fleance descended a race of monarchs who afterwards filled the Scottish throne, ending with James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, under whom the two crowns of England and Scotland were united.At supper the queen, whose manners were in the highest degree affable and royal, played the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which conciliated every one present, and Macbeth discoursed freely with his thanes and nobles, saying, that all that was honorable in the country was under his roof, if he had but his good friend Banquo present, whom yet he hoped he should rather have to chide for neglect, than to lament for any mischance. Just at these words the ghost of Banquo, whom he had caused to be murdered, entered the room, and placed himself on the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. Though Macbeth was a bold man, at this horrible sight his cheeks turned white with fear and he stood quite unmanned with his eyes fixed upon the ghost. His queen and all the nobles, who saw nothing, but perceived him gazing (as they thought) upon an empty chair, took it for a fit of distraction; and she reproached him, whispering that it was but the same fancy which had made him see the dagger in the air when he was about to kill Duncan. But Macbeth continued to see the ghost, and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant, that his queen fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was often troubled with.To such dreadful fancies Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom they now looked upon as father to a line of kings, who should keep their posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird sisters, and know from them the worst.He sought them in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the eye of a newt, and tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy of a witch, the root of the poisonous hemlock (this to have effect must be digged in the dark), the gall of a goat, and the liver of a Jew, with slips of the yew tree that roots itself in graves, and the finger of a dead child: all these were set on to boil in a great kettle, or cauldron, which, as fast as it grew too hot, was cooled with a baboon’s blood: to these they poured in the blood of a sow that had eaten her young, and they threw into the flame the grease that had sweaten from a murderer’s gibbet. By these charms they bound the infernal spirits to answer their questions.It was demanded of Macbeth, whether he would have his doubts resolved by them, or by their masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by their dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered, “Where are they? let me see them.” And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, the thane of Fife. And the second spirit arose in the likeness of a bloody child, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him have no fear, but laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born should have power to hurt him: and he advised him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. “Then live, Macduff!” cried the king; “what need I fear of thee? but yet I will make assurance doubly sure. Thou shalt not live; that I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder.” That spirit being dismissed, a third arose in the form of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand. He called Macbeth by name, and comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane-Hill should come against him. “Sweet bodements! good?” cried Macbeth; “who can unfix the forest, and move it from its earth-bound roots? I see I shall live the usual period of man’s life, and not be cut off by a violent death. But my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art can tell so much, if Banquo’s issue shall ever reign in this kingdom?” Here the cauldron sunk into the ground, and a noise of music was heard, and eight shadows, like kings, passed by Macbeth, and Banquo last, who bore a glass which showed the figures of many more, and Banquo, all bloody, smiled upon Macbeth, and pointed to them; by which Macbeth knew that these were the posterity of Banquo, who should reign after him in Scotland; and the witches, with a sound of soft music, and with dancing, making a show of duty and welcome to Macbeth, vanished. And from this time the thoughts of Macbeth were all bloody, and dreadful.The first thing he heard when he got out of the witches’ cave, was, that Macduff, thane of Fife, had fled to England, to join the army which was forming against him under Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king, with intent to displace Macbeth, and set Malcolm, the right heir, upon the throne. Macbeth, stung with rage, set upon the castle of Macduff, and put his wife and children, whom the thane had left behind, to the sword, and extended the slaughter to all who claimed the least relationship to Macduff.These and such-like deeds alienated the minds of all his chief nobility from him. Such as could, fled to join with Malcolm and Macduff, who were now approaching with a powerful army which they had raised in England; and the rest secretly wished success to their arms, though for fear of Macbeth they could take no active part. His recruits went on slowly. Everybody hated the tyrant, nobody loved or honored him, but all suspected him, and he began to envy the condition of Duncan, whom he had murdered, who slept soundly in his grave, against whom treason had done its worst: neither steel nor poison, domestic malice nor foreign levies, could hurt him any longer.While these things were acting, the queen who had been the sole partner in his wickedness, in whose bosom he could sometimes seek a momentary repose from those terrible dreams which afflicted them both nightly, died, it is supposed by her own hands, unable to bear the remorse of guilt and public hate; by which event he was left alone, without a soul to love or care for him, or a friend to whom he could confide his wicked purposes.He grew careless of life, and wished for death; but the near approach of Malcolm’s army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage, and he determined to die (as he expressed it) “with armor on his back.” Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly awaited the approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him, pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move! “Liar and slave,” cried Macbeth; “if thou speakest false, thou shalt hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale be true, I care not if thou dost as much by me;” for Macbeth now began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches of the spirits. He was not to fear till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane: and now a wood did move! “However,” said he, “if this which he avouchesbe true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence, nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life at an end.” With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.The strange appearance, which had given the messenger an idea of a wood moving, is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skillful general, instructed his soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valor, cutting to pieces all who were opposed to him, till he came to where Macduff was fighting. Seeing Macduff, and remembering the caution of the spirit who had counseled him to avoid Macduff above all men, he would have turned, but Macduff, who had been seeking him through the whole fight, opposed his turning, and a fierce contest ensued; Macduff giving him many foul reproaches for the murder of his wife and children. Macbeth, whose soul was charged enough with blood of that family already, would still have declined the combat; but Macduff still urged him to it, calling him tyrant, murderer, hell-hound, and villain.Then Macbeth remembered the words of the spirit, how none of woman born should hurt him; and smiling confidently he said to Macduff: “Thou losest thy labor, Macduff. As easily thou mayest impress the air with thy sword as make me vulnerable. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.” “Despair thy charm,” said Macduff, “and let that lying spirit whom thou hast served, tell thee, that Macduff was never born of woman, never as the ordinary manner of men is to be born, but was untimely taken from his mother.” “Accursed be the tongue which tells me so,” said the trembling Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; “and let never man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling spirits, who deceive us in words which have double senses, and while they keep their promise literally, disappoint our hopes with a different meaning. I will not fight with thee.”“Then live!” said the scornful Macduff; “we will have a show of thee, as men show monsters, and a painted board, on which shall be written, ‘Here men may see the tyrant!’” “Never,” said Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; “I will not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, and to be baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me who wast never born of woman, yet I will try the last.” With these frantic words he threw himself upon Macduff, who after a severe struggle in the end overcame him, and cutting off his head, made a present of it to the young and lawful king, Malcolm; who took upon him the government which by the machinations of the usurper he had so long been deprived of, and ascended the throne of Duncan the Meek, amid the acclamation of the nobles and the people.The imagination magnifies small objects, so as to fill the mind with a fantastic estimate; and with haughty insolence contracts the great to its own dwarfish measure, as for instance, in speaking of God.—Pascal.BEFORE DAYBREAK, WITH THEGREAT COMET OF 1882.By CHARLOTTE E. LEAVITT.The clock strikes four;Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,The breath of night is chill, as soft I goFrom out the door.In all the airThe living silence of the morning broods,So deep, so still, that every sound intrudesDiscordant there.A nameless changeMakes unfamiliar all the well-known street,And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,Wake weird and strange.On either hand,Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,The houses stand.Athwart the skyBlazes the comet with its streaming hair,Fleeing through space in passionate despair,As doom were nigh;While grand and grim,Warlike Orion from his gleaming heightDares this intruder, in its awful might,To cope with him.Intent I gaze:And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brainA solemn wonder that is almost pain—A song of praise.Lo! far away,The first faint flashes of the coming mornHerald triumphantly a king new-born,A golden day.

The clouds hang heavy round my way,I can not see;But through the darkness I believeGod leadeth me.’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,While all is dim;To close my weary, aching eyes,And follow him.Through many a thorny path he leadsMy tired feet;Through many a path of tears I go,But it is sweetTo know that he is close to me,My God, my guide.He leadeth me, and so I walkQuite satisfied.

The clouds hang heavy round my way,I can not see;But through the darkness I believeGod leadeth me.’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,While all is dim;To close my weary, aching eyes,And follow him.Through many a thorny path he leadsMy tired feet;Through many a path of tears I go,But it is sweetTo know that he is close to me,My God, my guide.He leadeth me, and so I walkQuite satisfied.

The clouds hang heavy round my way,I can not see;But through the darkness I believeGod leadeth me.’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,While all is dim;To close my weary, aching eyes,And follow him.

The clouds hang heavy round my way,

I can not see;

But through the darkness I believe

God leadeth me.

’Tis sweet to keep my hand in his,

While all is dim;

To close my weary, aching eyes,

And follow him.

Through many a thorny path he leadsMy tired feet;Through many a path of tears I go,But it is sweetTo know that he is close to me,My God, my guide.He leadeth me, and so I walkQuite satisfied.

Through many a thorny path he leads

My tired feet;

Through many a path of tears I go,

But it is sweet

To know that he is close to me,

My God, my guide.

He leadeth me, and so I walk

Quite satisfied.

ByProf.W. T. HARRIS.

Egypt.—According to Bunsen, Egypt is the middle place in the world’s history. It is connected directly with the West or Europe, and as directly with the East or Asia.

It is the only country in the great continent of Africa that forms a link in the history of the world. What education is to be found in the other parts of Africa, we have seen in our first chapter on education in the savage tribe. Of course we reckon the Abyssinian Christians, loosely, in this designation of Egypt, and consider Carthage as a part of Phœnician civilization.

Egypt is properly a link in the chain of Asiatic civilization, although geographically located in Africa. Its history is full of interaction with the Semitic peoples of Western Asia, and we find it often in relation with the Hebrews, the Arabians, and the Phœnicians, and even with the far-off nations of the Euphrates and Tigris. Finally the Persians conquer the country under Cambyses, and Egypt is henceforth Persian, then Macedonian, then Roman, then Saracen, and finally a Turkish dependency.

The river Nile is the essential feature of Egypt, more particularly the circumstance of its annual overflow and subsidence. There is little or no rain in Egypt in all the region from the mouth of the Nile up to the last tributary it receives on its way down from the highlands of Abyssinia. Northward from that branch (the Atbara) the Nile valley is eight hundred miles long, and the Nile itself with all its windings flows 1,300 miles, to its mouth.

The copious rains and snows in the mountainous countries at the south supply fertility by the annual inundation, which begins in June, attains its greatest height in September, and then subsides so that the farmers of Egypt can sow their grain on the waters in October, and by November, when the waters have subsided, the green blades of wheat are seen everywhere sprouting through the slimy deposit left by the river. In March there is an abundant harvest. Living was so cheap in Egypt that the cost of bringing up a human being to his twentieth year was not more than four dollars.

The Egyptian finds it possible to conquer nature and make it serve him. He builds canals and dykes and regulates the overflow of the Nile so as to get the utmost service from the fertilizing power of the rich soil that the Nile brings down to him. Observation of nature necessary for the purpose of utilizing the rise of the Nile, leads him to a knowledge of astronomy, the construction of calendars, and hydraulic engineering. He understands irrigation, the construction of canals, dams and reservoirs. He invents the science of geometry because he has to use the art of surveying in order to recover his farm after the inundation, and fix its boundaries. Difficulties that occur in locating farms that are liable to be washed away by new channels cut through by freshets, as well as by the covering up and destruction of old landmarks, lead to a more careful system of laws on the subject of landed property, as well as rights and privileges appertaining to its use, than we can find elsewhere in ancient times.

The greatest contrast exists between the day, which is very hot and bright with light both direct and reflected, and the night, which is very dark and cool.

In contrast to the natural changes which annually prevail, making Egypt first a vast sea of water and then a blooming garden, the people of Egypt strive for permanency.

Their struggle to control nature is their perpetual education. They build enormous architectural structures—temples and pyramids. They love the past and will preserve it if possible. The pyramid is a gigantic tomb, for the high priest who is the king.

Not only the king but all good Egyptians shall have their bodies embalmed and preserved. Their mummies shall be saved from decay in the gigantic tombs of the hillside, above the reach of the Nile floods.

Egypt invented the writing by hieroglyphics, and developed out of that system of picture-writing two other systems of writing, the Syllabic and Alphabetic. Doubtless the Phœnicians borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptians, and diffused a knowledge of it among the peoples living around the Mediterranean Sea.

The priestly caste hold the directive power of Egypt, They administer the education, and rule in the counsels of the state, and give character to whatever is Egyptian.

The idea of death is ever present with the Egyptian. There seems to be some faint idea of its spiritual meaning in their religion.

The god Osiris dies, slain by Typhon, and yet proves himself triumphant over death, and attains perfect individuality after it. In East India there is transmigration of souls as a punishment for the exercise of appetites and desires in the life here. The properly prepared soul reaches extinction in Brahm or in Nirwana. In Egypt, too, transmigration punishes the individual by delaying his ascent into the heaven of Osiris, wherein he may become a companion to that god. While his body does not decay he need not be born again in another body, and if embalmed properly, he can avoid transmigration until he lives again with Osiris.

Egyptian religious ideas are in advance of Persian in the doctrine of evil. The evil is not a principle of such power that it is invincible by the Lord of the good.

The thought of death and the death-court which would decide whether the individual had lived worthily or not, was the greatest educational influence in Egypt.

If the death-court decided that the deceased was worthy, his body should be embalmed, and this saved him from transmigration and secured him ultimate residence with Osiris.

Hieroglyphics can not express clear abstract ideas, but only symbols of ideas. Symbolic thought is not sufficient for science. The Egyptian expresses his ideas in the form of enigmas or riddles. The Sphinx is the most adequate expression of his mind. It has the form of a human bust placed on the body of a lion, rising out of a rock. It expresses the question of its soul: “What is man? Is he only a natural being who, like the rock or the animal, belongs to nature only, and does not escape from it—or does he rise out of it and attain to individual immortality, outlasting all the forms of nature?”

Egypt contributed to the spiritual development of all other lands. It is the great stimulator to the unfolding of mind in Greece and Rome, and all other nations about the Mediterranean. It is the great schoolmaster, not in morals and religion, but in scientific thinking. And yet it did not itself furnish the completed sciences, but only the limits and beginnings of science.

Greek literature abounds in exaggerated accounts of the learning and wisdom of Egypt, and of its appliances for education. We should believe that the Egyptian priesthood constituted a sort of university of philosophy, history, and science.

Arithmetic, geometry, surveying, and mensuration, civil engineering, language, and writing, and, according to some accounts, music formed the chief branches of their education, which varied with the caste. There were scientific schools for the priests and warriors, at Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis. The education of the common people was at a low standard. Plato tells us that the children of theEgyptians learned to read in classes. Diodorus says that the artisans in particular were taught reading and writing; and this we may readily believe, when we see that so many inscriptions had to be made on the walls of buildings, and on papyrus rolls. It seems that the trades and arts were learned by children from their parents.

The women looked after the out-of-door affairs, while the men did the housework, and especially cared for the training of the children and the work at the loom.

Arithmetic was taught by games and plays, such as trading apples or pieces of money, guessing at the number of grains of wheat concealed in the hand, or by arranging pupils in military lines.

Children went barefoot and almost naked, the climate being very mild. Psammeticus (B. C. 650) sought to introduce foreign ideas, especially Greek and Phœnecian, apparently thinking that something could be gained from those peoples. Foreign languages were taught under his reign, but not in other ages.

The sight of what is strange stimulates us to wonder and reflection. Herodotus, Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and others of the wisest of the Greeks speak with reverence of that part of their education received in Egypt.

After Alexandria was founded by the Macedonian Greeks, as the commercial emporium of the world, Egypt became more than ever a center for the collection and distribution of learning and wisdom for the West and for the East.

The Ptolemies cultivated mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar and history. The great museum founded by them in 322 B. C., furnished for two hundred years a sort of dwelling-place and university for the Greek investigators who resorted to Egypt. Even after Christianity had become the established religion under the Romans, Alexandria remained a chief seat of theological controversy.

In this museum there were several large courts surrounded by colonnades opening inward, and seats under the shady trees and by cool fountains, were placed for the scholars. The dwellings of the learned teachers were near by. The famous library was in the court most retired from the street, and free from interruption. There the busy scribes copied out the treasures of the library for the libraries of other lands.

The astronomical observations carried on here surprise us.

The length of a degree on the surface of the earth was measured as accurately as the perfection of their instruments permitted, and the circumference of the earth was calculated by this means. The fact that the earth is round seems to have been well known long before. Eratosthenes, the superintendent of the Alexandrian Library, about two hundred years B. C., computed the obliquity of the ecliptic to be 23° 51' and 20?, and also measured the distance between Syene and Alexandria, and the difference in latitude, by observations on the sun and stars. This gave him data for the calculation of the size of the earth, which he made to be about thirty thousand miles.

Phœnicia.—Along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on the narrow sea-coast at the foot of the Mountains of Lebanon, were a series of commercial and manufacturing cities, the seat of the Phœnecians. Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Berytus, Tripolis, Aradis were places of great security on the land side, and afforded great security on the seaward side to the shipping of their merchants. The manufacture of metallic goods, glass, linen textures, dyed with the wonderful Tyrian purple, furnished the home productions wherewith to obtain the coveted articles of foreign peoples. Phœnicia was the land of industry and adventurous sailors. The tin from Cornwall, and the amber even from the Baltic were brought home through stormy seas and used in manufactures. The trains of camels loaded with Phœnician wares pierced the deserts and arrived at the great cities on the Euphrates. Cyprus, Crete, Carthage, Gades (Cadiz) were settled by Phœnician colonies. In commerce writing is indispensable, and the Phœnician borrowed the art of writing from Egypt and spread it widely over the world.

For a commercial people the education was of a utilitarian character, especially arithmetic and writing, the commercial arts. The moral training was peculiar, inasmuch as the Phœnician wished to train the youth into roving habits, and to root out early that affection for home and parents that would injure the quality of the sailor. The child was not trained to reverence parents and home. His religious worship, too, was peculiar. He celebrated the pain of his gods. Melkarth was worshiped as a hero who had gone through great and useful labors like Hercules and become a god. Indeed Hercules is just the Greek copy of Melkarth, and was doubtless borrowed from the Phœnicians. The worship of Adonis by a sort of funeral commemoration of his death—loud lamentations and sad ceremonies—prevailed here also. We must note again that this worship of pain in Phœnicia, as well as the reverence for death in Egypt betokens a deeper insight into the mysteries of the relation of the human nature to the divine nature than we could find existing among the Persians or the Hindoos.

The Phœnicians obtained and held a “quarter” set apart for their trading colony in cities wherever they could gain a footing. They introduced luxuries among rude peoples, and found their profit in catering for them. They united producer and consumer, and used deceit and cunning, and (whenever necessary or useful) violence, but always for the promotion of trade.

They carried their forms of religious worship with their wares, and must have met with considerable success in introducing it among the Celtic peoples in Western Europe, if the Druid religion was a Phœnician importation among them, as seems likely.

The Phœnician concealed his discoveries under mythical narrations calculated to frighten away the sailors of other peoples from the places he had discovered. The fearful worship of the fire-god Moloch, to whom they sacrificed especially children, laying them in his red-hot arms while the mothers standing by were not allowed to express their pain at the spectacle by cries, seems to have been a powerful means of educating by religious ceremonial the parental and filial indifference necessary for the training of this people of commercial adventurers.

The Oriental and African education thus far considered does not seem to have had much respect for the individual man as such.

Of all Asiatics the Hebrews are the most interesting to the modern world. These as Jehovah’s chosen people will hold the place of honor throughout all time. They are preëminently the educated people, because educated by Jehovah; and preëminently the educators, because it is through them that the world has been taught the personality of God.

Judea.—Out from among a Chaldean people, of Sabæan religion, worshipers of the heavenly bodies, went Abraham, and founded a people that should reveal the true God to all nations.

At first there was a nomadic or herdsman’s life of his people; then the Egyptian bondage, a training in the highest civilization of that time. The chosen people were to learn agriculture and the arts, and leave off the herdsman’s life. Then in the promised land comes the development of the city life under the kings. The patriarchal, the agricultural, and the urban phases of life make up the national forms. Then there is the captivity to Babylon in which takes place another phase of the education of this people. Finally, under the Roman dominion, there is born the Desire of all Nations in Bethlehem, and the career of the Hebrews as a chosen people is at an end.

The Jew educated his children with the utmost tenderness and care, for they were the gift of Jehovah, and should be consecrated to him by education in his law and in the teachings of the prophets.

It is impossible to conceive of any other education of so powerful a character or of so spiritual and ennobling a tendency as the education of the Jewish child in the history of the dealings of Jehovah with his forefathers. His national history revealed the direct relation of man to God.

God is a teacher. He reveals his will to men. The consciousness of being God’s people educated those colossal individualities the patriarchs, the great national leaders, and the prophets. Their biographies furnish types of character that have a pedagogical value for all time.

With his idea of God as a father, the Jew becomes the most humane of all peoples. His respect for bodily life, his humanity toward widows and orphans, his institution of the Jubilee year, the scape-goat, the laws against cruelty to animals, have been a great lesson to modern civilization.

The Psalms of David that celebrate God’s greatness, goodness, providence, patient kindness and forgiveness, present for all time the expression of what is most comforting and most purifying to the human soul.

The Egyptian and Phœnician spirit is limited by nature. The Jewish is elevated above it. He conceives God as pure causality;—the creator of the world;—the sun and stars are not his special revelation and in no respect to be reverenced by man.

Man is greater than nature because he is chosen by the Almighty as his friend, and unconscious nature is not worthy such a destiny. Righteousness is honor of God, and mere ceremony is not. Mere nature is not adequate to the revelation of the divine. It is not the hurricane nor the earthquake that reveals God, but the small voice that speaks to man’s spirit and reason. The human heart is the place for God, but the sun and moon are not his incarnations.

Finally the Jew conceives of the unity of humanity in one people, who shall all worship the One Personal God. Nationality, talent, caste, work, accidents of any sort are all indifferent compared with knowledge of the true God and subjection to his will. The God of the Jewish people is not a special, national God over against the gods of other nations. He is the One only God and all others are false gods, mere wood and stone, mere things. Thus for the Jew there is the doctrine that all people descend from Adam created by Jehovah. The Prince of Peace shall come to heal the nations, and his character shall be holiness—not physical strength, or beauty, or great size, or dignity of bearing, but holiness and humility and patience. He shall take upon himself infirmities and disgrace in order to redeem the world. He will be the Messiah.

Here is the greatest educational idea ever conceived in this world!

BySirJOHN DENHAM.

Morpheus, the humble god that dwellsIn cottages and smoky cells,Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,And though he fears no prince’s frown,Flies from the circle of a crown.Come, I say, thou powerful god,And thy leaden charming-rod,Dipt in the Lethean lake,O’er his wakeful temples shake,Lest he should sleep and never wake.Nature, alas! why art thou soObligèd to thy greatest foe?Sleep that is thy great repast,Yet of death it bears a taste,And both are the same thing at last.

Morpheus, the humble god that dwellsIn cottages and smoky cells,Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,And though he fears no prince’s frown,Flies from the circle of a crown.Come, I say, thou powerful god,And thy leaden charming-rod,Dipt in the Lethean lake,O’er his wakeful temples shake,Lest he should sleep and never wake.Nature, alas! why art thou soObligèd to thy greatest foe?Sleep that is thy great repast,Yet of death it bears a taste,And both are the same thing at last.

Morpheus, the humble god that dwellsIn cottages and smoky cells,Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,And though he fears no prince’s frown,Flies from the circle of a crown.

Morpheus, the humble god that dwells

In cottages and smoky cells,

Hates gilded roofs, and beds of down,

And though he fears no prince’s frown,

Flies from the circle of a crown.

Come, I say, thou powerful god,And thy leaden charming-rod,Dipt in the Lethean lake,O’er his wakeful temples shake,Lest he should sleep and never wake.

Come, I say, thou powerful god,

And thy leaden charming-rod,

Dipt in the Lethean lake,

O’er his wakeful temples shake,

Lest he should sleep and never wake.

Nature, alas! why art thou soObligèd to thy greatest foe?Sleep that is thy great repast,Yet of death it bears a taste,And both are the same thing at last.

Nature, alas! why art thou so

Obligèd to thy greatest foe?

Sleep that is thy great repast,

Yet of death it bears a taste,

And both are the same thing at last.

By CHARLES LAMB.

When Duncan the Meek reigned King of Scotland, there lived a great thane, or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the king, and in great esteem at court for his valor and conduct in the wars; an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel army, assisted by the troops of Norway, in terrible numbers.

The two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious from this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures, like women, except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger upon her skinny lips, in token of silence: and the first of them saluted Macbeth with the title of “Thane of Glamis.” The general was not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures, but how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by giving him the title of “Thane of Cawdor,” to which honor he had no pretensions! and again the third bid him, “All hail!king that shalt be hereafter!” Such prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew that while the king’s sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of riddling terms, to belesser than Macbeth and greater! not so happy, but much happier!and prophesied that though he should never reign, yet his sons after him should be kings in Scotland. They then turned into air, and vanished: by which the generals knew them to be the weird sisters, or witches.

While they stood pondering upon the strangeness of this adventure, there arrived certain messengers from the king, who were empowered by him to confer upon Macbeth the dignity of Thane of Cawdor. An event so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches astonished Macbeth, and he stood rapt in amazement, unable to make reply to the messengers; and in that point of time swelling hopes arose in his mind, that the prediction of the third witch might in like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign in Scotland. Turning to Banquo, he said, “Do you not hope that your children shall be kings, when what the witches promised to me has so wonderfully come to pass?” “That hope,” answered the general, “might enkindle you to aim at the throne: but oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.” But the wicked suggestions of the witches had sunk too deep into the mind of Macbeth, to allow him to attend to the warnings of the good Banquo. From that time he bent all his thoughts how to compass the crown of Scotland.

Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purposes of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the flattering prophecy.

It happened at this time that the king, who, out of his royal condescension, would oftentimes visit his principal nobility on gracious terms, came to Macbeth’s house, attended by his two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and a numerous train of thanes and attendants, the more to honor Macbeth for the triumphal success of his wars. The castleof Macbeth was pleasantly situated, and the air about it was sweet and wholesome, which appeared by the nests which the martlet, or swallow, had built under all the jutting friezes and buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage: for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not less so with the attentions and respect of his honored hostess, lady Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles; and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the serpent under it. The king, being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside him. He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made presents, before he retired, to his principal officers; and among the rest, had sent a rich diamond to Lady Macbeth, greeting her by the name of his most kind hostess.

Now was the middle of the night, when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men’s minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when Lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband’s nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition. She had won him to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution: and she feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane than her own) would come between and defeat the purpose. So with her own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king’s bed; having taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge. There lay Duncan, in a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.

She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of offense to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favors of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men, and how would those honors be stained by the reputation of so foul a murder!

In these conflicts of the mind Lady Macbeth found her husband, inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt of the deed upon the drunken, sleepy grooms. And with the valor of her tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more summoned up courage to the bloody business.

So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another dagger in the air, with the handle toward him, and on the blade and at the point of it drops of blood. But when he tried to grasp at it, it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand. Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king’s room, whom he despatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the murder, one of the grooms who slept in the chamber, laughed in his sleep, and the other cried, “Murder,” which woke them both: but they said a short prayer; one of them said, “God bless us!” and the other answered, “Amen,” and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who stood listening to them, tried to say “Amen” when the fellow said “God bless us!” but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it. Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, “Sleep no more: Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life.” Still it cried, “Sleep no more,” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”

With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem their guilt.

Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements to such a deed were so much more forcible than poor silly grooms could be supposed to have, and Duncan’s two sons fled. Malcolm, the eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest, Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.

The king’s sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.

Though placed so high, Macbeth and his queen could not forget the prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king, yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been so remarkably brought to pass. For this purpose they made a great supper, to which they invited all the chief thanes; and among the rest, with marks of particular respect, Banquo and his son Fleance were invited. The way by which Banquo was to pass to the palace at night, was beset by murderers appointed by Macbeth, who stabbed Banquo; but in the scuffle Fleance escaped. From that Fleance descended a race of monarchs who afterwards filled the Scottish throne, ending with James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, under whom the two crowns of England and Scotland were united.

At supper the queen, whose manners were in the highest degree affable and royal, played the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which conciliated every one present, and Macbeth discoursed freely with his thanes and nobles, saying, that all that was honorable in the country was under his roof, if he had but his good friend Banquo present, whom yet he hoped he should rather have to chide for neglect, than to lament for any mischance. Just at these words the ghost of Banquo, whom he had caused to be murdered, entered the room, and placed himself on the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. Though Macbeth was a bold man, at this horrible sight his cheeks turned white with fear and he stood quite unmanned with his eyes fixed upon the ghost. His queen and all the nobles, who saw nothing, but perceived him gazing (as they thought) upon an empty chair, took it for a fit of distraction; and she reproached him, whispering that it was but the same fancy which had made him see the dagger in the air when he was about to kill Duncan. But Macbeth continued to see the ghost, and gave no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted words, yet so significant, that his queen fearing the dreadful secret would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was often troubled with.

To such dreadful fancies Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom they now looked upon as father to a line of kings, who should keep their posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird sisters, and know from them the worst.

He sought them in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the eye of a newt, and tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy of a witch, the root of the poisonous hemlock (this to have effect must be digged in the dark), the gall of a goat, and the liver of a Jew, with slips of the yew tree that roots itself in graves, and the finger of a dead child: all these were set on to boil in a great kettle, or cauldron, which, as fast as it grew too hot, was cooled with a baboon’s blood: to these they poured in the blood of a sow that had eaten her young, and they threw into the flame the grease that had sweaten from a murderer’s gibbet. By these charms they bound the infernal spirits to answer their questions.

It was demanded of Macbeth, whether he would have his doubts resolved by them, or by their masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by their dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered, “Where are they? let me see them.” And they called the spirits, which were three. And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of Macduff, the thane of Fife. And the second spirit arose in the likeness of a bloody child, and he called Macbeth by name, and bid him have no fear, but laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born should have power to hurt him: and he advised him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. “Then live, Macduff!” cried the king; “what need I fear of thee? but yet I will make assurance doubly sure. Thou shalt not live; that I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder.” That spirit being dismissed, a third arose in the form of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand. He called Macbeth by name, and comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane-Hill should come against him. “Sweet bodements! good?” cried Macbeth; “who can unfix the forest, and move it from its earth-bound roots? I see I shall live the usual period of man’s life, and not be cut off by a violent death. But my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art can tell so much, if Banquo’s issue shall ever reign in this kingdom?” Here the cauldron sunk into the ground, and a noise of music was heard, and eight shadows, like kings, passed by Macbeth, and Banquo last, who bore a glass which showed the figures of many more, and Banquo, all bloody, smiled upon Macbeth, and pointed to them; by which Macbeth knew that these were the posterity of Banquo, who should reign after him in Scotland; and the witches, with a sound of soft music, and with dancing, making a show of duty and welcome to Macbeth, vanished. And from this time the thoughts of Macbeth were all bloody, and dreadful.

The first thing he heard when he got out of the witches’ cave, was, that Macduff, thane of Fife, had fled to England, to join the army which was forming against him under Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king, with intent to displace Macbeth, and set Malcolm, the right heir, upon the throne. Macbeth, stung with rage, set upon the castle of Macduff, and put his wife and children, whom the thane had left behind, to the sword, and extended the slaughter to all who claimed the least relationship to Macduff.

These and such-like deeds alienated the minds of all his chief nobility from him. Such as could, fled to join with Malcolm and Macduff, who were now approaching with a powerful army which they had raised in England; and the rest secretly wished success to their arms, though for fear of Macbeth they could take no active part. His recruits went on slowly. Everybody hated the tyrant, nobody loved or honored him, but all suspected him, and he began to envy the condition of Duncan, whom he had murdered, who slept soundly in his grave, against whom treason had done its worst: neither steel nor poison, domestic malice nor foreign levies, could hurt him any longer.

While these things were acting, the queen who had been the sole partner in his wickedness, in whose bosom he could sometimes seek a momentary repose from those terrible dreams which afflicted them both nightly, died, it is supposed by her own hands, unable to bear the remorse of guilt and public hate; by which event he was left alone, without a soul to love or care for him, or a friend to whom he could confide his wicked purposes.

He grew careless of life, and wished for death; but the near approach of Malcolm’s army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage, and he determined to die (as he expressed it) “with armor on his back.” Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits, that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly awaited the approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him, pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move! “Liar and slave,” cried Macbeth; “if thou speakest false, thou shalt hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale be true, I care not if thou dost as much by me;” for Macbeth now began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches of the spirits. He was not to fear till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane: and now a wood did move! “However,” said he, “if this which he avouchesbe true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence, nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life at an end.” With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.

The strange appearance, which had given the messenger an idea of a wood moving, is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skillful general, instructed his soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.

And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valor, cutting to pieces all who were opposed to him, till he came to where Macduff was fighting. Seeing Macduff, and remembering the caution of the spirit who had counseled him to avoid Macduff above all men, he would have turned, but Macduff, who had been seeking him through the whole fight, opposed his turning, and a fierce contest ensued; Macduff giving him many foul reproaches for the murder of his wife and children. Macbeth, whose soul was charged enough with blood of that family already, would still have declined the combat; but Macduff still urged him to it, calling him tyrant, murderer, hell-hound, and villain.

Then Macbeth remembered the words of the spirit, how none of woman born should hurt him; and smiling confidently he said to Macduff: “Thou losest thy labor, Macduff. As easily thou mayest impress the air with thy sword as make me vulnerable. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield to one of woman born.” “Despair thy charm,” said Macduff, “and let that lying spirit whom thou hast served, tell thee, that Macduff was never born of woman, never as the ordinary manner of men is to be born, but was untimely taken from his mother.” “Accursed be the tongue which tells me so,” said the trembling Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; “and let never man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling spirits, who deceive us in words which have double senses, and while they keep their promise literally, disappoint our hopes with a different meaning. I will not fight with thee.”

“Then live!” said the scornful Macduff; “we will have a show of thee, as men show monsters, and a painted board, on which shall be written, ‘Here men may see the tyrant!’” “Never,” said Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; “I will not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet, and to be baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me who wast never born of woman, yet I will try the last.” With these frantic words he threw himself upon Macduff, who after a severe struggle in the end overcame him, and cutting off his head, made a present of it to the young and lawful king, Malcolm; who took upon him the government which by the machinations of the usurper he had so long been deprived of, and ascended the throne of Duncan the Meek, amid the acclamation of the nobles and the people.

The imagination magnifies small objects, so as to fill the mind with a fantastic estimate; and with haughty insolence contracts the great to its own dwarfish measure, as for instance, in speaking of God.—Pascal.

The imagination magnifies small objects, so as to fill the mind with a fantastic estimate; and with haughty insolence contracts the great to its own dwarfish measure, as for instance, in speaking of God.—Pascal.

By CHARLOTTE E. LEAVITT.

The clock strikes four;Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,The breath of night is chill, as soft I goFrom out the door.In all the airThe living silence of the morning broods,So deep, so still, that every sound intrudesDiscordant there.A nameless changeMakes unfamiliar all the well-known street,And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,Wake weird and strange.On either hand,Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,The houses stand.Athwart the skyBlazes the comet with its streaming hair,Fleeing through space in passionate despair,As doom were nigh;While grand and grim,Warlike Orion from his gleaming heightDares this intruder, in its awful might,To cope with him.Intent I gaze:And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brainA solemn wonder that is almost pain—A song of praise.Lo! far away,The first faint flashes of the coming mornHerald triumphantly a king new-born,A golden day.

The clock strikes four;Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,The breath of night is chill, as soft I goFrom out the door.In all the airThe living silence of the morning broods,So deep, so still, that every sound intrudesDiscordant there.A nameless changeMakes unfamiliar all the well-known street,And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,Wake weird and strange.On either hand,Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,The houses stand.Athwart the skyBlazes the comet with its streaming hair,Fleeing through space in passionate despair,As doom were nigh;While grand and grim,Warlike Orion from his gleaming heightDares this intruder, in its awful might,To cope with him.Intent I gaze:And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brainA solemn wonder that is almost pain—A song of praise.Lo! far away,The first faint flashes of the coming mornHerald triumphantly a king new-born,A golden day.

The clock strikes four;Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,The breath of night is chill, as soft I goFrom out the door.

The clock strikes four;

Glitter the stars, the waning moon hangs low,

The breath of night is chill, as soft I go

From out the door.

In all the airThe living silence of the morning broods,So deep, so still, that every sound intrudesDiscordant there.

In all the air

The living silence of the morning broods,

So deep, so still, that every sound intrudes

Discordant there.

A nameless changeMakes unfamiliar all the well-known street,And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,Wake weird and strange.

A nameless change

Makes unfamiliar all the well-known street,

And mocking echoes ’neath my stealthy feet,

Wake weird and strange.

On either hand,Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,The houses stand.

On either hand,

Mysterious, with Argus eyes shut fast,

Dumb and unchanging as a hopeless past,

The houses stand.

Athwart the skyBlazes the comet with its streaming hair,Fleeing through space in passionate despair,As doom were nigh;

Athwart the sky

Blazes the comet with its streaming hair,

Fleeing through space in passionate despair,

As doom were nigh;

While grand and grim,Warlike Orion from his gleaming heightDares this intruder, in its awful might,To cope with him.

While grand and grim,

Warlike Orion from his gleaming height

Dares this intruder, in its awful might,

To cope with him.

Intent I gaze:And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brainA solemn wonder that is almost pain—A song of praise.

Intent I gaze:

And, half unheeded, swells through heart and brain

A solemn wonder that is almost pain—

A song of praise.

Lo! far away,The first faint flashes of the coming mornHerald triumphantly a king new-born,A golden day.

Lo! far away,

The first faint flashes of the coming morn

Herald triumphantly a king new-born,

A golden day.

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