374 LITERAftY AND SCIENTIFIC. 



analysis of this character was worthy of admiration, alike for metaphysical in- 

 quiry into the hidden workinp^s of Macbeth's mind, and for lanc;uage exquisitely 

 descriptive of the scenes and incidents presented to the reader's contemplation. 

 Thus, when Duncan retires to Macbeth's castle " to enjoy in tranquillity the 

 repose brought home to him by his victorious armies," the lecturer continued 

 in the following terms an admirable picture of " the gentle retreat where 

 Nature seems to repose in silence and in solitude amid lakes, and woods, and 

 mountains, that seem to tell of all abstraction from the passions and the crimes 

 of men." •' Let the scene in its first opening view be presented to your con- 

 templation — not as it appears upon the stage, but in its own abstracted beauty; 

 and then, for the evening song of the bird haunting the solitary towers, and for 

 the * sweet air recommending itself unto the gentle senses,' place in awful con- 

 trast, the succeeding storm, and the * strange screams of death' heard upon the 

 midnight air ; and you will acknowledge the power of the magician, whose wand 

 thus suddenly converts security to danger, calm to tempest, life to death, and 

 triumph to lamentation ! " The recitations were delivered with high dramatic 

 power. In Macbeth's interview with the witches, on the heath ; in his address 

 to the dagger ; in the banquet scene, when the ghost of Banquo " spoils the 

 pleasure of the time ;" and in the fluctuations of passion which mark the tyrant's 

 varied feelings throughout the last act, Mr. Ball, though unaided by the 

 appurtenances of scenic illusion, presented an admirable and perfectly sustained 

 picture of a man, not naturally wicked, advancing gradually in the path of guilt, 

 until, with a full reliance upon supernatural aid, he declares that he 



" — Will not be afraid of death and bane 

 'Till Birnam forest come to Dunsiuane !" 



Of all the recitations, the most touching was that of the few lines of soul-felt 

 pathos which Macbethpronounces when, on the death of his wife, he finds him- 

 self left alone, " like a bark that sees its consort go down amid the waters of 

 the troubled ocean, while the clouds are collecting over head, and the tide 

 of ruin swells into fearful undulation." 



" To morrow, and to moiTow, and to morrow 

 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 

 To the last syllable of recorded time," &c. &c. 



In his lecture on the Eloquence of the Bar, Mr. Ball commenced by a reference 

 to the times in which Erskine " appealed to the understandings of an EngUsh jury 

 upon principles of human right and universal independence, enforcing those appeals 

 by language clothed in eloquence, and leading to conviction" — when Curran 

 *' diverted the attention of an easily excited Irish jury from the weak and pregnable 

 points of his client's case, by the glare of gushing streams of imaginative splen 

 dour" — and when Mackintosh by his defence of Peltier " gave great and sanguine 

 promise of sustaining the character of the English Bar" — those times being placed in 

 contrast by the lecturer with the subsequent period in which " night closed around the 

 precincts of tlie British forum." He then gave a judicious exposition of the difficul- 

 ties connected with the profession of the Bar, — the toil, both physical and mental, 

 that attends the Ufe of a barrister in full practice ; after which he drew an eloquent 

 contrast between the practice of the King's Bench and that of the Old Bailey. In 

 the former, said the lecturer, " it is evident that men must toil, but we may suppose 

 that thence likewise they can derive enjoyment. To protect the rights of the 

 orphan involved in the subtile meshes that fraud has drawn around — to defend the 

 mourning widow, when her husband's professing friends, upon his death, have 

 reared their serpent heads, endeavouring to crush her in tlieir perfidious coils — to 

 vindicate the Uberties of society by supporting the privileges of some arraigned, but 

 guiltless individual — to oppose the pure and adamantine shield of equity against the 

 strong weapon of the law, directed by the hand of arbitrary power — these are the 

 high and useful services that a King's Bench advocate may hope for opportunities 

 of rendering to his fellow men — these are the noble duties by which he can 

 benefit humanity, and imraortaUze his own name. There is, however, a branch 

 of the legal profession, in which I behold every thing that can ossify the heart of 



