guilty King, but the Queen also, felt that awful presence in the deserted hall. He

mutters at broken intervals that "blood will have blood," that "stones have been known to move," that "maggot-pies and choughs and rooks" have "brought forth the secret'st blood of man," till at last, when night is "at odds with morning which is which," he rouses himself from the spell of fear to plan his culminating act of villainy, the massacre of the wife and children of M'Duff.

GHOSTS.

III.

The Ghost of Cæsar seems at first sight to be of less importance than any other of Shakespeare's apparitions. It has little to say, and remains visible for a very short time. It is seen by none but Brutus, and creates no outward sensation. But when we examine the subject more closely, we find that this vision is a most powerful element in the drama, giving to it a unity of purpose and design which would otherwise be lacking.

It has been often remarked that Brutus, and not Cæsar, is the true hero of the play. This may be so, and in no other hero, perhaps, do we see reflected so much of the character and opinions of the

author; but from first to last the spirit of Julius Cæsar is the vital principle of the tragedy.

"O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet!"

is not a conclusion forced upon Brutus by the confusions and disasters of the battlefield, but the keynote of all that has happened before and after the assassination of the titular hero.

In the plays we have already studied, Hamlet, Richard III. and Macbeth admit us into the most secret chambers of their mind. We know their hopes and regrets, their ambitions and fears, the worst and the best of their nature; but Brutus lutely closes his heart against us. We hear him thinking aloud, but that is a

reso

voluntary act. His inmost feeling he keeps to himself, save when for one instant only he lifts the veil and gives us a brief glimpse of what is going on within.

This is at the end of the soliloquy (II., 1.) in which he reasons with himself as to the necessity for Cæsar's deathreasoning which we see to be forced and in antagonism to his truer instinct; then he adds, with unusual self-revelation :

"Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar

I have not slept,

Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream : The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council, and the state of

man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection."

Here we have again a reference to the double nature of man. As with the "Genius" of Macbeth (Macb., III., 1.), and the "Angel," "Demon," or "Spirit" of Mark Antony (Ant. and Cleo., II. 3.), the "Genius" is here also spoken of as a distinct part of the human being. Brutus goes further, and defines for us the other part of man as "the mortal instruments," in which is included, as can be gathered from the context, the brain or reasoning faculty. Throughout the play we can trace, by the help of his own key, the struggle going on within the breast of Brutus. In the first act his "Genius" is in revolt against the growing power of Cæsar and the loss of Roman liberty.