ly in front of the stage, as with us, was the orchestra;
but it was of much larger dimensions, not only positively, but
in proportion to the theatre. In our playhouses it is exclusively
inhabited by fiddles and their fiddlers; the ancients appropriated it
to more dignified purposes; for there stood the high altar of Bacchus,
richly ornamented and elevated, and around it moved the sacred Chorus
to solemn measures, in stately array and in magnificent vestments,
with crowns and incense, chanting at intervals their songs, and
occupied in their various rites, as we have before mentioned. It is
one of the many instances of uninterrupted traditions, that this part
of our theatres is still devoted to receive musicians, although,
in comparison with their predecessors, they are of an ignoble and
degenerate race.

The use of masks was another remarkable peculiarity of the ancient
acting. It has been conjectured, that the tragic mask was invented
to conceal the face of the actor, which, in a small city like Athens,
must have been known to the greater part of the audience, as vulgar
in expression, and it sometimes would have brought to mind most
unseasonably the remembrance of a life and of habits, that would have
repelled all sympathy with the character which he was to personate. It
would not have been endured, that a player should perform the part of
a monarch in his ordinary dress, nor that of a hero with his own mean
physiognomy. It is probable, also, that the likeness of every hero of
tragedy was handed down in statues, medals, and paintings, or even in
a series of masks; and that the countenance of Theseus, or of Ajax,
was as well known to the spectators as the face of any of their
contemporaries. Whenever a living character was introduced by name, as
Cleon or Socrates, in the old comedy, we may suppose that the mask was
a striking, although not a flattering portrait. We cannot doubt, that
these masks were made with great care, and were skilfully painted,
and finished with the nicest accuracy; for every art was brought to
a focus in the Greek theatres. We must not imagine, like schoolboys,
that the tragedies of Sophocles were performed at Athens in such
rude masks as are exhibited in our music shops. We have some
representations of them in antique sculptures and paintings, with
features somewhat distorted, but of exquisite and inimitable beauty.

_THE ROMAN STAGE._

The Drama of ancient Rome possesses little of originality