they have fairly banished the legitimate tragic drama from the London
stage. If the precept of Scripture be true--"By their fruits shall ye
know them"--the palm must be unquestionably awarded to the old Grecian
school.

If the different principles on which the two great schools of the drama
proceed are considered, it will not appear surprising that this result
has taken place.

The Greek drama embraced a very limited number of stories and events,
and they were all thoroughly known to every audience in the country. The
incidents and tragic occurrences so wonderfully illustrated by the
genius of their tragic poets, are almost all to be found sketched out in
the _Odyssey_ of Homer, or in the successive disasters of the fated race
of Oedipus. The sacrifice of Iphigenia to procure fair gales when
setting out for Troy, the foundation of the exquisite tragedy by
Euripides of _Iphigenia in Aulis_; the subsequent meeting of her with
her brothers, the basis of _Iphigenia in Tauris_, by the same poet; the
murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and her adulterous lover; the
revenge of Electra and Orestes, who put their mother and her lover to
death; the subsequent remorse and woful fate of the avenging brother and
sister--form so many tragedies, which for centuries entranced the
Athenian audience. The sorrows of Andromache, when torn from her home
after the death of Hector and sack of Troy, and subjected to the
jealousy of the daughter of Menelaus; the deep woes of Hecuba, who saw
in one day her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the
corpse of her son washed ashore, after having been perfidiously murdered
by his Thracian host, as they appeared in the thrilling verses of
Euripides--were all previously well known to the Grecian audience. If to
these we add the multiplied disasters of the line of Oedipus; the
despair of that unhappy man at his incestuous marriage with Jocasta; his
subsequent sorrow when an exile, poor and bowed down by misfortune; the
dreadful fate which befell his sons when they fell by each others' hands
before the walls of Thebes; and the heroic self-sacrifice of Antigone to
procure the rites of sepulture for her beloved and innocent brother--we
shall find we have embraced nearly the whole dramas which exercised the
genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

It resulted from this limited number of incidents in the Greek drama,
and the thorough acquaintance of the audience, in every instance, with