al gifts to that small Athenian land. They praise Pallas
Athene, who gave their forefathers the olive; then Poseidon--Neptune, as
the Romans call him--who gave their forefathers the horse; and something
more--the ship,--the horse of the sea, as they, like the old Norse
Vikings after them, delighted to call it.--

Our highest vaunt is this--Thy grace,
Poseidon, we behold.
The ruling curb, embossed with gold,
Controls the courser's managed pace.
Though loud, oh king, thy billows roar,
Our strong hands grasp the labouring oar,
And while the Nereids round it play,
Light cuts our bounding bark its way.

What a combination of fine humanities! Dance and song, patriotism and
religion, so often parted among us, have flowed together into one in
these stately villagers; each a small farmer; each a trained soldier, and
probably a trained seaman also; each a self-governed citizen; and each a
cultured gentleman, if ever there were gentlemen on earth.

But what drama, doing, or action--for such is the meaning of the word--is
going on upon the stage, to be commented on by the sympathizing Chorus?

One drama, at least, was acted in Athens in that year--440 B.C.--which
you, I doubt not, know well--that _Antigone_ of Sophocles, which
Mendelssohn has resuscitated, in our own generation, by setting it to
music, divine indeed, though very different from the music to which it
was set, probably by Sophocles himself, at its first, and for ought we
know, its only representation. For pieces had not then, as now, a run of
a hundred nights and more. The Athenian genius was so fertile, and the
Athenian audience so eager for novelty, that new pieces were demanded,
and were forthcoming, for each of the great festivals, and if a piece was
represented a second time it was usually after an interval of some years.
They did not, moreover, like the moderns, run every night to some theatre
or other, as a part of the day's amusement. Tragedy, and even comedy,
were serious subjects, calling out, not a passing sigh, or passing laugh,
but all the higher faculties and emotions. And as serious subjects were
to be expressed in verse and music, which gave stateliness, doubtless,
even to the richest burlesques of Aristophanes, and lifted them out of
mere street-buffoonery into an ideal fairy land of the grotesque, how
much more stateliness must verse and music have added to their tragedy!
And how much have we lost, toward