mother Clytemnestra will soon arrive. The time is night, the "brave o'erhanging firmament" is studded with stars. The only sounds audible are the tramp of sentinels, and the challenge of the watch: the camp is wrapt in deep slumber :

"Not the sound

Of birds is heard, nor of the sea; the winds

Are hushed in silence."

"The king of men " is much agitated by some secret grief. By the light of a "blazing lamp" he is writing a letter :--

And

"The writing he does blot; then seal,
open it again; then on the floor

Casts it in grief: the warm tear from his eyes
Fast flowing, in his thoughts distracted near,
Even, it may seem, to madness."

The cause for the perturbation of his spirit is this: the Grecian fleet has been detained at Aulis by thwarting winds, and Calchas, the seer, has declared that Agamemnon's daughter must be sacrificed to Diana, irate with him because he has shot, while hunting, one of her sacred deer. Unwittingly the Grecian commander has, in order to conciliate her, vowed that he will offer to her the most beautiful creature that the year of his child's birth has produced. He has been persuaded by his brother Menelaus to summon Iphigenia to Aulis, on the pretext of giving her in marriage to Achilles. He has sent a letter to Argos, directing Clytemnestra to bring the maiden to the camp without delay. Soon, however, the father recoils from this deceit,

and he prepares a second letter, annulling the former one, and enjoining his wife to remain at home. This he commits to the hands of an old servant of Clytemnestra's, with injunctions to make all speed with it to Argos; but just as the messenger is passing the borders of the camp, he is seized by Menelaus, who breaks the seal, reads the missive, and hurries to upbraid his brother with treachery to himself and the general cause of Hellas. A sharp debate ensues between the brothers—one twitting the other with bad faith; the other taxing the husband of Helen with want of proper feeling for his niece and himself, and chiding him for taking such pains to get back that worthless runaway, his wife. "If I," he says,

"Before ill judging, have with sobered thought My purpose changed, must I be therefore judged Reft of my sense? Thou rather, who hast lost A wife that brings thee shame, yet dost with warmth Wish to regain her, may the favouring Gods Grant thee such luck. But I will not slay

My children.

My nights, my days, would pass away in tears,
Did I with outrage and injustice wrong

Those who derive their life from me."

The brothers part in high dudgeon, Agamemnon remaining on the stage; and to him a messenger enters, bearing the unwelcome tidings that Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, and the infant Orestes, will soon make glad his eyes, after their long separation. They are close to the camp, though they have not yet entered it, for

"Wearied with this length of way, beside
A beauteous-flowing fountain they repose,
Themselves refreshing, and their steeds unyoked
Crop the fresh herbage of the verdant mead."

"Thou hast my thanks-go in," says the now utterly wretched father to the messenger, and then tells in soliloquy his woes to the audience. He is caught in inextricable toils. Shall he cause the assembled host to rise and mutiny, or shall he keep his rash vow, and sacrifice his darling to the irate goddess-"what ruin hath the son of Priam brought on me and my house!"

It is now early morning, and the camp is astir, and a murmur, gradually getting louder, is heard. The chieftains and the soldiers are greeting the queen of Argos and Mycenae, her fair daughter, and her infant son. But before they enter, Menelaus has hurried back, and is reconciled to his royal brother. The younger king tells his liege lord that speedy repentance has followed on the heels of his late hasty passion. He has been moved by the tears of the distracted father: he yields to the arguments used by him :

"When from thine eye I saw thee drop the tear,
I pitied thee and wept myself: what I said then
I now unsay, no more unkind to thee.

Now feel I as thou feelest-nay, exhort thee
To spare thy child; for what hath she to do,
Thy virgin daughter, with my erring wife?
Break up the army, let the troops depart.
Within this breast there beats a loving heart.
Love or ambition shall not us divide,
Though they part brethren oft."

A second choral song follows this reconciliation scene; and then the chariot that has brought Clytemnestra and her young children appears on the right hand of the royal tent. She is welcomed by the Chorus, and assisted by them to alight. In Clytemnestra, Euripides shows how delicately he can delineate female characters, and how happily he has seized the opportunity for exhibiting the Lady Macbeth or Lucrezia Borgia of the Greek stage as a loving wife and mother. The seeds of evil passions were dormant in her nature, but until she was deeply wronged they bore not fruit. Clytemnestra in this play is a fond mother, a trusting wife, a very woman, even shy, unpretending, unversed in courts or camps. To the Chorus, after acknowledging their "courtesy and gentleness of speech," she says:

"I hope that I am come

To happy nuptials, leading her a bride.
But from the chariot take the dowry-gifts,
Brought with me for the virgin: to the house
Bear them with careful hands. My daughter, leave
The chariot now, and place upon the ground
Thy delicate foot. Kind women, in your arms
Receive her she is tender: prithee too,
Lend me a hand, that I may leave this seat
In seemly fashion. Some stand by the yoke,
Fronting the horses; they are quick of eye,
And hard to rule when startled. Now receive
This child, an infant still. Dost sleep, my boy?
The rolling of the car hath wearied thee:
Yet wake to see thy sister made a bride;
A noble youth, the bridegroom, Thetis' son,
And he will wed into a noble house."

She enters without pomp or circumstance, with only an attendant or two. Knowing his name, she displays no further curiosity about the supposed bridegroom: whatever her husband has designed must, she thinks, be good. She, a half-divine princess of the race of Tantalus, the sister of Helen and of the great Twin-Brethren, the consort of "the king of men," is nevertheless an uninstructed Grecian housewife. She knows nothing of the genealogy of Achilles, at least on the father's side. She has never heard of the Myrmidons: she knows not where Pthia may be she asks what mortal or what goddess became the wife of Peleus; and when told that she is the sea-nymph Thetis, who but for a warning oracle would have been the spouse of Jupiter, she wonders where the rites of Hymen were celebrated, on firm land or in some ocean cave. The childlike amazement and delight of Iphigenia also are drawn by a master's hand. Not Thecla, when first entering Wallenstein's palace and seeing the royal state by which her father was surrounded; not Miranda, gazing for the first time upon "the brave new world,"* are more delicate creations of poetic fancy than Iphigenia.

Bearing in mind what the representation of strong emotions can be on the modern stage, where the face and limbs of the actors are free to exhibit the varying moods of a tragic character, it is most difficult, or

"Oh wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! Oh, brave new world
That has such people in it !"

-"Tempest," act v. sc. 1.