example of want of consistency or uniformity; since she first supplicates for life, and afterwards consents to die. It is difficult to attribute much weight to the criticism, though it comes with the sanction of a great name. The part of Iphigenia throughout appears singularly natural. Her first impulse is to live; but when she clearly perceives how much depends on her voluntary death, and how Achilles, her champion, is compromised by his dangerous resolve to save her-lastly, how the Greeks are bent on the expedition, from motives of national honour-she yields herself up a willing victim. It would be quite as reasonable to object to Menelaus's sudden change of purpose, from demanding the death of the maid, to the refusing to consent to it."

IPHIGENIA AT TAURI.

Twenty years have passed since the concluding scene of "Iphigenia in Aulis" before the opening of this drama. Ten years were spent in the siege of Troy, another ten in the return of the surviving heroes to their homes. From the moment when the young daughter of Agamemnon is borne away from the altar at Aulis, she has been devoted to the service of Diana at Tauri―a goddess who, like the ferocious deities of the Mexicans, delighted in the savour of human blood. From that moment, also, Iphigenia has remained ignorant of the great events that have taken place since her rescue. She knows not that Troy has fallen; that her father has been murdered and avenged; A. C. vol. xii.

H

that her brother Orestes and her sister Electra yet live, but under the ban of gods and men; or that Helen, the "direful spring" of so many woes to Greece, is once more queen at Sparta. Little chance, indeed, was there of her getting news of her country or kindred in the inhospitable country to which she had been brought. The land where Tauri * stood was shunned by all Greeks, for the welcome awaiting them there was death on the altar of the goddess, to whom men of their race were the most acceptable of victims.

But the end of her long exile and the hour assigned for her restoration to home and kindred were at hand. A Greek vessel arrives at this remote and barbarous region; and two strangers, immediately after the priestess of Diana has spoken a kind of prologue, come upon the stage, and cautiously, as persons afraid of being seen, survey the temple. Though they have had foul weather and rough seas, they are not shipwrecked, but have come with a special object to this perilous land. That object is apparently of the most desperate kind, for the strangers are not only Greeks, but have come, in obedience to an oracle, to carry off and transport to Attica the tutelary goddess of Tauri. In the prologue the audience is prepared to recognise in the two persons on the stage Orestes and his friend Pylades; for Iphigenia relates a dream she has had on the previous night, but which she misinterprets. She believes it to mean that Orestes, whom she had left an infant at Aulis, is dead, and proposes to offer

*The action of the play is fixed at the now historic Balaclava, in the Crimea.

libations to his shade. Orestes and his friend, having satisfied themselves that this is the temple whence the image, by force or fraud, must be taken away, retire and give place to the Chorus, not indeed without some misgivings on the part of Orestes as to the possibility of executing their enjoined task. "The walls are high," he says "the doors are barred with brass ; even if we can climb the one and force the other, how shall we escape the watchful eyes of those who guard the shrine or dwell in the city? If detected, we shall be put to death

Shall we, then, ere we die, by flight regain

The ship, in which we hither ploughed the sea?"

"Of flight we must not think," réjoins Pylades; "the god's command must be obeyed. But we have seen enough of the temple for the present; and now let us retire to some cave where

"We may lie concealed

At distance from our ship, lest some, whose eyes.
May note it, bear the tidings to the king,

And we be seized by force."

What Pylades had dreaded happens. The Chorus, as soon as their song, in which Iphigenia takes a part, is ended, say to her,

"Leaving the sea-washed shore an herdsman comes, Speeding with some fresh tidings."

The herdsman's report of what he has seen is most strange and exciting to the hearers of it. He opens

it with apprising the priestess that she must get all things ready for a sacrifice, for

"Two youths, swift rowing 'twixt the dashing rocks Of our wild sea, are landed on the beach,

A grateful offering at Diana's shrine.

"At first one of my comrades took them, as they sat in the cavern, for two deities; but another said, they are wrecked mariners: and he was in the right, as soon it proved; for one of the twain was suddenly seized with madness, while the other soothed him in his frenzy,

"Wiped off the foam, took of his person care,
And spread his fine robe over him.

"The mad one had assailed our herds, mistaking them, it seems, for certain Furies that hunt him; whereupon we, seeing the havoc he was making, blew our horns, called the neighbours to our aid, and at last, after a desperate resistance from these strange visitors, we captured them both,

"And bore them to the monarch of this land:
He viewed them, and without delay to thee
Sent them, devoted to the cleansing vase
And to the altar."

Hitherto the hand of Iphigenia is unspotted by the blood of human victims. The prisoners are the first Greeks who have landed on this fatal coast. She is still under the influence of her dream. Her conviction that Orestes is dead, her remembrance of the wrong done to her at Aulis, combine to harden her

against the prisoners before they are presented to her. When, however, she has seen and interrogated them as to their nation and whence they come, her mood changes. Her ignorance of what has taken place since she left Argos is now dispersed. Not only does she learn that the Greeks have taken Troy and returned to their homes, but also that Orestes is living. He evades, indeed, her questions as to himself; he will not disclose his name and parentage, and is unaware that his sister stands before him. 66 Argives both are ye?" she says, "then one of you shall be spared, and he shall take a letter from me to my brother." Then follows the celebrated contest between the pair of friends as to which of them shall do her commission. The deeply affecting character of this scene was felt in all lands where the tragedy was represented. "What shouts, what excitement," says Lælius, "pervaded the theatre at the representation of my friend Pacuvius's new play, when the contest took place between Orestes and Pylades, each claiming the privilege of dying for the other! "'* Then comes the recognition between the long-parted brother and sister. Iphigenia will not trust to mere oral communication. She will write as

well as give a verbal message. She reads the letter to the captives. She takes this precaution for two rea

sons:

"If thou preserve

This letter, that, though silent, will declare
My purport; if it perish in the sea,
Saving thyself my words too shalt thou save."

* Cicero on Friendship, c. 7.