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over the armour that but partially covers their stalwart limbs, are meeting in the deadly shock of a hand-to-hand struggle, under lurid and lowering skies, among the desecrated temples of the gods of Greece, in a landscape half-lighted by blazing buildings. As this war has been kindled by the wrath of Poseidon, there is an especial propriety in the comparisons being drawn from the ocean chafing under the violence of a storm, and Mr. Swinburne has sustained them throughout with equal spirit and consistency. Then leaving everything below in tempestuous convulsion to the horrors of impending chaos and the blackness of approaching night, the chorus averts its terror-stricken eyes and raises them in renewed entreaties to the Sun-god. But no more in the heavens than on the earth is there a sign as yet of the divine relenting, and again they pass from supplication to taunts :

But thou fair beauty of heaven, dear face of the day nigh dead,

What horror hath hidden thy glory, what hand hath muffled thy head? O Sun, with what song shall we call thee, or ward off thy wrath by what name,

With what prayer shall we seek to thee, soothe with what incense, avenge with what gift,

If thy light be such only as lightens to deathward the seaman adrift, With the fire of his house for a beacon that foemen have wasted with flame?

Who hath blinded thee? Who hath prevailed on thee? Who hath ensnared ?

Who hath broken thy bow and the shafts for thy battle prepared? Have they found out a fetter to bind thee, a chain for thine arm that was bared?

Be the name of thy conqueror set forth, and the might of thy master declared.

O God, fair God of the morning, O glory of day,

What ails thee to cast from thy forehead its garland away?

To pluck from thy temples their chaplet enwreathed of the light,

And bind on the brows of thy Godhead a frontlet of light?

Thou hast loosened the necks of thy horses and goaded their flanks with affright,

To the race of a course that we know not, on ways that are hid from our sight;

As a wind through the darkness the wheels of their chariot are whirled,

And the light of its passage is night on the face of the world.
And there falls from the wings of thy glory no help from on high,
But a shadow that smites us with fear and desire of thine eye;

For our hearts are as reeds that a wind in the water bows down and goes by,

To behold not thy comfort in heaven that hath left us untimely to die.'

In the thought as in the sound nothing can well be finer than the couplet,

6

Thou hast loosened the necks of thy horses and goaded their flanks with affright,

To the race of a course that we know not, on ways that are hid from our sight,'

mythologically expressive as it is of the failing faith and gathering despair of the heaven-gaping multitude. Then there is a graceful change in the description, as the sign that had been so frantically prayed for makes its appearance at last, and hope comes back to them, though at first hesitatingly, with the glory of the slanting sunbeams that are seen breaking out through the darkness:

'He has glanced into golden the grey sea-strands,

And the clouds are shot through with the fires of his hands,
And the height of the hollow of heaven that he fills
As the heart of a strong man is quickened and thrills;
High over the folds of the low-lying lands,

On the shadowless hills

As a guard on his watch-tower he stands.

All earth and all ocean, all depth and all height,
At the flash of an eyebeam are filled with his might :
The sea roars backwards, the storm drops dumb,
And silence as dew on the fire of the fight
Falls kind in our ears as his face in our sight
With presage of peace to come.'

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These clouds shot through with the fires of his hands' are the presage of the mingled joy and sorrow in store for the Athenians; joy and sorrow that run intertwining in alternate threads through the lyrical interchange of single lines between the chorus and the herald who has brought the news of the battle. The great sacrifice has answered its end. The drama has culminated in the defeat and confusion of the menacing hosts; Eumolpus has fallen on the spear of Erechtheus, but the monarch himself has been struck down in the moment of his victory by a bolt launched straight from the hand of Zeus. The shock of the hosts and the recoil of the enemy are rendered with great power, but after all they are necessarily very much a repetition of the scenes that have been already vividly evoked by the patriotic imagination of the chorus. There was a lull in the fierce war, and gods and men alike held their hands for the time being, while the rival leaders meet in Homeric fashion to decide the day as selected champions. Still the religious element is consistently evolved in the language

Erechtheus hurls at his enemy, in the shape of a short, sharp, pious prayer to Zeus:

'O Father-God,

Source of the God my father, from thine hand

Send me what end seems good now in thy sight,
But death from mine to this man.'

The fatal spear-thrust, followed by the deadly thunder-bolt, come as a speedy and startling answer. Preserving the metaphor of the wild inundation washing up over the solid earth, and threatening everything with a devastating deluge, the host of Eumolpus stricken through the heart of its chief, in fierce re'coil drew seaward, as with one wild wail of waves.' It is the commanding presence of Sorrow incarnate in the form of the fearfully stricken Praxithea, that compels to an outburst of blunt but sympathetic speech the messenger of the tidings of good and evil who has been reluctantly dallying with the dire announcement. And even then the miserable queen, who has seen all the tendrils of her domestic affections shrivelling up under the blighting dispensations of the gods, is still true to herself and her reverent and heroic nature. Of herself and her personal feelings she dare say nothing, but she has just strength left her for the utterance- I praise the gods for 'Athens.' When our sympathies with her have been strained to the uttermost, there is satisfaction in feeling that she has her reward and some consolation. At least it is given her to know that her bereavements have borne their fruit, and that the successive strokes that have spread desolation round her hearth have assured the foundations of her much-loved city. Athena, silent for so long and seemingly serenely indifferent, breaks forth into speech at last with no uncertain sound, and the drama comes to a close with a prophetic revelation of the greatness and the immortality of glory, for which Athens has been preserved. For

'-time nor earth nor changing sons of man,
Nor waves of generations, nor the winds
Of ages risen and fallen that steer their tides
Through light and dark of birth and lovelier death
From storm towards haven inviolable, shall see
So great a light alive beneath the sun

As the aweless eye of Athens; all fame else
Shall be to her fame as a shadow in sleep

To this wide noon at waking.'

We have little left to add. We have gone sufficiently into analysis of the drama in its conception and construction, to show that it is not only highly artistic but essentially Greek.

And we have indulged in amplitude and variety enough of quotation to enable our readers to judge for themselves, whether we have in any degree exceeded in our praises of the grace and spirit of the execution. We think there can hardly be a question that Mr. Swinburne's beautiful poem is singularly free from faults; if we have been conscious of drawbacks that have interfered with our entire enjoyment, some will be found to be inherent in the form or design of composition, while others at the worst are less faults than blemishes. Thus when a single overpowering idea is engrossing the minds alike of actors and spectators; while the whole machinery is working along converging lines towards the grand central event on which everything is to turn, it is impossible to escape from occasional repetition of description, or to avoid some iteration of thought and expression. The more striking the leading situations, the more thrilling the subordinate incidents, the higher the pitch of tension to which the feelings are strung and the loftier the tone of passion on which the speech is pitched, the more does that difficulty increase in proportion. It says much for the versatility of the dramatist's gifts, for the flexibility of his imagination and the fluency of his versification, that he has eluded the difficulty with such signal success. Occasionally there may be some slight obscurity in his thought -we fail to follow him in a far-fetched fancy, or doubt how far we may have rightly interpreted his meaning-even when we have tried to elucidate it by the light of the context. But in Erechtheus' we find fewer causes for complaint of the kind than in any of his earlier dramas; and we need hardly say that he is a model of transparent simplicity compared to some of his most distinguished contemporaries. Following Eschylus and Sophocles rather than the poet who anticipated him more than two thousand years ago in the treatment of his subject, he has dispensed altogether with the powerful agency of love, although it might apparently have been employed with telling effect to intensify the struggle in the bosom of Chthonia between her love of life and her devotion for her country. In resisting a temptation which might have proved irresistible to an inferior poet, he has given proof of his resolutely conscientious adherence to the severe grandeur of his classical design; and the result is a noble specimen of the antique drama, in which he has held up for admiration and inspiration the deeds, the sentiments, and the sufferings of an exalted race of godlike beings, who have enough of our common nature in theirs to encourage a high-minded heathen community in taking them as the noblest models for imitation.

ART. VII.—1. The Native Princes and States of India. By Lieutenant-Colonel MALLESON, Resident at Mysore. 8vo. London: 1875.

2. India and its Native Princes. By LOUIS ROUSSELET. English edition. London: 1875.

ONE

NE of the popular notions in England and Europe regarding the establishment of the British empire in India is that our conquests absorbed nationalities, displaced long-seated dynasties, and levelled ancient nobilities. These are the selfaccusations by which the average Englishman justifies to himself the indulgence of sitting down and casting dust on his head whenever he reviews the exploits of his countrymen in India-an attitude which is observed by foreigners with suspicion or impatience according to their insight into English character. Yet it would be easy to prove that one important reason why the English so rapidly conquered India was this, that the countries which fell into our hands had no nationalities, nor long-seated ruling dynasties, nor ancient aristocracies; had, in fact, no solid or permanent organisation of the kind, but were politically treasure trove, and at the disposal of the first who, having found, could keep. The best proof that in these countries the English destroyed no organised political institutions is the historical fact that in the countries which they annexed none had been left for them to destroy. On the other hand, where indigenous political institutions of long standing do still exist, it is the English who have saved them from destruction. We propose to give some description of the only considerable region of India in which such institutions still practically survive, having resisted for centuries the incessant attacks of Mahomedan invaders, and the crushing weight of the Moghal empire. That these institutions did not at last topple over and disappear towards the end of that long storm of anarchy which swept the length and breadth of India for a hundred years after the death of the Emperor Aurungzeb in 1707, is mainly due to their protection at the last moment by the English, who may thus claim at least the credit of having rescued the only ancient political structures in India which their predecessors had been unable to demolish. The subject has acquired additional importance at the present moment from the visit of the Prince of Wales to India, and from the recent addition to her Majesty's style and title. No incident of the Prince's visit was more remarkable than the unanimity with which the proudest native Chiefs acknowledged his pre

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