conceptions, and superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of the poetical colouring.

When Edipus, pursued by the vengeance of the gods, deprived of sight by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons, wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter Antigone, who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the "Edipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his offending son : her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over Edipus, when he perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent even through the stiffness of the translation :—

Alas! I only wish'd I might have died
With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
For longer life?

O, I was fond of misery with him;

E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
When he was with me. O my dearest father,
Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
Wert dear, and shall be ever.

Nor unlamented fell! for, O, these eyes,

My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time
E'er blot thee from my memory.

The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy of "Edipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding the rights of sepulture to Polynices (as the invader of his country), and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave, enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the threatened punishment. Her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril of such an undertaking, and endeavours to dissuade her from it, on which Antigone replies,

Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask

Thy poor assistance-I would scorn it now;
Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself:
Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.
I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down
By my dear brother; loving and beloved,
We'll rest together.

She proceeds to execute her generous purpose: she covers with earth the mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is led to death by command of the tyrant. Her sister Ismene, struck with shame and remorse, now comes forward to

accuse herself as a partaker in the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and scornfully rejects her, and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song—a virgin and a slave "—she dies à l'antique; she strangles herself to avoid a lingering death.

Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.

Thus it will be seen that in the “Antigone " there is a great deal of what may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry and character : she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed before us as to command our admiration. According to the classical ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace, a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our understanding, while they fill and exalt (the imagination. But in Cordelia it is not the external colouring or form, it is not what she says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism of Cordelia is more passive and tender-it melts into our heart; and in the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and less elaborate, than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the a от

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Parthenon. If Cordelia remind us of anything on earth, it is of one of the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove:" and as that heavenly form is connected with our human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.

HISTORICAL CHARACTERS.

CLEOPATRA.

I CANNOT agree with one of the most philosophical of Shakspeare's critics, who has asserted "that the actual truth of particular events, in proportion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all, it is equally just with regard to characters; and in either case can we admit it? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history-I mean according to the imperfect knowledge of his time-is admirable: his inaccuracies are few; his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury of History to debase its purity, new-stamp it arbitrarily with effigies and legends of his own devising, and then attempt to pass it current, like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners: he only rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened it, so that History herself has been known to receive it back as sterling.

Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred: so Shakspeare deemed, and laid no profane hand upon