And while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear,
In a small brazen melancholy urn,
That handful of cold ashes to which all
The grandeur of the Beautiful hath shrunk.
Hither they bear him, in his father's land
To find that heritage—a tomb!"—(Lord Lytton.)
So circumstantial is this narrative, that no doubt is left on the minds of the hearers as to its truth. Even Clytemnestra is touched and impressed by the sudden end of one
"So young, so noble, so unfortunate."—(P.)
After all, she is a woman and a mother. Orestes is dead, and the secret prayer of her heart is thus fulfilled. Orestes is dead, and she is at once delivered from those terrors which had haunted her sleep. But, hardened and guilty as she is, there is sorrow in the thought that her peace of mind should be regained only by the death of her first-born, "the child of her own life." "Wondrous," she exclaims, almost against her will, as if excusing her emotion—
"Wondrous and strange the force of motherhood!
Though wronged, a mother cannot hate her children."
It is a finer touch like this which stamps the poet. "These few words of genuine grief," says Mr Jebb, "humanise, and therefore dramatise, Clytemnestra more vividly than anything in Æschylus."
But the queen's better nature does not assert itself for long. A question put by the messenger as to
