shrinking reluctance seemingly out of keeping with her heroic mould. But Admetos, excuse him as we may, is but a refinement of a common type, old as mankind, and no great credit to its ranks. He may be found in every page of the world's history, from the siege of Jerusalem to the siege of Paris. À Kempis has transfixed him with sharp scorn in his chapter On the Consideration of Human Misery, and a burning theatre or a sinking ship betray him, shorn of poetical disguise, in all his unadorned brutality. But to find fault with Antigone, the noblest figure in classical literature, because she manifests a natural dislike for being buried alive is to carry our ideal of heroism a little beyond reason. Flesh and blood shrink from the sickening horror that lays its cold hand upon her heart. She is young, beautiful, and beloved, standing on the threshold of matrimony, and clinging with womanly tenderness to the sacred joys that are never to be hers. She is a martyr in a just cause, but without one ray of that divine ecstasy that sent Christian maidens smiling to the lions. Beyond a chilly hope that she will not be unwelcome to her parents, or to the
