A mighty billow lifted to the skies;
And with the billow, at the third great sweep
Of mountain surge, the sea gave up a bull,
Monster of aspect fierce, whose bellowings
Filled all the earth, that echoed back the roar
In tones that made us shudder."
The terrified horses become unmanageable; and though
"Our lord, in all their ways long conversant,
Grasped at their reins, and, throwing back his weight,
Pulled hard, as pulls a sailor at the oar;
They, with set jaws gripping the tempered bits,
Whirl along heedless of the master's hand,"—
until Hippolytus is dragged and dashed against the rocks, and lies a broken and bleeding body from which the spirit is rapidly fleeting. He is borne into his father's presence, torn, mangled, and bleeding, to die. But Theseus, still crediting Phædra's false letter, rejoices in his son's fate, although he alone believes him guilty. The messenger, indeed, bluntly tells the king that he is deceived:—
"Yet to one thing I never will give credence,
That this thy son has done a deed of baseness,—
Not should the whole of womankind go hang,
And score the pines of Ida with their letters,
Because I know—I know that he is noble."
Diana, it may seem to the reader, is far from being a help to her devoted friend and worshipper in his time of trouble. The cause she assigns for her inability to save him gives a curious insight into the
