upon her. She ought to have known, she said to herself, young as she was at the time, that she was trifling with the love of Harry Thornhill— poor dead, murdered Harry Thornhill!”

Weeks, months passed away, and Mr. Massey was still confined to his room. Sometimes he was strong enough to be dressed, and moved into a chair; but the London doctor and Dr. Fitz had long since prepared Mrs. Massey for the worst.

Frank Grey, hearing through persistent inquiry that Mr. Massey was so unwell, had ventured upon making a journey to Summerdale, and had called at Oak House; but only for an hour. He stammered out something about having business a few miles' distance, which was perfectly true, and that he felt he must take the liberty of calling. Mrs. Massey received him politely, but Frank felt that her manner was cold; he only saw Kate for a few minutes, and he was grieved to see how sad she looked.

She had be

Never had the spring flowers looked so hopeless to Mrs. Massey. The snowdrops drooping above the brown turf in the garden, in company with yellow crocusses, and daffodils, had no charm for her now. She had brought herself, by degrees, to talk with Paul about other subjects than the one which had such terrible possession of her. come his careful, tender nurse; and Kate had recovered back some of her old cheerfulness. She could see how necessary it was that there should be smiles and encouraging words in a sick room, and she could also see that they must come from her. Poor girl! It was hard for her to bear, after her years of unalloyed happiness, this dreadful, mysterious change.

At night, over the kitchen fire, the servants would discuss the master's illness, and invent all sorts of explanations of that never-to-beforgotten morning, when they heard that shriek of missus's, and found her in a swoon on the floor. The circumstance was all the more impressed upon them, because the life of Mr. and Mrs. Massey had been such a calm, happy life, to all appearance: and they never could understand how Mrs. Massey could, or why she did, absent herself from the sick room of her husband for days after he was taken so seriously ill, when she insisted that she was quite well herself, and refused to see Dr. Fitz.

The Summerdale people, who learnt all about the affair, could make nothing of it, and therefore said very little about it. They respected and loved the Masseys, and most of them said the servants had exaggerated what was no doubt a little quarrel, that would occur in the best-regulated families. The more that was said about it, the more were the virtues and goodness of the Masseys extolled. Oak House had never had such gracious tenants since it had been Oak House.

(To be continued.)

MEDALS FROM THE ANTIQUE.

No. 3.-SOPHOCLES.

BY THE CHEVALIER DE CHATELAIN.

INCESSANTLY exposed to fall beneath the combined efforts of the Asiatic States, Greece seems to have impressed her poets with so strong a consciousness of her critical position, that Sophocles, like his predecessors in the dramatic art, invariably represents man engaged in a hopeless struggle against misfortune, and bowed down beneath the iron will of inflexible fate. According to Brumoy, this great man was born in Colonæ, in the second year of the seventy-first Olympiad, which answers to the year 495 B.C.; and the best biographers have adopted the epoch fixed by the learned Greek scholar, although, according to the Parian marbles, his birth took place in the third year of the seventieth Olympiad—a difference of about three years.

Some historians assert that Sophocles' father, Sophiles, was by trade a blacksmith; while Pliny, on the contrary, assures us that Sophiles belonged to a distinguished family, a supposition that would seem to be confirmed by the very careful education the subject of our sketch received from his parents.

Sophocles was initiated into the rudiments of polite learning by Lamprus, the same whom the poet Phrynichus satirized by representing his funeral train to be composed of water-fowls, a delicate way of hinting that this second Amphion had anticipated the modern system of teetotalism, by practising a complete abstinence from the juice of the grape. His pupil distinguished himself, at a very early age, both in dancing and music, successively carrying off the prizes in each of these sister arts. And the youthful Sophocles might be seen, wrapt in the folds of elegant drapery, with perfumed locks, and his handsome countenance radiant with inspiration, and his lyre in his arms, leading a chorus of young Athenians round some triumphal monument, and singing a hymn of victory, after the celebrated battle of Salamis.

A passionate admirer of Homer, from whom our poet borrowed the majesty and elevation of his style, and the harmony of his numbers, it was in the pages of his unequalled model, that Sophocles studied not only the art of delineating great characters, but the science of warapparently the least compatible with poetry, yet a most necessary study in the stormy times in which his lot was cast. He felt less enthusiasm for the works of Eschylus, his predecessor in dramatic poetry, whose style he considered overlaid with too many reflections, and bombastic

expressions, and whom he thought deficient in the knowledge of stage business. Nevertheless, he approved certain portions of his works, while he maintained that Eschylus had succeeeded in these only by chance. Vastly superior to the latter in the structure of his tragedies, Sophocles discarded all metaphysical and allegorical beings from his pieces, strengthened the choruses, and obtained the abolition of the custom which had hitherto exclusively confined the competition for prizes to trilogies, i.e., pieces consisting of three tragedies, and a pastoral, the characters of which were satyrs.

Our poet was not twenty, when Cimon brought back the ashes of Theseus to Scyros, by order of the oracle of Apollo. The Archon Aphepsion called on all the poets to enter into competition for the tragedy that was to illustrate so solemn an occasion. Sophocles offered his Triptolemus, the subject being the travels of that prince, and the mysteries of Ceres. The five umpires, appointed such by the drawing of lots, having been beset by the petty intrigues got up by some of the candidates in the view of biassing their judgment, displayed such hesitation in awarding the prize, that the ten generals elected by the tribes, suddenly made their appearance on the stage, headed by Cimon, who had no sooner performed the customary libations to the deity presiding over the games, than Aphepsion bid them stay, and having sworn them, installed them as sole judges of the contest—a circumstance that imparted a fresh degree of lustre to this festive occasion.

The prize was awarded to Sophocles, which decision so incensed his competitor, Eschylus, that he left Athens abruptly, and retired to the court of Hiero in Sicily, where he died close upon seventy years of age.

Thenceforward Sophocles became the idol of the Athenians, and in the course of his long career, wrote upwards of one hundred and twenty tragedies, of which the following only have been handed down to us: Edipus the Tyrant, Electra, Philoctetes, Ajax, Antigone, the Trachiniæ, and Edipus Coloneus.

Sophocles was crowned twenty times, and had the glory of obtaining the first and second palms. Amongst those of his pieces which have not reached us, we may mention: Pandora created by the gods, Triptole mus, Dedalus, Athamas, Andromeda, Tereus, Aletes, The Camirians (or descendants of Camirus, son of Hercules), Medea, Pelias, The Colchi, The Scythians or Medea's Flight, Creusa, Amphiaraus, Eriphyle, Alcmæon, Nauplius, Paris recognized by Priam, Helen's Nuptials, The Festival of the Greeks before Troy, Memnon, The Trojan Captives, Polyxenes, The Antenorides, and Nausicaa.

It was customary for poets to recite their own verses on the stage, - a custom which Sophocles accordingly observed for a time, playing amongst other parts, those of Thomyris in the tragedy of that name, and of the princess Nausicaa, daughter of the king of the Phæacians. But the weakness of his voice obliged him ultimately to give up interpreting the characters he delineated.

Many crowned heads sought to entice the great tragic poet to their several courts, but he turned a deaf ear to their dazzling offers, preferring the glory he enjoyed in his own country, to the favours they were ready to bestow.

Of course, so great a genius as Sophocles, could not escape the shafts of envy, which ever delights to carp at superior talent; but our poet repelled all such attacks with a mild and patient spirit, his only answer being the production of fresh masterpieces. He was indeed deservedly nicknamed the Bee of Parnassus, and Philostrates of Lemnos represented him in one of his paintings, with his brow surrounded by bees, and modestly bent towards the ground.

The satirical Aristophanes likewise renders justice to Sophocles' noble character, when he represents him on the stage offering his hand to Eschylus, to place him in the seat of honour, and then himself retreating amongst the common herd of spectators.

When Euripides first appeared on the stage as a tragic writer, some quarrels arose between Sophocles and himself. Euripides lampooned Sophocles in a biting epigram, to which our poet retorted in equally cutting terms. Nevertheless, a reconciliation took place between the two great poets, and from thenceforward the most cordial and intimate friendship was kept up between them until death. Euripides having descended to the grave before his illustrious friend (who followed him in the course of the same year), the latter wore mourning for him publicly, and gave orders to the actors who were performing one of his own works, to appear on the stage without the wreath which usually adorned their heads.

Born in a free condition, Sophocles took up arms for the defence of his country, and made one of the ten chiefs whom the Athenians sent to Samos to command the army. Thucydides and Pericles were amongst his colleagues. At a later period, in spite of Pericles' opinion that he was better fitted to be a good scholar than a skilful general, the Athenians, in their enthusiastic admiration for the tragedy of Antigone, raised him a second time to the highest post in the army, by appointing him as one of the ten generals sent to carry war into Sicily; albeit Sophocles himself, with the modesty of true genius, was the first to confess his inexperience. A pleasing instance of this diffidence occurred one day that a council was held for the purpose of discussing some very important topic, when being pressed by Nicias to give his opinion, he answered: "I am older than you, if the Republic only looks to the number of years-but you are my senior, if it reckons our respective ages by the eminent services you have rendered to the State."

Satisfied with the property bequeathed to him by his father, and devoid of all personal ambition, Sophocles sought no further remuneration for his works than a crown of laurels, to which a few measures of vegetables were added on certain occasions. He was ever more solicitous of improving his abilities than his fortune. During the plague that

ravaged Athens, he shared his dwelling with the celebrated Hippocrates, when that great physician came to devote his services to those who were stricken by the epidemic. Hence the Greeks, ever prone to impart a poetic tinge even to the occurrences of daily life, built on this simple foundation, a fabled visit which Esculapius was said to have paid Sophocles.

But though honoured and illustrious as a poet, Sophocles was not equally fortunate as a father. Towards the close of his life, he was dragged before the Areopagus by his unnatural sons, who, under the odious pretence that he was in his dotage, were not ashamed to claim the right of putting him under restraint, as incapable of managing his family, and taking care of his property. A scene as impressive as any page from one of his own tragedies, then took place and in presence of his son Iophon and of the judges, whose sentence the unworthy young man was hoping to obtain against his own father, Sophocles proceeded to read that touching passage* in Edipus Coloneus, in which the unfortunate monarch, driven from his native country by the Thebans, is resting on a rock, and giving the details of his acute sufferings.

Transported with admiration by this stirring poetry, the entire assembly rose like one man, and surrounding the aged poet, conducted him back in triumph to his dwelling, amidst a hurricane of cheers and applause; thus nobly revenging him by these tokens of high esteem, on his base and sordid accusers.

Sophocles died in the third year of the ninety-third Olympiad-i.e., in the ninetieth year of his age-overcome, according to some authors, by the lively emotion he experienced on learning that a prize had been decerned to one of his tragedies; but, according to others, choked by a grapestone that stuck in his throat. This latter version is alluded to in an epigram attributed to the poet Simonides, which may, however, be taken in an allegorical sense, since Bacchus, one of whose attributes is the grape, presided over the festivals illustrated by scenic representations.

Sophocles left two sons-Iophon, who cultivated poetry with great enthusiasm; and Ariston, who became the father of a poet whom he named Sophocles, and who obtained some success in writing tragedies.

On the death of Sophocles, Lysander, who was then besieging Athens, and held the fort of Celeæ, where rested the ashes of the great poet's ancestors, begged his corpse of the beleaguered city, and had it laid in the tomb of his fathers, and himself presided over the funeral rites. Hence was derived the fabled apparition of Bacchus, who was said to have twice disturbed the general's slumbers, and to have ordered him to pay the last duties to the Attic swan who had just expired.

The Athenians honoured Sophocles' memory, by promulgating a decree enjoining a yearly sacrifice to be made to the heroes dear to their country.

* One Greek author maintains that Sophocles read the entire tragedy of Edips Coloneus, an opinion extensively adopted by biographers.