Now, behold a third is come,—
Saviour, shall I say, or doom?
From what quarter sped?
Full-accomplished, when shall Fate,
Lulled to rest, her stormy ire abate?"
In our sympathy for Orestes thus suffering for his piety, we cannot but look forward with eager expectation to the next Play, in which we are to see him delivered from the Furies. But there is another reason, even more powerful, to make the Athenian citizen wait impatiently for the "Eumenides." A rumour has got abroad that Æschylus is going to use all the interest which his great Trilogy must awaken to support a political cause. The leaders of the popular party, Pericles and Ephialtes, are proposing to reform, if not to abolish, the high court of Areopagus. This venerable court has been hitherto in the hands mainly of the nobility, and wields an authority all the more extensive because it is undefined; it is the highest tribunal in cases of murder and sacrilege, and a peculiar sanctity is attached to its decisions. Some, however, of the citizens think, it seems, that it is old-fashioned and unwieldy; and perhaps even that it may become the stronghold of a selfish nobility, who, by straining to the utmost its undefined prerogatives, may make it the means of a formidable opposition to the system of reform which is in progress. Others regard it with the reverence which they conceive to be due to an institution founded by the gods, and intimately con-
