had she been guilty of frailty, like Scott's 'Constance of Beverley.' The act for which she suffers was prompted by the holiest affection. Hitherto she has been buoyed up by the sublime enthusiasm which inspires the martyr; but now that the sacrifice has been consummated, what wonder if the nerves so tightly strung give way, if for a moment nature reasserts herself, and the heroine becomes the woman? Like Jephtha's daughter, she breaks out into a passionate lament—mourning for her bright young life so cruelly cut short, for those fair promises of marriage never to be realised. The cold comfort of the Chorus and the consciousness of her own innocence can, after all, but slightly lighten the dread of approaching death to her who goes down, "living among the dead, to the strong dungeon of the tomb." Then she tries to steel her fortitude by remembering how others had suffered before her; and she recalls the fate of Niobe (one of her own race), whose children had been slain by Apollo and Diana, while she herself was changed into stone:—
"And there, hard by the crag of Siphylos,
As creeping ivy grows,
So crept the shoots of rock o'er life and breath;
And, as the rumour goes,
The showers ne'er leave her wasting in her death,
Nor yet the drifting snows;
From weeping brows they drip on rocks beneath—
Thus God my life o'erthrows."—(P.)[1]
- ↑ "As a documentary reminiscence of the myths proper to these regions (Lydia), there gleams, even at the present day, at two hours' distance from the ancient Magnesia, in the sunken
