And we go along with Orestes, sir; the Greeks did—if our feebler soul cannot. NORTH. Yes, Talboys, we do go along with Orestes. He does that which he _must_ do—which he is under a moral obligation to do—under a moral necessity of doing. Necessity! ay, an Αναγκη—stern, strong, adamantine as that which links the Chain of Causes and Events in the natural universe—which compels the equable and unalterable celestial motions beheld by our eyes—such a bounden, irresistible agency sends on the son of the murdered, with hidden sword, against the bosom that has lulled, fed, _made_ him!—HE MUST. TALBOYS. Love, hate, horror—the furies of kinned shed blood ready to spring up from the black inscrutable earth wetted by the red drops, and to dog the heels of the new Slayer—of the divinely-appointed Parricide! So a Poet teaches Virtue. NORTH. Ay, even so; convulsing your soul—convulsing the worlds, he shows you LAW—the archaic, the primal, sprung, ere Time, from the bosom of Jupiter—LAW the bond of the worlds, LAW the inviolate violated, and avenging her Violation, vindicating her own everlasting stability, purity, divinity. TALBOYS. Divine Law and humble, faithful, acquiescent human Obedience! Obedience self-sacrificing, blind to the consequences, hearing the God, hearing the Ghost, deaf to all other Voices—deaf to fear, deaf to pity! NORTH. Now call in the Philosopher, and hear what he has to preach. Something exquisite and unintelligible about the Middle between two Extremes! TALBOYS. Shade of the Stagyrite! NORTH. The pure Earth shakes crime from herself, and the pure stars follow their eternal courses. The Mother slays the children of a brother for the father’s repast. And the sun, stopt in the heavens, veils his resplendent face. So a Poet inculcates Law—Law running through all things, and binding all things in Unity and in Sympathy—Law entwined in the primal relations of Man with Man. To reconcile Man with Law—to make him its “willing bondsman”—is the great Moral and Political Problem—the first Social need of the day—the innermost craving need of all time since the Fall. The Poet is its greatest teacher—a wily preceptor, who lessons you, unaware, unsuspecting of the supreme benefit purposed you—done you—by him, the Hierophant of Harmonia. TALBOYS. You ordered me, sir, some few or many hours ago—some Short or Long Time since—to swear that after this Morning’s Breakfast I would never more so much as confidentially whisper into a friend’s ear the words—Othello! Desdemona! And I swore it. I am now eager to swear it over again; but I begin, sir, to entertain the most serious apprehensions that that time will never arrive. NORTH. What time?