the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and elevated state of mind in the audience. It is impossible to conceive a more perfect drama than the _Antigone_ of Sophocles. The subject, the characters, the moral tone of the piece, are as perfect as its execution is masterly and felicitous. It possesses, what is not frequent in Greek tragedy, the interest arising from elevated moral feeling and heroic courage devoted to noble purposes. The steady perseverance of Antigone in her noble resolution to perform the last rites to her dead brother, in defiance of the cruel threats of Creon; the courage with which she does discharge those mournful duties; the rage of the tyrant at the violation of his commands; the momentary reappearance of the woman in Antigone, when she thinks of her betrothed, and contemplates her dreadful fate, to be shut up in a living tomb in the rock; the despair of Haemon, who kills himself on the body of his beloved; the silent despair of his mother, which, unable to find words for its expression, leads to her self-immolation--the last victim of the curses bestowed on the race of Oedipus; are all portrayed with inimitable force and pathos. Simplicity of expression, depth of feeling, resolution of mind, are its great characteristics, as they are of all the works of Sophocles. It has been revived with signal success in recent times. If a translation could be made, which should render into English the force and beauty of the original language, the mingled energy and delicacy of Sophocles's conception, we should, indeed, have a perfect idea of the magic of the Greek drama. Such a translation is not beyond the bounds of possibility; the English language is capable of it, and could, in the hands of a master, render back a faithful image of the brevity and power of the Greek. But that master must be a Sophocles, or a Shakspeare; and ages will probably elapse before the world produce either the one or the other.