The _Iphigenia in Aulis_ is the most perfect of all the tragedies of Euripides, and the best adapted for modern representation. The well-known story of the daughter of the King of Men being devoted to sacrifice, to appease the angry deities, and procure favourable gales for the fleet on the way to Troy, and of the agony of her parents under the infliction, is developed with all the pathos and eloquence of which that great master of the tragic art was capable. Nothing can exceed the progressive interest which the character of Iphigenia excites. At first, horrorstruck, and shrinking with the timidity of her sex from the axe of the priest, she gradually rises when her fate appears inevitable, and at length devotes herself for her country with a woman's devotion, and more than a man's fortitude. In the French plays on the same subject, a love episode is introduced between her and Achilles; but the simplicity of the Greek original appears preferable, in which she had no previous acquaintance with the son of Peleus, and he is interested in her fate, and strives to avert it, only from finding that his name, as her betrothed, had, without his knowledge, been used by Agamemnon to induce Clytemnestra to bring her to the Grecian camp. Doubtless, the tenderness of Racine in the love-scenes between her and Achilles, is inimitable; but the simplicity of the Greek original, where grief on her parents' part for her loss, and her own heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of patriotic duty, are undisturbed by any other emotion, is yet more touching, and far more agreeable to ancient manners, where love on the woman's part, previous to marriage, was, as now in the East, almost unknown.