Take, as an example, the figure which you know best—the figure of Antigone herself—devoting herself to be entombed alone, for the sake of love and duty. Love of a brother, which she can only prove, alas! by burying his corpse. Duty to the dead, an instinct depending on no written law, but springing out of the very depths of those blind and yet sacred monitions which prove that the true man is not an animal, but a spirit; fulfilling her holy purpose, unchecked by fear, unswayed by her sisters’ entreaties. Hardening her heart magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then after proving her godlike courage, proving the tenderness of her womanhood by that melodious wail over her own untimely death and the loss of marriage joys, which some of you must know from the music of Mendelssohn, and which the late Dean Milman has put into English thus— Come, fellow-citizens, and see The desolate Antigone. On the last path her steps shall tread, Set forth, the journey of the dead, Watching, with vainly lingering gaze, Her last, last sun’s expiring rays, Never to see it, never more, For down to Acheron’s dread shore, A living victim am I led To Hades’ universal bed. To my dark lot no bridal joys Belong, nor e’er the jocund noise Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me, But death, cold death, my only spouse shall be. Oh tomb! Oh bridal chamber! Oh deep-delved And strongly-guarded mansion! I descend To meet in your dread chambers all my kindred, Who in dark multitudes have crowded down Where Proserpine received the dead. But I, The last, and oh how few more miserable, Go down, or ere my sands of life are run. And let me ask you whether the contemplation of such a self-sacrifice should draw you, should have drawn those who heard the tale nearer to, or further from, a certain cross which stood on Calvary some 1800 years ago? May not the tale of Antigone heard from mother or from nurse have nerved ere now some martyr-maiden to dare and suffer in an even holier cause?