One only feature there is in the story, and this belongs to its second stage (which is also its sublimest stage), where a pure taste is likely to pause, and to revolt as from something not perfectly reconciled with the general depth of the coloring. This lies in the Sphinx's riddle, which, as hitherto explained, seems to us deplorably below the grandeur of the occasion. Three thousand years, at the least, have passed away since that riddle was propounded; and it seems odd enough that the proper solution should not present itself till November of 1849. That is true; it seems odd, but still it is possible, that we, in _anno domini_ 1849, may see further through a mile-stone than Œdipus, the king, in the year B. c. twelve or thirteen hundred. The long interval between the enigma and its answer may remind the reader of an old story in Joe Miller, where a traveller, apparently an inquisitive person, in passing-through a toll-bar, said to the keeper, "How do you like your eggs dressed?" Without waiting for the answer, he rode off; but twenty- five years later, riding through the same bar, kept by the same man, the traveller looked steadfastly at him, and received the monosyllabic answer, "_Poached_." A long parenthesis is twenty-five years; and we, gazing back over a far wider gulf of time, shall endeavor to look hard at the Sphinx, and to convince that mysterious young lady,--if our voice can reach her,--that she was too easily satisfied with the answer given; that the true answer is yet to come; and that, in fact, Œdipus shouted before he was out of the wood.