affirm is, that this idea was utterly and exquisitely inappreciable by Pagan Greece and Rome; that various translations from Pindar, [Footnote: And when we are speaking of this subject, it may be proper to mention (as the very extreme anachronism which the case admits of) that Mr. Archdeacon W. has absolutely introduced the idea of sin into the "Iliad;" and, in a regular octavo volume, has represented it as the key to the whole movement of the fable. It was once made a reproach to Southey that his Don Roderick spoke, in his penitential moods, a language too much resembling that of Methodism; yet, after all, that prince was a Christian, and a Christian amongst Mussulmans. But what are we to think of Achilles and Patroclus, when described as being (or _not_ being) "under convictions of sin"?] from Aristophanes, and from the Greek tragedians, embodying at intervals this word _sin_, are more extravagant than would be the word _category_ introduced into the harangue of an Indian sachem amongst the Cherokees; and finally that the very nearest approach to the abysmal idea which we Christians attach to the word sin--(an approach, but to that which never can be touched--a writing as of palmistry upon each man's hand, but a writing which "no man can read")--lies in the Pagan idea of _piacularity_; which is an idea thus far like hereditary sin, that it expresses an evil to which the party affected has not consciously concurred; which is thus far _not_ like hereditary sin, that it expresses an evil personal to the individual, and not extending itself to the race. This was the evil exemplified in Œdipus. He was loaded with an insupportable burthen of pariah participation in pollution and misery, to which his will had never consented. He seemed to have committed the most atrocious crimes; he was a murderer, he was a parricide, he was doubly incestuous, and yet how? In the case where he might be thought a murderer, he had stood upon his self-defence, not benefiting by any superior resources, but, on the contrary, fighting as one man against three, and under the provocation of insufferable insolence. Had he been a parricide? What matter, as regarded the moral guilt, if his father (and by the fault of that father) were utterly unknown to him? Incestuous had he been? but how, if the very oracles of fate, as expounded by events and by mysterious creatures such as the Sphinx, had stranded him, like a ship left by the tide, upon this dark unknown shore of a criminality unsuspected by himself? All these treasons against the sanctities of nature had Œdipus committed; and yet was this Œdipus a thoroughly good man, no more dreaming of the horrors in which he was entangled, than the eye at noonday in midsummer is conscious of the stars that lie far behind the daylight. Let us review rapidly the incidents of his life.