It is this dread idea which, pervading the pages of Eschylus, gives them that peculiar character of simplicity and grandeur, with which no other tragedies are marked in a like degree. Such was the source of the inspiration of classic tragedy, the spring of that stern and severe poetry which throws the lurid hues of a melancholy so profound upon the pallid and affrighted face of humanity. Man, struggling with all the gloomy energy of despair against this vague but formidable Horror, which no virtue or agony could conciliate--this dark Fate, the creation of his own misled and perverted intuitions--and vainly seeking to escape from the inflexible circle which he had traced around himself, is an object which cannot fail to awaken the deepest pity. He asks from his fellow men, from nature, from the gods, the meaning of the dire enigma of life. Alas! they leave him to struggle in the stony hands of an unbending Fate! no reply is ever given to his wild demand, and the 'veil of Isis is never raised!' The world quivered under some strange anathema; a mystic malediction wreathed its thorns round the anguished heads of men; even in the midst of their festivals, when seeming to drink deep of joy from the brimming cup of life, the invisible hand of a Gorgon Fate was forever felt tracing upon their walls the decrees of a dark, inscrutable, inflexible, and terrible destiny! Yet there are poets among us, who would willingly return to the days of Paganism, and resuscitate the gods of Greece! 'Get to dust as common mortals, By a common doom and track! Let no Schiller from the portals Of that Hades call you back, Or instruct us all to weep: Everlasting be your sleep! Pan, Pan is dead!' ''Twas the hour when one in Zion Hung for Love's sake on a cross-- When His brow was chill with dying, And His soul was faint with loss; When His priestly blood dropped downward; And His kingly eyes looked homeward-- Then Pan was dead!'