All Æschylus’s more marked characters come before us invested with marvellous attributes, and their voices awake a thrilling mysterious echo in the depths of the soul. Prometheus, for example,—who or what in poetry is like him? Some features of resemblance he may have to the Satan of “Paradise Lost,” but only in his indomitable energy, in his unconquerable will; in all other respects he stands differenced from that “archangel ruined” by qualities the most remarkable. Towards mankind he appears in the relation of supreme love. For their sake alone he braves the anger of Zeus, who, in the tempest of vengeance which he pours upon the naked form of this beneficent god, is presented to the mind as a tyrannical oppressor. Again, in the Erinnyes, what mysterious phantoms does he conjure up! The whole scene, where black and blood-dripping they rise before the fancy in the shrine of Delphi, is, beyond imagination, awe-inspiring and sublime. Like Orestes himself, the fancy is haunted, as we read, by an uneasy consciousness of their presence. They appear like the summits of the infernal world, thrust up visibly into the world of reality. They are frightful dreams endued with form and vitality, and walking abroad to scare us even while waking. Never did faith in visionary beings equal in strength the faith which he constrains us to have in these his creations. The scent of blood fills the nostrils as we read. We pant,—we shudder,—we expect to hear their footsteps on the carpet behind us. Nevertheless the effect of Æschylus’ poetry is not, like Byron’s, to humiliate or depress. On the contrary, it imparts to us its energy as we read. It fills,—it expands,—it aggrandises,—it elevates the mind.