Nausicaa, it is evident, loves Ulysses; she stands beside a pillar, a favorite attitude for beautiful women with Homer, and as Ulysses passes, she addresses to him those few words so fraught with tenderness and renunciation. Ulysses's own speech to Arete, too, is a model of simplicity and dignity, possessing, it seems to me, something of the same quality which we admire in the speeches of Othello. But throughout this narrative, pre-eminent above all the other figures in it is the figure of the queen herself, of Arete. Such a daughter as Nausicaa could only come from such a mother. To her Ulysses is advised to address his supplication. She is the wise matron, the peace-maker who composes the angry feuds of the men. And she possesses the whole heart and devotion of her husband. "Her Alcinous made his wife And honored her as nowhere else on earth Is any woman honored who bears charge Over a husband's household. From their hearts Her children pay her reverence, and the king And all the people, for they look on her As if she were a goddess. When she goes Abroad into the streets, all welcome her With acclamations. Never does she fail In wise discernment, but decides disputes Kindly and justly between man and man. And if thou gain her favor there is hope That thou mayst see thy friends once more." We have then as illustrations of conjugal fidelity: the main picture, Ulysses and Penelope; the companion picture, Alcinous and Arete; and, as a foil to set off both, there looms up every now and then in the course of the poem, that unhappy pair, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, the latter, the type of conjugal infidelity, from which the soul of Homer revolts. This foil is very skillfully used. At the very end of the poem, when everything is hastening toward a happy consummation, Ulysses having slain the suitors and being about to be reunited with his wife, we are introduced into the world of shades, where the ghost of Agamemnon once more rehearses the story of Clytemnestra's treachery. At that moment the spirits of the suitors come flying down to Hades, and the happier destiny of Ulysses is thus brought into clearer relief by contrast. The next ethical element of which I have to speak is the _filial conduct_ of Telemachus. In him the spirit of adventure has developed into a desire to help his father. In the early part of the poem he announces that he is now a child no longer. He begins to assert authority. And yet in his home he continues to be treated as a child. The suitors laugh at him, his own mother can not bear to think that he should go out into the wide world alone, and the news of his departure is accordingly concealed from her. Very fine are the words in which her mother's love expresses itself when she discovers his absence: