Perhaps Antigone is a trifle too coldly perfect, too faultlessly wise--a tacit reflection upon every-day human nature, that likes its ease, and counts the cost of its renunciations. We look for a trace of weakness, a warm burst of living tenderness. But duty is shy like love, and chary of expression. “I do not love a friend who loves in words,” is the cry of her steadfast soul. There she stands, in the still majesty of a sorrow that lies too deep for tears, supreme among the classic types of the world as a model of filial devotion. Cordelia, true and loyal as she is, and tender at heart, does not approach her in strength and dignity. But the duty of the Greek heroine does not end with her father’s death. She lays down her life at last that the false-hearted brother, who has given her no gentle consideration in her days of helplessness and despair, may not lie unburied on the plains of Thebes, and so wander without rest in Hades. She laments the lost pleasures of living. No husband or children are to be hers. Yet no enthusiasm of passion or romance tempers this “cold statue’s fine-wrought grace.” The man she was to marry is secondary. Love, in our sense, does not enter as a motive power into her life, but her human need of sympathy is shown in a few pathetic words: And yet, of all my friends, Not one bewails my fate; No kindly tear is shed. There are a few women of colossal wickedness who serve as foils, or shadows in the picture. Their very sins are a part of the overmastering strength that defies its hard limitations. “Of all things, as many as have life and intellect, we women are the most wretched race; we must first purchase a husband with excess of money, then receive him as our lord,” is the bitter protest of the wronged Medea, and the key-note to her tragical destiny. Clytemnestra says that she has always been trained to obey, but she towers far above her warrior husband in force as in crime. She resents his unfaithfulness; she does not forgive him for the inhuman sacrifice of their innocent daughter; she meets him on his own ground. It is appalling, the stern and pitiless passion with which her untamed spirit, spurred on by the white-hot hate which is often a great love reversed, tramples upon every human impulse, and sweeps a whole race with her to destruction. The clash of elemental forces is there, even though the responsibility is shifted upon the gods, who use these frail mortals as blind instruments in their inscrutable plans. But these monsters of crime are few, and seem to throw into stronger relief the self-forgetful women who exalt their inferior position, and bend their heads to the yoke with such stately dignity that they seem to command even in obeying. For, in spite of the important part assigned them in the world of affairs as well as at the fireside, they are constantly reminded of their little worth. “Let not women counsel,” is the advice of men to the wisest of them.