brother she has vainly striven to save from desecration, Antigone descends
"Into the dreary mansions of the dead,"
uncheered by any throb of expectation. Finally, the manner of her death is too appalling to be met with stoicism. Juliet, the bravest of Shakespeare's heroines, quails before the thought of a few unconscious hours spent in the darkness of the tomb; and if our more exalted views demand indifference to such a fate, we must not look to the Greeks, nor to him who
"Saw life steadily, and saw it whole,"
for the fulfillment of our idle fancy.
Youth, health, beauty, and virtue were to the ancient mind the natural requisites for happiness; yet even these favors were so far at best from securing it, that "nature's most pleasing invention, early death," was too often esteemed the rarest gift of all. When Schopenhauer says of the fourth commandment, "'Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,'—ah! what a misfortune to hold out as a reward for duty!" we feel both shocked and repulsed by
