How beautifully is Iphigenia introduced; beaming more and more softly on us with every touch of description. After Clytemnestra has given Orestes (then an infant,) out of the chariot, she says:
| “Ye females, in your arms, | |
| Receive her, for she is of tender age. | |
| Sit here by my feet, my child, | |
| By thy mother, Iphigenia, and show | |
| These strangers how I am blessed in thee, | |
| And here address thee to thy father. | |
| Iphi. | Oh mother, should I run, wouldst thou be angry? |
| And embrace my father breast to breast?” |
With the same sweet timid trust she prefers the request to himself, and as he holds her in his arms, he seems as noble as Guido's Archangel; as if he never could sink below the trust of such a being!
The Achilles, in the first scene, is fine. A true Greek hero; not too good; all flushed with the pride of youth; but capable of god-like impulses. At first, he thinks only of his own wounded pride, (when he finds Iphigenia has been decoyed to Anlis under the pretext of becoming his wife;) but the grief of the queen soon makes him superior to his arrogant chafings. How well he says:—
| “ | Far as a young man may, I will repress |
| So great a wrong.” |
By seeing him here, we understand why he, not Hector, was the hero of the Iliad. The beautiful moral nature of Hector was early developed by close domestic ties, and the cause of his country. Except in a purer simplicity of speech and manner, he might be a modern and a Christian. But Achilles is cast
