Controls the courser's managed pace,
Though loud, oh king, thy billows roar,
Our strong hands grasp the labouring oar,
And while the Nereids round it play,
Light cuts our bounding bark its way.


What a combination of fine humanities! Dance and song, patriotism
and religion, so often parted among us, have flowed together into one
in these stately villagers; each a small farmer; each a trained
soldier, and probably a trained seaman also; each a self-governed
citizen; and each a cultured gentleman, if ever there were gentlemen
on earth.

But what drama, doing, or action--for such is the meaning of the
word--is going on upon the stage, to be commented on by the
sympathising Chorus?

One drama, at least, was acted in Athens in that year--440 B.C.--
which you, I doubt not, know well--"Antigone," that of Sophocles,
which Mendelssohn has resuscitated in our own generation, by setting
it to music, divine indeed, though very different from the music to
which it was set, probably by Sophocles himself, at its first, and
for aught we know, its only representation; for pieces had not then,
as now, a run of a hundred nights and more. The Athenian genius was
so fertile, and the Athenian audience so eager for novelty, that new
pieces were demanded, and were forthcoming, for each of the great
festivals, and if a piece was represented a second time it was
usually after an interval of some years. They did not, moreover,
like the moderns, run every night to some theatre or other, as a part