gardens between the wall and the inner stockade; the spectators sat on
the slope, tier above tier; the actors appeared upon a green terrace
below, issuing from an arbour and passing off behind a thick box-hedge
on the other side of the terrace. There was no scenery whatever.

Aurora had selected the Antigone. There were not many dramatists from
whom to choose, for so many English writers, once famous, had dropped
out of knowledge and disappeared. Yet some of the far more ancient Greek
and Roman classics remained because they contained depth and originality
of ideas in small compass. They had been copied in manuscripts by
thoughtful men from the old printed books before they mouldered away,
and their manuscripts being copied again, these works were handed down.
The books which came into existence with printing had never been copied
by the pen, and had consequently nearly disappeared. Extremely long and
diffuse, it was found, too, that so many of them were but enlargements
of ideas or sentiments which had been expressed in a few words by the
classics. It is so much easier to copy an epigram of two lines than a
printed book of hundreds of pages, and hence it was that Sophocles had
survived while much more recent writers had been lost.

From a translation Aurora had arranged several of his dramas. Antigone
was her favourite, and she wished Felix to see it. In some indefinable
manner the spirit of the ancient Greeks seemed to her in accord with the
times, for men had or appeared to have so little control over their own
lives that they might well imagine themselves overruled by destiny.
Communication between one place and another was difficult, the division
of society into castes, and the iron tyranny of arms, prevented the
individual from making any progress in lifting himself out of the groove
in which he was born, except by the rarest opportunity, unless specially
favoured by fortune. As men were born so they lived; they could not