are so formed that it would be impossible for such eyes to
squint and take furtive glances on this side and on that, but
they must turn the whole head. The manners of that period are
plain and fierce. The reverence exhibited is for personal
qualities; courage, address, self-command, justice, strength,
swiftness, a loud voice, a broad chest. Luxury and elegance
are not known. A sparse population and want make every man his
own valet, cook, butcher and soldier, and the habit of supplying
his own needs educates the body to wonderful performances. Such
are the Agamemnon and Diomed of Homer, and not far different is
the picture Xenophon gives of himself and his compatriots in the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand. "After the army had crossed the
river Teleboas in Armenia, there fell much snow, and the troops
lay miserably on the ground covered with it. But Xenophon arose
naked, and taking an axe, began to split wood; whereupon others
rose and did the like." Throughout his army exists a boundless
liberty of speech. They quarrel for plunder, they wrangle with
the generals on each new order, and Xenophon is as sharp-tongued
as any and sharper-tongued than most, and so gives as good as he
gets. Who does not see that this is a gang of great boys, with
such a code of honor and such lax discipline as great boys have?

The costly charm of the ancient tragedy, and indeed of all the
old literature, is that the persons speak simply,--speak as
persons who have great good sense without knowing it, before
yet the reflective habit has become the predominant habit of
the mind. Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of
the old, but of the natural. The Greeks are not reflective, but
perfect in their senses and in their health, with the finest
physical organization in the world. Adults acted with the