THE ANTIGONE OF SOPHOCLES, AS REPRESENTED ON THE EDINBURGH STAGE.


Every thing in our days is new. _Roads_, for instance, which, being
formerly 'of the earth earthy,' and therefore perishable, are now iron,
and next door to being immortal; _tragedies_, which are so entirely
new, that neither we nor our fathers, through eighteen hundred and ninety
odd years, gone by, since Caesar did our little island the honor to sit
upon its skirts, have ever seen the like to this 'Antigone;' and, finally,
even more new are _readers_, who, being once an obedient race of men,
most humble and deferential in the presence of a Greek scholar, are now
become intractably mutinous; keep their hats on whilst he is addressing
them; and listen to him or not, as he seems to talk sense or nonsense.
Some there are, however, who look upon all these new things as being
intensely old. Yet, surely the railroads are new? No; not at all. Talus,
the iron man in Spenser, who continually ran round the island of Crete,
administering gentle warning and correction to offenders, by flooring them
with an iron flail, was a very ancient personage in Greek fable; and the
received opinion is, that he must have been a Cretan railroad, called The
Great Circular Coast-Line, that carried my lords the judges on their
circuits of jail-delivery. The 'Antigone,' again, that wears the freshness
of morning dew, and is so fresh and dewy in the beautiful person of Miss
Faucit, had really begun to look faded on the Athenian stage, and even 'of
a certain age,' about the death of Pericles, whose meridian year was the
year 444 before Christ. Lastly, these modern _readers_, that are so
obstinately rebellious to the once Papal authority of Greek, they--No; on