magnificent impression of Antigone. I ought also to have added a note on
the scenic mask, and the common notion (not authorized, I am satisfied, by
the practice in the _supreme_ era of Pericles), that it exhibited a Janus
face, the windward side expressing grief or horror, the leeward expressing
tranquillity. Believe it not, reader. But on this and other points, it
will be better to speak circumstantially, in a separate paper on the Greek
drama, as a majestic but very exclusive and almost, if one may say so,
bigoted form of the scenic art.




THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. [1]


It sounds like the tolling of funeral bells, as the annunciation is made
of one death after another amongst those who supported our canopy of
empire through the last most memorable generation. The eldest of the
Wellesleys is gone: he is gathered to his fathers; and here we have his
life circumstantially written.

Who, and of what origin are the Wellesleys? There is an impression current
amongst the public, or there _was_ an impression, that the true name
of the Wellesley family is Wesley. This is a case very much resembling
some of those imagined by the old scholastic logicians, where it was
impossible either to deny or to affirm: saying _yes_, or saying _no_,
equally you told a falsehood. The facts are these: the family was
originally English; and in England, at the earliest era, there is no
doubt at all that its name was De Welles leigh, which was pronounced in
the eldest times just as it is now, viz. as a dissyllable, [2] the first