the Areopagus, Wheler with the Theatre of Rewe have the very seats people on the two great eir collective capacity; n often pointed out, the ons, both of the theatr knowing the exact vier ors, as from their lofty f, or to an Athenian of the Propylea of the If which even more than g, throws one back into s loved her, as we are short of her surpass go δύναμιν καθ' ἡμέραν ἔργα Thucyd. 11. 43). It is opriateness of the scene ould be impossible for mit of Hymettus more set forth his concep ut such as from the etical faculty he ima e "specular mount," uld have been then, - that the city wall can be ing traces to have passed so hind the hill of the Pays ve excluded the view of he supposed Upper Bema have commanded. What explanation of the story remains to be determined, the ingenious conjecture m the transference of the the Dionysiac theatre, on the sea, to the Payx. Iso failed to notice the re, which was indeed Dr. Wordsworth. by the rough dry bed of the Charadrus at its foot, in whi people met in solemn assembly to stone their unwort the low oblong rock of Tiryns, whose enormous Cy are probably the only works of man recorded by are yet in existence. And greatest of all, Mycena may be as well to dwell more at length, as no aco have seen does justice to its remarkable character. At the very extremity of the plain of Argos Perseus had drawn back from the home of his mu father into the uttermost recess that he could abandoning his hold over the level tract which lay with its Cyclopean fortresses, and its glittering ba tance-stands the low eminence, where he is said t forth, by the púкns of his sword, the streams which creep round the hill, as well as that which supplies the top. Round this rocky knoll are the vestiges in its face is fixed the ancient gateway, with its c green basalt, and its sculptured lionesses, the ga the oldest kings of Greece sate to administer ju morial of the antiquity not only of Greece, but of ages not only classical, but primeval, mythologica Close above and behind this eminence rises a bl hill, with its dark sterile precipices filling up the fect desolation-of the ancient curse of the Pelop over the place. Such is the spot which was ch central stage of Greek tragedy. The impression wh scene leaves on the mind is indeed precisely that by the closing dialogue between Clytemnestra and the Agamemnon of Eschylus. And when we re such as are the actual vestiges of Mycena now, they were in the days of Pausanias, and such I but few additions, they were in the days of the T can have but little doubt that the imagery which them still remains to be judged of by us; that th "sæva Pelopis domus," in front of which all the Orestean trilogies unfold themselves, — the tomb visited with libations,-are that very same ancient we have described as meeting us in the walls of t - not, in which the Argive Argos (xos)-as if his murdered grande could find, without hich lay beneath him, tering bay in the dis is said to have called ms which on each side supplies the well on e vestiges of his city; with its coping-stone of s, the gateway where inister justice, a me ce, but of the world, thological, aboriginal ses a black, frowning up the idea of pere Pelopidae broodin was chosen for the ssion which the whol y that which is le a and the Chorus in we remember tha e now, such nearl such probably, with the Tragedians, we which floated before that the gate of the all the plots of the tomb which Electr cient gateway which s of the citadel-hill never saw them, but whose insight into them was portion to his appreciation of the Greek poets, and velopment of a kindred faculty in his own mind. further certain, that the mind of the Greek nation wa in itself poetical, but that it was also thoroughly with the general spirit of the scenery, in the midst was formed. As a particular instance of it may b the singular appropriateness of Mycenae to the Orest as before described; and it is almost impossible, e language of the Greek poets, to do justice to the clearness and gorgeousness of the atmosphere of which they seem to have been so thoroughly awake ἄναξ, ἀμέτρητ ̓ ἀὴρ ὃς ἔχεις τὴν γῆν μετέωρον, (Aristoph. ὄμμα αἰθέρος ἀκάματον σελαγεῖται μαρμαρέαις ἐν αὐγαῖς ( σεμνότατον (ib. 560.), χρυσαυγεῖ δόμῳ . . . τηλαυγές (Αν. 1709, 1710), διὰ λαμπροτάτου βαίνοντες ἁβρῶς απ Med. 829). These, and many other passages whi quoted (see in Wordsworth's Athens and Attica, hyperbolical as some of them may sound to weste only just representations of the transparent clearness, colouring of an Athenian sky; of the flood of fire the marble columns, the mountains, and the sea, ar and penetrated by the illumination of an Athenian s But if Greek scenery is a standing witness to us ness with which the Greeks caught its general spi less a witness to us of the indifference with which th its details, of their complete sacrifice of all particu the leading idea which they wished to represent. Homer, it is true, forms an exception; his epith signate accurately the character of the places to whi affixed. Whether Mistra (Leake's Morea III. 6), (ib. 1. 287) be the Messa of the Iliad, the num pigeons in the rocks justifies the appellation of ToλUT 15 Is it fanciful to find in the delight with which the Athenians dwelt on the constant sunshine of the Acropolis, the origin of the frequent epithet λimapai Aonval-or in the violet hue which with out exaggeration the even its encircling crown of mo deed the origin, but an ad for the application of tha ἰοστέφανοι ? em was great in pro- e Orestean tragedy, western ears, are 1 spirit, it is no ch they regarded articular facts to epithets still de which they are 6), or Mezapo number of wild πολυτρήρων, three e evening sheds upon of mountains, not inan additional reason of that other epithet |