ntment of his hopes. When he again appears with Pylades, he
threatens to take the most violent measures, to interrupt this marriage,
and to carry off Hermione by force from the court where she was
detained. His friend naturally feels for the wound which his fame must
suffer from such an outrage, and the dishonour which it would bring upon
a name rendered sacred throughout Greece, from the unmerited misfortunes
which he had sustained. "Voila donc le succes qu'aura votre ambassade.
Oreste ravisseur." But such considerations are of no avail in the
intemperance of his present feelings; and Orestes, after alluding to the
injury of a second rejection by Hermione, proceeds to another motive,
which urged him to any means, however violent to secure his object, and
which most powerfully interests the imagination. Every one knows the
supposed history of that mysterious character, whose destiny seemed to
have placed him at the disposal of some unrelenting enemy of the human
race, and who had suffered every misfortune which could oppress human
nature.

"--Mais, s'il faut ne te rien deguiser
Mon innocence enfin commence a me peser,
Je ne sais, de tout tems, quelle injuste puissence
Laisse le crime en paix, et poursuit l'innocence,
De quelque part sur moi que je trouve les yeux,
Je ne vois que malheurs qui condamnent lea Dieux,
Meritons leur courroux, justifions leur haine,
Et que le fruit du crime en precede la peine."

It is a remark of Seneca, that the most sublime spectacle in nature is
the view of a great man _struggling against_ misfortune, and such a
character has ever been considered as the most appropriate subject for
dramatic representation. The extreme difficulty of succeeding, in the
very important passage which I have quoted, is obviously because the
very reverse of such a spectacle is now presented to the mind,--when
Orestes is made to abandon that distinction in _his fate_ which alone
gave him any peculiar hold over the feelings of the spectators, and
because the actor must continue to engage, even more deeply than
before, their _interest_ and their _pity_, at the very time when the
sentiments he utters must necessarily lower the dignity of the character
he sustains, and diminish the compassion he had previously awakened.
How, then, is that ascendency over the mind, which the singular destiny
of Orestes naturally acquires, to be preserved, when he no longer is to
be regarded as the inn