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74 Athenian audience, of their slow and steady neighbours. So charmed are the Chorus with the effect of a little wholesome conviviality upon national temper, that they deliver it as their decided opinion that in future all embassies to foreign states should be fairly drunk before they set out. When men are sober, they are critical and suspicious, and put a wrong interpretation on things, and stand upon their dignity; but under the genial influence of good liquor there is a disposition to make everything pleasant. And so, with two choric hymns, chanted by Spartans and Athenians in turn—so bright and graceful that they would seem out of place in such wild company, but that we know the poet meant them to herald the joy with which a real Peace would be welcomed—this broad extravaganza ends.

For the humour is indeed of the broadest, in some passages, even for Aristophanes. But in spite of coarse language, it has been justly said by modern critics in the poet's defence, that the moral of the piece is honest and true. The longing for that domestic happiness which has been interrupted and shattered by twenty years of incessant war, is a far more wholesome sentiment, in its nature and effects, than very much of modern sentiment which passes under finer names.