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74

True, I am poor, yet not the less am loyal

To those who have been kind to me of yore." —(Alford.)

Connected perhaps with his sympathy with women and an oppressed class of men is his practice of bringing on the scene young children. He puts them in situations that cannot fail to have touched the hearts of a susceptible people. In the "Iphigenia in Aulis," the infant Orestes is employed to work on Agamemnon's parental love. The little sons of Alcestis add to the pathos of her parting words. In the "Trojan Women," a drama of weeping and lamentation nearly "all compact," the fate of Astyanax is the most touching incident. In the "Andromache," the little Molossus is held up by his great-grandsire Peleus in order that he may loosen the cords by which his mother's hands are bound. Maternal love adds a human element to the wild and whirling passion of Medea. Racine, who profoundly studied Euripides, did not neglect this device for producing emotion. In his "Andromaque," Astyanax is made to contribute to the pity of the scene, although the etiquette of the French stage did not permit of his appearing on it. Did this innovation—if it were one—take its rise from a practice not uncommon in the law courts, for defendants to appeal to the mercy of the jurors by exhibiting their wives and children? Whether the courts borrowed it from the theatre, or the theatre from the courts, such a display, however foreign to our notions of the sobriety of justice, indicates a kind, if not an equi-