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This sentiment marks woman, when she loves enough to feel what a creature of glory and beauty a true man would be, as much in our own time as that of Euripides. Cooper makes the weak Hetty say to her beautiful sister: “Of course, I don't compare you with Harry. A handsome man is always far handsomer than any woman.” True, it was the sentiment of the age. but it was the first time Iphigenia had felt it. In Agamemnon she saw her father, to him she could prefer her claim. In Achilles she saw a man, the crown of creation, enough to fill the world with his presence, were all other beings blotted from its spaces.

The reply of Achilles is as noble. Here is his bride, he feels it now, and all his vain vauntings are hushed. How sweet is her reply, and then the tender modesty with which she addresses him here and elsewhere as “stranger.”