as to climb up, and to squat upon it. After some time, thinking themselves ill-treated in being given so quiet a ruler, they sent a deputation to Jupiter, praying for another sovereign. He then gave them an Eel to govern them. But the Frogs, discovering the easy good nature of their new ruler, sent a third time to Jupiter, begging that he would once more choose them a King. Jupiter, displeased at their complaints, sent them a Heron, who preyed upon the Frogs day by day till there were none left to croak upon the lake.

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE.

A Hare one day ridiculed the short feet and slow pace of the Tortoise. The latter, laughing, said: “Though you be swift as the wind, I will beat you in a race." The Hare, deeming this to be simply impossible, assented; and they agreed that the Fox should choose the course and fix the goal. On the day appointed for the race they started together. The Tortoise never for a moment stopped, but went on with a slow but steady pace straight to the end of the course. The Hare, trusting to his native swiftness, cared little about the race, and lying down by the wayside, fell fast asleep. At last waking up, and moving as fast as he could, he saw that the Tortoise had reached the goal, and was comfortably dozing after her fatigue.

THE CAT AND THE MICE.

A certain house was overrun with Mice. A Cat discovering this, made her way into it and began to catch and eat them one by one. The Mice, being continually devoured, kept themselves close in their holes. The Cat, no longer able to get at them, perceived that she must tempt them forth by some device. For this purpose she jumped upon a peg, and, suspending herself from it, pretended to be dead. One of the Mice, peeping stealthily out, saw her, and said: "Ah, my good madam, even though you should turn yourself into a meal bag, we will not come near you."

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEK DRAMA.

THE sudden decline in lyric poetry had its cause in the intense devotion which the pleasure-loving Athenians displayed for the drama, which, at the epoch of these brilliant lyric poets, had reached its highest stage in the writings of Eschylus and his successors.

This growth of the dramatic art evidenced a new advance in the progress of literature, so rapidly developing in the hands of the alert and active-minded Greeks. The epic, in which the poet stands at a distance, calmly observing and quietly narrating the deeds of former heroes, is a more primitive literary form than the drama, in which the artist throws himself into the midst of his characters, and makes them live, act and talk in his very presence, and in that of his hearers.

It is a severer art than the epic. It has no background of narration, none of that aerial perspective which draws on the imagination of the spectator to eke out any insufficiency in the story. Suppressing these aids, it must depend for effect on its unity and simplicity, on its power of awakening the sympathy of an audience, of unfolding the depths of human nature, and of making visible to the eye and palpable to the touch what the epic poet displays wrapped in the glowing veil of imagination.

In Greek drama, too, the lyric art is almost as fully cultivated as the dramatic, in the songs of the chorus, which forms such an essential feature of the classic stage. In this, and in other respects, the ancient drama differs essentially

from the modern; its peculiar features arising from the character of its origin, and from the marked differences in mental requirement between the Greeks and the moderns. Our tendency to the romantic and imaginative was in them replaced by a severely artistic spirit, whose demands chiseled their plays into the cold stateliness of marble statuary, while they lacked the plastic and vital exuberance of the recent drama.

As the dramatic art, moreover, originated in Greece, it necessarily needed time and experience to ripen into its most attractive and life-like form; and we find the cold and statuesque severity of Eschylus gradually softening and widening, till, in the later comedy, the art of the playwright much more closely approximates to its modern representative.

In seeking the origin of this art we must go back to the early rural festivals of the Greeks, and particularly those connected with the worship of Bacchus. Twice each year, at the opening of the spring, and at the joyous season of the vintage, the villagers and country people were accustomed to gather around a rustic altar dedicated to this merriest of the gods, at the foot of the warm hills on which the grapes grew so richly. Here they would dance, sing, and indulge in games, which, however simple, were full of that graceful spirit which seemed innate with the Greeks. Nor was it an idle or half-hearted worship they thus paid. They fervently believed in their gods, believed that every hill, every stream, almost every tree, was the seat of a distinct deity; and their worship was conducted with an enthusiasm unknown to our colder natures.

In the goat, which was offered in sacrifice to Bacchus, or Dionysius, during these games, we have the supposed origin of the word Tragedy, whose literal meaning is "Goat Song." They accompanied their jovial sports by the singing of extemporized hymns in honor of the god, dancing around

the altar of the deity, and chanting choruses in his praise. Most probably certain villages grew famous for their skill in these games, and bands of such expert performers may have gone from place to place, or matches have arisen between different companies of singers, giving to the festivals something of the character of musical contests.

In the hands of one Ari'on, of Lesbos, the dithyrambic dance and song (as this performance was called) became an orderly and solemn ceremony. The number of the chorus was increased to fifty, and the extemporized song was replaced by set music and words. In this form the ceremony was kept up for many years in different parts of Greece.

But it was in Attica, the native land of the drama, that the first essential addition was made to the simplicity of the chorus. This consisted of a rude dialogue, introduced into the pauses of the choric song, and maintained between a single speaker and the leader of the singers. The origin of this improvement is attributed to Thes'pis, a native of the country districts, who flourished about 535 B.C.

The Thespian performances were, however, ludicrous and homely in character, and much more akin to the comic than the tragic. To Phryn'ichus, a disciple of Thespis, must be given the honor of forming, out of these farcical elements, the earliest approach to Tragedy. Forsaking the humors of the rustic festivals, he selected for his subjects solemn mythologic legends, which he handled with the feeling of a poet. But his works, as yet, failed to exhibit the true dramatic form, being essentially lyrical in character. It was not until after the advent of Eschylus as a dramatist that the productions of Phryn'ichus became in any just sense dramatic, borrowing the improved methods adopted by this great artist, to whose genius we owe the earliest tragic drama of Greece.

These performances, originating, as we have seen, in the country districts, soon made their way into the city of

Athens. After the period of the Persian war, when this city took the lead among the Grecian States, we find the drama thoroughly acclimated there, and received with an enthusiasm, and a critical judgment as to its truth and beauty, which insured its rapid development. Whatever was most solemn in religion, enthusiastic in national feeling, or correct in an artistic sense, found expression in the rival dramas, which twice in every spring were offered, in rapid succession, in the great theatre of Bacchus, in contest for the tragic prize.

The stage on which these performances were presented, at first a mere platform, then an edifice of wood, eventually became a splendid theatre, which was built into the sloping height of the Acrop'olis. It formed a vast semicircle of seats, cut into the solid rock, rising tier above tier, and capable of containing an audience of thirty thousand persons. This great edifice was open to the heavens. Before the spectators lay the broad sky, the temples and harbors of the city, the rocky cliffs of Sal'amis, and the sunny islands of the bright Egean Sea. Nor did it matter if the sun shone fully into their faces, for a Greek audience was never fastidious about the weather.

It may seem incredible that any actor could make himself distinctly heard, in the open air, by such an immense audience; and that his critical hearers could distinguish the various expressions of passion, discriminating between the accents of grief and joy, the tones of submission and command. To meet this difficulty the Greeks contrived artistically formed masks, which inclosed the whole head, and were fitted with some acoustic arrangement by which the powers of the human voice were greatly reinforced. Also, that the persons of the actors might not appear diminutive to the spectators, their height was increased by thick-soled shoes, and their apparent size by a judicious