Ale, he may object, is an unclassical tipple; but perhaps
not. Xenophon, the most Attic of prose writers, mentions pointedly in his
_Anabasis_, that the Ten Thousand, when retreating through snowy
mountains, and in circumstances very like our General Elphinstone's
retreat from Cabul, came upon a considerable stock of bottled ale. To be
sure, the poor ignorant man calls it _barley wine_, [Greek: _oitos
chrithinos_:] but the flavor was found so perfectly classical that not
one man of the ten thousand, not even the Attic bee himself, is reported
to have left any protest against it, or indeed to have left much of the
ale.
But stop: perhaps I am intruding upon other men's space. Speaking,
therefore, now finally to the principal question, How far did this
memorable experiment succeed? I reply, that, in the sense of realizing all
that the joint revivers proposed to realize, it succeeded; and failed only
where these revivers had themselves failed to comprehend the magnificent
tendencies of Greek tragedy, or where the limitations of our theatres,
arising out of our habits and social differences, had made it impossible
to succeed. In London, I believe that there are nearly thirty theatres,
and many more, if every place of amusement (not bearing the technical name
of _theatre_) were included. All these must be united to compose a
building such as that which received the vast audiences, and consequently
the vast spectacles, of some ancient cities.
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