that account lose her daughters also. Rather than leave her to suffer alone, Ruth will starve with, or beg for her. Here is love for the dead and the living, surpassing that of Alcestis and Sigune. That Ruth does for her mother-in-law, what as the highest filial love the poet invents for Antigone, when he represents her as not leaving her blind father, is in actual life almost unexampled. Nor would it be easy to find an instance of a deeper conflict than that which love had to sustain on this occasion.