We

came now and then fierce and rude in-and likable, if less important, than the vaders, and in which revolts against historian's weighty narrative. These Roman sway were perpetual. It is full sketches, as the reader is aware, are in of curious descriptions, such as a man the form of letters, and as such convey examining those glooms out of the heart some curious information to us, both of of civilization would be likely to make, historical scenes and of the daily life of and which are interesting both in their Rome. There are few books of the mistakes and in their affirmations. "All series more attractive than Messrs. have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge Church and Brodribb's agreeable account frames," he says - the common descrip-of this genial and kindly Roman. tion, by the way, of the half-savage war-enter with him into all the details of exrior, whom civilization half dreads and is istence, and are amused by all the pehalf contemptuous of. Not much more culiarities which mark the long distance than a century ago, the same description and difference between us, without losmight have been given in England of ing sight of those more lasting conditions those "wild Scotch" who followed Prince of humanity which are the same now as Charlie. The still broader generalization they were in Rome in the first century, a which describes the Teutons as "a race mingled likeness and contrast which without either natural or acquired cun-gives the chief charm to social history. ning," is amusing enough. The "An- The most famous, perhaps, of Pliny's nals and "History," one closely fol- letters is that which gives an account of lowing on the other, are, however, the the great eruption of Vesuvius, by which greatest works of Tacitus. The first Pompeii and Herculaneum were deembraces the first half of the century in stroyed, and which the reader will find in which he himself lived the age just this volume, though it seems unnecessary before his own, which he had most abun- to quote it here. It is interesting, howdant opportunity of fathoming and com-ever, to note in this narrative, and in the prehending; the second is the story of equally well-known account of the Jews the reigns under which he himself lived. given by Tacitus, what is pointed out by The many mutilations to which they have the authors of both volumes - the curibeen subject impair the perfection of ous absence of that critical faculty and these records; but the English reader sense of the necessity of accuracy, which will find even in Mr. Bodham Donne's we in these latter days pride ourselves summary a very comprehensive view of on possessing. Pliny's story of the erupthe history of the time, its extraordinary tion is extremely picturesque, but it is convulsions, its succession of one tyrant wanting in the most obvious details of after another, the frightful episode of trustworthy evidence, and tells us neither military domination which gave to the when the extraordinary appearances paralyzed city such rulers as Otho and which he describes began, nor how long Vitellius, and all the vicissitudes of they lasted, nor where the terror-stricken Cæsarism- occasionally fortunate, as crowd which. pressed so upon him as to when Vespasian and Titus ruled, but drive him onward, escaped to in their always stupefying and deadening the national life, and working downwards to certain ruin. The strong bias against the system of despotism which is evident, gives pungency to the record, such as a history of the Napoleons by such a bitter yet honourable critic as Montalembert might have shown. There is little space in the small volumes of this series for giving, besides the necessary narrative and summary, much insight into the style and eloquence of such a writer-a thing itself extremely difficult, almost impossible; but any good account of the most authentic story of the first century To return, however, to Pliny: there must be interesting to the English reader. are innumerable bits of Roman life in his Pliny, the friend of Tacitus, lends his letters much less known than his debrighter social sketches to fill out the scription of the famous and terrible catasstatelier narrative, and furnishes an trophe of Pompeii. The reader will be extremely pleasant volume, more easy lamused by the following curious sketch

flight, nor even the direction they took. The notes of Tacitus on the Jews are still more deficient in all that constitutes evidence, and show a readiness to accept the merest hearsay, which is very unworthy a historian, and is by no means, one would have said, characteristic of the man. It gives the most grotesque outsider's version of the facts so well known to us from other sources; although even in this strange travesty there is much which the author evidently feels to show a higher tone of morality than that of his own superior and enlightened race.

of an institution well known among us as
the claque, which seems to have been
used in Pliny's days, under much less jus-
tifiable circumstances than those which
have attended its modern existence. It
is here introduced as a common feature
in the courts of justice. Pliny himself
practised at the bar like so many other
distinguished Romans. He is describ-
ing the "Court of the Hundred," in which
he says there are few interesting cases,
and the greater part of the practice is in
the hands of young and unknown men:

They have an audience like themselves,
regularly hired for the occasion; a speculator
contracts to supply them; presents are passed
to them quite openly in court, and they go for
the same hire from court to court. Yesterday
two young slaves of mine were dragged off to
applaud somebody at half-a-crown apiece.
Such is the price of the highest eloquence-
for this you may fill a number of benches, col-
lect a crowd, and have a burst of cheering as
soon as ever the leader of the chorus has
given the word.

shows a remarkable kindness in making himself one of the audience; me certainly he has never failed whenever he has happened to be in town. This year [he says on another occasion] has brought us a great crop of there was scarcely a day on which some one poets. During the whole month of April. did not give a reading. I am delighted to see that literature flourishes, that the powers of our writers have the opportunity of displaying themselves; yet audiences come but slowly to listen. Many persons sit in the lounging-places and waste in gossip the time that they should spend in listening. They reader has entered, whether he has spoken his even have news brought to them whether the preface, whether he has got through a considerable part of his manuscript. Then at last they come, but come slowly and reluctantly. Good heavens! our fathers can remember how the Emperor Claudius, walking one day in the palace, hearing a great shouting, inquired the cause. They told him that Nonianus was reading: whereupon he entered the room wholly unexpected by the reader. Now, the idlest of men, after having been invited long before to attend, and reminded over and over again of the engagement, cither do not come at all, or if they come complain of having "lost a day" ↑

lic.

"I, however," adds Pliny, with conscious virtue, "have failed scarcely a single reader."

Another habit of a more refined kind but one which, it will easily be seen, might very well grow into an intolerable nuisance to all plain people having This reference to the good old times friends of the literary class was the (not very far off in this case) shows that system of public readings. It is a hard Pliny did not share his friend Tacitus's case enough when you are liable to be hatred for the Cæsars. The historian, presented, without a moment's notice, no doubt, would have thrown back the with a volume of your friend's poetry, blissful moment when the readings of all and still harder when your opinion is poets were attended with eagerness and asked as to the expediency of publica-interest, to the golden age of the Repubtion; but what would become of us if all the writers of our acquaintance had the privilege of inviting us to hear them read their productions an invitation scarcely to be refused at less cost than a quarrel? We remember ruefully an accident that once happened to ourselves (and it was at Rome) when a friend, whose entreaties to read his MS. we had skilfully dodged up to the last moment, instead of saying farewell like a Christian, jumped after us into the railway carriage which was about to convey us to Civita Vecchia, and produced upon us, helpless, the dreaded MS. It would appear that Pliny was more charitable than we are; for he speaks of this terrible practice which Juvenal, more impatient, denounces as one of "the horrors of this hateful town" with an amiable complaisance:

I must beg you to excuse me to-day [he says]; Titinius Capito means to give a reading, and I cannot say whether I am more bound or more desirous to hear him... He lends his house to readers; and whether the reading be at his own house or elsewhere, he

We shall quote but one other sketch, the portrait of the elder Pliny, to show what ancient Roman virtue was in the learned naturalist. We fear that irreverent youth in our own day would have stigmatized the venerable philosopher as something of a prig. It is to prove among other things the "marvellous industry" of his relative, that Pliny the younger thus writes:

From the 23d of August he began to study at midnight, and through the winter he continued to rise at one, or, at the latest, at two in the morning, often at twelve. . . . Before daybreak he would go to the Emperor Vespasian, who also worked at night, and thence to his official duties. On returning home, he gave what time remained to study. After taking a light meal, as our forefathers used to do, he would often, in summer, if he had leisure, recline in the sun and have a book read to him-on which he wrote notes, or from which he made extracts. He read nothing without making extracts; for he used

4 23

to say that you could get something good has made full proof of penitence. I indeed from the worst book. After reading in the believe him reformed, because he knows and sun, he had generally a cold bath, then a light meal, and a very short nap; after which, as if he were beginning another day, he would study till dinner. During dinner a book was read to him, and he made notes upon it as it went on. I remember one of his friends once stopping the reader, who had pronounced a word incorrectly, and making him repeat it. My uncle said to him, "Did you not understand the word?" "Yes," he replied. "Why, then, did you stop him? we have lost more than ten lines by this interruption." So parsimonious was he of his time. In the country he exempted only his bathing time from study-I mean the actual time of his immersion in the water; for while he was being rubbed or dried he would have something read, or dictate something. While travelling he threw aside every other care, and gave himself up to study. He always had a scribe by his side, with a book and a writing-table, whose hands in winter were protected by gloves, so that the cold weather might not rob him of a single moment. Even at Rome he used to be carried in a litter with this view. I remember him rebuking me for

taking a walk. "You might have managed," he said, "not to lose these hours." In fact, he thought all time lost that was not given to study.

feels his faults. That you are angry with him I know, and that you are justly angry I know also; but then has mercy its highest praise when cause for anger is most just. You have loved the man, and I trust will again love him. Meanwhile, it is enough that you suffer yourself to be entreated. Should he deserve it, you may again be angry, and, having yielded to entreaty, you will have the more excuse. Put down something to his youthsomething to his tears-something to your own kindness. Torture him not, lest torturing him you torture also yourself. For anger to a nature so gentle as yours is really torture. I am fearful lest I should seem to exact rather than to entreat, should I join my prayers to his. And yet I will join them, and that as fully and as earnestly as I have sharply and severely reproved him, threatening him plainly that I will never entreat for him again. This I said to him, whom there was need to frighten. To you I say not so. For most likely I should again entreat, and again obtain my prayer, if only it be such as is fitting for me to ask, and for you to grant. Farewell.

It is difficult to do full justice to the claims of such a poet as Juvenal in such a series as the present, designed for domestic reading, and specially intended for the innocent hands of those whom It is curious to recollect that this tre- English literature, more than any other, mendous student was at the time of his has the merit of avoiding to offend. The death, which took place on the night of the writer is compelled to make perpetual great eruption of Vesuvius, probably from breaks in his quotations, and leave the the suffocating atmosphere at the foot of darker part of the story untold. But the volcano admiral in command of the even with this necessary elimination, fleet in the Bay of Naples. It was in his enough is left to show the lofty indignaattempt to save the terrified people on tion against evil, the manly love of virtue, the coast, whose houses were destroyed, which inspire the verse of this most and who were, as was natural, frightened earnest of satirists. The reader will perto death by this appalling and unprec- ceive at a glance that there is no levity edented catastrophe, that he lost his life. in this censor of public morals, no sneakWe add one brief epistle more, which is ing regard for the vice he chastises, or not included in the selection of quota- covert sympathy with those who practise tions made by Messrs. Church and Brod-it. He is not easy and good-natured, ribb. It is very charming and touching but impetuous, breathless, in his denunin itself, and still more curious from its ciations- - carried far beyond the point at resemblance to a yet more famous letter which an observer can laugh at the habit the Epistle of Paul to Philemon. If it he stigmatizes. His indignation is as a wants something of the dignified and pa- fire within him sharp and hot and intolthetic tenderness of that most beautiful erant. Curiously enough, some of the inletter, it is still very striking in its simi- dignant youthful verses of Savonarola · larity of sentiment. It is written within a kindred age of despotism and moral the same purpose to recommend an erring but repentant servant to the forgiveness of his master.

depravity, while he was still only griev ing over the vice of his time, and had not seen his way to his after vehement crusade against it sound almost like paraphrases of the fiery lines of Juvenal."

Your freedman, with whom you said that you were angry, has come to me, and, falling at my feet, has, as it were, clung to yours. He has wept much-he has entreated much of much he has been silent; in a word, he | Be bold in mischief, dare some mighty crime.

Wouldst thou to honour and preferment

climb ?

On guilt's broad base thy towering fortress | Crowds the long street and leaves his orphan raise,

the Greek is quite as much to be pitied the low mattrassed couch, at least Rab who never could have known Shake- said that he rose as refreshed as when he speare, as is the Englishman who does was fifteen. not know Eschylus. Lear is to the full He found some appetite for the fresh as great as Edipus, and even the fondest milk and new-laid eggs which they set and most admiring classicist will scarcely before him, and they told the neighbours find within the circle of Greek tragedy with wistful pride that Rab ate a whole any figure worthy to take a place by the reaper's "bap" on the very first morning side of Hamlet. After this little flourish of his return. And truly he seemed to of our national trumpet, which we make drink in health from the sea-breezes with much relish on behalf of our partic- that blew up the shingled shore. It was ular client the English reader, and in too shingly a shore for any one to walk defiance of all classic fanatics, we com- much there. But Rab found out shelmend these stout old Romans, and still tered coves, and sat in them for hours more their greater predecessors of together. Sometimes his companion was Greece, to the audience they claim. The sister Flora, sometimes sister Christian, series was admirably planned, and it has but Jessie Macfarlane, daughter of the been thoroughly well carried out. To farmer at Easter Clachan, was the friend Mr. Collins, who has conducted it, we of both, and came with either. She was all owe our best thanks; and any one the only girl in the house at Easter Clawho reads the volumes which he has chan, and the good Christison women himself contributed, will feel that the were fond of her, and never left her loneeditorship could not possibly have beenly. She was but twenty, and they were in better hands. We are glad to under-both nigh forty, but they all loved each stand that, in acquiescence with many other, and cared for the same things requests, from the press and the public, their respective households, the sermons it is intended to supply the omissions we at kirk, their thrifty handiworks, and the have indicated - and we trust some running story in the magazine, and were others by a short supplemental series. not without an appreciation of far wider interests much more keen than that of many who would scorn the humble monotony of their outward lives. They had stayed at home, but their hearts had travelled far. In the girl's eyes, those two good plain spinsters were sacred and RAB CHRISTISON had been ailing for glorified by the romance that was not yet some time. He said it was nothing very audible in her own life. Christian Chrismuch. Only something that shortened tison had been "promised" to the young his walks. That kept him awake till mid-mate of a whaling-vessel that nearly fifnight, and wakened him at dawn. That teen years before had sailed from Clachan made him think there must be something on the Forth, and had never sailed home terribly amiss with London meat and again. Flora was engaged to one who London bread, since he found no appetite! went to seek his fortune in India, and for either. But surely all this was nothing very serious.

From The Sunday Magazine.
ONE MORE CHANCE.

His conscience even misgave him that he should use such an excuse to ask for an untimely holiday in the spring that he might go down to his old home at Clachan on the Forth. They were all glad to see him there; no visit of his would ever be untimely to his old father and mother and his two maidenly sisters. They would have liked to put him in the "spare room," which was carpeted all over, and had white hangings. But Rab would have the little room in the roof where he slept when he was a boy, with its window turned to the sky, where, if you climbed up, you could catch a glimpse of the blue hills far away. The deep sleep of his boyhood seemed to return to

was still unsuccessfully seeking it there. Flora was the graver of the two sisters, and was sometimes a little sore and hasty in temper. But with neither had their love-affairs made any parenthesis in life. They kept their father's ledgers, and served behind his counter, and went out to tea among their own little set in a substantial, cheerful way. But Jessie understood where Christian's thoughts went, when she dropped her knitting and gazed at the sun sinking over the sea, till the grey clouds closed above him, and only a streak of glory lingered on the wave. And Jessie respected Flora's quaint and constant knowledge of Hindoo words and customs. She never said a word on the subject to either of them, nor they to her. They did not know she