Væ victis! (L, "Woe to the vanquished!") When the Gauls under Brennus invaded Italy and reduced the Roman citizens, who had fled to the Capitol, to the direst extremities, the Senate agreed to buy them off with one thousand pounds' weight of gold. Brennus produced false weights. The tribune objected. But Brennus threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming, in "a voice unbearable to Romans" (intoleranda Romanis vox), “Væ victis !” (LIVY, v. 48.)

Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas, the Vulgate rendering of the words in Ecclesiastes i. 2: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Farther down in the same chapter are the verses,

I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit" (13, 14).

A very good paraphrase was independently hit upon by two great minds. "I was in the habit of saying to my friends," writes Leibnitz to Nicaise, September 29, 1693, “Sanitas sanitatum, et omnia sanitas, without knowing that M. Ménage also used the phrase, as I learn from his Ménagiana.'" The "Ménagiana," it may be added, a collection of Ménage's table-talk, was published posthumously in 1692.

Was it Leibnitz or Ménage of whom Disraeli was thinking when, in a speech at the meeting of an agricultural society at Aylesbury in 1864, he quoted as the opinion of "a very great scholar" that the text "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," was a mistake of the copyist, who wrote “Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas," when he should have written "Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas"? This caused a Liberal to characterize the views of the opposition as "a policy of sewage."

Vice. A famous couplet in Pope's "Essay on Man," Epistle ii., 1. 227, runs as follows:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen.

Pope borrowed the structure of these lines from Dryden :

For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be loved needs only to be seen.

The Hind and the Panther, Part I., 1. 3.

For the idea he seems to have gone to Archbishop Leighton: "Were the true visage of sin seen at full light, undressed and unpainted, it were impossi ble while it so appeared that any one soul could be in love with it, but would rather flee from it as hideous and abominable."

Victory - Defeat. "I remember," says Emerson, in his essay "Quotation and Originality,” “to have heard Mr. Samuel Rogers in London relate, among other anecdotes of the Duke of Wellington, that a lady having expressed in his presence a passionate wish to witness a great victory, he replied, Madam, there is nothing so dreadful as a great victory-except a great defeat.'" It is possible that Wellington used the phrase more than once; or was Rogers misquoting and miscrediting the famous words in the despatch which the duke sent in 1815,-"Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won"? Emerson goes on to say that "this speech is D'Argenson's, and is reported by Grimm. Napoleon also said, 'The sight of a battle-field, after the fight, is enough to inspire princes with a love of peace and a horror of war.""

Violet. According to the scientists, who are a dull sort of folk, however, and who love to hide their ignorance behind long names of learned sound, the violet is a genus of exogenous herbs of the order Violacea, and is a native

of the north temperate zone. But the poets know a great deal more than the scientists, for they were born before them, and will survive them, and the poets tell us all about the creation of this fragrant flower. When Jupiter was in love with Io and changed her into a heifer, deeming that common grass and flowers were no fit diet for a sweetheart of the king of gods, he created the violet that she might feed upon its dainty petals. And, it is added, when Io died violets sprang from her body. (See next entry.)

The Greek name for violet was ion, and, possibly because that suggested Ionia, whence the Athenians were fabled to have sprung, the flower was a great favorite with the Athenians, who adopted it as their badge and loved to weave it into the chaplets which they wore at banquets, thinking, indeed, that it was a safeguard against drunkenness.

Alcibiades went to Agathos crowned with ivy and violets. The only lines that have survived from Alcæus's ode to Sappho begin by addressing her as "Violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho." The Athenian orators, when striving to win the favor and attention of the people, were wont to address them as "Athenians, crowned with violets!"

Among the Romans also the violet was highly esteemed. Ovid, in speaking of the ancient sacrifices, and contrasting their noble simplicity with the garish display of more degenerate times, says that "if there was any one who could add violets to the chaplets wrought from the flowers of the meadow he was a rich man." And Virgil, to emphasize the desolation of Nature mourning the death of Daphnis, speaks of the violet as replaced by the thistle.

In the East the violet had a great reputation among those races whose religions were rather emotional than mystical. The Arabian poets, like their brother bards of other climes, bade the wealthy and haughty learn humility from this lowly wayside preacher. It was a favorite flower with Mohammed, and hence has acquired a peculiar sanctity in Moslem countries. "As my religion is above others," quoth the Prophet, "so is the excellence of the odor of violets above other odors. It is as warmth in winter and coolness in midsummer."

It is likely that it was from some long foreground of popular homage that the violet became the badge of the medieval minstrels, as in the poetical contests of Toulouse, where the prize was a golden violet. Clémence Isaure places the violet among the flowers with which victors in the gai science were crowned.

The superstition still survives in widely-scattered countries that to dream of the violet is good luck. In Brandenburg and Silesia it is held a specific against the ague. In Thuringia it is a charm against the black art. In many parts of rural Germany the custom is still observed of decking the bridal bed and the cradles of young girls with this flower, a custom known to have been in use among the Kelts as well as among the Greeks.

No one, indeed, names the flower but to praise it; no one uses it but for some pretty, useful, or poetical purpose. Its popularity is highly creditable to human nature. Except that in some regions of the East it has been used to flavor sherbets, and that in Scotland it has been mistakenly used as a cosmetic, it has been universally cherished only for its modesty, its beauty, and its delicate fragrance.

In modern France the flower has been adopted as the emblem of the Bonaparte family. 'Caporal la Violette" or Papa la Violette" was the title bestowed by his partisans upon the first Napoleon after his banishment to Elba, significative of their confidence that he would return again in the spring.

Early in January, 1815, a number of colored engravings made their appearance in Paris, representing a violet in full bloom, with the leaves so ar

ranged as to form the profile of Napoleon. Underneath was this significant motto: “Il reviendra avec le printemps." The phrase became an Imperial toast, and the flower and color were worn as a party distinction. And, in fact, the sentiment was realized. When March 20, 1815, saw Napoleon re-enter the Tuileries after his escape from Elba, he found the grand staircase filled with ladies, who nearly smothered him with violets.

On the death of the King of Rome very pretty devices in violets were made, showing on the edge of the petals profiles of the members of the Bonaparte family, each profile forming the outer edge of the petal looking at the flower and leaving the face white.

On the death of Napoleon III., also, the visitors to Chiselhurst wore or carried thither bunches of violets.

A pretty story, but apocryphal, is told as to the adoption of the flower by the Imperialist party. Three days before his departure for Elba, Napoleon, it is said, was walking in the gardens of Fontainebleau with the Duc de Bassano and General Bertrand. He was contemplating retirement into exile, his courtiers were counselling resistance. They had almost won the day, when the Emperor saw beside him the three-year-old son of his gardener plucking a bunch of violets.

"My dear," he said, “will you give me your nosegay? The little one handed him the flowers.

"Gentlemen," said Napoleon, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I shall take this as an omen. Henceforth the violet shall be the emblem of my desires." And, without heeding his courtiers' remonstrances, he withdrew to his rooms.

Next day he was seen in his garden picking the stray violets, which were then very scarce. A grenadier on sentry duty approached, and said,— "Next year, Sire, you will have less difficulty, for the violets will then be

thicker."

Napoleon looked up in astonishment.

"What !" said he, "do you suppose I shall be here again in a year's time ?" "Perhaps sooner," was the reply.

"But do you know that the day after to-morrow I leave for the island of Elba ?"

"Your majesty will suffer the storm to pass."

"Are your comrades of the same opinion?"

"Almost all.”

"Let them think so, then, but not say so. When your sentry duty is over, go and find Bertrand. He will give you twenty napoleons; but keep the secret."

When the grenadier returned to the guard-room he remarked to his comrades how for the last two or three days the Emperor had been walking about with a bunch of violets.

"For the future," he added, "when we are talking between ourselves, let us call him Papa la Violette."

And, in fact, from that day the troops in the barrack and at their mess always spoke of Napoleon as Papa la Violette. The secret gradually reached the public, and the violet became recognized as the badge of the Imperialists.

Violet of his native land. Tennyson, in "In Memoriam," xviii., has the following stanza :

'Tis well; 'tis something; we may stand

Where he in English earth is laid,

And from his ashes may be made

The violet of his native land.

Is there a reminiscence here of Shakespeare's lines?

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

Lay her i' the earth;

May violets spring!

Hamlet, Act v., Sc. 1.

In Greek mythology there is a legend that when Io died violets sprang from her body. But it does not follow that Shakespeare intends any allusion to this legend. The fact that flowers spring from soil fertilized by the bodies of the dead is one of current observation. Five centuries before Shakespeare, Omar Khayyám had said,—

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
Rubáiyát, Stanza 19.

Again, at Cagliari, in Sardinia, there is a sepulchre in honor of a wife's devotion which was erected in pagan times. The inscriptions on the side are in Latin and in Greek. In one of these the husband begs that her bones may turn to flowers, and mentions quite a nosegay that he would like to see.

Virtue of necessity, To make a, an ancient proverbial expression, meaning to take credit upon one's self for that which is really forced upon one by circumstances, to assume commendation for doing under duress that which would be commendable only as the outcome of free will. The nicer aptness of the phrase is blurred at present through its constant use in the affiliated, but none the less corrupted, sense of to make the best of things, to put a good face on the matter. Quintilian, in his "Institutes," I., viii., 14, says, "Laudem virtutis necessitati damus" ("We give to necessity the praise of virtue"). Chaucer twice uses the words, "To maken vertu of necessitee,”viz., "Knightes Tale," 1. 3044, and "Troilus and Creseide," l. 1587. Shakespeare, in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act iv., Sc. 2, uses the exact modern locution; and that the saying was also current in continental Europe in mediæval times is evidenced by the fact that Hadrianus Julius, in his additions to the "Adagia" of Erasmus, quotes it as "a very familiar proverb" among his countrymen. His Latinized form runs as follows: "Necessitatem in virtutem commutare."

Vox populi, vox Dei (L., “The voice of the people is the voice of God"), a proverb of uncertain origin. It was used by Walter Reynolds as the text of the sermon at the coronation of Edward III., and is spoken of as a proverb by William of Malmesbury, "Recogitans illud proverbium: Vox populi vox Dei" (De Gestis Pontificum, fol. 114, ed. Savili). Still farther back, Alcuin, in the eighth century, protested against it: "We should not listen to those who are wont to say Vox populi, vox Dei, for the noise of the mob is very near to madness" (Capitulare Admonitionis ad Carolum). Sir William Hamilton in his edition of Reid traces it dubiously to the "Works and Days" of Hesiod: "In man speaks God."

The people's voice is odd,
It is and it is not the voice of God.

POPE: Imitation of Horace.

W.

W, the twenty-third letter of the English alphabet, used both as consonant and as vowel. It was made some time in the eleventh century, by simply doubling the U or V sign. (See U.)

Wake, in its original sense, the popular English equivalent for the ecclesiastical term "vigil." In medieval England the dedication wake or "revel" of a country parish celebrated the anniversary of the church's dedication. The population gave themselves up to wholesale revelry, attracting a legion of hawkers and merchants, until the wakes degenerated into common fairs, without any religious elements. To remedy some of the more glaring evils, Edward I. passed a statute forbidding them to be held in church-yards. Further attempts to regulate them were made by Henry VI. in 1448 and by Henry VIII. in 1536. Since the Restoration the custom has gradually declined, though it still holds good in some rural parishes.

But the term is now chiefly confined to the Irish caoinan, the wake or vigil (more literally, the "wailing") held over a dead body by the friends of the deceased. Miss Edgeworth epigrammatically styles it "a midnight meeting, held professedly for the indulgence of holy sorrow, but usually converted into orgies of unholy joy." The custom was known throughout Great Britain as well as in the north of Europe. In Anglo-Saxon it was called a lyke wake, liche-wake, or lake-wake (from lic, a “corpse,” and waecce, or waccian, to “keep watch or vigil"), and the word is used in this sense by early English writers. Thus, Chaucer, in his "Knightes Tale:"

The custom itself may be traced back to a remote antiquity. Allusions to similar funeral feasts may be found in many ancient writings, and even in the Bible. In the Book of Tobit is the passage, "Pour out thy bread on the burial of the just;" in Ecclesiasticus, "Delicates poured upon a mouth shut up are as messes of meat set upon a grave;" and a prophecy of Jeremiah, foretelling the calamities that shall befall the Jews, announces that "They shall not be buried, . . . neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother."

The Albanians, the Arabs, and the Egyptians all practised similar funeral ceremonies, degenerating into similar orgies, and traces of the same custom may still be found among the Abyssinians, the Welsh, and the Swedes.

They had a weird sort of a dance at Sierra City on Washington's birthday, says a California exchange. Previous to that holiday the following printed notices, bordered in black, were posted all around town: "Funeral Notice.-Died, at Sierra City, California, February 22, 1888, Small-Pox. As the deceased has no friends in town, his enemies are invited to assemble at Spencer & Moore's Hall, at 8 o'clock, to dance on his coffin. The funeral exercises will be under the auspices of the Butte's Band, which will pipe its level best for the occasion. Tickets, $1. P.S.-The wake will continue ad libitum at the close of the dano" That evening the people turned out en masse, and had a rip-roaring break-down in celebration of their at last being out of quarantine. The dances indulged in during the evening were the small-pox polka, the virus jig, vaccination reel, and quarantine quadrille. Thirty-five recently-recovered small-pox patients participated in the festivities.-Philadelphia Ledger,

1888.

Walker, or Hookey Walker! (the latter being the earlier expression), in English-and especially London-slang, an ironical ejaculation of surprise, used when a person is telling an improbable story. Its American equivalent is "Rats!" The origin is uncertain. One story asserts that John Walker, familiarly known as "Hookey Walker" from the size and shape of his nose, was in 1830, or thereabouts, employed by the firm of Longman, Clementi & Co., Cheapside, London, as a spy on his fellow-clerks, that his more or less exaggerated reports, met by well-feigned surprise and denial, led to his final dismissal in disgrace, and that the phrase "That's Hookey Walker !" became proverbial in the city for any dubious statement. Another story, fathered by the Saturday Review and implying a less esoteric circle of originators, makes