She winks and giggles and simpers, And simpers and giggles and winks; And, though she talks but little, 'Tis a good deal more than she thinks. She lies abed in the morning Till nearly the hour of noon, Then comes down snapping and snarling Because she was called so soon; Her hair is still in papers, Her cheeks still fresh with paintRemains of her last night's blushes, Before she intended to faint. She dotes upon men unshaven, And men with "flowing hair;" She's eloquent over moustaches: They give such a foreign air! She talks of Italian music, And falls in love with the moon; And if a mouse were to meet her, She would sink away in a swoon. Her feet are so very little, Her hands are so very white, Her jewels so very heavy, And her head so very light! Her color is made of cosmetics (Though this she will never own), Her body is mostly of cotton, Her heart is wholly of stone. She falls in love with a fellow Both are well mated in life: STARK. MARCUS CATO AND THE STOICS. FROM MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO'S ORATION IN DEFENCE OF L. MURENA. COME now to Marcus Cato, who is the mainstay and prop of the whole prosecution-who is, however, so zealous and vehement a prosecutor that I am much more afraid of the weight of his name than of his accusation. And with respect to this accuser, O judges, first of all I will entreat you not to let Cato's dignity, nor your expectation of his tribuneship, nor the high reputation and virtue of his whole life, be any injury to Lucius Murena. Let not all the honors of Marcus Cato, which he has acquired in order to be able to assist many men, be an injury to my client alone. Publius Africanus had been twice consul, and had destroyed those two terrors of this empire, Carthage and Numantia, when he prosecuted Lucius Cotta. He was a man of the most splendid eloquence, of the greatest good faith, of the purest integrity; his authority was as great almost as that of the Roman people itself in that empire which had been mainly saved by his means. I have often heard old men say that this very extraordinarily high character of the accuser was of the greatest service to Lucius Cotta. Those wise men who then were the judges in that cause did not like any one to be defeated in any trial if he was to appear overwhelmed only by the excessive influence of his adversary. What more shall I say? Did not the Roman people deliver Sergius Galba (the fact is preserved in the recollection of every one) from your grandfather, that most intrepid. and prosperous man Marcus Cato, who was zealously seeking his ruin? At all times in this city the whole people, and also the judges-wise men, looking far into futurity -have resisted the overweening power of prosecutors. I do not like an accuser bringing his personal power, or any predominant influence, or his own eminent authority, or his own excessive popularity, into a court of justice. Let all these things have weight to ensure the safety of the innocent, to aid the weak, to succor the unfortunate. But in a case where the danger and ruin of citizens may ensue, let them be rejected. For if, perchance, any one should say that Cato would not have come forward as an accuser if he had not previously made up his mind about the justice of the cause, he will then be laying down a most unjust law, O judges, and establishing a miserable condition for men in their danger if he thinks that the opinion of an accuser is to have against a defendant the weight of a previous investigation legally conducted. I, O Cato, do not venture to find fault with. your intentions by reason of my extraordinarily high opinion of your virtue, but in some particulars I may perhaps be able slightly to amend and reform them. “You are not very wrong," said an aged tutor to a very brave man; "but if you are wrong, I can set you right.' can set you right." But I can say with the greatest truth that you never do wrong, and that all offences are equal, that every sin is an unpardonable crime, and that he does not commit a less crime who kills a cock, if there was no need to do so, than the man who strangles his father. They say that a wise man never feels uncertain on any point, never repents of anything, is never deceived in anything and never alters his opinion. All these opinions that most acute man Marcus Cato, having been induced by learned advocates of them, has embraced, and that not for the sake of arguing about them, as is the case of most men, but of living by them. Do the Publicans ask for anything? "Take care that their influence has no weight." Do weight. any suppliants, miserable and unhappy men, come to us? "You will be a wicked and infamous man if you do anything from being influenced by mercy.' Does any one confess that he has done wrong and beg pardon for his wrong-doing? "To pardon is a crime of the deepest dye."But it is a trifling offence."-" All offences are equal." You say something. You say something. "That is a fixed and unalterable principle."- "You are influenced not by the facts, but by your opinion.”—“A wise man never forms mere opinions." His You have made a mistake in some point." He thinks that you are abusing him. And in accordance with these principles of his are the following assertions: "I said in the Senate that I would prosecute one of the candidates for the consulship.' "You said that when you were angry."-" A wise man never is angry." er is angry."-" But you said it for some temporary purpose. It is the act," says he, "of a worthless man to deceive by a lie; it is a disgraceful act to alter one's opinion; to be moved by entreaties is wickedness; to pity any one is an enormity." But our phil osophers (for I confess, O Cato, that I too, in my youth, distrusting my own abilities, sought assistance from learning)-our philosophers, I say, men of the school of Plato and Aristotle, men of soberness and moderation, say that private interest does sometimes have weight even with a wise man. They say that it does become a virtuous man to feel pity; that there are different gradations of offences, and different degrees of punishment appropriate to each; that a man with every proper regard for firmness may pardon offences; that even the wise man himself has sometimes nothing more than opinion to go upon, without absolute certainty; that he is sometimes angry; that he is sometimes influenced and pacified by entreaty; that he sometimes does change an opinion which he may have expressed, when it is better to do so; that he sometimes abandons his previous opinions altogether; and that all his virtues are tempered by a certain moderation. If any chance, O Cato, had conducted, endowed with your existing natural disposition, to those tutors, you would not indeed have been a better man than you are, nor a braver one, nor more temperate, nor more just than you are (for that is not possible), but you would have been a little more inclined to lenity; you would not, when you were not induced by any enmity or provoked by any personal injury, accuse a most virtuous man -a man of the highest rank and the greatest integrity; you would consider that as fortune had entrusted the guardianship of the same year to you * and to Murena, that you were connected with him by some certain political union; and the severe things which *Cato was tribune elect. you have said in the Senate you would either not have said, or you would have guarded against their being applied to him, or you would have interpreted them in the mildest sense. And even you yourself (at least that is my opinion and expectation), excited as you are at present by the impetuosity of your disposition, and elated as you are both by the vigor of your natural character and by your confidence in your own ability, and inflamed as you are by your recent study of all these precepts, will find practice modify them and time and increasing years soften and humanize you. In truth, those tutors and teachers of virtue whom you think so much of appear to me themselves to have carried their definitions of duties somewhat farther than is agreeable to nature; and it would be better if, when we had in theory pushed our principles to extremities, yet in practice we stopped at what was expedient. "Forgive nothing." Say, rather, Forgive some things, but not everything. Do nothing for the sake of private influence. sake of private influence." Certainly resist private influence when virtue and good faith require you to do so. "Do not be moved by pity." Certainly, if it is to extinguish all impartiality; nevertheless, there is some credit due to humanity. "Abide by your own opinion." Very true, unless some other sounder opinion convinces you. That great Scipio was a man of this sort, who had no objection to do the same thing that you do, to keep a most learned man-a man of almost divine wisdom-in his house, by whose conversation and precepts, although they were the very same that you are so fond of, he was nevertheless not made more severe, but (as I have heard said by old men) he was rendered most merciful. And who was 66 more mild in his manners than Caius Lælius? | ture and turned fiction from a toy into a Who was more agreeable than he (devoted mighty engine, and under the light tale to the same studies as you)? Who was Who was breathing through the community either its more virtuous or more wise than he? I reverence for the old or its thirst for the new might say the same of Lucius Philus and of communicates the spirit and lessons of hisCaius Gallus, but I will conduct you now tory, unfolds the operations of religious and into your own house. Do you think that civil institutions, and defends or assails new there was any man more courteous, more theories of education or morals by exhibiting agreeable any one whose conduct was more them in life and action. The poetry of the completely regulated by every principle of age is equally characteristic. It has a deepvirtue and politeness-than Cato, your greater and more impressive tone than comes to grandfather? And when you were speaking with truth and dignity of his virtue, you said that you had a domestic example to imitate. That indeed is an example set up for your imitation in your own family; and the similarity of nature ought rather to influence you who are descended from him than any one of us, but still that example is as much an object for my imitation as for yours. But if you were to add his courtesy and affability to your own wisdom and impartiality, I will not say that those qualities which are now most excellent will be made intrinsically better, but they will certainly be more agreeably seasoned. Translation of C. D. YONGE. LITERATURE OF THE AGE. THE character of the age is stamped very strongly on its literary productions. Who that can compare the present with the past is not struck with the bold and earnest spirit of the literature of our times? It refuses to waste itself on trifles or to minister to mere gratification. Almost all that is written has now some bearing on great interests of human nature. Fiction is no longer a mere amusement; but transcendent genius, accommodating itself to the character of the age, has seized upon this province of litera us from what has been called the Augustan age of English literature. The regular, elaborate, harmonious strains which delighted a former generation are now accused-I say not how justly-of playing too much on the surface of nature and the heart. Men want and demand a more thrilling note, a poetry which pierces beneath the exterior of life to the depths of the soul, and which lays open its mysterious workings, borrowing from the whole outward creation fresh images and correspondences with which to illuminate the secrets of the world within us. WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. EARLY LOVE. young ET us love while life is By the touch of age are thinning, And the eye is bright and winning. You will find returning passion; |