Emil. Immortal gods! who gave me sons like these, Forsake them not, but guard your work divine.

Titus. Think not, O best of fathers, best of men,
That with unfilial arrogance I speak.

My heart is full this instant of affection,
Hard to suppress. Dear to my soul are those
I leave behind, bitter to me their sorrows.
But destiny supreme hath marked my way;
And I accept what honour cannot shun.
By trivial accident, by various ills
Fatal to man, thou might'st have lost thy sons,
And they in dark oblivion would have slept :
But now I see the goal that Jove assigns,
And glory terminates our short career.
Be this thy comfort; I avow it mine.
Admir'd and mourned by Rome, for Rome we die.
Of fate secure, immortal is our fame,

And spotless laurels deck thy children's tomb.
Emil. O! my son, thou art the judge
And arbiter of fate. Time, rapid fly,
And bring a joyful victory to Rome!
Let me but see the scale of combat turned,
And die in glad assurance of her safety.

Var. The hero's fire invades my secret soul:
Like his my bosom burns. You shall not die,
Unaided and alone. Perhaps the gods!-
I know not that; but I will raise a pile
Of glorious ruin. Shine, ye stars of Rome!
First in the column stand my British bands.
Prepare your squadrons, and protract the time
Of his return.

SECTION XI.

CICERO LORD CHESTERFIELD..... V. Knox.

Cicero. MISTAKE me not. I know how to value the sweet courtesies of life. Affability, attention, decorum of behaviour, if they have not been ranked by philosophers among the virtues, are certainly related to them, and have a powerful influence in promoting social happiness. I have recommended them, as well as yourself. But I contend, and no sophistry shall prevail upon me to give up this point, that to be truly amiable, they must proceed from goodness

of heart. Assumed by the artful to serve the purposes of private interest, they degenerate to contemptible grimace and detestable hypocrisy.

Chest. Excuse me, my dear Cicero; I cannot enter farther into the controversy at present. I have a hundred engagements at least; and see yonder my little elegant French Comptesse. I promised her and myself the pleasure of a promenade. Pleasant walking enough in these elysian groves. So much good company too, that if it were not that the canaille are apt to be troublesome, I should not much regret the distance from the Thuilleries. But adieu, mon cher ami, for I see Madame **** is joining the party. Adieu, adieu!

Cic. Contemptible fop!

Chest. Ah! what do I hear? Recollect that I a man of honour, unused to the pity or the insults of an upstart, a novus homo. But perhaps your exclamation was not meant of me-if so, why

Cic. I am as little inclined to insult as to flatter you. Your levity excited my indignation; but my compassion for the degeneracy of human nature, exhibited in your instance, absorbs my contempt.

Chest. I could be a little angry, but as bienséance forbids it, I will be a philosopher for once. A-propos, pray how do you reconcile your-what shall I call it-your unsmooth address to those rules of decorum, that gentleness of manners, of which you say you know and teach the propriety as well as myself?

Cic. To confess the truth, I would not advance the external embellishment of manners to extreme refinement. Ornamental education, or an attention to the graces, has a connexion with effeminacy. In acquiring the gentleman, I would not lose the spirit of a man. There is a gracefulness in a manly character, a beauty in an open and ingenuous disposition, which all the professed teachers of the arts of pleasing know not how to communicate.

Chest. You and I lived in a state of manners, as different as the periods at which we lived were distant. You Romans-pardon me, my dear, you Romans--had a little of the brute in you. Come, come, I must overlook it. You were obliged to court plebeians for their suffrages; and if similis simili gaudet, it must be owned, that the greatest of you were secure of their favour. Why, Beau Nash would have handed your Catos and Brutuses out of the ball-room, if they had shown their unmannerly heads in

it; and my Lord Modish, animated with the conscious merit of the largest or smallest buckles in the room, according to the temporary ton, would have laughed Pompey the Great out of countenance. Oh, Cicero, had you lived in a modern European court, you would have caught a degree of that undescribable grace, which is not only the ornament, but may be the substitute of all those laboured attainments which fools call solid merit. But it was not your good fortune, and I make allowances.

Cic. The vivacity you have acquired in studying the writings and the manners of the degenerate Gauls, has led you to set too high a value on qualifications which dazzle the lively perceptions with a momentary blaze, and to depreciate that kind of worth which can neither be obtained nor understood without serious attention and sometimes painful efforts.

Chest. That the great Cicero should know so little of the world, really surprises me. A little libertinism, my dear, that's all; how can one be a gentleman without a little libertinism?

Cic. I ever thought that to be a gentleman, it was requisite to be a moral man. And surely you, who might have enjoyed the benefits of a light to direct you, which I wanted, were blameable in omitting religion and virtue in your system.

Chest. What! superstitious too!-You have not then conversed with your superior, the philosopher of Ferney. I thank Heaven I was born in the same age with that great luminary. Prejudice had else, perhaps, chained me in the thraldom of my great grandmother. These are enlightened 'days; and I find I have contributed something to the general illumination, by my posthumous letters.

Cic. Boast not of them. Remember you were a father. Chest. And did I not endeavour most effectually to serve my son, by pointing out the qualifications necessary to a foreign ambassador, for which department I always designed him? Few fathers have taken more pains to accomplish a son than myself. There was nothing I did not condescend to point out to him.

Cic. True: your condescension was great indeed. You were the pander of your son. You not only taught him the mean arts of dissimulation, the petty tricks which degrade nobility; but you corrupted his principles, fomented his passions, and even pointed out objects for their gratification. You might have left the task of teaching him fashionable vice to a vicious world. Example, and the corrupt

D

Wan treachery, with his thirsty dagger drawn;
Suspicion, poisoning the brother's cup;
Naked rebellion, with the torch and axe,
Making his wild sport of your blazing thrones;
Till anarchy comes down on you like night,
And massacre seals Rome's eternal grave!

Senators. Go, enemy and parricide, from Rome! Cat. (indignantly.) It shall be so!-(Going. He suddenly returns.)-When Catiline comes again, Your grandeur shall be base, and clowns shall sit In scorn upon those chairs.

Then Cicero and his tools shall pay me blood—
Vengeance for every drop of my boy's veins ;-
And such of you as cannot find the grace
To die with swords in your right hands, shall feel
The life, life worse than death, of trampled slaves!

Senators. Go, enemy and parricide, from Rome!
Cic. Expel him, lictors! Clear the senate-house !
Cat. I go, but not to leap the gulf alone!
I go;-but when I come-'twill be the burst
Of ocean in the earthquake rolling back
In swift and mountainous ruin. Fare you well!-
You build my funeral pile, but your best blood
Shall quench its flame. Back, slaves! (to the Lictors.) I
will return!

SECTION VIII.

..Ibid.

ARE there not times, Patricians! when great states
Rush to their ruin ? Rome is no more like Rome
Than a foul dungeon's like the glorious sky.
What is she now? Degenerate, gross, defiled;
The tainted haunt, the gorged receptacle.
Of every slave and vagabond of earth:
A mighty grave, that luxury has dug,
To rid the other realms of pestilence;
And, of the mountain of corruption there,
Which once was human beings, procreate
A buzzing, fluttering swarm; or venom tooth'd,
A viper brood insects and reptiles only!
Consul! Look on me-on this brow-these hands;
Look on this bosom, black with early wounds;

SPEECH OF CATILINE......

Have I not served the state from boyhood up,
Scattered my blood for her, laboured for, loved her ?
I had no chance; wherefore should I be Consul?
Patricians! they have pushed me to the gulf;
I have worn down my heart, wasted my means,
Humbled my birth, barter'd my ancient name,
For the rank favour of the senseless mass
That frets and festers in your commonwealth:
Ay, stalk'd about with bare head and stretched hand,
Smiling on this slave, and embracing that,
Coining my conscience into beggar words,
Doing the candidates' whole drudgery.
What is't to me that all have stooped in turn?
Does fellowship in chains make bondage proud?
Does the plague lose its venom, if it taint
My brother with myself? Is't victory,
If I but find, stretched by my bleeding side,
All who came with me in the golden morn,
And shouted as my banner met the sun?
I cannot think of't. There's no faith in earth;
The very men with whom I walked through life
Nay, till within this hour, in all the bonds
Of courtesy and high companionship,
They all deserted me; Metellus, Scipio,
Æmilius, Cato, even my kinsman Cæsar,—
All the chief names and senators of Rome,
This day, as if the heavens had stamped me black,
Turned on their heel, just at the point of fate,
Left me a mockery in the rabble's midst,
And followed their plebeian consul, Cicero!
No! I have run my course. Another year!
Why taunt me, sir? No-if their curule chair,
Sceptre, and robe, and all their mummery,
Their whole embodied consulate were flung,
Here at my feet,—and all assembled Rome
Knelt to me, but to stretch my finger out,
And pluck them from the dust,-I'd scorn to do it;
This was the day to which I looked through life;
And it has failed me,-vanished from my grasp,
Like air.

I must not throw the honourable stake,

That won, is worth the world,—is glory, life;
But, like a beaten slave, must stand aloof,
While others sweep the board!

"Tis fixed!-Past talking now!-By Tartarus!