Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides !
Still as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too;
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

O for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread, Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs' orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamp of fire. I was monarch: pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy!

Cheerily, then, my little man,
Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisins of the dow;
Every evening from thy feet.

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat :
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt's for work be shod,

Made to tread the mills of toil,

Up and down in ceaseless moil:
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in

Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

WINTER.

SHUT in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
and door,

In baffled rage at pane
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed.
The house-dog on his paws outspread,
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons' straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood

With nuts from brown October's wood.

MERIVALE.

1808-1875.

REV. CHARLES MERIVALE, Dean of Ely, and a distinguished historian, was born in England in 1808, and died in 1875. His History of Rome under the Emperors is a scholarly, calm, and unprejudiced representation of the period of Roman history which lies between the establishment of the first Triumvirate and the last of the Cæsars. This work is written with great care, and exhibits marked opulence of scholarship and thorough comprehension of the subject. The author was a profound rather than brilliant historian, and is especially to be praised for his accuracy and fullness. The extracts are from his History above named.

AUGUSTUS CESAR.*

IN stature Augustus hardly exceeded the middle height, but his person was lightly and delicately formed, and its proportions were such as to convey a favorable and even a striking impression. His countenance was pale, and testified to the weakness of his health, and almost constant bodily suffering; but the hardships of military service had imparted a swarthy tinge to a complexion naturally fair, and his eyebrows meeting over a sharp and aquiline nose gave a serious and stern expression to his countenance. His hair was light, and his eyes blue and piercing; he was well pleased if any one on approaching him looked on the ground and affected to be unable to meet their dazzling brightness. It was said that his dress concealed many imperfections and blemishes on his person; but he could not disguise all the infirmities under which he labored; the weakness of the forefinger of his right hand and a lameness in the left hip were the results of wounds he incurred in a battle with the Iapydæ in early life; he suffered repeated attacks of fever of the most serious kind, especially in the course of the campaign of Philippi and that against the Cantabrians, and again two years afterward at Rome, when his recovery was despaired of. From that time, although constantly liable to be affected by cold and heat, and obliged to nurse himself throughout with the care of a valetudinarian, he does not appear to have had any return of illness so serious as the preceding; and dying at the age of seventy

* AUGUSTUS CESAR, one of the Emperors of Rome and the heir of Julius Cæsar, the greatest of warriors and rulers, was born 63 B. C. He was a liberal patron of literature and art, and his reign was so illustrious that it is called the Augustan Age. He was the friend of Virgil and Horace, the most eminent of the Roman poets, and so increased the architectural splendor of Rome as to be able to boast that he had transformed it from a city of brick to a city of marble. (See Plutarch's Life of Marcus Antonius.)

four, the rumor obtained popular currency that he was prematurely cut off by poison administered by the empress. As the natural consequence of this bodily weakness and sickly constitution, Augustus did not attempt to distinguish himself by active exertions or feats of personal prowess.

The splendid examples of his uncle the dictator, and of Antonius his rival, might have early discouraged him from attempting to shine as a warrior and hero: he had not the vivacity and animal spirits necessary to carry him through such exploits as theirs; and, although he did not shrink from exposing himself to personal danger, he prudently declined to allow a comparison to be instituted between himself and rivals whom he could not hope to equal. Thus necessarily thrown back upon other resources, he trusted to caution and circumspection, first to preserve his own life, and afterwards to obtain the splendid prizes which had hitherto been carried off by daring adventure, and the good fortune which is so often its attendant. From his youth upwards accustomed to overreach, not the bold and reckless only, but the most considerate and wily of his contemporaries, he succeeded in the end in deluding the senate and people of Rome in the establishment of his tyranny; and finally deceived the expectations of the world, and falsified the lessons of the Republican history, reigning himself forty years in disguise, and leaving a throne to be claimed without a challenge by his successors for fourteen centuries.

But although emperor in name, and in fact absolute master of his people, the manners of the Cæsar, both in public and private life, were still those of a simple citizen. On the most solemn occasions he was distinguished by no other dress than the robes and insignia of the offices which he exercised; he was attended by no other guards than those which his consular dignity rendered customary and decent. In his court there was none of the etiquette of modern monarchies to be recognized, and it was only by slow and gradual encroachment that it came to prevail in that of his successors. Many anecdotes are recorded of the moderation with which the emperor received the opposition, and often the rebukes, of individuals in public as well as in private. These stories are not without their importance as showing how little formality there was in the tone of addressing the master of the Roman world, and how entirely different the ideas of the nation. were, with regard to the position occupied by the Cæsar and his family, from those with which modern associations have imbued us.

We have already noticed the rude freedom with which Tiberius was attacked, although step-son of the emperor, and participating in the eminent functions of the tribunitian power, by a declaimer in the schools at Rhodes; but Augustus himself seems to have suffered almost as much as any private citizen from the general coarseness of behavior which characterized the Romans in their public assemblies, and the rebukes to which he patiently submitted were frequently such as would lay the courtier of a constitutional sovereign in modern Europe under perpetual disgrace.

66

The accused "Well," an

On one occasion, for instance, in the public discharge of his functions as corrector of manners, he had brought a specific charge against a certain knight for having squandered his patrimony. proved that he had, on the contrary, augmented it. swered the emperor, somewhat annoyed by his error, but you are at all events living in celibacy contrary to recent enactments." The other was able to reply that he was married, and was the father of three legitimate children; and when the emperor signified that he had no further charge to bring, added aloud, "Another time, Cæsar, when you give ear to informations against honest men, take care that your informants are honest themselves." Augustus felt the justice of the rebuke thus publicly administered, and submitted to it in silence.

THE BURNING OF ROME.*

PROVIDENCE was preparing an awful chastisement; and was about to overwhelm Rome, like the Cities of the Plain, in a sheet of retributive fire. Crowded, as the mass of the citizens were, in their close wooden dwelling-chambers, accidents were constantly occurring which involved whole streets and quarters of the city in wide-spreading conflagrations, and the efforts of the night-watch to stem these outbursts of fire, with few of the appliances, and little, perhaps, even of the discipline of our modern police, were but imperfectly effectual. But the greatest of all the fires which desolated Rome was that which broke out on the 19th of July, in the year 817, the tenth of Nero, which began at the eastern end of the Circus, abutting on the valley between

* In A. D. 64 Rome was nearly destroyed by a fire which the Emperor Nero was himself accused of instigating. In order to remove this suspicion he charged the crime upon the ChrisBut for this tians, many of whom were in consequence subjected to the most cruel tortures. fire we should have, perhaps, still left many of the beautiful structures for which ancient Rome was so famous, only the ruins of which now remain.