'Tis I my cause that plead ;—if aught I feign,
May the poor sisters' vase my shoulders strain!

If praise in ancient trophies any see,
All Afric speaks Numantine sires for me.2
With this my mother's Albine line may vie,
And lifts my house on twofold titles high.
When soon the maiden robe I ceased to wear,
And bound the bridal riband round my hair,
I joined thee, Paulus, thus to leave thy bed; -
Yet write it on my tomb-stone: but once wed.3
Witness, O ashes, by thee, Rome revered,

Beneath whose surnames, Afric, thou liest sheared; —
And he, who laid thy homes, Achilles, bare,4
And Perses crushed, Achilles vaunting heir,
He, my forefather. Spotless did I shine,
Nor blushed my hearth for any stain of mine.
Cornelia never shamed such noble birth,
But copied, as she could, its brightest worth.

Nor did time change me; pure was all from blame,
Between the nuptial torch and funeral flame.
Me Nature governed through ingenuous blood,
Lest I could grow, by fear of judgment, good.
Spring from the urn whatever lot austere,5

None sits dishonored by my sitting near.

Allusion is here made to the punishment of the daughters of Danäus.

2 Scipio the younger, surnamed Africanus and Numantinus, after he had destroyed Carthage and Numantia, was the ancestor of Cornelia.

3 Valerius Maximus tells us, that women who took no second husband were held in particular honor. II. 1, 2.

▲ Æmilius Paulus, surnamed Macedonicus, is meant, who vanquished Perses, the last of the Macedonian kings. These traced their line from Achilles. See the Eneid vi., 840.

5

According to the interpretation given above, this must mean, let the most rigorous judge be assigned to me.

Not thou, whose girdle freed the ship aground,
Claudia, chaste priestess of the Turret-crowned; -
Nor thou, whose snowy robe relumed the fire,1
When Vesta came, her hearth-flame to require.

Thee I ne 'er grieved, dear mother, soon or late.
What wouldst thou wish me changed in, but my fate?
Scribonia's tears are praises; Rome's sad moans,
And Cæsar's sigh, are poured upon my bones.
A sister, worthy his own daughter, dies, 3
And a god's grief flows chiding from his eyes.

But yet I've worn the matron's prize-array ; 4
Not from a sterile house been snatched away.
Thee, Lepidus! Thee, Paulus ! - still my blest!
My dying eyes were closed upon your breast.
My brother twice the curule honors wore ;
I saw him Consul, and then saw no more.
My daughter! image of thy Censor sire,

6

5

Like me, approach but once the marriage fire,

And so sustain thy line. From the unmoored bark

I shrink not; no more ills my lot shall mark.

1 The vestal virgin, Aemilia, whose story is told by Dionysius Hal. and Valerius Max.

2 Her mother Scribonia became the wife of Augustus Cæsar, and made him the father of the famous Julia.

3 Cornelia was of course the half sister of that celebrated beauty, whose scandalous life and wretched end appear in singular contrast with the flattering mention of her in this passage, and with the character of her chaste eulogist.

4 There were honorary distinctions for matrons, who had borne three children to the state. Frequent mention is made of the "jus trium liberorum" by the Roman writers. What the "vestis honores" here mentioned consisted in, is not, however, very clear.

P. Cornelius Scipio was ædile and prætor before he arrived at the consulship. These were the required grades of succession.

"Here again is rather an unfortunate instance of praise; for Velleius Paterculus informs us, that the Censorship of Plancus and Paulus was spent in quarrels, and was neither honorable to themselves nor useful to the republic; Paulus being wanting in authority, and Plancus in morals.

II. 95.

O'er the quenched pile when praise is full and free,
That is the loftiest prize of woman's victory.

Our sons, love's pledges, now to thee I trust;
This care still breathes, burnt in upon my dust.
Father, fulfil a mother's part; my share

Of the dear burthens now thy neck must bear.
When thou giv'st kisses as they weep, add mine ; —
The weight now rests on thee of house and line.
Let them not hear it, when thy sorrows speak;
But kiss them, as they come, with unwet cheek.
Enough the night with thoughts of me to wear,
And dreams, as if my living face was there.
And when thou talk'st, my Paulus, to my shade,
Fancy to each kind word an answer made.
Should e'er an altered bride-bed face the door,1
A step-dame sitting where I sat before,
Your father's choice, my children, bear,
Subdued by goodness she will be your friend.
Nor praise too much your mother; lest from thence
A rival feeling kindle to offence.

Or if content with memories he remain,

My ashes worthy deemed such rank to gain;
Learn how to soothe his age, as on it steals,

And comfort every care the lonely feels.

commend ;

What fails from mine be in your years enrolled ! 2
Paulus in you be happy to be old!

1 "The nuptial couch was placed in the hall opposite to the door. If it had ever been used for that purpose before, the place of it was changed." Adam's Roman Ant.

2 This natural and beautiful thought is found also in Martial, at the 37th epigram of the first book :

"Diceret infernas qui prior îsset ad umbras:
Vive tuo, frater, tempore, -vive meo."

All's well. No mourning weeds the mother clad,
But every child my
funeral farewell bade.

My cause is pleaded. Rise, ye pitying Powers,1
While friendly earth pays back life's honored hours.
Heaven is unclosed to Worth. Me worthy find,
And bear
my bones to rest with their illustrious kind.2

N. L. F.

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD BY FIRE.

THAT a violent end is appointed for the present system and order of created things has been a theme of poetry, and even of philosophy, from the remotest times. It can be traced in the usages and the fictions of the oldest nations on earth. And to it was added, for the most part if not always, the doctrine of a retribution then to take place, and the belief of a nobler and more glorious creation to spring out of the ruins of this. It may appear singular to claim so great an antiquity and prevalence for ideas, which are commonly supposed to have taken their birth from Christianity. The claim, however, cannot be disallowed; and it would indeed be extraordinary, if an apprehension so general, recognised by the traditions of the Jews and the customs of the Pagans, and lying spread over all those great portions of the globe where Mahometanism is professed, should have been derived from two or three passages of the Scriptures of the New Testament.

We propose first to inquire into the origin of such an opinion. We shall then endeavor to trace its history through different ages and tribes of men; from the feeblest intimations of it in the earlier periods of society down to those glaring

"Rise," that is, to pronounce your award.

The critical reader will perceive that the conjectural emendation of Heinsius has been adopted in this line. In two other instances, lines 21 & 39, 40, the text of Burmann has been deserted for the more recent one of Kuinoel.

errors connected with it, which have found advocates even in modern days. We hope to close what we intend to say with those practical principles, which the subject ought to suggest.

--

We are to inquire first, then, into the origin of the opinion. What should have suggested the thought, that this solid earth and this stupendous frame of nature were one day suddenly to perish? No signs of dissolution, certainly, were discernible on the newly peopled globe, nor among the eternal stars. It seems natural to look for the cause in some terrible revolution which befell the old world, and in the impressions of dread which it must have left on the minds of men. Such a revolution was the Deluge. The tradition of that event is not peculiar to Moses. It is presented to us in different forms from many sources. It is the united voice of antiquity, coming to us, as it were, across a waste of overwhelming waters. It is perpetuated in the records or the monuments of people the farthest apart from one another. The physical researches of modern days justify the tradition. The present appearances of the earth correspond with it. Various marks on the surface of the globe, and in its structure, its inland parts and mountain tops containing shells and marine substances, the organic remains that lie scattered in climates, of which the living animal could not have been a native, — all these things prove the reality of some awful convulsion and destruction by flood. The event, it is easy to conceive, would leave deep traces of sadness and anxiety behind it, and might well become connected with the expectation of another convulsion, to be attended with like fatal consequences. Men would naturally associate the memorials of one with a looking for of the other. And positive indications are not wanting that they actually did so. These two ideas are closely bound together. Even in the New Testament, we read in the second epistle of Peter the following remarkable words; "By the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire, against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." We are aware that some interpreters have been willing to see, in this picture of a flaming universe, only a description in