Guard, Paullus, guard the pledges of our love-
My very dust that ingrained wish can move!
Father thou art, and mother must thou be,
Unto those little ones bereft of me.

Weep they, give twofold kisses, thine and mine,
Solace their hearts, and both our loves combine;
And if thou needst must weep, go, weep apart —
Let not our children, folded to thine heart,
Between thy kisses feel thy teardrops start.
Enough, for love, be nightlong thoughts of me,
And phantom forms that murmur I am she.
Or, if thou speakest to mine effigy,
Speak soft, and pause, and dream of a reply.

Yet

if a presence new our halls behold,
And a new bride my wonted place shall hold -
My children, speak her fair, who pleased your sire,
And let your gentleness disarm her ire;
Nor speak in praise of me- your loyal part
Will turn to gall and wormwood in her heart.
But, if your father hold my worth so high,
That lifelong love can people vacancy,
And solitude seem only love gone by,
Tend ye his loneliness, his thoughts engage,
And bar the avenues of pain to age.

I died before my time-add my lost years
Unto your youth, be to his heart compeers;
So shall he face, content, life's slow decline,
Glad in my children's love, as once in mine.

Lo, all is well! I ne'er wore garb of woe
For child or husband: I was first to go.

Lo, I have said! Rise, ye who weep; I stand

In high desert, worthy the Spirit Land.

Worth hath stormed Heaven ere now; this, this I claim

To rise, in death, upon the waves of Fame.

ROMAN LIFE UNDER AUGUSTUS.

By W. A. BECKER.

[WILHELM ADOLF BECKER, a noted German classical antiquary, was born at Dresden, 1796; died at Meissen, 1846. Designed for trade, he left it for scholarship; studied at Leipsic, and the last four years of his life was professor there. His still familiar works are "Charicles" and "Gallus," novels embodying the social life of the Greeks in Alexander's time and the Romans in Augustus'. His "Handbook of Roman Antiquities" (1843-1846) is his chief monument as a scholar.

This historical novel of Becker's is based on the real fate of Cornelius Gallus.]

STUDIES AND LETTERS.

GALLUS had for some time past kept as much as possible aloof from the disquieting labors of public life, and had been accustomed to divide his time between the pleasures of the table and of love, the society of friends, and the pursuit of his studies, serious as well as cheerful. On the present occasion also, after his friends had departed, he withdrew into the chamber, where he used daily to spend the later hours of the morning, in converse with the great spirits of ancient Greece -a pursuit animating and refreshing alike to heart and soul or to yield himself up to the sport of his own muse. Immediately adjoining this apartment was the library, full of the most precious treasures acquired by Gallus, chiefly in Alexandria. There, in presses of cedar wood, placed round the walls, lay the rolls, partly of parchment, and partly of the finest Egyptian papyrus, each supplied with a label, on which was seen, in bright red letters, the name of the author and title of the book. Above these again were ranged the busts, in bronze or marble, of the most renowned writers, an entirely novel ornament for libraries, first introduced into Rome by Asinius Pollio, who perhaps had only copied it from the libraries of Pergamus and Alexandria. True, only the chief representatives of each separate branch of literature were to be found in the narrow space available for them; but to compensate for this, there were several rolls which contained the portraits of seven hundred remarkable men. These were the hebdomades or peplography of Varro, who, by means of a new and much-valued invention, was enabled in an easy manner to multiply the collection of his portraits, and so to spread copies

of them, with short biographical notices of the men, through the whole learned world.

On the other side of the library was a larger room in which a number of learned slaves were occupied in transcribing, with nimble hand, the works of illustrious Greek and the more ancient Roman authors, both for the supply of the library, and for the use of those friends to whom Gallus obligingly communicated his literary treasures. Others were engaged in giving the rolls the most agreeable exterior, in gluing the separate strips of papyrus together, drawing the red lines which divided the different columns, and writing the title in the same color; in smoothing with pumice-stone and blackening the edges; fastening ivory tops on the sticks round which the rolls were wrapped, and dyeing bright ed or yellow the parchment which was to serve as a wrapper.

Gallus, with Chresimus, entered the study, where the freedman, of whom he was used to avail himself in his studies, to make remarks on what was read, to note down particular passages, or to commit to paper his own poetical effusions, as they escaped him, was already awaiting him. After giving Chresimus further instructions to make the necessary preparations for an immediate journey, he reclined, in his accustomed manner, on his studying couch, supported on his left arm, his right knee being drawn up somewhat higher than the other, in order to place on it his books or tablets.

"Give me that roll of poetry of mine, Phædrus," said he to the freedman; "I will not set out till I have sent the book finished to the bookseller. I certainly do not much desire to be sold in the Argiletan taverns for five denarii, and find my name hung up on the doors, and not always in the best company; but Secundus worries me for it, and therefore be it so."

"He understands his advantage," said Phædrus, as he drew forth the roll from the cedar-wood chest. "I wager that his scribes will have nothing else to do for months, but to copy off your Elegies and Epigrams, and that you will be rewarded with the applause poured upon them not by Rome only, nor by Italy, but by the world."

"Who knows?" said Gallus. "It is always hazardous to give to the opinion of the public that which was only written for a narrow circle of tried friends and besides, our public is so very capricious. For one I am too cold, for another I speak too much of Lycoris; my Epigrams are too long for a third;

and then there are those grammarians, who impute to me the blunders which the copyist in his hurry has committed. But look!" continued he, as he unfolded the roll, "there is just room left before we get to the umbilicus, for a small poem on which I meditated this morning when walking to and fro in the peristyle. It is somewhat hurriedly thrown off, I grant, and its jocular tone is not exactly in keeping with the last elegy. Perhaps they will say I had done better to leave it out, but its contents are the best proof of its unassumingness: why, therefore, should I not let the joke stand? Listen, then, and write."

Phædrus here was about taking the roll. "No," said Gallus, "the time before our departure is too brief. Take style and tablet, write with abbreviations, and insert it afterwards whilst I am dictating a few letters."

Phædrus departed to copy the poem more intelligibly on the roll, and to send thither Philodamus, whom his master generally employed to write his letters; equally acquainted with both languages, he used, in most instances, to discharge the duties of the Greek and Latin correspondent, and particularly when the contents of the letters made a confidential scribe necessary. To-day, however, this was not the case; for Gallus only wished some short friendly letters, which contained no secrets, to be written. Philodamus brought the style, the wooden tablets coated over with wax, and what was requisite for sealing the letters; took the seat of Phædrus, and set down with expert hand the short sentences which Gallus dictated. Notifications of his departure to his friends; invitations to them to visit him at his villa; approval of a purchase of some statues and pictures, which a friend in Athens had made for him; recommendations of one friend to another in Alexandria; such were the quickly dispatched subjects of the day's correspondence. . . .

He read over once more the letters which Philodamus had written; the slave then fastened the tablets together with crossed thread, and where the ends were knotted, placed a round piece of wax; while Gallus drew from his finger a beautiful beryl, on which was engraved by the hand of Dioscorides, a lion driven by four amoretts, breathed on it, to prevent the tenacious wax from adhering to it, and then impressed it deeply into the pliant mass. Meanwhile Philodamus had summoned the tabellarii, or slaves used for conveying letters. Each of

them received a letter; but that destined for Athens was about to be intrusted to a friend journeying thither.

THE DRINKERS.

The lamps had been long shining on the marble panels of the walls in the triclinium, where Earinos, with his assistants, was making preparations, under the direction of the tricliniarch, for the nocturnal comissatio. Upon the polished table between the tapestried couches stood an elegant bronze candelabrum, in the form of a stem of a tree, from the winterly and almost leafless branches of which four two-flamed lamps, emulating each other in beauty of shape, were suspended. Other lamps hung by chains from the ceiling, which was richly gilt and ingeniously inlaid with ivory, in order to expel the darkness of night from all parts of the saloon. A number of costly goblets and larger vessels were arranged on two silver sideboards. On one of these a slave was just placing another vessel filled with snow, together with its colum, whilst on the other was the steaming caldarium, containing water kept constantly boiling by the coals in its inner cylinder, in case any of the guests should prefer the calda, the drink of winter, to the snow-drink, for which he might think the season was not sufficiently advanced.

By degrees the guests assembled from the bath and the peristylum, and took their places in the same order as before on the triclinium. Gallus and Calpurnius were still wanting. They had been seen walking to and fro along the cryptoporticus in earnest discourse. At length they arrived, and the gloom seemed dissipated from the brow of Gallus; his eyes sparkled more brightly, and his whole being seemed to have become more animated.

"I hope, my friends, you have not waited for us," said he to Pomponius and Cæcilianus, who reproached him for his long absence. "How could we do otherwise," responded Pomponius, "as it is necessary first to choose the king who shall reign supreme over the mixing bowl and cyathus? Quick, Lentulus, let us have the dice directly, or the snow will be turned to calda before we are able to drink it."

On a signal from Lentulus, a slave placed upon the table the dice-board, of terebinthus wood, the four dice made from the knuckles of gazelles, and the ivory turret-shaped dice-box.