2. Death or glory for me. There is no alternative between, not merely the half-slavery that we now live in and independence, but between the most condign suffering and the most illustrious security. If the people would rise, through the pressure of public injury, they must have risen long since; if from private violence, what town, what district, what family, has not its claims of deadly retribution? Yet, here the people stand, after a hundred years of those continued stimulants to resistance, as unresisting as in the day when Pompey marched over the threshold of the temple.

3. I know your generous friendship, Eleazer, and fear that your anxiety to save me from the chances of the struggle may bias your better judgment. But here I pledge myself, by all that constitutes the honor of man, to strike at all risks a blow upon the Roman crest that shall echo through the land.

4. What! commit our holy cause into the nursing of those pampered hypocrites, whose utter baseness of heart you know still more deeply than I do? Linger, till those pestilent profligates raise their price with Florus by betraying a design, that will be the glory of every man who draws a sword in it?

5. Vainly, madly, ask a brood that, like the serpent, engender and fatten among the ruins of their country, to discard their venom, to cast their fangs, to feel for human feelings? As well ask the serpent itself to rise from the original curse.

6. It is the irrevocable nature of faction to be base till it can be mischievous; to lick the dust until it can sting; to creep on its belly until it can twist its folds round the victim. No! let the old pensionaries, the bloated hangers-on in the train of every governor, the open sellers of their country for filthy lucre, betray me when I leave it in their power. To the field, I say! once and for all, to the field!

13. EXTRACT FROM RODERICK, THE LAST OF THE GOTHS,

A

CHRISTIAN woman spinning at her door

Beheld him, and, with sudden pity touch'd,
She laid her spindle by, and running in
Took bread, and following after, call'd him back,
And placing in his passive hands the loaf,
She said, "Christ Jesus, for his mother's sake,
Have mercy on thee !" With a look that seem'd
Like idiocy he heard her, and stood still,
Staring awhile; then bursting into tears

Wept like a child, and thus relieved his heart,
Till even to bursting else with swelling thoughts

2. So through the streets, and through the northern gate Did Roderick, reckless of a resting-place,

With feeble yet with hurried step pursue
His agitated way; and when he reach'd
The open fields, and found himself alone
Beneath the starry canopy of heaven,
The sense of solitude, so dreadful late,
Was then repose and comfort. There he stopt
Beside a little rill, and brake the loaf;
And shedding o'er that unaccustomed food
Painful but quiet tears, with grateful soul

He breathed thanksgiving forth; then made his bed
On heath and myrtle.

SOUTHEY.

SON

14. SALATHIEL TO TITUS.

of Vespasian, I am at this hour a poor man, as I may in the next be an exile or a slave: I have ties to life as strong as ever were bound round the heart of man: I stand here a suppliant for the life of one whose loss would embitter mine! Yet, not for wealth unlimited, for the safety of my family, for the life of the noble victim that is now standing at

the place of torture, dare I abandon, dare I think the impious thought of abandoning the cause of the City of Holiness.

2. Titus! in the name of that Being to whom the wisdom of the earth is folly, I adjure you to beware. Jerusalem is sacred. Her crimes have often wrought her misery-often has she been trampled by the armies of the stranger. But she is still the City of the Omnipotent; and never was blow inflicted on her by man, that was not terribly repaid.

3. The Assyrian came, the mightiest power of the world he plundered her temple, and led her people into captivity. How long was it before his empire was a dream, his dynasty extinguished in blood, and an enemy on his throne? The Persian came from her protector, he turned into her oppressor; and his empire was swept away like the dust of the desert! The Syrian smote her: the smiter died in agonies of remorse; and where is his kingdom now? The Egyptian smote her: and who now sits on the throne of the Ptolemies?

4. Pompey came: the invincible, the conqueror of a thousand cities, the light of Rome; the lord of Asia, riding on the very wings of victory. But he profaned her temple; and from that hour he went down-down like a millstone plunged into the ocean! Blind counsel, rash ambition, womanish fears, were upon the great statesman and warrior of Rome. Where does he sleep? What sands were covered with his blood?

5. The universal conqueror died a slave, by the hand of a slave! Crassus came at the head of the legions: he plundered the sacred vessels of the sanctuary. Vengeance followed him, and he was cursed by the curse of God. Where are the bones of the robber and his host? Go, tear them from the jaws of the lion and the wolf of Parthia,—their fitting tomb!

6. You, too, son of Vespasian, may be commissioned for the punishment of a stiff-necked and rebellious people. You may Scourge our naked vice by force of arms; and then you may return to your own land exulting in the conquest of the fiercest enemy of Rome. But shall you escape the common fate of the instrument of evil? Shall you see a peaceful old

age? Shall a son of yours ever sit upon the throne? Shall not rather some monster of your blood efface the memory of your virtue, and make Rome, in the bitterness of her soul, curse the Flavian name?

M

15. SEMPRONIUS' SPEECH FOR WAR.

Y voice is still for war.

Gods! can a Roman senate long debate, Which of the two to choose, slavery or death? No, let us rise at once, gird on our swords, And, at the head of our remaining troops, Attack the foe, break through the thick array

Of his thronged legions, and charge home upon him.

2. Perhaps some arm more lucky than the rest

May reach his heart, and free the world from bondage. Rise, fathers, rise! 'tis Rome demands your help:

Rise, and revenge her slaughtered citizens,

Or share their fate! The corpse of half her Senato
Manure the fields of Thessaly, while we
Sit here, deliberating in cold debates,
If we should sacrifice our lives to honor,
Or wear them out in servitude and chains.

3. Rouse up, for shame! Our brothers of Pharsalia
Point out their wounds, and cry aloud-"To battle !"
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow,
And Scipio's ghost walks unrevenged among us.

ADDISON.

YOU

16. CAIUS MARIUS TO THE ROMANS.

OU have committed to my conduct, O Romans, the war against Jugurtha. The patricians are offended at this. "He has no family statues," they exclaim. no illustrious line of ancestors!"

"He can point to

What

then? Will dead

ancestors, will motionless statues help fight your battles? Will it avail your general to appeal to these, in the perilous hour?

2. Rare wisdom would it be, my countrymen, to intrust the command of your army to one whose only qualification for it would be the virtue of his forefathers! to one untried and unexperienced, but of most unexceptiorable family! who could not show a solitary scar, but any number of ancestral statues! who knew not the first rudiments of war, but was very perfect in pedigrees! Truly I have known of such holiday heroes, raised, because of family considerations, to a command for which they were not fitted,-who, when the moment for action arrived, were obliged, in their ignorance and trepidation, to give to some inferior officer-to some despised plebeian-the ordering of every movement.

3. I submit to you, Romans,-is patrician pride or plebeian experience the safer reliance? The actions of which my opponents have merely read, I have achieved or shared in. What they have seen written in books, I have seen written on battle-fields with steel and blood.

4. They object to my humble birth. They sneer at my lowly origin. Impotent objection! Ignominious sneer! Where but in the spirit of a man (bear witness, gods !),— where but in the spirit, can his nobility be lodged? and where bis dishonor, but in his own cowardly inaction, or his unworthy deeds? Tell these railers at my obscure extraction, their haughty lineage could not make them noble-my humble birth could never make me base!

5. I profess no indifference to noble descent. It is a good thing to number great men among one's ancestry. But when a descendant is dwarfed in the comparison, it should be accounted a shame rather than a boast. These patricians cannot despise me, if they would, since their titles of nobility date from ancestral services similar to those which I myself have rendered.

6. And what if I can show no family statues? I can show