an example, which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England: a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength. [St John's College Fellowships, 1847.] 168. ABOUT this time Sertorius was much dispirited, because that deer of his could nowhere be found; for he was thus deprived of a great means of cheering the barbarians, who then particularly required consolation. It happened that some men, who were rambling about at night for other purposes, fell in with the deer and caught it, for they knew it by the colour. Sertorius hearing of this, promised to give them a large sum of money if they would mention it to nobody; and, concealing the deer for several days, he came forward with a joyful countenance to the tribunal, and told the barbarian chiefs that the deity prognosticated to him in his sleep some great good fortune. He then ascended the tribunal, and transacted business with those who applied to him. The deer being let loose by those who had charge of it close by, and, seeing Sertorius, bounded joyfully up to the tribunal, and, standing by him, placed its head on his knees, and touched his right hand with its mouth, having been accustomed to do this before. Sertorius cordially returned the caresses of the animal, and even shed tears. The spectators were at first surprised; then clapping their hands and shouting they conducted Sertorius to his residence, considering him to be a man superior to other mortals and beloved by the gods; and they were full of good hopes. [St John's College Fellowships, 1847.] 169. IF therefore thou fallest from thy employment in public, take sanctuary in an honest retirement, being indifferent to thy gain abroad, or thy safety at home. If thou art out of favour with thy prince, secure the favour of the King of kings, and then there is no harm come to thee. And when Zeno Cittiensis lost all his goods in a storm, he retired to the studies of philosophy, to his short cloak, and a severe life, and gave thanks to fortune for his prosperous mischance. When the northwind blows hard, and it rains sadly, none but fools sit down in it and cry; wise people defend themselves against it with a warm garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. When a storm of a sad mischance beats upon our spirits, turn it into some advantage by observing, where it can serve another end, either of religion or prudence, of more safety or less envy: it will turn into something, that is good, if we list to make it so. [Gonville and Caius College, 1847.] 170. My lords, where hath this fire lain all this while, so many hundred years together, that no smoke should appear 'till it burst out now, to consume me and my children? hard it is, and extreme hard, in my opinion, that a punishment should precede the promulgation of a law; that I should be punished by a law subsequent to the act done, I most humbly beseech your lordships, take that into consideration; for, certainly it were better a great deal to live under no law, but the will of man, and conform ourselves in human wisdom, as well as we could, and to comply with that will, than to live under the protection of a law, as we think, and then a law should be made to punish us, for a crime precedent to the law; then I conceive no man living could be safe, if that should be admitted. [St John's College Voluntary Classical, 1847.] 171. I CANNOT praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised, and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas), describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see, and know and yet abstain. [St John's College Voluntary Classical, 1847.] 172. FOR you are not ignorant of what moment it is in public affairs to seize the proper times of acting: and what a difference it makes, whether the same thing be decreed, undertaken, or transacted sooner or later. If all the vigorous decrees that have been made since the beginning of this disturbance, had either been carried into effect on the day when I proposed them, and not put off from day to day; or if, from the time when they began to be put in execution, they had not still been delayed and postponed, we should have seen an end of the war before now. I have acquitted myself to the Republic in all points, as that man ought to do, who by the judgment of the Senate and the people, is placed in that rank of authority, in which I now am: and not merely in those things, which alone are to be required from man; fidelity, vigilance, love of my country; for these are duties from which nobody ought to be excused; but I take it to be the part of him who acts as one of the leaders in state affairs, to ensure even the prudence of his measures to the public: and for my part, since I have assumed so much to myself, as to take the steerage of the Republic into my hands, I should not think myself less culpable, if I should draw the Senate into any thing impertinently, than if I had drawn them into it treacherously. I know that a punctual account is sent you of all things that are done or going forward amongst us. But what I would have you informed particularly by me is this; that my mind is wholly intent on the war, nor cares to attend to any other object, unless when the immediate service of the City may have called it by accident to something else. [Trinity College Scholarships, 1847.] 173. THE Cynic philosopher Diogenes used to say of Harpalus, a freebooter of great repute in those days for lucky enterprizes, that a life of such long continued good fortune as his was a standing witness against the being of gods. Another instance of impiety is that of the tyrant Dionysius, who, after pillaging a shrine sacred to Proserpine at Locri, on his voyage to Syracuse was scudding along with a very fair breeze, when he begged his friends to mark what a fine sail the gods were pleased to grant to persons guilty of sacrilege. On another occasion he landed on the Peloponnese, and coming to a temple of Jupiter Olympius he pulled off the shoulders of the statue a short but heavy cloak of gold in which the tyrant Gelo had dressed it as an offering out of his Carthaginian spoils whereupon he was not even afraid to vent his wit; for a gold cape, he said, was heavy in summer and cold in winter; and he therefore threw a woollen mantle over it, because that would do for any time of year. At Epidaurus he ordered the gold beard of an Æsculapius to be taken off, because it was not at all proper that the son should have a beard when his father Apollo was not allowed one in any temple. The next thing we hear of him is that he ordered the silver slabs in all the temples he visited to be carried off; and as according to the ancient Greek custom there was generally an inscription assigning them to the Good Deities, he would say that he desired nothing more than to avail himself of their goodness: nor did he ever scruple to take away the little gold images of Victory which were usually supported by statues with hands outstretched, saying that, so far from taking anything away from them, he only received what they offered; for it was folly to pray to them for blessings, and then not like to take those which they actually held out their hands to give us. The articles which he so sacrilegiously took from the temples of the gods he sold in the market-place by public auction; then after extorting the money, he issued a notice commanding all who had any sacred treasures in their possession to restore them by a certain day to their proper shrines, thereby crowning acts of the grossest impiety towards the gods with a most wanton outrage against his fellow-creatures. [Catharine Hall, 1847.] 174. In this doubt of all sides, the night, the common friend to wearied and dismayed armies, parted them and then the king caused his cannon, which were nearest the enemy, to be drawn off: and with his whole |