If I mistake not, Aston fought two duels in India on two successive days, and fell in the second one.

WORDS are so twisted and tortured by some writers of the present day that I am really sorry for them, I mean for the words. It is a favorite fancy of mine that perhaps in the next world the use of words may be dispensed with,-that our thoughts may stream into each other's minds without any verbal communication.

THOMAS GRENVILLE told me this curious fact.

When he was

a young man, he one day dined with Lord Spencer at Wimbledon. Among the company was George Pitt (afterwards Lord Rivers), who declared that he could tame the most furious animal by looking at it steadily. Lord Spencer said, "Well, there is a mastiff in the court-yard here which is the terror of the neighborhood: will you try your powers on him?» Pitt agreed to do so; and the company descended into the court-yard. servant held the mastiff by a chain. Pitt knelt down at a short distance from the animal, and stared him sternly in the face. They all shuddered. At a signal given, the mastiff was let loose, and rushed furiously towards Pitt,-then suddenly checked his pace, seemed confounded, and leaping over Pitt's head, ran away, and was not seen for many hours after.

During one of my visits to Italy, while I was walking a little before my carriage on the road not far from Vicenza, I perceived two huge dogs, nearly as tall as myself, bounding towards me (from out a gateway, though there was no house in sight). I recollected what Pitt had done; and trembling from head to foot, I yet had resolution enough to stand quite still and eye them with a fixed look. They gradually relaxed their speed from a gallop to a trot, came up to me, stopped for a moment, and then went back again.

DUNNING (afterwards Lord Ashburton) was "stating the law" to a jury at Guildhall, when Lord Mansfield interrupted him by saying, "If that be law, I'll go home and burn my books." "My lord," replied Dunning, "you had better go home and read them."

Dunning was remarkably ugly. One night while he was playing whist at Nando's with Horne Tooke and two others, Lord

Thurlow called at the door and desired the waiter to give a note to Dunning (with whom, though their politics were so different, he was very intimate). The waiter did not know Dunning by sight. "Take the note up-stairs," said Thurlow, "and deliver it to the ugliest man at the card-table-to him who most resembles the knave of spades." The note immediately reached its destination. Horne Tooke used often to tell this anecdote.

WHEN titled ladies become authoresses or composers, their friends suffer for it. Lady Lady asked me to buy her book, and I replied that I would do so when I was rich enough. I went to a concert at Lady's, during which several pieces composed by her daughter were performed; and early next morning a music-seller arrived at my house, bringing with him the daughter's compositions (and a bill receipted), price sixteen shillings.

THOMAS GRENVILLE told me that he was present in the House when Lord North, suddenly rising from his seat and going out, carried off on the hilt of his sword the wig of Welbore Ellis, who was stooping to take up some papers. I have myself often seen Lord North in the House. While sitting there he would frequently hold a handkerchief to his face; and once after a long debate, when somebody said to him, "My lord, I fear you have been asleep," he replied, "I wish I had."

ONE morning at his own house, while speaking to me of his travels, Fox could not recollect the name of a particular town in Holland, and was much vexed at the treacherousness of his memory. He had a dinner party that day; and just as he had applied the carving-knife to the sirloin, the name of the town having suddenly occurred to him, he roared out exultingly, to the astonishment of the company, "Gorcum, Gorcum!"

LORD ST. HELENS (who had been ambassador to Russia) told me as a fact this anecdote of the Empress Catherine. She frequently had little whist parties, at which she sometimes played, and sometimes not. One night when she was not playing, but walking about from table to table and watching the different hands, she rang the bell to summon the page-in-waiting from an antechamber. No page appeared. She rang the bell again; and again without effect. Upon this she left the room, looking

daggers, and did not return for a very considerable time; the company supposing that the unfortunate page was destined for the knout or Siberia. On entering the antechamber, the Empress found that the page, like his betters, was busy at whist; and that when she had rung the bell, he happened to have so very interesting a hand that he could not make up his mind to quit it. Now what did the Empress do? She dispatched the page on her errand, and then quietly sat down to hold his cards till he should return.

Lord St. Helens also told me that he and Ségur were with the Empress in her carriage, when the horses took fright, and ran furiously down-hill. The danger was excessive. When it was over the Empress said, Mon étoile vous a sauvée."

E

ROMAN POETS OF THE LATER EMPIRE

BY HARRIET WATERS PRESTON

ARLY in the second century A. D. the sweet but slender aftermath of Latin pagan poetry began to ripen upon the sunny hillside where it had pleased the Emperor Hadrian to fix his most magnificent abode. That many-sided and enigmatical being, whom the ancient writers can only attempt to describe by accumulating pairs of contradictory adjectives—"grave and gay, cordial and reserved, impulsive and cautious, niggardly and lavish, crafty and ingenuous," had certainly both a refined taste in poetry and a delicate poetical talent of his own. The ghosts of the light and languid men of letters whom he rather disdainfully patronized—" with an air," goes on Spartianus, the author quoted above, "of knowing much more than they"-seem always to haunt the beautiful oval gymnasium of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, upon whose original marble seats one may still dream away an idle hour. Here Annius Florus chanted the brief glories of the rose, or engaged in merry metrical duels with his imperial master; and the Etruscan Annianus sang in tripping measure the song of the Falernian vine ("I am the one grape-I am the grape of Falernum "), or sought to bring again into vogue, by slightly adapting to the superficial squeamishness of a sophisticated time, the naïve indecencies of the Fescennine harvest-home and marriage hymns. The taste of the clique, as often happens in a period of decadence, was for the far-sought and archaic, the curious and the daintily sensuous, for tender sentimentalism and aromatic pains. These artificial folk doted upon nature; and the fragments of their verse which we possess reveal an altogether new sensitiveness to her beauties, and sympathy with her moods. Whatever they knew of aspiration or regret seems to have been gathered into one wistful sigh, and to exhale in the forever inimitable farewell of the Emperor himself to his own departing soul,-"Animula, blandula, vagula.”

It is difficult also, upon internal evidence, not to refer to the same period, and to some member or members of the same circle, the one fragment of highly impassioned and melodious Latin verse which has survived the wreckage of a couple of centuries, - the 'Pervigilium Veneris.' We know that Hadrian restored with great pomp the worship of Alma Venus; and it seemed as if this dulcet song for the vigil of her festa must have been inspired by that circumstance. The

connection of ideas is loose, the imagery as vaporous, fluctuating, and insaissisable as in a Troubadour love-song; but here too the atmo sphere is voluptuous and the emotion strong. The German critic who << proves all things," without always holding fast to that which is good, has both shown conclusively that the 'Pervigilium' does belong to the time of Hadrian, and that it does not. The fact that the strongly accented septennarian verse in which it is written, constantly recalls the long surge of certain Augustinian hymns, may only mean that the tonic accent really went for more in the delivery of native Latin verse than is commonly supposed.

A similar uncertainty with regard to its date involves the work of the best Latin bucolic poet after Virgil; the only one, in fact, whose compositions will stand any kind of comparison with those of the master. Calpurnius Siculus wrote eclogues of indisputable though unequal beauty. He offered the incense of extravagant praise to a youthful emperor who had lately acceded, whose advent had been heralded by the appearance of a wonderful comet; whose personal and mental gifts excited ardent hopes; who built a huge amphitheatre of wood on or near the Campus Martius, and ransacked the earth for curious beasts to exhibit therein. All these things have commonly been thought to refer to Nero, and to the first five years of his reign (54-59 A. D.), during which he gave no sign of the vicious and insane propensities which afterwards made his name a synonym of horror. It appears, however, by the precise testimony of astronomy, that the comet of 54 cannot be identified with the one which is described so very vividly by Calpurnius; while a comet meeting the requirements fairly well did appear early in the third century A. D. Of the eleven eclogues long attributed to the Sicilian, four are now almost universally assigned to the African, Olympius Aurelius Nemesianus, who also wrote a poem upon hunting, and who certainly flourished during the brief reign of the Emperor Carus and his sons,-282-284 A. D. On the other hand, the recurring refrain of the last of these Nemesianian eclogues bears a strong resemblance to that of the 'Pervigilium Veneris,' and may perhaps be considered an argument for the advanced date of the latter.

Nearly a century more was to pass before the last ardent revival of Roman patriotism found expression in a poetic revival, during which the venerable forms of classic Latin verse were once again handled for a moment with something like the old mastery and grace. It was the flare of a forlorn hope. The cloud of barbarian invasion already hung low upon the horizon; and the end of the Golden City of the past was as plainly announced as is that of the "golden autumn woodland" on the last still day of October. Meanwhile Roma Aurea had lost but little as yet of her unparalleled