Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

The belief in the immortality of the soul is the only true panacea for the ills of life.

Dead! God, how much there is in that little word!

From a letter. The truth of this saying is illustrated by a passage from Wraxall's "Memoirs," quoted by Jennings ("Anecdotal History of Parliament"): "Sir Philip Francis said of a regulation in Pitt's India Bill, abolishing trial by jury in the case of delinquents returning from India: 'Had the experiment been made when the illustrious statesman, the iate Earl of Chatham, enjoyed a seat in this assembly, he would have sprung from the bed of sickness, he would have solicited some friendly hand to lay him on the floor, and thence, with a monarch's voice, he would have called the whole kingdom to arms to oppose it. But he is dead, and has left nothing in the world that resembles him. He is dead! and the sense, the honor, the character, and the understanding of the nation are dead with him.' The repetition of the words, 'he is dead,'” adds Wraxall, "was delivered with the finest effect; and the reflections produced by it involuntarily attracted every eye towards the treasury-bench, where sat his son."

Byron's last words were, "I must sleep now."

Goethe expressed, in his conversations with Eckermann and others, great admiration for Byron. "There is no padding,” he said, "in his poetry" (Es sind keine Flickwörter im Gedichte). He made Byron an exception to his statement, "Modern poets put too much water in their ink" (Neuere Poeten thun viel Wasser in die Tinte). The mot is, however, not Goethe's, but is taken directly from Sterne's "Koran," II., 142, who directed it against the poets of the early part of the eighteenth century, especially Pope. But, on the other hand, Goethe declared that Byron "was always a self-tormentor," recalling the English poet's allusion to 'the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau.” Childe Harold, III., 77. Again Goethe said of him, "The moment he reflects, he is a child" (So bald er reflectirt, ist er ein

CAIUS JULIUS CÆSAR.

[Born in Rome, July 12, 100 B.C.; studied oratory at Rhodes; filled several offices before the first triumvirate, when he obtained the province of Gaul, the subjugation of which occupied nine years; being ordered by the Senate to disband his army, he crossed the Rubicon and entered Rome, 50 B.C.; pursued Pompey to Greece, and defeated him at Pharsalia, 48; made dictator, conquered Egypt, and crushed the Pompeian faction in Africa; returning to Rome, reformed the calendar, declined the title of king, and contemplated great improvements in public administration; but was assassinated by a combination of personal and political enemies, 44 B.C.]

This day you will behold your son either supreme pontiff or an exile.

To his mother, on the morning of his election as Pontifex Maximus, 63 B. C. His competitors were Isauricus and Catullus, two of the most distinguished men of Rome. The Senate was greatly alarmed at the success of the popular leader, and called to mind the warning given them by the sagacious Sulla, who said, when pardoning Cæsar for a refusal to divorce his wife Cornelia, Cinna's daughter, "This man will be the ruin of the party of the nobles, for in this one Cæsar you will find many a Marius;" and although Cæsar was careful to wear the latus clavus, or broad purple stripe indicative of his rank, the careless arrangement of his toga caused Sulla also to say of him, "Beware of the ill-girt boy" (male præcinctum puerum). — SUETONIUS: Life.

Similar situations have called out similar expressions to Cæsar's boast to his mother. Fiesco, whose plot to seize upon Genoa, Jan. 2, 1547, gave Schiller the subject of a tragedy, said to his wife on the eve of his attempt, "You shall either never see me more, or you shall behold to-morrow every thing in Genoa subject to your power." Falling into the water while passing the next day from one ship to another, he was drowned by the weight of his armor.

Mirabeau, after being the idol of the populace, foresaw the change in public sentiment which would be caused by his support of the proposition to give the king, rather than the Assembly, the initiative of war, and, determined to carry his point or perish, he exclaimed, "I will either leave the house in triumph,

or be torn to fragments." Hearing next day "the great treason of the Count de Mirabeau" cried in the streets, he declared that he needed not that lesson to know how short was the distance from the Capitol to the Tarpeian Rock (je n'avais pas besoin de cette leçon pour savoir qu'il n'y a qu'un pas du Capitole à la roche tarpeienne).

When one of the Directory, hesitating at the appointment of Bonaparte to the command of the army at the age of twenty-six, said to him, You are too young; "In a year,"

he answered, "I shall be old or dead."- LOCKHART: Life, IV. Just as Scipio, conscious of his own powers, replied to those who objected to his election as ædile at the age of twenty-four, "If all the quirites wish me to be ædile, I am old enough."

Nicholas of Russia found, on his accession to the imperial throne by the death of Alexander I. and the renunciation of his rights by his brother, the Archduke Constantine, that an extensive conspiracy against himself must be subdued by force. He said on the morning when the troops were to take the oath of allegiance, "I shall soon be an emperor or a corpse." His energy saved his life and his crown.

After Cavour's secret visit to Napoleon III., in 1858, to interest him in the cause of Italian independence, Victor Emmanuel exclaimed, "Next year I shall be king of Italy or plain M. de Savoie." Next year's battles of Magenta and Solferino made him king of Italy.

Cæsar's wife ought to be free even from suspicion.

When summoned as a witness against Publicus Clodius, his wife Pompeia's gallant, who was prosecuted for the profanation of religious ceremonies (the mysteries of the Bona Dea, to which women alone were admitted), Cæsar declared he knew nothing of the affair. Being asked why, then, he had divorced his wife, he replied, "Because my family should be free not only from guilt, but even from the suspicion of it" (Quoniam meos tam suspicione quam crimine judico carere oportere). SUETONIUS: Life. Plutarch gives it, "Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion." — Life.

Better be first in a village than second in Rome.

Having received the government of Farther Spain after his prætorship, he came to a little town in passing the Alps; and his friends, by way of mirth, took occasion to say, "Can there here be any disputes for offices, any contentions for precedency, or such envy and ambition as we see among the great?" To which Cæsar answered, with great seriousness, "I assure you I had rather be the first man here than the second man in Rome.". PLUTARCH: Life. "It is the true cry of nature," says Lacordaire: "wherever we are, we wish to be first.". - Conferences.

When he was in Spain, he was so much affected by reading the history of Alexander the Great, that he burst into tears. When asked the reason, he replied, "Do you think I have not sufficient cause for concern, when Alexander at my age reigned over so many conquered countries, and I have not one glorious achievement to boast?"- PLUTARCH: Life. This is sometimes shortened into the exclamation, "Twenty-two years old, and nothing done for immortality!”

He rebuked his friends for expressing their dislike of asparagus upon which sweet ointment instead of oil had been poured, at the house of Valerius Leo, at Milan, by saying, "He who finds fault with any rusticity is himself a rustic." — Ibid.

The die is cast.

A motion having been made in the senate that some person should be appointed to succeed Cæsar in Gaul, before the term of his command had expired, and that his claim to be a candidate at the next election of consuls should not be admitted, Cæsar advanced into Cisalpine Gaul, making a halt at Ravenna, and sending his troops to the banks of the Rubicon, now the Pisatello, near Rimini. A very ancient law of the republic forbade any general, returning from the wars, to cross this river with his troops under arms. Cæsar, therefore, having joined them, halted them upon the bank, and revolved in his mind the importance of the step he was about to take; saying to those around him, "We may still retreat; but, if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms." "While he was thus hesitating," says Suetonius

("Life"), "a person remarkable for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a number of soldiers also, flocked from their posts to listen to him, and some trumpeters among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon this Cæsar exclaimed, 'Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is now cast'" (Jacta alea est; or in Greek, as Plutarch states.) He thus, in the opinion of some, embraced that occasion of usurping the supreme power which he had coveted from youth; two verses of Euripides being frequently in his mouth, translated into Latin by Cicero (De Officiis, III.)

"Nam si violandum est jus, regnandi gratia
Violandum est: aliis rebus pietatem colas."

"Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws,
For sovereign power alone can justify the cause."

Phæniss. II.

What dost thou fear? Thou art carrying Cæsar. (Quid times? Cæsarem vehis.)

While his soldiers were having a tedious passage from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, in the campaign against Pompey, Cæsar went secretly on board a small vessel, and discovered himself to the pilot when the boat was in danger of being overturned, exclaiming, as Plutarch gives it in his " Apothegms of Kings and Great Commanders," "Trust fortune, and know that you carry Cæsar." Plutarch, in his "Life of Cæsar," states that he disguised himself as a slave, and in the morning astonished the pilot, who wished to put back owing to a head wind, by saying, "Go forward, my friend, and fear nothing: thou carriest Cæsar and his fortune." Fournier doubts the story, because Cæsar did not mention it in his "History of the Civil War."

On one occasion when Gen. Jackson was sailing down Chesapeake Bay in an old steamboat, the waves were running high, and an elderly gentleman present expressed some concern. "You are uneasy," said the general to him: "you never sailed with me before, I see.” — PARTON: Life.