With Cabbage Sprouts.

'Lest pallid leaves o'ercast thy soul with spleen,
Let nitrous water colour them with green.'

Leeks.

'When you Tarentine leeks eat, shun offence,
And with closed lips a breathless kiss dispense.'

Grafted Persian Apricots.

'Crabbed and wild, we clung to parent arms,
But, by adoption, have matured our charms.'

Thrushes.

'Thy crown, of roses, or of spikenard be;
A crown of thrushes is the crown for me.'

Goose's Liver.

'On goose's liver a wondering glance bestow;
Larger than largest goose, where could it grow?'

Tarentine Wool and Wine.

'Aulon is famous for its wool and wine;
The former shall be yours, the latter mine.'

Those in the fourteenth book are distiches, to be attached to gifts prepared for guests at feasts :

With Tablets.

'These three-leaved tablets you'll be sure to bless,
When a fair lady sends them back with―yes.'

With a Night-Lamp.

'Privy to nocturnal glee,
Nought I say of all I see.'

With a Child's Rattle.

'Should round thy neck thy crying first-born cling,
His little hand may bid this timbrel ring.'

With a Fly-Flap.

'What from thy food repels profaning flies,
Strutted, a gorgeous train, with gem-like eyes.'

With a Basket.

'From painted Britons, I, a basket, came,
Which now imperial Rome would native claim.'

With Crystal Cups.

You crystal break from fear of breaking it;
Careless and careful hands like faults commit.'

With a Glass Cup.

'This is Egyptian work. How oft does taste
Aiming too high, its toilsome efforts waste!'

With a Baetic Cloak.

'I'm what I seem; not any dyer gave,
But nature dyed this colour that I have.'

With a German Mask.

'Worked in red clay a Batavian's face am I ;
I move your laughter, but make children cry.'

To a Shorthand Writer.

The swifter hand doth the swift words out-run ;
Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done.'

SUPPOSITIOUS EPIGRAM.

'Learn, young man, how with eloquence to plead your cause, that you may be your own defender, guard, and support. I would not that fortune should place me in the highest or in the lowest rank, but that she should assign to me the middle walk of life. Envy besets those in high places, oppression those that are needy; how happy does he live who is free from both. What nature denies, industry may accord; rarely do the rich attain the blessings which are allotted to the poor.

O ye young men, who rejoice in a time of life apt for study, learn; years pass away like running water. Do not, while you have the opportunity of learning, waste your days, ye docile youths, in idle pursuits; neither the running water nor the fleeting hour ever returns. Let youth ripen in the study of virtue, that life may pass with wellmerited esteem and honour.'

If all Martial's writings were as irreproachable as this last extract from Mr Bohn's collection of them, commentators would hardly have differed as to his merits. But, unfit as many of his effusions are for the perusal of youthful students, the ease and elegance of his compositions generally, and the varied information they contain, will always ensure them a place among the literary productions of the ancient classic authors.

PLINY

THE YOUNGER,

DIED A.D. 107.

S so called to distinguish him from his uncle, who was a celebrated naturalist. Having been born A.D. 62, his letters to different friends, though not so cleverly written as those of Cicero, furnish some interesting details of the early days of Christianity, as well as of the politics and literature of his time.

During the reign of Vespasian he was pursuing his studies, and he began to practise as an advocate at the age of nineteen, afterwards filling several important public offices.

One of his earliest letters contains a list of all his uncle's writings, which included a very wide range of subjects, and describes his studious habits and intense application to literary work.

In the summer of the year 79 he was an eye-witness, with his mother and uncle, of the first great eruption of Vesuvius, in the vicinity of which were numerous bathingplaces and villas belonging to the wealthy Romans, the volcanic nature of the mountain having been concealed by the luxuriant vegetation that covered it. The first portent, he says, in his graphic account, was a large cloud of varying and unusual shape and hue, succeeded by showers of cinders and red-hot stones. The uncle, being in command of the fleet, ordered the ships to embark some of the terrified residents along the shore of the Bay of Naples,

and, having endeavoured to calm their fears, he retired for his afternoon sleep. Very soon, however, his apartment was almost blocked up with ashes, and all the houses trembled with frequent shocks of earthquake. The occupants made their escape, protecting their heads from the falling stones with pillows and cushions, and, on reaching the sea-side, the sudden approach of flames dispersed the party, and the old man was afterwards found dead. Pliny and his mother remained in their house at Misenum until the next morning, when they saw the sea driven back and the shore advancing, with a fearful cloud behind them, and lightning all around. Making their escape towards the coast, through heavy falls of ashes which darkened the air, in the midst of a shrieking and shouting multitude, many of whom believed that the final endless night had come upon the world, the black mist at last cleared away, and they returned to Misenum. The fuller particulars of the terrible incidents of the eruption, and the destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii-the one by boiling mud, and the other by burning cinders-he appears to have collected afterwards, but they, unfortunately, have not been preserved, and there remains no other contemporary narrative of the calamity.

In the year 93 Pliny was Prætor; and, writing of the exile of the philosophers, and the other tyrannical acts of Domitian and his informers, he felt scorched, he says, by the thunderbolts that fell around him, and struck down so many of his friends. He also tells a pathetic story of Arria, who, in the midst of political troubles, had to conceal the death of their son from her sick husband, leaving her bereavement, as he puts it, outside the door. She afterwards followed him in an open fishing-boat when being conveyed as a prisoner by ship from Illyricum to Rome, and taught him fortitude in taking his own life, by stabbing herself with a dagger, and telling him it did not hurt. The fate of other martyrs to liberty is likewise narrated, and how tenderly Arria's grand-daughter, Fannia, watched by the sick-bed of one of the vestal virgins, a kinswoman of her husband. The informers having been suppressed by Nerva, the reign of Trajan was signalised by the punishment of several rapacious governors of provinces, whose extortions