Half-clothed, dark-featured, motionless lay she, " That I should be afraid of him I love! I have done ill. If he should beat me now, The once strong mother, now devoid of life; I would not blame him. Did not the door Disheveled spectre of dead misery All that the poor leaves after his long strife. The cold and livid arm, already stiff, Hung o'er the soaked straw of her wretched bed. The mouth lay open horribly, as if move? Not yet, poor man." She sits with careful brow, Wrapped in her inward grief; nor hears the roar Of winds and waves that dash against his prow, The parting soul with a great cry had fled- Nor the black cormorant shrieking on the Rocked by their own weight, sweetly sleep the How gay his heart that Janet's love made twain, With even breath, and foreheads calm and clear; light. "What weather was it?" "Hard." "Your fishing?" "Bad. So sound that the last trump might call in The sea was like a nest of thieves to-night; by the Romans in the early and more martial ages: I read of no collections antecedent to those made by Emilius, Paulus, and Lucullus, the latter of whom, being a man of great magnificence, allowed the learned men of his time to have free access to his library, but neither in his lifetime nor at his death made it public property. plundered Athens of a great collection of Cornelius Sylla, before his dictatorship. books, which had been accumulating from the time of the tyranny, and these he brought to Rome, but did not build or endow any library for public use. This was at last undertaken by Julius Cæsar upon an imperial scale not long before his death, and the learned M. Varro was employed to collect and arrange the books for the foundation of an ample library; its completion, which was interrupted by the death of Julius and the civil wars subsequent thereto, was left for Augustus, who assigned a fund out of the Dalmatian booty for this purpose, which he put into the hands of the celebrated Asinius Pollio, who therewith founded a temple to liberty on Mount Aventine, and with the help of Sylla's and Varro's collections, in addition to his own purchases, opened the first public library in Rome, in an apartment annexed to the temple above mentioned. Two others were afterward instituted by the same emperor, which he called the Octavian and Palatine libraries; the first, so named in honor of his sister, was placed in the temple of Juno; the latter, as its title specifies, was in the imperial palace; these libraries were royally endowed with establishments of Greek and Latin librarians, of which C. Julius Hyginus, the grammarian, was one. The Emperor Tiberius added another library to the palace, and attached his new building to that front which looked towards. the Via Sacra, in which quarter he himself resided. Vespasian endowed a public library in the Temple of Peace. Trajan founded the famous Ulpian library in his new forum, from whence it was at last removed to the Collis Viminalis to furnish the baths of Dioclesian. The Capitoline library is supposed to have been founded with the noble edifice to which it was by Domitian, and was consumed, together attached, by a stroke of lightning in the time of Commodus. The Emperor Hadrian enriched his favorite villa with a superb collection of books, and lodged |