: "And all the world about, against him in "Laurance," and if a man it were, the thoughts in the book, and mak could, our disgust for his want of self-respecting an accompaniment to the unsung music and true pride would prevent our sympathy. of the pages. In such a mood may these We should mention, however, that both in poems be read, but they will bear a colder the "Story of Doom" and in "Laurance," and less congenial atmosphere. How delithere are some passages for which we readi- cate, subtle, and perfect is this: ly forgive Miss Ingelow her lack of judgment in choice of subject. What is specially admirable in Miss Ingelow is her knowing when to stop. She completes a picture and| has done with it. You are not tortured with endless variations on the same theme, which merely serve as instances of intellectual dexterity. Miss Ingelow can use Turner's colours without falling into Turner's mistiness. She observes a golden reticence when once the spell is cast over you. Some versifiers, when they have tumbled on a charm, dissipate the scene which has appeared at the words by continuing a clumsy jabber of their own characteristic inspira tion. Not so the true poet. He or she will no more interrupt the poetic image than a well-bred man will break in on the silence he knows to be the choice of his companion. With reference to the shorter poems, we can recommend them as pure draughts from the Heliconian spring. If an indolent reviewer may confess to a little personal weather influence, the writer charges him self with reading those delightful verses under the shade of green trees, with the noises of the summer noon-tide, the purring of wood-pigeons, the hum of bees, and the pleasant jangling of chimes falling on the air from a distant campanile, colouring, as We do not want to despoil the little work, which we would be sorely tempted to do, if we were to take from it extracts of all the poems with which we were pleased. In the season of bad and worse verses, through which we have just passed, this book came as a welcome relief, and we feel a debt of gratitude to Miss Ingelow, which we cordially wish our readers would help us to discharge by acquainting themselves with her poems as quickly as possible. - THE PRIVATE LETTERS OF ST. PAUL AND ent opinions, like rough boys, are given to ST. JOHN. By the Rev. Samuel Cox. (Ar- slamming doors in each other's face; this little thur Miall.) It is refreshing to come upon a book is a kind of wedge to keep the door of little book like this whose worth stands in in heaven open. Every man of true heart and verse relation to its size. In no time of our good judgment will read it with comfort and history as a Christian nation has it been more hope. We trust that the writer will meet with necessary to cast out the evil spirit by the exor- such appreciation of his labour as will encourcising presence of the good. Nothing can be age him to do a similar service in regard to more influential in leading people away from an other books of the Bible. There are many endless disputing about questions that had bet- who cannot search out for themselves what ter be left to settle themselves, than an intro- they will gladly receive when presented by a duction such as this to one of the "palace- man who uses the genial results of his own chambers far apart" in the souls of the first patient inquiry to build up the faith of his neighteachers of our faith, where their policy may be bour. The book is delightful for its earnestfound as lofty as their creed. People of differ-ness, large-heartedness, and truth. — Spectator. POETRY: Up in the Barn, 386. Long Years Ago, 386. Remonstrance, 386. Calm, 425. Twilight Those of our readers who have ever taken "a basin of gruel, thin, but not too thin," with dear Mr. Woodhouse in Miss Chester's "Emma," will remember his repeating "Kitty a fair but frozen maid," and his inability to recollect the following lines. It was for his sake that we copied the whole in the last number, page 322. We intended to have said so before; but, when the table of contents of that number was made out, we were spending a week at the seaside, at the upper part of Swampscott, at the good house of Mr. Caswell, on Robert's Beach. Would that we were there still superintending the new bathing-houses, and seeing how much the lawn is improved by cutting away the bushes which hid the bay! Another year we may be longer at liberty. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay a commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second The Complete work " 20 50 88 80 "" 220 64 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense the publishers. OLD Farmer Joe steps through the doors, As wide to him as gates of Thebes; And thoughtful walks about the floors Whereon are piled his winter stores, And counts the profits of his glebes. And four of clover in the bay; Reflective in the leaf-strewn yard; To labor long maintained and hard. Cart-loads of pumpkins yonder lie, The horse is feeding in his stall, At length Old Farmer Joe sits down - "How fast the years do go! It seems, in fact, but yesterday, That in this very barn, we threeDavid, Ezekiel, and me Pitched in the summer loads of hay! David he sails his clipper now, And who, of course, but little Joe? I might have been- I can't tell what; I might have preached like Parson Jones; I might have gone to Congress, sure; - oh, pshaw ! What future waits him no man knows; Content is rich, and somethin' more, If it rains it's apt to pour; Where all is mine that I can raise. I've ploughed and mowed this dear old farm, From Fraser's Magazine. JULIUS CÆSAR. speculation is fond of disporting itself, without any means of obtaining an answer. All we can see is that he found Rome a city with nations for her subjects, yet with the same system of government which she had developed when hostile territory was almost visible from her walls, and that he left her the centre of a universal state. This mighty change was effected by his single genius and will; and it is no wonder that posterity, deeply influenced by the result, have taken a keen interest in his life and character. Cæsar is the only great man of antiquity whose career belongs to the controversies of modern politics. The contemporary evidence relating to Cæsar is neither copious nor satisfactory. Party spirit not only colours a narrative, but often induces writers to suppress facts or insert them. Cicero is our best eyewitness, and he, besides having been involved in all the political contests wherein Cæsar took a part, was himself utterly weak and vacillating as a statesman. At one moment he is found in fierce opposition to Cæsar, at another on friendly terms with him; and we hardly know how to calculate the proper allowance for his bias. Moreover, the real scope and importance of po No human institution has exercised such great and lasting influence upon the world as the Roman empire. The Christian Church doubtless has operated even more widely in swaying the destinies of mankind; but the Church was in its origin divine; and moreover it has been greatly affected by its relations with the empire, whether of alliance or antagonism. Alone among powers which have risen to predominance, Rome was able to make her conquests permanent, to assimilate her various subjects into something like a homogeneous whole, to impress upon the entire civilised world a uniform system of law and government. The material unity already subsisting under one emperor prepared mankind to learn the Christian lesson that in the sight of God all men are brethren. That the empire did immense mischief as well as good, that morals were deeply corrupted and intellectual activity stifled under the pressure of the Pax Romana, that absolute power was often wielded by the caprice of monsters of cruelty and profligacy, is most obviously true; and with the light of experience to guide us, we can see that such evils are inherent in any uni-litical movements is rarely seen by actors versal despotism. But until the Roman empire arose the experiment had never been tried, and may well have seemed promising at any rate the lessons it has taught humanity were worth purchasing at the price, even if the evil at the time be held to have preponderated over the good. Augustus is usually reckoned as the first emperor, because with him began the unbroken series of absolute monarchs; but history has never failed to recognise Julius Cæsar as the real founder of the empire. He not only, in fact, destroyed the power of the aristocracy, and for a few months himself wielded imperial authority; he also originated those ideas upon which the empire was based, and which his successor began to carry out. Throughout his life he consistently advocated the gradual admission of the subject nations to Roman citizenship, and during his tenure of power he introduced into the senate the first members not of Italian birth. He began that system of organising the provinces, under which Rome became the centre of all authority, and the provincials enjoyed every advantage consistent with the total extinction of political vitality. Whether the empire became what Cæsar would have made it if his life had not been cut short, is one of those questions over which historical in them. Some see one event, some another; and each attaches special weight to what is within his own range of vision, while all alike are too near to appreciate greatness. The best judges of the form and proportions of a gigantic mountain are not those who live under its shadow, and have daily before their eyes its southern or its western face. The traveller who makes himself acquainted with its aspect from each point of view, and then contemplates it from a distant spot, whence the relation and comparative magnitude of the parts are clearly visible, will have a far more accurate idea of its real dimensions than a native who knows every rock of a single face, and of that only. Many modern historians have written of Cæsar, and have ransacked the materials afforded by the writings of himself and his contemporaries. Probably there is not a scrap of evidence relating to him of which several writers have not examined the purport, and carefully estimated the bearing upon other existing testimony. How widely divergent are the results which may be deduced, according to the point of view of the inquirer, may be exemplified by comparing Dr. Arnold's short life of Caesar in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana with the elaborate biography of Napoleon III. Quot homines tot sententiæ.' There are no two au thors who entirely agree in their estimate | means: he never showed any inclination either of Cæsar or of the circumstances by instinctive to the born soldier, to disdain which he was surrounded. Though they peaceful measures and appeal prematurely represent the facts in the same way, they to the sword. When war seemed to him draw dissimilar inferences from them. The necessary, he took up arms with calm conmost remarkable account of Cæsar which fidence, without any of the hesitation natuhas yet been published is that of Professor ral to a peaceful politician. Equally at Mommsen, of whose Roman history the home in the camp and in the senate, he portion embracing the life of Cæsar has re- always employed the right weapon, whether cently appeared in English. It is satisfac- tongue, pen or sword, and showed himself tory to find that the views of so able and an equal master of all. learned a man approach pretty nearly to those of an eminent English historian, Mr. Merivale, in spite of the differences between their points of view and political and religious sympathies. It leads us to hope that the stores of evidence have been thoroughly explored, and that we are not premature in attempting to construct an image of Cæsar out of the various portraits, taken under varying lights and by very different processes, which have been offered for our inspection. The special characteristic of Cæsar's mind was the universality of his powers. He was not merely versatile, able to be every thing by turns, combining in himself superficial aptitude for many diverse functions. His talents were not impaired by any of that feebleness which often renders mere versatility valueless in the weighty affairs of life. There was a unity in his mind which kept every single faculty in due subordination, and gave it a new value independent of its separate excellence, from its perfect harmony with the rest. He was, so to speak, a living embodiment of genus, comprising in itself a number of species. Had Plato lived to see Cæsar, he might have thought that the idea of man was almost realised, intellectually at least, if not morally. His greatness was of a higher order than that of the general, the orator, the author, or even the statesman, and comprehended them all within itself. The white light of the sun, capable of being resolved into many coloured rays, but in itself perfect and untinged by any preponderance of one colour or another, is no inapt type of Cæsar's intellect. That he was not specially or preeminently any one thing, soldier or politician, led by choice or by the necessities of his position to acquire laboriously some proficiency in arts not his own, is shown in the whole tenor of his life. He never betrayed any predilection for either war or peace, as a means of attaining his ends. When the arts of peace would suit his purpose best, he pursued them with perfect steadiness, as if they were the only possible Cæsar's Commentaries are most justly admired as models of excellence in their particular line. Perfectly clear and simple in their language, free from any egotistical vanity, betokening a perfect mastery of the subject-matter and a full appreciation of the relative importance of the various parts, they are precisely what they were intended to be a lucid and sufficient account, for the benefit of the author's countrymen, of his course of action in Gaul. The unlimited means at the disposal of Napoleon III. for every form of investigation, especially for hunting out those traces of their presence which Roman armies seldom failed to leave upon the face of the ground, have enabled him to give a narrative more minutely detailed than Cæsar's own, and to afford the first satisfactory explanation of many points of military interest which have puzzled students of the Commentaries. It is equally unreasonable, however, to give Cæsar the credit of all the elucidations furnished by later inquirers, or to blame him for not having been more explicit. His purpose was not to write a text-book on the art of war, but to furnish an account of his doings to the people in whose name he was acting. Accordingly his work dispenses with many military technicalities, and goes straight to the point at which it is aimed: it is throughout the composition of a man who writes because he deems it as much part of his business to give a history of his campaigns as to fight them, and who does fighting and narrating alike thoroughly and well. Of Cæsar's other literary performances we are left to judge by hearsay evidence; and after making all due allowance for flattery to the founder of the empire, we have still a strong consensus of testimony in his favour. We know that he took unusual pains to obtain the highest culture of his age, which was mainly literary and philosophical, and that when dictator he evinced a genuine interest in literature. Remembering the uniformity of his success in other spheres, about which we have more trustworthy evidence, we are fully warranted in believing, what friends and enemies agreed to declare, tha |