* * * * *

THE FIRST AGE.

BY H. DIDIMUS.

(Concluded from page 546.)

BOOK FOURTH.

SECTION I.

O, help me to escape that oblivion which is more fearful than death! Who

would fall with the common herd, like rain into the ocean—lost in

eternity! Even as the lightning is born of conflicting vapor; is born to

penetrate, change, and subdue. So, of every age, and of the breath and

roar of the people, is born one to rule, and mould, and make his time.

Go then, and get power. Get it by the sword; since, even in our day,

blood buoys the strong swimmer onward to greatness. Get it by arts of

policy; since men will be ruled, and most honor those who rule them most

sternly. Get it by the pen; a voice which fills all time, reaches every

ear, fashions the intellect of millions, and makes it your own. Who

would not float down through endless ages upon a strain of such music,

the multitudinous echo of a spirit chosen of God? The shade of Tubal

rests upon my hand, and guides it.

The gentle dew falls in silence, unmarked; the print of its footsteps

disappear before the growing light; yet the earth acknowledges its

presence in the livelier green it puts on to make glad its children. In

the narrow valley lives an honest worker; one who, with years of labor,

has subdued the hardy soil. Even now, the yellow grain bends beneath the

weight of its own wealth, and wakes a joy which ambition never knew.

Think you that his days are unrecorded in the Book of Life? Upon his

broad shoulders rests the State. Ariel’s soul is content.

Thus, early in time, to these two were given, in divided empire, the

passions which now govern the sons of Adam; and have built up, giving

and receiving mutual aid, all our glory.

SECTION II.

As the adventurer, he who first traversed the Amazon, lost in the wood

which covers, thick, the base of Chimborazo, shutting out day and night,

listened with large wonder, mixed fear and joy, to the war of elements

unchained within its bowels; so Erix and Zella, with all their tribe,

listened to the first voice of that strange instrument which Ariel,

gifted of God, after many days, raised high, midway the mountains and

the sea. He had caught and tamed, to answer to the touch of a skill

creative, the sure interpreter of matter and of mind; and the vast soul

which, in these latter days, is well shadowed forth in that book of

love, called The People. He, in a page resplendent with holy fire, and

with a name here unrecognized, is given to every true believer as the

builder of the Organ, and inventor of that art which raises man close to

the footstool of his Maker; and as the notes—new to mortal ears—rose

deep, heavy, filling the forest wide, overcoming the distant murmur of

the sea, overcoming all voices of all life, rumbling, changed to the

clangor of great strifes run for in the future upon many an unbattled

plain, to close in a hymn so soft, so melting, so full of sweet

acknowledgment of the power by God intrusted to a noble end: even Zella,

who had watched his toils and marked their purpose, fell prostrate;

while Erix and his brethren, trembling, fled; nor turned till the music,

wild with joy and that laughter which leaps from youth, and health, and

a breast vacant of all care, soothed their unknown fears, and drew them

with a golden cord, slow tracing back their steps, again to listen,

again to wonder, and again to admire; till, grown familiar, they

expressed with cries, sad shouts, and gestures violent, their new bliss,

and circling, danced. Then, catching the measure, as Ariel’s marvelous

hand poured forth a song of high gratitude for the gift of chiefest

excellence in all that store of heaven’s bounty by himself enjoyed, they

gave rhythm for rhythm.

SECTION III.

“Now, do we know, O God, that thy love endureth for ever.”

“Sweet, even unto thee, was the voice of Adam.”

“Sweet, even unto thee, was the voice of Eve.”

“Our great mother;”

“Our good mother;”

“Fairer than the star of the morning, Eve.”

“Speak for us, Adam;”

“Speak for us, Eve;”

“These are thy voices,”

“In Paradise rejoicing.”

“We hear thee, mother,”

“Glorious,”

“Amid the flowery paths walking.”

“O, lift from my soul this evil,”

“Greater than they may bear!”

“And it is lifted, mother;”

“And the breath of flowers thou didst train,”

“Sweet-scented,”

“And the warble of birds thou didst instruct,”

“To praise the growing light,”

“And the heaving of thy bosom,”

“Pleading,”

“Face to face,”

“Come to us,”

“Swell over us,”

“Cover us,”

“As with a sea of infinite delight,”

“O, matchless beauty of a matchless skill;”

“Unborn;”

“Fallen through love!”

“We hear thee,”

“We feel thee,”

“Breathing,”

“Breathing upon our ears;”

“And it is lifted,”

“Mother;”

“And we rise,”

“Upon the wings of this music,”

“Even unto the throne which endureth for ever.”

SECTION IV.

Thus Ariel played; and from day to day, even as his brother at the forge

found new devices, added knowledge to knowledge in his high art, to be

lost in that flood which washed, whiter than wool, the sins, of the

world. And from day to day there came, from tribes far distant, many to

whom rumor had spoken of this joy late found; and of them, one so

fashioned in love’s mould, that she drew after her, ever as she moved,

the eyes of men. Not Aglaia and her sisters, of the heroic age of poesy

universal, could match her qualities, of an excellence so rare, that the

oldest, who remembered Eve, called her Eve’s daughter. Now, alone, her

sole attendant a young gazelle, hung with garlands woven by her hand,

and tamed to reflect, in the soft lustre of its eyes, eyes more soft and

more lustrous far, she stood aloof, then nearer drew, and halting, drank

in with greedy ear, as one long famished, the liquid melody which

floated, beating, upon the air. She listened till her very breathing

hung upon each note, and grew, or was fined away, in consonance with the

measure; and as the master closed, she bowed before him, low, in

reverence, even to the ground; and rising, asked—

“Art thou of the sons of God?”

Then first did Ariel’s eyes rest upon the maid there standing, bright,

as a vision from that land which he in childhood sought, to lose

forever; and fire ran through every vein, and that passion which

enforces unity of person and of will.

“Fairest of Eve’s daughters, such worship is not mine. To Him who

clothed thee with His beauty, alone belongs reverence, with prayer.”

“In my father’s house I have seen many like unto thyself, winged.”

“Whence art thou?”

“From east of Eden.”

“And thy father?”

“Cain.”

“Who yet lives?”

“Mighty in that glory which is his as the first-born of all the earth.”

“How looks he?”

“Noble, even as thyself, with twice thy stature, majestic; and upon his

front supreme burns a star, inextinguishable, the covenant of mercy for

that act of which I may no further speak.”

“The blood of Abel!”

Deep night overcame them suddenly, and swept past, as the rushing of a

strong wind.

“My father!”

Then turned the maid and fled; in fleetness outstripping the garlanded

beast which hastened to catch her steps, retreating, lighter than its

own. And as, upon the plains of Arcady, Melanion did strive with

Atalanta in the race, in king Jason’s time, so Ariel, pushed by a power

that knows no let, followed quick upon love’s course, nor stayed, till

he caught the frighted deer, full many a league removed, panting, upon a

bed of violets which lay smiling in the sunlight where the forest opened

charily to the sky.

“Oh, primest work of earth!”

Then, in turn, he worshiped, and bowed, even to her feet, which,

trembling, he embraced.

“Thou didst follow me to my hurt.”

“I did follow thee for thy love.”

“On this side of Eden I may no longer stay.”

“Eden, where is it, if not with thee!”

“Thus do the angels speak, and then—betray.”

“Powers of the air; false to heaven, they must be false to thee.”

“Thy comeliness had said thou wast of them.”

“Thy comeliness should better have answered thy doubt.”

“A sweet persuader art thou with thy tongue.”

“A sweeter persuasion rests upon thy lips.”

“Hist! I hear the flowers moving.”

“It is the murmur of the sea, far distant, calling.”

“What sayest it?”

“Love.”

The maid, half-yielding, half-refusing, by doubt and trust in turn

possessed, bent over the fair-eyed beast recumbent at her side, and

stroked its smoking flanks, and played with the garlands now displaced

and torn, and sought with pliant fingers to renew a labor which might

conceal the passion new-born, struggling in her breast.

“Thou shall forsake thy land and dwell with me; and here, along these

paths, and by the waters whose words thou hearest, and with the light,

and with darkness, we will all the pleasures prove which God to our

first parents gave when, in Paradise, resting, he declared all things

good.”

“And Cain?”

“Sweet cousin?”

“It was my father’s shadow that overcame us, and I fled, fearing his

anger, from the music of thy tongue.”

“Great is Cain.”

“Loved is Cain.”

And thus, alternating, deprecating, amid the violets standing, they sang

in praise of the first-born of the earth.

SECTION V.

“Mighty;”

“Majestic;”

“Lord;”

“Heritor of Adam;”

“Thou who didst first receive a mother’s kiss, of Eve, a mother;”

“Hear us.”

“Greatest, among men, is thy strength;”

“Greatest, among men, is thy glory,”

“For thou alone,”

“Of all the living,”

“Hast seen God!”

“Oh, son of earth’s love,”

“Love’s first fruit,”

“Hear us,”

“Bless us,”

“As thou didst pursue my mother, swift-footed,”

“As thou didst worship the fair-eyed, beyond Eden,”

“So am I pursued, my father;”

“So do I worship, Cain.”

“Heart to heart;”

“Soul to soul;”

“Of one will;”

“Melting into one being;”

“Bless us;”

“Even as God hath blessed thee,”

“All merciful.”

“And thou, oh Sun, effulgent;”

“And ye woods, whose song is ceaseless;”

“And broad sea, far distant, speaking;”

“And flowers, incense breathing,”

“Bear witness.”

“Now do I receive thee,”

“Now do I pledge thee,”

“Life of my life,”

“To an unending joy.”

SECTION VI.

And Ariel led the maid, quick retracing their late course, blushing,

with eyelids drooping, listening with face averted to the music of his

passion, homeward to his mother; while the garlanded beast, now flying

before their steps, now halting, showed mimic war, and caressed its

mistress, from whose eyes it caught security and love.

* * * * *

THE ORPHAN’S HYMN.

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

Here’s the tomb of my father—how mournful the thought!

That he went to the grave ere my infantile mind

One smile of parental affection had caught,

Or his lineaments dear in my heart were enshrined!

Yes, my sire! by thy dust I am kneeling in prayer,

Where in days of my childhood so oft I have wept,

Imploring thy spirit to soothe my despair,

And at evening and morning sweet vigils have kept.

Ere my young mind could grasp them, they told me thy woes;

Of the virtues that bind thee forever to me;

Of the love of thy friends, of the hate of thy foes;

That in features and mind I was like unto thee;

And with dawning of thought is thy memory wove,

The grief and the pining that prey on my breast;

The longing to soar to thy dwelling above,

And repose in thine arms in the Land of the Blest.

I have never seen parents their children caress,

Or soothe into quiet their heart-breathing

When the storm of misfortune around them did press,

But the tears of affection arose to mine eyes:

I have ne’er met a maid by the side of her sire,

Or beheld in the festal a father who kept

Watch over his daughter, and seemed to admire

His lovely and beautiful charge, but I’ve wept.

My mother lies by him—blessed saint of the skies!

Remembrance returns thee; how gentle and meek;

I behold thee when youth filled with radiance thine eyes,

And beauty and health were illuming thy cheek;

When thy delicate form was elastic as air,

When thy bosom was white as the Parian’s glow,

When thy beautiful ringlets of long, flowing hair,

In sable threads sprinkled thy forehead of snow.

How solemn, dear mother! it seems, that the clay,

Relentless and cold, now encumbers the breast,

Where, all helpless, so oft I in infancy lay,

And, soothed by thy lullaby, sobbed me to rest;

That on earth I shall never behold thee again,

Never more feel thy rosy lips pressing my brow,

Or thy fairy hand smoothing my pillow of pain—

Thy affection and love must forever forgo!

My sister sleeps next—lovely blossom of heaven!

Ah, why wast thou summoned so early away?

Why so soon was the bond of our sisterhood riven,

And I left alone on the cold earth to stay?

Why wast thou not spared to delight and to cheer

My desolate heart ’mid depression and gloom;

With thy love-breathing counsels to gladden my ear—

With thy songs and thy smiles to enliven my home?

Sleep on, ye beloved! it is better to rest

In the halls of the dead, than to linger in life,

Where the brain and the bosom with pains are oppressed

And the soul is beleaguered by sorrow and strife;

Sleep on! though no blossoms your homes are perfuming,

There are calmness and freedom from discord and care,

The lovely and beautiful daily are coming—

And in my pale vesture I soon shall be there.

* * * * *

RELIGION.

J. HUNT, JR.

Religion, pure and undefiled,

Before the Father’s sight in bliss—

Who will the same in Heaven reward,

Consists in holy deeds, like this:

To heed, when cold Affliction’s shaft

Is at the helpless Orphan hurled—

The Widow visit, _and_ to keep

Himself unspotted from the world.

* * * * *

TITUS QUINCTIUS FLAMININUS.[2]

Of all the truths at which we arrive through a calm and dispassionate

study of history, none appears to me more certain than this, that, as

regards the career and course of empires, the rise and fall of states,

there neither is, nor has been, any such thing as Fortune; that from the

beginning of time, to the events born of the present day, every minute

particular, every seemingly unimportant incident—or, as men are fond to

call it, accident—in the affairs of nations, is part and parcel of one

grand, universal, all-pervading scheme of divine world-government,

projected before the patriarch kings led forth their flocks to feed on

pastures yet moist with the waters of the deluge, but not to be

fulfilled until time itself shall have an end.

It can hardly, I think, fail to strike the least observant of readers,

that unless the civilized world had been for a long period chained

together under the stagnant, and in the main, peaceful despotism of the

successors of the twelve Cæsars, it never would have been prepared to

receive that tincture of letters, of humanity, and above all, of

Christian faith, with which it became in the end so thoroughly imbued;

that in every case, without one exception, it brought over to its own

milder cultivation, milder religion, the fiercest and most barbarous of

its heathen conquerors.

Not a province of the Western Roman empire but was overrun, devastated,

conquered, permanently occupied by hordes of the wildest, crudest, most

violent, most ignorant of mankind—Goths, Vandals, Huns, Vikings, and

Norsemen, Jutes and Danes, tribes whose very names to this day stand as

the types of unlettered force and unsparing outrage. Not a province of

that empire, though of its present population not one hundredth part can

trace an approximate descent from the original Roman colonists, so vast

the influx of the Pagan invaders, but in the lapse of time conquered its

conquerors by the arts of peace, and so became the germ of that

Christian civilization, that Christian Liberty, which—though either, or

both, may be temporarily obscured for the moment—we see, in the main,

steadily and consistently pervading the Europe end America of the

nineteenth century.

That this state of things could have existed, by any reasonable

probability at this day, in the event of Darius or Xerxes having overrun

and occupied Western Europe, with their oriental hordes—in the event of

Carthage having subdued Rome, and filled Italy, Greece, Gaul, Spain,

Britain, with her bloody fiend-worship, and her base Semitic

trade-spirit—in the event of Mark Antony having won the day at Actium,

and broken up the heritage of Rome, like that of Alexander, among a

dozen jarring dynasties, instead of leaving it to be centralized into an

almost universal empire—in the event of the Saracen having destroyed

the paladins of Charles Martel at Tours—of the Turks having conquered

the Mediterranean at Lepanto, or Continental Europe under the walls of

Vienna—few will be found, I think, so hardy as to assert.

Strange, therefore, as it may appear at first sight, the first germs of

existing institutions may be said to have been sown on the banks of the

Ilissus, the Eurotas, and the Tiber; and the deity, whom the blind

superstition of the early Romans venerated as the war-god Quirinus

guarding the wave-rocked cradle of Rome’s twin founders, was, in truth,

the Lord of Hosts, watching over the infancy of that peculiar and

appointed people which should make smooth his way before him, and

prepare the nations to receive the faith of civil and religious freedom.

For all this wonderful accomplishment of wonderful designs, however, we

shall find that the instruments are purely human, although the ends may

be divine—that, although the men are never wanting to do His work, when

done it must be, it is for the most part, if not always, in blindness,

in sin, in wrath, and in the madness of ambition, that they do that

work, imagining themselves, vainly, busied about their own miserable

ends; and for the doing it they are alone accountable. But not so of the

nations, which, having no life hereafter, no individual identity in the

world to come, meet their rewards or punishments here, where their

virtues or their vices have required them, and thrive or perish as they

work toward the completion of His infinite designs.

Nowhere, perhaps, in the whole course of history, is this supervision of

the Most High, which even religious men are wont unthinkingly to call

Fortune, more clearly visible, than in the events of the Second Punic

War.

At home the republic, though undaunted and unequaled of all times in

heroism, was weeping tears of blood at every pore, and resisting only

with a persistency savoring almost of despair, abroad it was only by the

exercise of sacrifices and self-denial almost superhuman, that she was

enabled to maintain her foothold in her provinces of Sicily and Spain.

It seems to us, when we read how Capua, the noblest of her allied

cities, opened her gates and made common cause with the enemy, how

twelve of the thirty colonies of the Latin name refused their

contingents of men and money; how all the north of Italy, then Cisalpine

Gaul, from the Var to the Rubicon, was in tumultuous arms against her;

how all the proud and magnificent cities of La Puglia and Calabria were

leagued with the terrible invader; it seems, I say, as if one superadded

call on her resources must have remained unanswered; one more

war-trumpet blown by a new enemy must have sounded her death-note.

And there was one moment when it appeared that this contingency was

close at hand. In the year of the city 540, while all the south of Italy

was in arms with Hannibal from Capua down to the Gulf of Taranto, and

all the north was in that tumultuous state of disorganization which with

Celtic populations is ever the herald of coming insurrection, Sardinia

suddenly broke out into armed and open rebellion. Sicily, also, in which

Hiero, the fast and faithful friend of Rome, had lately died at a very

advanced age, rejected the Roman alliance, and a war of extermination

was raging in that beautiful island between the partisans of the two

rival powers, and the forces which each could spare from the home

conflict to aid its faction.

At this crisis, Philip of Macedon, the descendant of Alexander, and at

that time the most powerful of European princes, entered into an

alliance, offensive and defensive, with Hannibal, and would in the

course of that very summer have crossed the Adriatic and invaded Italy

with some five-and-twenty thousand men, sixteen thousand of whom were

the hitherto unconquered phalanx, provided with that arm, in the

greatest possible perfection, the want of which had robbed Hannibal of

the fruits of all his great pitched battles—I mean an efficient

artillery.

In this respect the Greeks were unsurpassed; the Greek engineers were

the wonder of the world, as was subsequently shown at the siege of

Syracuse; and how great soever the superiority of the Romans to the

Carthagenians in this arm of service, it was as nothing to the skill of

the Greek artillerists, and the excellence of the Greek machinery.

What this combination might—I should rather say might not—have

effected, it were difficult to show; more difficult to show how Rome

could have resisted it. For my part, having examined the question in all

its lights, I am of opinion that, had this alliance gone into effect,

and Philip acted with energy and steadiness of purpose equal to his

bravery and ambition, Marcellus never would have taken Syracuse, nor

Scipio conquered Spain; but that from both those countries triumphant

reinforcements would have poured in to Hannibal, over the Alps, across

the Straits of Messina, that an Italian Tama would have sealed the doom

of Rome, and a Punic ploughshare razed the foundations of the capitol.

But such—it is well for humanity—was not to be the issue of the war.

Philip’s ambassadors, returning with the treaty signed and ratified by

Hannibal, were taken by the Roman squadron off the Calabrian coast, and

sent to the city with their papers.

A year elapsed before the treaty could be renewed; and, meantime, the

Romans, awakened to a perception of their danger, found means to

enkindle the Ætolians and Illyrian pirates against Philip, and in the

end to organize a Greek confederation against Macedon, which gave its

active and ambitious sovereign plenty of work to do on his own side of

the Adriatic. At a later period he found cause to repent that he had

ever meditated intervention.

Such strokes of fortune, so historians call them, as that capture of the

ambassadors of Philip, which, perhaps, saved Rome—as that strong gale

which blew on Christmas Eve on Bantry Bay, dispersing Hoche’s armament

to the four winds of heaven—such strokes, I say, of fortune, I hold to

be the visible agencies and instruments of God’s providence, in the

government of nations, to the welfare of the world.

From Rome that peril was averted. The arms of Macedon abstained,

perforce, from the shores of devastated Italy. The arms of Syracuse, of

Spain, were wrested from the hands which would have wielded them in the

behalf of Carthage. The arms even of the unbridled Numidians were turned

against the masters whom they had served so fatally for Rome. And out of

the furnace of that scathing war, the giant form of the chosen republic

emerged, without one hair singed, one thread of its vestments injured;

and that, like the faithful sons of Israel, by the especial providence

of the Almighty.

Years passed, and events hurried toward their consummation. Yet still,

though from this date the tide of Hannibal’s affairs began to ebb, and

that of Rome’s to flow with a healthier, prouder current, it was not

until twelve more terrible campaigns had been fought out in vain, that

the star of the great Carthaginian set in blood at Zama, and the name of

Carthage herself, all but one brief spasmodic sound of fury and despair,

went out and was forgotten from among the nations.

Then rousing herself, like a galled lioness, Rome went forth to avenge

and conquer.

Hitherto she had fought at home for existence, henceforth she fought

abroad for dominion; and abroad as at home, until her mission was

accomplished and His work done fully to the end, she was invincible, as

the fruit of her labors is eternal.

The war, which had been undertaken against Philip by the Romans shortly

after his giving them the first offense, had languished from the

beginning on both sides, and peace had been concluded between the

contending parties some three years before the decisive victory of Zama.

So soon, however, as peace was concluded with Carthage, in the year of

the city 552, B. C. 200, true to the latter part at least of her famous

motto,

_Parcere devictis et debellare superbos_,[3]

Rome sought at once a cause of war, whereby to chastise Philip for the

comfort given to her enemies in her worst time of need. Nor sought long

in vain.

A deputation from the Athenians came seeking succor; the arms of Philip

were too near their borders.

War was declared, the Consul Sulpicius landed at Dyrrachium with a

regular army, and the campaign commenced by a series of operations in

the valley of the river Erigon, in Dassaretia, the object of Philip

being to prevent that of the consul to secure his junction with his

Dardanian and Ætolian allies. Several sharp skirmishes occurred, in all

of which the Macedonians were worsted with loss, and in one instance

Philip narrowly escaped being taken prisoner; whereupon he retreated

through the mountain-passes, throwing up strong field-works in every

available position, but avoiding a general action.

His works all proved useless, being either forced or turned without

difficulty by the active and movable legionary tactic of the Romans,

against which it became at once evident that so ponderous and unwieldy a

body as the phalanx could not manœuvre or fight, in broken ground, with

a hope of success.

In the end Philip retired at his leisure into his hereditary kingdom,

and the consul having stormed and garrisoned the small town of Pelium,

on the Macedonian frontier, fell back to Apollonia on the Illyrian

sea-coast, without accomplishing his object.

Still his campaign had not been useless, for he had snatched the

prestige of invariable success from the phalanx, had established the

incontestible superiority of the Roman soldiery of all arms to the

Greek, and had defeated the Macedonians on every occasion, when they had

ventured to await battle.

It is not a little remarkable, and proves clearly the singular

adaptability of the Romans to all martial practices, that whereas,

scarce twenty years before, we find their cavalry the worst in all

respects but personal valor in the known world, and their light troops

unable to compete even with the barbarian allies of Hannibal, we now

observe them superior in both these arms, owing, as it is distinctly

stated by all the writers, to the superior excellence of their

weapons[4] and equipment, even to the far-famed targeteers and

life-guards of Macedonia.

In the following year, Sulpicius was superseded by the new consul,

Publius Villius Tappulus, who, taking command of Sulpicius’ legions at

Apollonia, advanced up the open valley of the Aöus, now Vioza, with the

intention of forcing the famous passes, variously known as the Aoi

Stenæ, or Fauces Antigoncuses, and now as the defiles of the Viosa,

rather than turning them by way of Dassaretia, as had been done

previously by his predecessor. The judgment was sound, the execution

naught. For, after marching to within five miles of the western

extremity of the defiles, he fortified his camp in the plain, probably

in the valley of the Dryno,[5] above its junction with the Vioza,

reconnoitered the position of Philip, who was very strongly posted in an

intrenched camp at the most difficult point of the pass, _à cheval_ on

the river, and occupying both the mountain sides, and there lay

perfectly inactive until he was himself relieved by Titus Quinctius

Flamininus, his successor in the consular dignity.

This man, of the early Roman leaders, was in many respects one of the

most remarkable; in one particular, with the single exception of Caius

Julius Cæsar, the great Dictator, he stands alone, in honorable contrast

to his merciless and cruel countrymen—though quick and vehement of

temper, he was a just man, and both merciful and courteous to conquered

enemies. The one blot on his character, to which I shall come hereafter,

must be ascribed to the policy of his country, under direct orders from

which he was unquestionably acting, not to his own wishes or

disposition, to which nothing could be more abhorrent than the duty

imposed upon him.

Plutarch informs[6] us that, in his time, “it was easy to judge of his

personal appearance,” which, unfortunately, he has not described, “from

his statue in brass at Rome, inscribed with Greek characters, which

still stands opposite to the hippodrome, nigh to the great Apollo from

Carthage.”

As, however, the whole tenor of Plutarch’s life is laudatory, and for

that gossiping anecdote-monger singularly correct and clear, we may take

it as a fact that the nobility of his person was not unequal to that of

his character; which I consider the finest recorded of any Roman general

or statesman.

“He is said,” continues the author,[7] I have already quoted, “to have

been of a temperament impulsive and vehement both in his likings and

dislikings, but with this distinction, that he was quick to wrath which

quickly passed away, but prompt to kindness which endured to the end. He

was very ambitious and very fond of glory, ever anxious to be the actor

himself in the best and greatest deeds, and rejoicing in the

acquaintance rather of those who needed benefits themselves, than of

those who could confer them upon others, esteeming those as material for

the promotion of his own virtue, these as rivals of his own glory.”

I will add that I can find him guilty of no act—almost alone of his

countrymen—of political dishonesty, or of social turpitude. To his

country he was a zealous, ardent, and profitable servant; to his friends

and associates faithful and true; to his enemies just and clement; and

to the provincials, subjected to his dominion, a governor so affable,

beneficent and equitable, that when he left their shores they mourned as

for a countryman, almost a father of the country.

As a general, he committed no military error; and although his command

was limited to little more than two campaigns, they were campaigns of

the most important—important not merely to his own country, but to the

science of war, in general—since they established, beyond a

peradventure, the superiority of the tactic and armature of the legion

to those of the phalanx; in other words, of the line to the column

tactic.

I give to him this credit, unhesitatingly; for, although Pyrrhus was at

last beaten by the phalanx in Italy, it was rather by dint of numbers

and aid of circumstances than by military skill; and further, it is

evident that the great bulk of his armies consisted of targeteers,

little different from the legionaries, and of Samnites, Tarentines, and

other Italian soldiery precisely similar to them, in arms and array.

Again, although Sulpicius had demonstrated the superiority of the

individual Roman, to the individual Greek, heavy footman; he had

not—nor any one else hitherto—defeated a phalanx, unless with a

phalanx.

When Greeks met Greeks then was the tug of war.

For the rest, the battles of Paullus Æmilius against Perseus, were but

the battles of Flamininus against the father of Perseus, less ably

fought, though on the same principles at last successful.

The fact remains, that from the battle of Cynoscephalæ, of which anon,

to the end of ancient history, it was an admitted fact that, unless on a

very narrow and perfectly level field, where both its flanks were

securely covered, the phalanx could not receive battle from the legions

with a chance of success; and that as to delivering battle on wide, open

plains, where rapid manœuvring and counter-marching could be resorted

to, such an idea was preposterous.

Flamininus was educated to arms from his very boyhood, and that in the

terrible Italian campaigns of Hannibal; through which he served with

such distinction that he had already attained the post of tribune of the

soldiers, equal to the modern rank of lieutenant-colonel, under that

daring and distinguished leader Marcus Marcellus, and was on the field

when he was slain, rashly periling himself in an affair of outposts near

Venusia, in the year of Rome 546, B. C. 208, and in the sixtieth year of

his own age.

After the death of his great commander, Flamininus was appointed

governor of Tarentum,[8] in the capacity of quæstor, on its recapture by

Fabius Maximus; and there displayed no less ability in the

administration of justice than he had previously evinced skill and

courage in warfare. Seven years afterward—at the early age of thirty

years—he was elected consul; and, although opposed by the veto[9] of

the tribunes Fulvius and Manlius Carius on the ground that he lacked

twelve years of the legitimate age, and that he had never filled the

intermediate grades of ædile and prætor, he was confirmed by the senate,

and received Macedonia as his province, by lot.

The fact is, that the wars of Hannibal had by this time taught the

Romans that an overstrict adherence to prescriptive formulæ, in times of

national peril, is disastrous; and that to meet the ablest adversaries

the ablest men must be had, whether all the theoretic requisites to

their election had been complied with or not.

Therefore Scipio, the elder Africanus, was sent to Spain with

proconsular rank and a consular army, before he was of the just age to

fill a prætorship.

Therefore Flamininus was elected consul at thirty, although the

constitution expressly declared that no one should hold that dignity

until he should have fully attained his forty-second year.

Such laws may be, perhaps, generally wise; but the breach of them is

always so. Nor does history show any instances, worth remark, of

youthful genius elevated by the popular call to early station, and

subsequently found unworthy, from the days of Alexander, Scipio, and

Flamininus, to those of Pitt and Napoleon.

Nor do I believe that the appointment of the consuls was really, though

it was ostensibly, left to the chance of a lot, at least in times of

actual war, and national emergency; since we invariably find the best

man sent to the place where he was required, which could not always have

occurred fortuitously. Doubtless those who superintended the balloting

had some method of determining the result, as had the augurs and

haruspices with regard to omens and sacrifices.

So Flamininus was not only elected consul at thirty, but obtained the

seat of the great war for his province, and was empowered to pick nine

thousand men, horse and foot, out of the Spanish and African veterans,

inured to all that was known of warfare in those days by the campaigns

of Hannibal and Scipio.

A grand occasion, indeed, and a superb command for an untried commander.

It appears that on his entering upon his office, Flamininus was detained

some time at Rome, in order to superintend a fast and expiatory

sacrifice on account of certain alleged prodigies of evil import; but it

is certain that he had understood the consequences of the dilatory

operations of his predecessors, and was resolute not to fall into the

like error. He sailed from Brundusium for the island of Corcyra, now

Corfu, which he occupied with eight thousand foot, and eight hundred

horse, much earlier in the season than the preceding consuls had been

wont to take the field: and, instantly passing over to the main, in a

single line-of-battle ship, hurried onward by forced journeys to the

camp, and superseded Villius, in the face of the enemy.

A few days afterward, his reinforcements coming up, he called a council

of war to determine whether a direct attack, or a flank movement through

Dassaretia, was to be preferred. The council, of course, determined any

thing rather than direct action: but Flamininus, perceiving the

facilities afforded by the geography of that broken, mountainous,

forest-clad region, intersected by deep ravines and impracticable

torrents, to the protracting of the war, resolved to take the bolder and

more prudent course of trying conclusions, at once, with an enemy whose

object it evidently was to act purely on the defensive, and to avoid

delivering battle.

Yet, determined as he was, the difficulties of the ground were so great,

and so skillfully had Philip availed himself of every defensible point,

or coigne of vantage, that many days elapsed before he could decide on

the mode of assault.

The river Aöus, now Vioza, an extremely large and powerful river,

augmented at every half-mile by fierce mountain torrents, along the

valley of which is the most direct pass into Macedonia proper, at this

point breaks its way through a chain of exceedingly abrupt and

precipitous, though not very lofty mountains, and forms a gorge of six

miles in length, closely resembling that picturesque defile of the

Delaware, with which many of my readers are doubtless familiar, known as

the Water-Gap.

Forced into a space, two-thirds less than its ordinary breadth, the Aöus

has here cut its way through the solid rock, between the mounts Asnaus

and Aëropus, now Nemertzika and Trebusin, respectively to the left and

right of the defile, which here runs nearly south-eastward. The

right-hand mountain, Aëropus or Trebusin, is the loftier of the two,

descending in a sheer wall of perpendicular and treeless rock to the

brink of the only road, scarped out of the living limestone like a

cornice above the torrent, which bathes the base of the opposite hill,

leaving no level space between.

“The mountain on the opposite or left bank of the river,” says Colonel

Leake, whose topography of the Grecian battles founded on minute

personal inspection, is no less valuable than interesting, “is the

northern extremity of the great ridge of Nemertzika, Asnaus, much lower

than that summit, but nearly equal to Trebusin in height. At the top, it

is a bare, perpendicular precipice, but the steep lower slope, unlike

that of its opposite neighbor, is clothed with trees quite to the river.

Through the opening between them is seen a magnificent variety of naked

precipices and hanging woods, inclosing the broad and rapid stream of

the insinuating river.”[10]

The road,[11] difficult in any event to an army, if defended, is

impracticable.

In this prodigiously strong pass Philip had taken post, occupying the

narrow road with the phalanx, and having his main body hutted

comfortably among the loose crags of Aëropus, on a conspicuous summit of

which was pitched his own royal pavilion, with the banner of Alexander

waving over it. The slopes of the opposite hill, Asnaus, was held by

Athenagoras his lieutenant, with the light troops, and all the flanking

crags and salient angles of the precipitous hills were mounted with the

tremendous military engines, which, though of common use in the defense

and attack of fortresses, had never been brought into field service

until now.

Immediately in front of this stern mountain gateway extended a small

plain, midway between the Roman camp and the Macedonian lines, and here,

after a fruitless parley and attempt at accommodation, from which both

parties retired so much exasperated at their mutual pertinacity, that

the river, which divided them, alone prevented their personal conflict,

the light troops met in action from both armies.

It is scarce to be conceived how, with such obstacles against them, the

Romans could have escaped destruction; but it is almost ever the case in

mountain warfare that the attacking party is successful.

The gray mists of the early summer morning were still nestling among the

crags, and brooding in the deep glades of the hanging woods, when the

long, shrill blasts of the Roman trumpets announced the impetuous rush

of the light troops; and on they went, headlong and invincible, carrying

all before them, and driving in the Macedonian skirmishers like the foam

of the Adriatic before the fury of the south-east wind.

There was no dust upsurging from the rocky road to shroud their advance,

no smoke-clouds to veil them from the shot of the enemy’s artillery,

with their bright armor flashing in the sunbeams, as they streamed down

the gaps in the mountain summits, and their blood-red banners and tall

plumes tossing in the light morning air, on they came, dazzling and

unobscured, a fair mark for the deadly missiles, arrows shot off in

volleys, vast javelins which no human arm could launch, and mighty

stones hurled from the catapults, as if from modern ordnance, which tore

their ranks asunder, and leveled whole files to the earth at a blow.

But their extraordinary discipline and admirable armature enabled them

to endure the storm; and they made their way through all opposition,

until they met the phalanx, bristling with its impenetrable pikes, its

flanks impregnably protected by the rocks here, by the river there, and

its narrow front offering no point assailable. Then they were checked;

but, even then, not beaten back, so stubborn was their Roman hardihood,

so firm their resolution to be slain, not conquered.

All day long did that deep glen quake and shudder to the dread sounds of

the mortal conflict; the thundering crash of the huge stone-shot,

shivering the trees and shivered on the crags; the hurtling of the

terrible _falaricæ_; the clash and clang of steel blades and brazen

bucklers; the whirlwind of the charging horse; the shouts and shrieks

and death-groans; the thrilling trumpets of the legions; the solemn

pæans of the phalanx.

Only when the sun set, and the full, round moon came soaring coldly up

above the tree-tops, flooding the bloody stream of the Aöus, and the

corpse-incumbered gorge, with silver radiance, did the weary and

shattered hosts draw off to their respective camps, from a strife so

justly balanced, that none could say which had come off the better, none

judge on which side the more or the better men had fallen.

That night, Flamininus sat in his tent alone, anxious, uncertain how to

proceed, so terrible had been the loss of life, and so small the

advantage; when a shepherd was introduced, sent by Charops, the prince

of the Ætolians, who should conduct a detachment, by a wild mountain

foot-path, to a height in the enemy’s rear, domineering his whole

position.

Four thousand chosen veterans of infantry and three hundred horse, under

a tribune of the soldiers, were detailed, instantly, for the service,

which would occupy three days.

They should march all night long, such were their orders, for the summer

moon was at its full, and the nights light as day and far more pleasant,

as being soft with fragrant dews and the cool mountain air. By day, they

should halt in some deep, bosky dell or forest glade, to rest and

refresh themselves securely. So far as the nature of the ground should

admit, the cavalry would lead the way, then halt on the last level. The

vantage ground once gained, they should kindle a fire on the summit, but

abstain from all active demonstration, till they should perceive the

action in the defile at its height. Such were their orders; and in high

hope they parted, carrying with them as a guide the shepherd, in chains,

as a precaution against treachery, but encouraged by great promises, if

faithful.

On the two following days, Flamininus skirmished continually with his

light troops against Philip’s outposts, relieving his men by divisions,

more to divert the attention of the enemy from the stratagem which was

in progress, than with any design to harass him; though in both points

of view he succeeded admirably; for the superiority of the Roman

light-infantry soldier to the Greek skirmisher was great indeed, and the

Macedonians lost many and good men.

On the third[12] morning, secure that all had gone well so far, by the

immovable attitude of the enemy, neither elevated by any unexpected

success, nor shaken by any suspicion of his danger, the consul drew up

his legionary cohorts, in solid column of maniples, along the rocky

road, before the sun had yet risen, and while the mountain mists still

covered the distant peaks with an impenetrable veil.

His light troops, advanced on both flanks, pressed forward along the

difficult hill-sides, dashing the heavy dew in showers from the dripping

underwood, and threatening the camps of Philip and Athenagoras both at

once, with loud shouts and a storm of missiles.

Then were renewed the splendor, the obstinacy, and the carnage of the

first encounter. Again the Roman voltigeurs drove in the enemy’s

outposts; and beat back the targeteers, who sallied from their works

eager for the fray, from post to post, till they came within the range

of the artillery, when in their turn they began to suffer heavily.

But at this instant the sun arose; the mists melted gradually away from

the bare peaks, which now stood forth glittering in the hazy sunshine.

With indescribable anxiety the eyes of Flamininus were riveted upon the

distant crag, indicated as the decisive point. There was a vapor

floating round it dull and indistinct, and browner than the blue mist

wreaths—but was it, could it be, the smoke-signal?

For a time all was an agony of doubt and suspense. His officers gathered

about the consul; the legionaries, seeing their commanders’ eyes all

turned in one direction, gazed that way also, anxious if ignorant.

Browner the vapor grew and browner; now it soared upward, black as a

thunder-cloud, darkening the azure skies, a manifest smoke-signal.

Jove! what a shout arose from the now triumphant cohorts!—what a

thrilling shriek of the shrill trumpets, answered faintly and remotely,

as if from the skies, by another Roman blast, but liker to the scream of

the mountain-vulture than to the clangor of the pealing brass!—what a

clang as of ten thousand stithies, when the Spanish blades smote home

upon the Macedonian targes!

Yet still the men fell fast on both sides, although the Romans won their

way, in spite of artillery and pike and sling-shot, at the sword’s

point; for the Greeks still fought stubbornly, and plied their dreadful

engines with deliberate aim at point blank range, unconscious that they

were surrounded.

Then came the Latin cheers, and the clang of arms, out of the clouds,

rolling down the mountain side, on their flank, in their rear; the rush

of charging horse!—In an instant they broke, disbanded, scattered,

deserted their defenses—all was over.

In the first instance the panic and route of the Macedonians were

absolute; and so utterly disheartened and terror-stricken were the men,

that, had it been possible to pursue them effectually, the whole army

must have laid down its arms or have been cut to pieces.

The ground,[13] however, was for the most part impracticable to cavalry,

and their heavy armature rendered the legions as inefficient in pursuit

as formidable in close combat. About two thousand only of the

Macedonians fell, more in the battle than in the route; but the whole of

the formidable defenses, on which they had expended so much time and

toil, were carried at a blow, all their superb artillery, their camp,

their baggage, rich with the barbaric pomp of the Macedonian royalty,

all their camp followers and slaves, remained the prizes of the victors.

Philip, after he had fled five miles from the field, that is to say, so

far as to the eastern extremity of the defile he had fruitlessly

endeavored to defend, at length perceiving that he was unpursued, and

suspecting the reason, halted on a steep knoll covering the entrance of

the pass, and sending out parties along the ridges and through the

ravines with which they were familiar, soon collected all his men about

his standard save those whom he had left on the field of battle, never

to rouse to the trumpet or rally to the banner any more.

Thence he retreated rapidly down the valley of the Aöus, or Vioza, in a

south-easterly direction to a place called the camps of Pyrrhus,

supposed to be Ostanitza, near the junction of the Voidhomati and

Vioza,[14] where he passed the night; and thence by a prodigious forced

march of nearly fifty miles reached Mount Lingon on the following day,

where he remained some time in doubt whither to turn his steps, and how

to frame his further operations.

Mount Lingon is the eastern and loftiest extremity of a great chain of

hills; dividing Macedonia proper from Thessaly on the east and Epirus on

the west. It forms a huge, triangular bastion, its northern base

overlooking Macedonia, and its apex facing due southward, which is in

fact the water-shed between the three great rivers, Aöus or Vioza

flowing north-westward into the Adriatic, Penëus or Salamosia flowing

eastward into the gulf of Saloniki, and Arecthus or Arta, which has a

southerly course into the gulf of the same name, famous in after days

for the naval catastrophe of Actium.[15] The flanks of this ridge are

steep, difficult and heavily timbered, but its summits are green with

rich, open downs, and watered by perennial springs and fountains, an

admirable post of observation, and commanding the descent into all the

great plains of Northern Greece. After mature deliberation, Philip

retreated still south-eastward to Tricca, now Trikkala, on the Penëus;

and, though with a sore heart, devastated his own country, wasting the

fields and burning the cities. Such of the population as were capable of

following his marches, with their cattle and movables, he swept along

with him; all else was given up as plunder to his soldiers, so that no

region could suffer aught more cruel from an invader than did Thessaly

at the hands of its legitimate defender. Pheræ shut her gates against

him, and since he could not spare the time to besiege it, for the

Ætolians were coming up with him rapidly, having laid waste all the

country around the Sperchias and Macra and made themselves masters of

many strong towns, he made the best of his way back to the frontiers of

Macedonia.

In the meantime, the consul, after his victory, followed so hard on the

track of his defeated enemy, that on the fourth or fifth day, after

reorganizing his forces and taking up the pursuit in earnest, he reached

Mount Cercetium some fifty miles in advance of Philip’s deserted station

on Lingon, where he had given rendezvous to Amynander and his

Athamanians, whom he needed as guides for the interior of Thessaly.

Thereafter, he stormed Phaloria, received Piera and Metropolis into

surrender, and laid siege to Atrax, a strong place not far from Larissa,

on the Penëus, about twenty miles above the celebrated pass of Tempe, in

which Philip lay strongly intrenched watching his movements, and not

more than forty from the shores of the Ægean. This small place, however,

garrisoned by Macedonians, offered so stubborn a resistance that

Flamininus was unable to take it, until the season was waxing so far

advanced, that, finding the devastated plains of Thessaly utterly

inadequate to the support of his army, and having no harbors on the

coast of Acamania or Ætolia in his rear, capable of receiving transports

sufficient to supply him, he judged it best to raise the siege, and fall

back to winter-quarters in Phocis, on the shores of the gulf of Corinth,

leaving the whole of Thessaly ruined, and its principal towns either

destroyed by Philip, or occupied by his own garrisons.

During these proceedings of the consul by land, his brother, Lucius

Quinctius, who commanded the fleet destined to co-operate in the war,

acting in conjunction with Attalus and the Rhodian squadron, had made

himself master of Eretria, Calchis and Carystus, the strongholds and

principal towns of Eubœa, winning enormous booty, and stationed himself

at Cenchreæ, at the head of the gulf of Eghina, whence he was preparing

to lay siege to Corinth, the most opulent and splendid of all the Greek

cities, now held by a strong Macedonian garrison, backed by a powerful

faction within the walls, for Philip.

Marching down into Phocis without opposition, for except the garrisons

of a few scattered towns there was no force, on this side Macedonia,

adverse to the Romans, Flamininus took Phanotea by assault, admitted

Ambrysus and Hyampolis to surrender, scaled the walls of Anticyra,

entered the gates of Daulis pell-mell with the garrison which had

sallied, and laid regular siege to Elatia, which was too strong to be

taken by a _coup-de-main_. The capture and sacking of this town was the

last military operation of the campaign.

A political event occurred, however, at the close of it, which was even

of greater influence in the end, than all the victories of the year, the

ratification namely of a treaty of alliance between the powerful Achæan

confederacy and the Roman republic, by the consequences of which, joined

to the events of the past campaign, all northern Greece from the Isthmus

of Corinth to the line formed by the Aöus and Penëus rivers, and the

ridges of Lingon and Cercetium, was united under the eagles of the

republic against Philip. Within that region, however, the two splendid

cities—Corinth, the siege of which by Attalus and Lucius Quinctius had

proved unsuccessful, and Argos—still held out for the king, and it was

evident that another campaign would be needed for the termination of the

war.

Well satisfied with his success, as he had indeed cause to be, for few

campaigns on record have more fully and masterly accomplished their end,

Flamininus retired into winter-quarters in the island of Corfu, while

Attalus and the proprætor Lucius laid up their fleets in the Piræus, and

passed the season of inactivity within the walls of Athens.

During the winter, after the election of the new consuls, Caius

Cornelius Cethegus, and Marcus Minutius Rufus, but before it was known

whether the conduct of the war would be continued to Flamininus, or one

of the consuls appointed his successor, a sedition broke out in the town

of Opus, and the inhabitants admitted the Romans. The Macedonian

garrison, however, still held out, and while Flamininus was preparing to

reduce it, a herald arrived from the king, demanding an interview in

order to treat of peace. To this the consul, naturally desirous to

conclude the war himself, acceded, and a singular interview followed.

A place was appointed on the shore of the gulf of Tituni near Nicæa, and

thither came the Roman general, Amynander king of the Athamanes,

Dionysodorus envoy of Attalus, Agesimbrotus admiral of the Rhodian

fleet, Phæneas prince of the Ætolians, and with them two Achæans,

Aristænus and Xenophon. These overland. But Philip came across from

Demetrias, now Volo, with one ship of war and five single-banked

galleys, and casting anchor as close as might be to the shore, addressed

the confederates from the prow of his ship.

Flamininus proposed that he should land, in order that they might

converse more at their ease; and, on the king’s refusing, inquired who

it was of the company whom he feared.

“I fear none but the immortal gods,” was the haughty reply; “but I

distrust many whom I see around thee, and most of all the Ætolians.”

“That,” replied the Roman, “is a peril common to all who parley with an

enemy, that they can place confidence in no one.”

“Nay, Titus Quinctius,” answered Philip, “but Philip and Phæneas are not

equal inducements to treason; and it is one thing for the Ætolians to

find another general, and for the Macedonians to find another king such

as I am.”

To this argument there was no reply but silence.[16] Nor, when they came

to speak of conditions, could any terms be effected among so many

jarring interests; but it was agreed at length that ambassadors should

be sent by all the contracting parties to the Senate. A truce was

proclaimed for two months, Philip withdrawing, as a security for his

good faith, the garrisons from all the towns of Locris and Phocis; while

Flamininus, in order to give color to the proceedings, sent with the

ambassadors Amynander king of the Athamanes, Quinctius Fabius, his

wife’s nephew, Quinctius Fulvius, and Appius Claudius, all members of

his military family.

After awhile the delegates returned. The Senate had given no decision.

The province and war of Macedonia, when the consuls were about to cast

lots, had been continued to Flamininus as imperator, the tribunes Oppius

and Fulvius having strongly represented the impolicy of removing general

after general, as fast as each got accustomed to the country and was

ready to follow up a first success by a final victory. The argument

prevailed, and the option of peace or war was left to the imperator. The

Senate was not aweary of the strife, and Flamininus was athirst for

glory, not for peace.

No further parley was granted to Philip; and these terms only dictated

to him, that he must withdraw his forces from the whole of Greece into

his own proper dominions, north of the river Aöus and the Cambunian

mountains.

This was of course tantamount to a resumption of hostilities; and both

parties, it appears, prepared with equal alacrity and confidence for the

final conflict.

The first operation of Philip, who, on finding the necessity of drawing

all his resources to a common centre, began to despair of maintaining

Corinth, Argos, and his Achæan cities, was to deliver them over for

safekeeping to Nabis, tyrant of Lacedæmon, on condition that in case of

his being successful against the Romans they should be restored to

himself, otherwise they should belong to Nabis.

No sooner was that done, however, than the treacherous tyrant, desirous

only to retain his new power, made peace with the Ætolians, furnished

the Romans with Cretan auxiliaries to act against Philip, and even

entered into illusory negotiations for the delivery of Corinth and

Argos, than which nothing was further from his mind, until at least he

should have plundered them of all they contained most valuable, and

this, with his wife’s aid, he lost no time in doing.

These circumstances, however, were but as mere preludes to the great

strife which was about to be determined in the broken and uneven country

of north-eastern Thessaly, not far from the ground on which Flamininus

had closed his last campaign, to the southward of the Penëus, whither

both parties were already collecting their powers and drawing to a head.

Almost before the opening of the spring both leaders were on the alert,

and active in preparation; partly by stratagem and the insinuation of a

menace, if not its reality, partly by persuasion, Flamininus had the

address to bring over the Bœotians, as he had already brought over the

Achæans, to the Roman alliance; and thenceforth, every thing in his rear

being secure and friendly, he had nothing to do but to look forward and

bend up all his energies and powers to the destruction of the enemy

before him.

To this end he was well provided; for when his command was continued to

him, five thousand infantry, three hundred horse, and three thousand

mariners of the Latin allies, were voted him as a reinforcement to his

late victorious army.

With these admirable troops, then, he broke up from Elatia, his last

conquest, about the vernal equinox, and marching north-westerly by the

great road through Thronium and Scarphea, on the gulf of Tituni, arrived

at Thermopylæ, where by a preconcerted plan he met the Ætolians in

council, and three days afterward, encamping at Xynias in Thessaly,

received their contingent of six hundred foot and four hundred horse,

under Phæneas their chief-magistrate. Moving forward at once with the

celerity and decision which mark all his operations, his force was

augmented by five hundred Cretans of Gortyna, under Cydas, and three

hundred Illyrians of Apollonia, all light infantry skilled with the bow

and sling; and a few days afterward he was joined by Amynander with

twelve hundred Athamanians, completing the muster of the allies.

Philip meanwhile was laboring under the sore disadvantage which is sure

to afflict, and in the end overthrow, all nations which engage in long

careers of conquest. Incessant wars, since the days of Alexander, had

worn out the manhood of Macedonia. His own wars had consumed the flower

of the adults, and those who remained were the sons of mere youths or of

octogenarians, begotten while the men of Macedonia were fattening

foreign fields with priceless gore.

As in the last campaigns of Napoleon, Philip’s conscriptions of this

year included all the youth of sixteen years, while they recalled to the

standard all the discharged veterans who had yet power to trail a pike.

So certainly in all ages will the like causes produce the like effects.

Of this material, however, he had constructed a complete phalanx of

sixteen thousand men, the flower of his kingdom, and the last bulwark of

his throne. To these were added two thousand native targeteers, two

thousand Thracians and Illyrians, about fifteen hundred mercenaries of

all countries, and two thousand horse. With this power he lay at Dium,

now Malathria, on the gulf of Saloniki awaiting the Romans, by no means

despondent, but rather confident of success. For although the last

campaign had gone against him, as a whole, still the repulse of the

Romans from the walls of Atrax by hard fighting, seemed to

counterbalance the forcing of the gorges of the Aöus, while it was

undeniable that the phalanx had fully maintained its ancient renown, and

was, for all that had yet been proved, invincible in a pitched battle.

No less secure of victory, flushed with past triumphs, and athirst for

future glory, Quinctius pressed on, resolved on the first occasion to

deliver battle, his forces being, as nearly as possible, equal to those

of the king, though he had a superiority of about four hundred horse.

On hearing of the Roman advance, Philip broke up from Dium and marched

upon Larissa, intending to deliver battle south of the Penëus, with a

view probably to the subsequent defense of the defiles of Tempo, in case

of disaster; while Flamininus having failed in an attempt to surprise

the Phiotic city of Thebes, marched direct upon Pheræ, previously

ordering his soldiers to cut and carry with them the palisades, of which

at any moment to fortify the casual encampment of the night.

Both leaders, thus aware of the enemy’s proximity, yet unaware of his

exact position, encamped and fortified their camps, the Roman at about

six, the Macedonian at four miles’ distance from the town of Pheræ.

On the following day, light parties being sent out on both sides to take

possession of the heights above the town, which would seem to be the

western slopes of Karadagh, formerly Mount Calcodonium—described by

Leake as gentle pasture hills, interspersed with groves of oak, but

swelling, a little northward on the way to Larissa, into steep, broken

hills, topped with bare limestone crags—they came in sight of one

another so unexpectedly, that they were mutually amazed, and neither

charged the other, but both sent back for orders to head-quarters, and

were ultimately drawn off without fighting. On the second day, both

leaders sent out reconnoitering parties of light-armed infantry with

some horse, and these encountered on the hill above the suburbs of Pheræ

to the northward. It so happened that Flamininus had ordered two

squadrons of Ætolian horse on this duty, wishing to avail himself of

their familiarity with the country; and these, overboiling with courage

and emulous of the Roman renown, so soon as they discovered the enemy,

dared the Italians to the test of superior valor, and charged the

Macedonians with such metal and prowess that they cut them up very

severely; after which, having skirmished for a considerable time with no

decisive results, they drew off, as if by mutual consent, to their own

encampments.

The ground about Pheræ, being much incumbered with orchards, groves and

gardens, and cut up by stone walls and thorn hedges, was very unsuitable

for a general action, and both leaders, perceiving this, moved early the

next morning by different routes, the great ridge of Karadagh

intervening between their lines of march, and intercepting all sound or

sight, upon Scotussa, a town some ten miles distant in a westerly

direction, lying at the base of the hills, and on the verge of the

plain.

The Romans marched to the southward, Philip to the northward of the

dividing ridge; and, unaware how nearly they were intrenched, both

erected their palisades for the night almost within hearing of their

countersigns and trumpets.

The third morning, after they had decamped from Pheræ, was exceedingly

thick and foggy; but in spite of this Philip, who had passed the night

on the banks of the Onchestus, persevered in marching upon Scotussa,

where he hoped to find ripe corn in the plain for his troops. The

darkness, however, increased, and ere long one of those tremendous

thunder-storms, for which all the limestone countries of upper Greece

are so famous, or rather infamous, burst over his head, with hail, and

wild whirling wind-gusts, and forked lightnings, and compelled him to

halt at once and intrench himself, at the northern base of the bare,

craggy hills, forming the summits of the Calcodonium, known as the

Cynoscephalæ or dog’s heads, though the resemblance does not go far to

justify the appellation.

So soon[17] as it cleared a little, though the mist was still so dense

that one could scarce see his own hand, he sent out a detachment to

occupy the heights of Cynoscephalæ. At the same moment Flamininus sent

out his troops of horse and a thousand voltigeurs from Thetidium, where

he lay, to feel for the enemy.

These latter fell suddenly into the ambushed outpost of the Macedonians,

neither discovering the others till they were at half spear’s length in

the gloom. After a momentary pause of amazement, they fell on fiercely,

and among the slippery crags, in the dense mist and drizzling rain, the

strife reeled blindly to and fro, all striking at once, none parrying,

and friend as often injuring friend, as enemy enemy. On both sides,

rumor reached the camps, and the Romans being hard pressed and giving

way, Flamininus, who was nearest to the scene of action, reinforced his

men with two thousand infantry under two tribunes, and five hundred

Ætolian horse of Archedamus and Eupolemus.

On the arrival of these, the skirmish was exchanged for close combat;

and the encouragement given to the Romans, by the prompt succor,

doubling their courage, nor that only, but their physical strength, they

charged home so vehemently, that they broke the enemy, and drove them to

the steep crags; the din of battle receding from the lines of

Flamininus, until the cries of his own men, and the shouts of the

victorious legionaries, aroused and alarmed Philip in his camp.

He, expecting nothing on that day less than an engagement, had sent out

his men to forage in the plain; but as he saw how things were going, and

as the mist was beginning to melt away before the sunbeams, and the

clear blue to show above, he ordered up Heracleides the Gyrtonian,

commander of the Thessalian cavalry, find Leon, the Macedonian master of

the horse, and Athenagoras with all the mercenaries save the Thracians,

and launched them vigorously against the enemy.

Rallying upon themselves the broken and disordered troops who had

preceded them, these in turn laid on with so heavy a hand, and so

furious an impetus that they bore the Romans back bodily, and drove them

over the brink of the heights in consternation and disorder toward their

own intrenchments; nor would they have failed to do fearful execution on

them, if not utterly to destroy them, but for the devoted gallantry of

the handful of Ætolian horse, who charged them time after time; and,

when repulsed, rallied and charged again; and so gained that invaluable

time, which, as it was in this case, is often victory.

At this moment, seeing that the defeat of his cavalry and light troops

was not only serious in itself, but was seriously dispiriting the rest

of his army, Flamininus drew out his legions in order of battle,

harangued them briefly in words of fire, which kindled every soldier’s

heart to like passion, and led them straightway into action.

Almost simultaneously Philip, to whom tidings had been brought that the

enemy were utterly disordered and in flight, and who was compelled by

the urgency of his officers and the eagerness of his men to give battle,

contrary to his own better judgment, which knew the ground to be

unfavorable to the phalanx, led the right wing of it up the northern

ascent of the heights, directing Nicanor, surnamed the elephant, to

bring up the centre and left wing close at his heels. On reaching the

summit, which had been left vacant when the Macedonian light troops

drove back the Romans, he formed line of battle by the left, and thus

gained the ground of vantage.

But while he was yet in the act of forming his right, the mercenaries

were upon him, crushed in by the advance of the solid cohorts; for

Flamininus had rallied his light troops in the intervals of his

maniples, and was carrying all before him with great slaughter, himself

leading his left wing, the right and centre being a little retired, with

the elephants in front.

Philip thus labored at once under a double disadvantage, when, believing

himself the assailant of a disordered foe, he found himself assailed—a

perilous thing in warfare—and, secondly, when he was compelled to

encounter an enemy in full array of battle, while above one half of his

own power was in column of march, and as yet unready to deploy.

Up to this moment, the day had been one of accidents and vicissitudes;

from this moment it was one of the finest generalship and the finest

fighting, and in the end the best fighting carried it.

Mindful of the rule never to receive a charge but on a charge, so soon

as he saw Flamininus’ eagles face to face with him, Philip rallied the

retreating horse and mercenaries upon his targeteers, with whom he

covered his right flank, and ordered the phalanx to double the depth of

its files and prepare to charge.

We have all seen, and all know the effect, of two poor lines of modern

infantry bringing their muskets from the shoulder to the charge; the

thrill which the sudden clash and clatter, and the quick flashing

movement sends to the boldest heart—what then must have been the effect

on the spectator, when sixteen serried ranks brought down their huge

sarissæ, twenty-four feet in length, from the port to the level—the

rattle of the massive truncheons sloping simultaneously, like a whole

field of bearded grain before a sudden blast, the clang of the steel

spear heads against the brazen bucklers, and the glimmering flash of

seven points protruded in advance of every shield in the front line.

Such was the spectacle which met the eyes of the legionaries as they

crowned the heights of Cynoscephalæ, but no thrill did it send to those

stern hearts, but that of ardor and of emulation. Never was such a

war-cry heard as burst that day over the rugged hills, for not only did

the combatants on both sides, as they rushed to hand and hand encounter,

shout with their hearts in their voices, but all who saw it from a

distance swelled the tremendous diapason.

The clang might have been heard at a mile’s distance, as the pike-points

of the phalanx smote full upon the bosses of the long legionary shields,

and bore back the loose lines by sheer force, orderly still and

unbroken, while the Spanish broadswords of the Romans hewed desperately,

but in vain, into the twilight forest of the impenetrable sarissæ.

Stubbornly the Romans fought and long; and when at length broken, they

were not beaten; when borne backward foot by foot they still disdained

to fly; but fell where they stood, and died fighting.

But Flamininus, who had the true eye, the true inspiration of a great

general, ever the keenest and the clearest in the most direful turmoil

of the headiest fight, had marked, like Wellington at Talavera, a gap in

the enemy’s array.

Leaving his broken right wing to its fate, he rushed, confident at one

glance of victory, to the head of his centre, and charged, with his

elephants in front, by a rapid oblique movement, full upon the left wing

of the phalanx, as it mounted the heights in marching, rather than in

fighting, order. Here, before it could form, almost before it could

level its long pikes, it was pierced in a hundred places at once; and,

in almost less time than is required to describe it, the fierce Spanish

broadswords of the legionaries, fleshed in its vitals, had reduced it to

a weltering mass of inextricable confusion and almost unheard of

carnage.

The Roman left, cheered by the triumph of their comrades, rallied upon

themselves and returned to the charge; and simultaneously an unordered

movement of a tribune of the soldiers, which should have rendered him

immortal, although his name has not survived, decided the victory, as

completely as did a like inspiration, on the part of the unrewarded

Kellerman, decide that of Marengo.

This nameless tribune—a shame that he should be nameless—when the

enemy’s left and centre fled, wheeled with a mere handful of men round

the rear of Philip’s right, and, gaining the very summit from which he

had descended, at the moment when the Romans rallied in its face, fell

like a thunderbolt on the unguarded rear of its yet unbroken masses.

In any event, a rear or flank attack upon the phalanx, so ponderous a

column that it could even when unassailed with difficulty form a new

face, was perilous; here it was fatal.

The battle was ended as by a thunder-clap. Of the Macedonians eight

thousand fell in the field, five thousand laid down their arms; their

camp was taken, but before the victors entered it, it had been sacked by

the Ætolians; their king, not tarrying to burn his papers at Larissa,

fled without drawing bridle through Tempe into Macedonia.

Of the Romans seven hundred lay dead in their ranks on the field; so

true is Sallust’s apophthegm, that audacity is as a rampart to the

soldier, and flight more perilous than battle.

It was not a battle only that was won, but a war that was ended.

Yet never was a battle won which was so nearly lost, except Marengo;

which it in several points resembles.

In the first place, like Marengo, it was in fact not one, but two

battles, in which the victors of the first were the vanquished of the

second.

In the second place, like Marengo, its last and crowning success was due

to an unordered, self-originating, charge of a subordinate officer, with

a mere handful of men on the flank or rear of a victorious column.

But in this, unlike Marengo, it was the eagle eye, the prompt decision,

and the lightning-like execution of the general in chief, not the shrewd

observation of a second in command, that redeemed the half lost battle,

and changed the pæans of an exulting conqueror into groans of anguish

and despair.

With Cynoscephalæ, terminates the splendor of Flamininus’ military

career, but not the splendor of his life.

Philip at once sued for peace, and the general, aware that a war had

broken out between Antiochus, King of Syria, and Rome, and dreading

Philip’s co-operation with him, if driven to despair, at once granted

him terms.

He withdrew all his garrisons from Greece; delivered all his fleet, with

the exception of ten galleys; paid an indemnification of a thousand

talents, for the expenses of the war; gave up his son Demetrius as a

hostage, for his faithful observance of the conditions; and, to his

credit be it spoken, ever continued true in his allegiance to the

Romans.

At first, apprehending trouble from Antiochus, the Senate determined to

keep Roman garrisons in the three strongholds of Chalcis, Corinth, and

Demetrius; but so loud were the complaints of the Greeks in general, of

the Æolians in particular, and so consistent did they appear to

Flamininus, that he used the great personal weight and influence he had

gained with the people and the Senate, not to obtain personal honors,

wealth or distinction, but to procure the complete liberation of Greece,

and the withdrawal of every foreign soldier from her confines.

The proudest hour of his life, save one, was when he sat in his curule

chair at the Isthmian games, a spectator of the show, and heard the

Roman trumpet-blast command attention, and the Roman herald make

proclamation—“The Senate, and the Imperator, Titus Quinctius, having

subdued King Philip and the Macedonians, give to the Corinthians,

Locrians, Phocians, Eubæans, Achæans, Pthiotians, Magnetians,

Thessalians, and Perrhæbians, liberty, immunity from garrisons, immunity

from tribute, and the right of self-government, according to their own

constitutions.”

At first men heard not, or hearing, believed not, for very joy, that

such happiness could be; and they called upon the herald to repeat his

proclamation.

Then such a shout arose as rang from sea to sea across the Isthmus. The

like of it was never heard before or afterward in Greece. And what has

often been said hyperbolically, to lend grandeur to descriptions of the

human voice, was then actually seen to happen;[18] for crows winging

their way over the amphitheatre fell into the arena, stunned by the

concussion of the air.

As one man, the whole theatre stood up. There was no more talk of the

combatants. Every one spoke of Flamininus, every one would touch the

hand of the champion, the liberator of Greece.

I said the proudest day of his life, save one. For he had one prouder.

Two years longer he tarried among the Greeks, as commissioner to see the

treaties carried out; and for a short time he fell into odium with the

people he had liberated, for that, when he was warring against Nabis,

the cruel tyrant and usurper of Lacedæmon, and might have dethroned him,

he made peace, and suffered him to retain his blood-bought dominion.

Some were so base as to attribute this to jealousy of Philipœmen. His

own statement, and our knowledge of his character bears out that

statement, asserts that he could not destroy Nabis, without destroying

Sparta, and that in preference to destroying Sparta, he suffered Nabis

to go free.

But when he left the shores of Hellas, after interceding twenty times,

and mediating successfully between the Greeks and his successors, the

Ætolians much desired to make him some great gift, that should prove

their great love and veneration. But the known integrity of the man

deterred them; for it was notorious that he would receive naught that

savored of a bribe.

At last they bethought them. There were in Greece twelve hundred Roman

citizens, who had been captives to Hannibal, and by him sold as slaves.

Their sad case had of late been sadly aggravated, as slaves themselves

and bondmen, they all saw their countrymen, many their kinsmen, some

their brethren or their sons, free, conquerors, and hailed as saviors of

the land, to which they were enslaved.

Titus had grieved for them deeply; but he was too poor to ransom them,

too just to take them by the strong hand from their lawful owners. So

the Ætolians ransomed them at five minæ[19] the head; and, as he was on

the point of setting sail, brought them down to the wharf in a body, and

presented them to him, the gift of liberated Greece. “A gift worthy,”

says Plutarch, “of a great man, and a lover of his country.”

A gift, say I, which none would have offered but to—what is far greater

than a great—a good man. A gift which proves alike the character of the

givers, and the receiver. An honor, as few gifts are, to both.

I care not that in Flamininus’ triumph those twelve hundred ransomed

Romans, of their own free will, walked with shaven heads and white caps,

as manumitted slaves, and that the people of Rome had no eyes for the

hostage prince, or the barbaric gold, or the strange Macedonian

armor—had no eyes for Flamininus himself, but only for the twelve

hundred manumitted Romans.

But I do care that the Ætolians knew, from their knowledge of the man,

that there was one invaluable gift which it would gladden the heart of

the incorruptible of men to receive at their hands, richer than untold

gold, inestimable jewels, the priceless liberty of freeborn Romans.

It does not belong to the military career of Flamininus, but it does to

the history of his life, that in after days he was sent by the Senate

ambassador to Prusias, king of Bithynia, for the purpose of compelling

the surrender into their hands of the aged, exiled, down fallen

Hannibal; and that, rather than fall into those pitiless hands, which

never refrained the scourge and axe from the noblest foeman, the old man

had recourse to the

“Cannarum vindex et tanti sanguinis ultor,

Annulus.”[20]

Nor do I choose to pass it over in silence. Since it is to be remembered

that the highest pride of a Roman was to do his duty; and his duty was

whatever his country ordered. So that, however odious the task imposed,

and we know too much of this man’s character not to be sure that the

embassy to Prusias was odious, a consular of Rome had no choice but to

obey Rome’s bidding.

There was, moreover, much in the pertinacity with which Hannibal

journeyed from barbarous court to barbarous court, in the hope of

kindling a fire-brand for Rome’s conflagration, even after his own

country was prostrate beyond the chance of resurrection, to palliate if

not justify the rancor of Romans. The inextinguishable hater has no

right to complain if the hatred against himself be inextinguishable.

The last office held by Flamininus, was the censorship—the highest,

noblest, purest dignity in the gift of the state; and never—at least in

those days—bestowed on any but the noble and the pure. It was the

Corinthian capital to the career of the honored and honorable Roman

magistrate, and such was Titus Quinctius Flamininus.

After this he passes from our sight, and is heard of no more in history.

He was a great general, a great statesman; perhaps of the greatest.

But he was something more than a general, more than a statesman—he was

every inch a man.

-----

[2] We have been favored by Mr. Charles Scribner of New York, with the

advanced sheets of Mr. Herbert’s new work, “The Captains of the Roman

Republic,” from which we select the following spirited sketch of Titus

Quinctius Flamininus. We give it as our decided opinion that this work

will prove superior to its predecessor, “The Captains of the Old World.”

[3] “To spare the conquered and subdue the proud”—the former of which

she never did.

[4] Livy, xxxi. 34, 35.

[5] Col. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, i. 385.

[6] Plutarch, Vit. Flamini.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Livy, xxxiii. 8.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Leake. Travels in Northern Greece, vol, 1, p. 385.

[11] Plutarch. Flamininus 3.

[12] Plutarch, vit. Flaminini. IV. V. Livy, xxxii. 12.

[13] Livy, xxxii. 12.

[14] Leake. Travels in Northern Greece, i. 296.

[15] Livy, xxxii. 13.

[16] Livy, xxxii. 32.

[17] All the details of this action are from Polybius. Reliquiæ Lib.

xviii.; who is here singularly clear and vivid in his description.

[18] Plutarch, vita Flaminini, x.

[19] About twenty pounds sterling.

[20] The Ring, avenger of Cannæ and of so much blood.—_Juvenal. Satire

X._

An allusion to the poison, by which he died, and which he was said to

keep concealed in a ring.

* * * * *

OUR MINNIE’S DREAM.

BY A REVERIST.

Her dream is like this book-mark red,

Which has long lain buried

Within a hallowéd tome;

If to unfold the page, soul-bid,

Mark the contrast, all unsaid,

Of the fresh deep ruby—wed

To the fastness dear of home—

And the faded outside hue

Of a token all too true

From its claspéd cell to roam.

All that the idle world hath kenned

Is like the faded, visible end

Of that lore-lettered mark;

Dim, sadly paled its pristine hues,

In streaming through earth’s chilling dews,

Obedient to imperious muse.

The folded end, still perfect, bright,

In keeping here of household faith,

Awaits Heaven’s kindly angel, Death,

To open it to truer light.

* * * * *

SONNET.—PLEASURE.

BY WM. ALEXANDER.

Hues how fantastic dost thou still assume,

Deluding man, amid life’s sweetest scene,

Spreading o’er all his way gay, gorgeous green,

With fairest flowers, which but a moment bloom—

Like evening cloud which golden Sol hath decked,

All evanescent, fading soon away;

So, Pleasure! grasped, thou hastest to decay,

Bidding each rising hope in bud be checked—

In Eden, erst, truth-like didst thou appear.

Thy right hand holding sweets surpassing fair,

Till, with her sombre train sin entered there,

To drag man thence, an exile full of fear—

Farewell, false Pleasure! and again, farewell—

Thy guests, the Wise hath told us, “are in depths of hell.”

* * * * *

NELLY NOWLAN’S EXPERIENCE.

BY MRS. S. C. HALL.

“I broke off in my last without an ending, which I could not help; I am

not a bit more mistress of my own time than if I was a born lady, and

oh, aunt dear, but I _do_ pity them ladies—you’d never believe how hard

they work—not with their heads or their hands, but in a way twice as

bad. You think it hard enough to put on your things of a Sunday. Oh! if

you knew the dressing and undressing, the shopping, the driving round

and round and round in a place they call a park—where there’s no sign

of a mountain or any thing to raise the spirits—the visiting! not

having a bit of friendly talk with those they like, but wearing the life

and liveries off their servants, posting from house to house, and just

leaving little squares of _pasteboard_ at the doors.”

“‘Has Lady Jane Vivian never inquired how I am?’ asked my poor mistress.

“‘Never, Ma’am,’ I said.

“Well, she had a puzzled look on her face, and there it ended for

awhile.

“‘Ellen,’ she said again, a few days after, ‘Mrs. Brett tells me, Lady

Jane Vivian called every day, and left cards.’

“Well, I was fairly bothered about the cards.

“‘Sure, Ma’am,’ I said, ‘what would make her leave the cards here, we’re

no gamblers;’ this was when first I was own maid to my mistress—so she

smiled again, and said how it was I did not understand that ladies left

their names printed on pasteboard squares; and that was the same thing

as a visit. Well! I had my own thought of what a cold, unnatural thing

it was to send a square of pasteboard up to a poor sick lady, instead of

comforting her, with a bright smile and kind words, and all sorts of

cheerful discourse. But I supposed it was manners, and every people have

their own; and then she asked for the _cards_. Now, the mistress of the

house we lodged in, scrambled up every bit of them pasteboards with a

title, and stuck them round the looking-glass, in her little, dingy

back-parlor, for a nobility show. So I had to go and ask her to pick out

all the Lady Jane Vivians, which she did, and gave them with a toss of

her head, saying, ‘She did not want such a scrap of an ould maid’s title

for the matter of that, she had lords and dukes! calling on her, before

now.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘Calling on your lodgers,

you mean, ma’am,’ but I held my peace. Well! would you believe it? My

own mistress was as proud of them five bits of pasteboard, as I’d be of

five shillings! And she bade me bring her a fine chaney dish with a

small tea-party painted on it, up in the air and down on the earth,

beside a little railway, and little tufty houses one atop of the other,

and bells at the corners—a fine ancient dish it is, like nothing on the

earth or in the sea, which she says shows its imagination; well, she

takes every one of the cards up in her poor, thin, trembling fingers,

and then she rubs them clean and puts them right; the Misters and

Mistresses, and the young Misses all down below, and the Sirs and Lords

and Ladies on the top; mighty neat entirely to look at; and all the

time, the darling! she was railing at the vanity of the lodging-house

woman who wanted to show off the fine names, and never seemed to think

that she was doing the same thing; to be sure, she had a right to them,

and right is right; but the vanity, to my thinking, was all one. I had a

deal more to tell you about _that_ church—but _one who knows_ said, it

was fitter for me to hold my tongue; the reason is this, that it’s

better for us, you understand, to keep on never heeding them, and not to

put them in mind of what they are doing, and they will all walk, as easy

as any thing, back to the fine, true, ould, ancient church of Rome: they

call it _High Church_ now, but if they’re let alone, _one who knows_

says, they’ll soon be higher, on the highest pinnacle of St. Peter’s! so

all we have to say, aunt dear, is just good luck to every poor traveler

on the _right road_.

“Do you mind Mary Considine, who you used to call the blue-bell of the

Shannon? She was the beauty of the place, I have heard, when she married

her own first cousin, Ned Considine? don’t you also mind telling me how

cruel hard she was to be pleased; and how, after she had married him,

she said she intended taking a house, but changed her mind, and took

Ned, and was greatly disappointed in taking him, for he was very deaf?

“Well, who should I chance to find out but this very Mr. and Mrs.

Considine; and indeed it’s little remains of beauty she has now; the

country, or rather the town life, does not agree any how with beauty,

living as they do, at the back of ‘God speed,’ in a small court; though,

as you will see by’n bye, they have lashings[21] of money: they’ve one

son and a daughter. I met the young girl (she was born to them, I may

say, in their old age, a last rose of their summer) at mass, and I think

we knew each other by nature: my mistress gave me leave to run over and

see her, and when she came to me took great delight in her smiling,

innocent face, and the sweet voice I told her she had; and she sang some

of the Irish melodies like an angel, if you can think of an angel

singing any thing but holy psalms. And this young Mary is well brought

up, quite above the common; reading and writing is nothing to her; and

as to other accomplishments she’s wonderful; and can tell every fortune

out of a book, except her own! Now, among the many prides her mother has

gathered, the one that bothers Mary the most, is that she does not like

any body to think she is Irish; she thinks she _turns her tongue_ so

purty on the English, and as my poor mistress says (for she heard her at

it) with a brogue, a rale Cork brogue; not the same as our pretty,

delicate Leinster accent; but (as the mistress says) ‘a brogue strong

enough to carry St. Paul’s to St. Peter’s,’ and so I thought,

_particularly now, when it’s on the road_. My mistress says it’s quite

absurd to look at her courtesey; and when you talk to her of her

country, to hear her cry out—‘Why then, how did you know I was Irish?’

The Irish divert my poor mistress a great deal. She encourages me to

tell all about my country, and she has been more like a mother than a

lady to Mary Considine.

“But about poor Mary. She was overjoyed that her father and mother took

so to me, and, indeed, so was I, for the music of home is in Mary’s

sweet voice; and it is the next best thing to being in my own land, to

hear her sing ‘The Exile of Erin;’ and then, while the tears are wet on

my cheek, she tunes up ‘Shielan-a-guira,’ with a heart and a half; her

eyes are so beaming with light, that you wonder where the dark place is

in them, and yet it’s all the time a light in darkness. I can’t

discourse you now her features one by one, but altogether: the poor

Irish never pass her in the street without a blessing, or the English

without a stare—still I saw that Mary was far from happy. I have not

much time to watch or inquire, but I could not sleep for thinking of

her—Mrs. Considine’s mouth was full of the titles of the great quality

she’d see in the Park, and she traveled about with a book she called a

peerage, in her pocket, while poor Mary would show me the bits of

flowers she’d pick out of the grass, or bring my mistress a bunch of

violets from Covent Garden Market. As to her father, he hardly ever

stirs out, except to watch that his son, who has a situation at

Blackwall, does not spend his pence on an omnibus—he makes a fair god

of his money; how the priest gets over it I don’t know, for he’s the

greatest miser I ever heard of—a fair neager[22]—not like his

countrymen.

“Well, aunt; at last poor little Mary let me into the very heart of her

trouble. She was in love—in love with maybe you think some delicate

dandy chap of an Englishman; for Mary is very little—a fairy of a

thing, (God bless us!) that might pass for a real ‘fairy’ in her own

country—as thin as a willow-wand, as straight as a bullrush, but small,

you understand. I wanted her to tell me who it was, and she used to hide

her face and cry, and then look up, blushing like a rose among the

dew-drops. At last, she said she’d _show_ him to me next evening; she

was going to confession, and he would do the same, and meet her at the

door. So away they went. There were three or four young men at the door,

one with a sky-blue tie and a fine waistcoat. I was so sure _that was

him_, that I never looked at any one else; but she passed on, tossing

her head disdainfully at the blue tie.

“‘He’s not here,’ she whispered; and the little creature trembled on my

arm. She soon made a clean breast, and I waited, as I had leave to do;

the sky-blue tie waited also, but Mary was too quick for him, she darted

round the corner, while he was admiring his own shadow, thrown by the

full moon on the wall, and I after her.