is supported in front by a row of low columns, to three of which the beaks of ships are attached.

At the close of Pompey's campaigns in the East, in 62 B. C., he committed the government of all Syria, from the Euphrates to Egypt, into the hands of M. Aemilius Scaurus, who renewed the war against Aretas. This seeker for a throne quickly gave up the unequal contest and paid the Romans three hundred talents for peace. The conqueror on his return, being made curule aedile with P. Plautius Hypsaeus in 58, celebrated the public games with extraordinary magnificence, and issued money with the authority of the senate, in honor of himself and his colleague. One side shows a camel and King Aretas on his knees holding the rein, and with the right hand presenting an olive branch hung with suppliant fillets. Below we read REX ARETAS and above M. SCAVR. EX. Senatus consulto. The reverse has Jupiter with the thunder-bolt, in a swift quadriga-legends P.HYPSAE. AEDilis CVRulis-C. HYPSAE, COS. PREIVERNUM CAPTVM. The latter line relates to the capture of Privernum in 341 B. C. by the consul C. Plautius, and teaches us that his cognomen was Hypsaeus, while the prominence given to that remote and not very memorable event betrays the want of distinction in the family.

Another denarius of the Plautia gens alludes to an unrecorded victory. The legend of the obverse is A. PLAVTIVS. AEDilis CVRulis. senatus consulto, around a female head, adorned in an oriental manner with a turreted crown, and perhaps representing Ceres, the care of whose temple (Aedes) originally gave the Aediles their name. The reverse has the same device as the preceding coin, of a camel held by a man kneeling and offering an olive branch. But the name below is BACCHIVS IVDAEVS of whom no other historic record remains. There is no doubt, according to Eckhel, that when Pompey, by his general Scaurus, forced Aretas to sue for peace, he also by his general A. Plautius, dictated terms to Bacchius, apparently one of the Arabian dynasty, but a Jew by religion, which military success is commemorated on the money struck by Plautus as aedile.

The first triumvirate, which was already controlling the affairs of Rome, secured in the year of Scaurus' aedileship, the removal from Italy of the two leaders of the senate, Cicero and Cato. The latter was sent as Propraetor to Cyprus to check the power of Ptolemy, and the following quinarii seem to have been struck on his return after two years. The first has a female head with legend M. CATO PRO. PRraetore-reverse, Victory seated with a patera in the right, and a palm branch in the left hand; beneath VICTRIX. The other has simply м. CATO, with a boyish head, below which is a small scorpion;—reverse as the preceding. The device of these reverses may refer to the little temple of Victoria virgo dedicated by M. Porcius Cato, an ancestor of Uticensis, and may even be an image of the goddess herself. The proper date of the coins is claimed by some to be when Cato was engaged in Africa in the war against Cæsar, to which last period of the republic the following denarius of Q. Metellus undoubtedly belongs. On the reverse is an elephant, which may be either an allusion to the triumph of L. Caecilius Metellusin the first Punic war, when a hundred and twenty elephants were brought to Rome, or a symbol of Africa where the war was conducted by Quintus with Cato's active assistance, or a reference to his well known confidence in its military value. The initials Q. C. M. P. I., are interpreted by comparison with similar coins to mean Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius Imperator. This last title belonged to Metellus ex officio, but that of Pius was inherited. The obverse has a female head and near it a stork, which as a bird noted for its pietas, is appropriate to the agnomen of Metellus.

We have now come to the rise of the empire. In our review of the family coins of the republic, we have seen mementoes of campaigns, conquests and triumphs, as well as of political changes and the fortunes of their authors, sometimes indicated too obscurely to have been recognized without other history, yet illustrating in return the records which cast light upon them. They show the strength of the Roman family feeling. The men of later times never grew weary in cherishing the renown of their great ancestors, and deeds two centuries old are paraded

by pious descendants. The rigid aristocracy of birth, whose efforts to retain power had convulsed the commonwealth in earlier days, had yielded to an aristocrcy of wealth, but its spirit was perpetuated in the feelings of the people. The elements of the state were families rather than individuals, and throughout succeeding times no civilized land has been more distracted than Italy by the quarrels of family factions.

ART. III. THE POETIC ELEMENT IN HUMAN NATURE.

"The mind can make

Substance, and people planets of its own

With beings brighter than have been, and give

A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh."

POETRY is at once the most significant expression of human life, and the most characteristic part of a national literature. Congenial speech of the human soul, it is found wherever man has beheld beauty, admired heroism, felt the power of love, or aspired to immortality; and its utterances have purified the vision, fired enthusiasm, quickened sympathy, and inspired to high endeavor. It equally celebrates the glory and achievements of the past, and with glad prophecy declares the nobled dignity and excellence of the coming time. It is the language of youth awakening to the first vigor, joy and marvel of life and thought, and none the less of the higher thoughts, the mightier impulses, and the profounder longings of ripened age. All times, nations and individuals, own its sovereign sway, yield it glad and reverent homage, and find its ministry beneficent and exalting; and the few who have no appreciation of poetry, who often affect even to despise its magical power, not infrequently in moments of calmer reflection and stronger emotion, confess their sense of lacking appropriate speech, beautiful and most worthy of the human soul.

Facts are not the final end of human knowledge, nor is their acquisition the worthiest act of the human mind. When we have learned all of an object that our sense can give, when we have considered all its relations that our understanding can think, yet is the rational demand of our nature unsatisfied till imagination arises, and, as by a queenly right, waving away all our previous notions and perceptions, restores to us that object with every liniament, form and expression, glorified in its own light. Then our soul is nourished. Our knowledge gave us pleasure, this transformation gives delight; that presented a broader view, this a new and sublimer one; that increased our

thoughts, this our life. That is the most excellent knowledge for man which makes him most fully to know and possess himself. For manhood, character, these are the things we want; not wealth, not facts, not form nor mere power. These are but trappings, ornaments only when superadded to a noble character, and man is forever better than anything you can put upon him; always conferring honor rather than receiving it from surroundings. Just here poetry performed its noblest office. Showing to man what is better than he possesses, it fired him to its eager pursuit. It claims with a sublime courage all conceivable good for the human soul, as its rightful portion. Man can think nothing so good but presently—in a year, in a century, in an age-he shall attain to the summit of his thought, and he may well wait on so regal a hope. This is the glory of the ideal, that it is like the horizon, forever beautiful, but forever beyond our reach, giving us all the good we sought, but, receding as we pursue it, so widens the prospect and heightens the beauty that new desire keeps us still pursuing.

Poetry is the language of idealism. Its conceptions are immortal because it passes out of the realm of facts, and lifts its calm brow and clear deep eye up to those fair imperishable ideas which so thickly illumine our early life, and which shine through all our years with a quiet, cheering radiance, till they go out in Heaven's own light. History reports what man has done, what thoughts he has cherished, what dignity he has attained, what aspirations he has felt, and in what direction he moved. Poetry declares what man may do, what heights he may scale, what wastes reclaim, what realms explore, what conquests achieve, and what are the abysmal capabilities of his producing life. Memory brings before us in panoramic display, the grand and affecting scenes of history, and awakens admiration and enthusiasm. Imagination causes to pass before our eyes, in splendid procession, the glory, beauty and love, which abiding in the human heart first speak out in poetry, and thus kindles aspiration and faith. Thus in our most inspired moments, when exalted emotions or thoughts crowd for utterance, we speak by symbols, figures, comparisons, through the 20

VOL. II.