fire to their houses and villages a great way round, returned to the camp. The same day ambassadors came from the enemy to Cæsar, to sue for peace. Cæsar doubled the number of hostages he had before imposed on them, and ordered them to be sent over to him into Gaul, because, the equinox coming on, and his ships being leaky, he thought it not prudent to put off his return till winter. A fair wind offering, he set sail a little after midnight, and arrived safe in Gaul. Two of his transports, not being able to reach the same port with the rest, were driven into a haven a little lower in the country. Only two of the British states sent hostages into Gaul, the rest neglecting to perform the conditions of the treaty. For these successes a thanksgiving of twenty days was decreed by the Senate. BOADICEA. BY WILLIAM COWPER. [WILLIAM COWPER, English poet and letter-writer, was born in 1731 and died in 1800. Always acutely sensitive and physically delicate, ill-treatment by "fagging" at school aggravated this into later insanity, from attacks of which he suffered all his life; he could not undergo the strain of the most quiet methods of earning a living, and subsisted on the charity of relatives, and at last on a pension. His best known works are hymns, "The Task,” "John Gilpin's Ride," other small poems, a translation of Homer, and a collection of charming letters.] WHEN the British warrior queen, Sought with an indignant mien Counsel of her country's gods, Sage beneath the spreading oak Full of rage and full of grief. "Princess! if our aged eyes Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, 'Tis because resentment ties All the terrors of our tongues. "Rome shall perish-write the word "Rome, for empire far renowned, "Other Romans shall arise, Heedless of a soldier's name, Sounds, not arms, shall win the prize, Harmony the path to fame. "Then the progeny that springs From the forests of our land, Armed with thunder, clad with wings, Shall a wider world command. "Regions Cæsar never knew Such the bard's prophetic words, She, with all a monarch's pride, "Ruffians, pitiless as proud, Heaven awards the vengeance due: Empire is on us bestowed, Shame and ruin wait on you." CORRESPONDENCE OF CICERO. (Translation of G. E. Jeans.) FROM QUINTUS METELLUS CELER IN CISALPINE GAUL to CICERO AT ROME, EARLY IN B.C. 62. [It was usual for a consul to address the people from the rostra on laying down his office. But on Cicero's proposing to do so, one of the new tribunes, Quintus Metellus Nepos, the agent of Pompeius, interposed his veto on the ground that he "had put Roman citizens to death without trial." Cicero retorted with an oration entitled "Metellina." This produced the following letter from the brother of Nepos, acting proconsul in Cisalpine Gaul.] I TRUST this will find you in health. I had certainly supposed that mutual regard, as well as our reconciliation, would have secured me from being attacked and ridiculed in my absence, and my brother Metellus from being persecuted by you in respect of his rights and property, for a mere word. Even if he found but little protection in the respect due to him, yet surely the exalted rank of our family, or my own services to your order and to the state, might have proved an adequate defence. I see now that he has been entrapped, and I have been neglected by the very men in whom such conduct was least becoming. The result is that I, the governor of a province, the general of an army, nay, actually engaged in the conduct of a war, am wearing the garb of sorrow. But since you have thus deliberately acted in defiance alike of all reason and of the courtesy of former times, you must not be surprised if you have cause to rue it. I used to hope that you were not so lightly attached to me and mine; still; for my part, neither the slight to our family nor the injuries any one may inflict upon me shall ever alienate me from the patriotic cause. CICERO'S REPLY TO THE PRECEDING. Allow me to express my good wishes for the prosperity of yourself and your army. Your letter to me says you had supposed that mutual regard and our reconciliation would have secured you from attack and ridicule on my part. Now what may be the meaning of this, I fail to see quite clearly. I suspect, however, that some one may VOL. V. - - 13 have informed you how I, when insisting in the Senate that a considerable party still felt some bitterness at my having been the instrument of saving the country, stated that you had consented, at the request of some relations whom you could not well refuse, to suppress the encomiums you had intended to honor me with in the Senate. In saying this, however, I added that you and I had shared the duty of saving the constitution; for while my part was to defend the capital from intrigues at home and intestine treason, yours was to guard Italy from open attack and secret conspiracy; but that this alliance of ours for so great and glorious a work had been strained by your relations, who, though I had been the means of procuring you a most important and distinguished charge, were afraid of allowing you to pay me any portion of regard in return. As these words of mine showed how much I had looked forward to what you would say, and how entirely I was disappointed, my argument seemed to excite a little amusement, and was followed by a certain amount of laughter, not at you, but rather at my own disappointment, and because I was acknowledging so naïvely and openly that I had eagerly looked forward to being eulogized by you. And surely what I said cannot but be considered complimentary to you if even in the fullest splendor of my renown and achievements I still longed to have some confirmation of this from your own lips. And as to your reference to our "mutual regard," I know not what you consider reciprocity in friendship. To me it seems to mean that friendly feeling is as freely rendered as it is expected. In my own case, if I affirm that for your sake I have allowed my claim to your province to be passed over, I shall perhaps seem to you to be trifling with words; for selfinterest really brought about this resolution, and every day I reap therefrom additional fruit and satisfaction. What I do affirm is this that from the moment I had declined the province in public, I began to cast about how I could best throw it into your hands. As to the balloting between you and the others I say nothing: I merely wish to suggest a surmise that nothing whatever which my colleague did therein was without my full cognizance. Look at what followed; at the promptness with which I convoked the Senate that very day when the balloting was over, and the ample terms I must have used in your favor when you yourself told me that my speech not only paid a high compliment to you, but was very disparaging to your colleagues. Nay, the very decree of the Senate passed that day is couched in such terms that as long as it remains extant my services to you cannot possibly be ignored. Then, again, I must beg you to recollect how after your departure I spoke about you in the Senate, how I addressed public meetings and how I corresponded with you; and when you have taken all these things into account, then I must ask you to judge for yourself whether you can fairly say that your late demonstration of coming to Rome was meeting me in a "mutual" spirit. With reference to what you say about a "reconciliation" between us, I do not understand why you should speak of reconciliation where there has never been an interruption of friendship. As to your brother Metellus not deserving, as you say, to be exposed to attacks from me and all for a single word, I must ask you first of all to believe that I strongly sympathize with your motives in this, and the kindly feeling shown in your brotherly affection, but then to pardon me if for my country's good I have ever opposed your brother; for in patriotism I yield not even to the most ardent of mankind. Nay more, if it prove that I have but been defending my own position against a cruelly unjust attack he himself made upon me, you may well be satisfied that I do not make a personal complaint to you of your brother's injustice to me. For when I had ascertained that he was deliberately aiming a blow delivered with the whole weight of his position as tribune in order to crush me, I applied to your wife Claudia [sister of the notorious Clodius] and your sister Mucia, whose liking for me, owing to my intimacy with Pompeius, I had often tested, to deter him from the wrong he proposed doing me. In spite of this, as I know you must have heard, on the last day of the year he put upon me-the consul who had saved the Republic - an insult which the vilest citizen in the most beggarly office was never yet exposed to; actually debarring me when laying down my office from the privilege of a farewell address. Yet this insult of his resulted in a signal honor to myself; for as he would make no concession except that I might take the oath, I pronounced aloud the truest and noblest of oaths, and as loudly the people in answer solemnly attested that I had sworn this truly. Yet though I had received this signal affront, on that very day I sent an amicable message to Metellus by our common |