icicle! He an icicle! By Jove, Miss Sunshine should have had a glimpse into his past!

"You here, Randolph? Why, you wrote me word last time you were going yachting to the Levant. It is wonderful to see you in your own county. Are you thinking that il faut vous ranger at last?"

Randolph swore again under his moustaches, and glanced impatiently at Sunshine. He lifted his hat to Mrs. Rocksilver, and took her proffered Jouvins as she floated up to him-a pretty, affected, bold-eyed, dashinglooking woman, of eight-and-twenty or thirty.

"I thought you said you only knew her slightly?" said Sunshine, with a lift of her contemptuous pencilled eyebrows, as Mrs. Rocksilver passed on with old Lord Saltire, at whose house she was staying, giving Gordon a very familiar nod, smile, and au revoir.

"Did I? Well, what of that ?”

intimate ones.

"Why, that your slight acquaintances seem very You write to her, and she calls you Randolph," said Miss Sunshine, quickly, who, having had his exclusive attention for the last two months, could have slain any other human being who got a word from him.

"Oh! that's nothing. In some sets one soon becomes familiar, and one has to write to lots of people one doesn't care a button about. Her mail-phaeton horses were not broken well enough for her to drive, and I offered to break them for her, and had to write about them. Won't you come and have an ice? We can't talk pleasantly with all these people about us."

Tête-à-tête over glace à la vanille, he did talk, very pleasantly, too; but Sunshine was disquieted, like a brood of partridges at sight of a pointer's nose among the turnips. She would have liked to call him Randolph herself, and allow nobody to do so besides. That story of the phaeton horses didn't quite satisfy her, and she hated Mrs. Rocksilver instantly and vehemently, being a young lady of very hot and rapid impulses, accustomed to treasure Randolph's notes of acceptation of the Audley Court invitation as if they had been deeds of gift to all the money in Barclay's.

AUGUSTUS CÆSAR: HIS COURT AND COMPANIONS.

A FORTNIGHT after the assassination of Julius Cæsar, a delicate and sickly-looking youth the dictator's grand-nephew and adopted heir, appeared in Rome, at the critical moment when the murder of Cæsar had spread terror and confusion, and when Antony had roused the Roman people to indignation against the conspirators. Landing from Apollonia, an adventurer, Caius Octavius-for it is of him we speak-had not long arrived in Rome when he became a hero; gained statesmen and officers to his interest, and divided with Antony, the consul, the favour of the people; and entered on that marvellous career which, after long years of civil war, and tyranny, and bloodshed, ended in the dissolution of the republic itself, and in his being hailed by the grateful senate and people of Rome, Augustus, Emperor, and Father of his country.

It was in that memorable year-the six hundred and ninetieth of the city-in which Cicero's administration as consul ended, and in which Rome was preserved from destruction and liberty thought to be more firmly established than ever, that Caius Octavius was born. The family of Atia, his mother (the niece of Julius Cæsar), had given many senators to Rome; but although the Octavii were a wealthy family of Velitræ, his father seems to have been the first who obtained admission to the senate. His mother bestowed great pains on the education of the youthful Octavius, and is said to have transmitted to him much of her purity of diction and grace of manners. His own natural gifts seemed to promise fruits worthy of her care; but no one could have supposed, when at the age of eighteen he entered on public life, that he was destined to connect his name with every event of importance in the annals of the world for the next fifty-eight years, and to transform the Republic into the Empire of Rome.

Of course it would not be possible to give in an article like the present the story of a reign so eventful as that of Augustus-a reign which merits more attention than any other in the Roman history, or to trace in succession the various incidents which, during that long period, changed the destiny of nations and the aspect of the world. We do not here profess to write his life or analyse his character; nor can we attempt to depict more than some artistic and literary aspects of a court that was adorned by the illustrious band of friends who made "the Augustan era" Rome's culminating point in art, and poetry, and splendour. It was under the encouragement of Augustus that the lyric Horace wrote his matchless poems, and the tasteful Virgil studied and polished his immortal compositions; in his reign Tibullus was writing his refined elegies, and Ovid his flowing numbers; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the historian, had come to Rome; Strabo was writing some of his works; and Livy was concluding his history.

The mother of Octavius seems to have dreaded his accepting Julius Cæsar's adoption of him as a son, as if she foresaw that in order to become the avenger and successor of Cæsar, he would grasp the consular office, and engage in a proscription of the best and noblest of his countrymen. If the imperial power of the great man whose name he now assumed

was really at this period the object of the young Cæsar's ambition, he must have seen that his youth and want of military experience, not to mention the power of Antony and the strength of the friends of liberty, forbade all hope of his immediate attainment of imperial authority, and warned him, at all events, to bide his time. He had the prudence to assume-as the nephew of another great soldier and emperor in our own times has assumed the appearance of fidelity to a republic, and for a time he seemed to be guided by the counsels of Cicero, whose patriotism was well known to be inflexible.

We who find instruction and delight in the works of that illustrious man, and justly appreciate the moral grandeur of his character, do not wonder at the influence he possessed in public affairs, and can estimate the importance of his friendship to the young Octavius. Cicero had twice saved Rome, the Senate, and the Commonwealth; the integrity of his patriotism was only equalled by the splendour of his eloquence and learning; and the sweetness of temper and charm of manners that gave him such power over all who approached him were adorned by purity of life and instinctive love of virtue.

Octavius was placed in a situation of the greatest difficulty amid the intrigues of party that followed on the events of the Ides of March; but he acted with an art and prudence that neutralised the hostility of Antony and baffled the oldest statesmen of Rome. Cæsar's name was still a charm to the soldiery and to all whom he had promoted; his cause was espoused by all who were adventurers; and the commonalty and populace, eager for novelty, were accordingly ranged on the side of the youthful soldier, who styled himself "Son of the Deified," and "Avenger of Cæsar," while most of the patricians and men of the equestrian dignity stood by the old principles of the Commonwealth. Those writers who have taken an unfavourable view of his character, represent that at this juncture he dissembled his real aim, seeing his best chance for future empire in sharing power with others until he could grasp the whole. Be this as it may, Octavius Cæsar, notwithstanding that he had been mortally opposed to Antony, joined him and Lepidus in the ominous "Triumvirate for Regulating the Commonwealth," from whose usurpation such 66 woes unnumbered" sprung. And now began the terrible proscription in which each triumvir sacrificed even his own friends to the vengeance of his colleagues. A veritable Reign of Terror brooded over Rome, in which the soldiery were to become the instruments of public ruin. The best blood of her citizens was sacrificed in the long and cruel struggle that ensued; but the proscription had not a more noble victim than Cicero himself. Octavius, as his apologists affirm, strongly endeavoured to preserve him, but his death was held a necessary sacrifice to the common interest of the three, for his virtue warned them that he never could be the friend of tyrants, and his authority was such that an enemy could not be suffered to retain it. As we are not now writing the history of this short but sanguinary tyranny, it will suffice to say that while proscription and plunder were occupying the triumvirate at Rome, the successes of Brutus and Cassius-the Agamemnon and Achilles of the Roman legions-in Thrace, obliged Octavius Cæsar and his colleagues to encounter the champions of the republic in the field. He was doomed to witness the defeat of Julius Cæsar's veterans in their naval

encounter with the forces of Sextus Pompey, the scene of which was the bay between Messina and Reggio, that became memorable in English naval history for the defeat of the Spanish fleet by Admiral Byng. Octavius then proceeded to join Antony among the barren hills of Macedon. The strength of the Roman republic was there collected under Brutus and Cassius; the representatives of patricians who had been sacrificed for their patriotism had joined the camp; and the Oriental allies of the old Commonwealth, each bringing their national weapons-there were slingers from Minorca, light horsemen from Numidia, and archers from Crete-were under arms in its defence.

The issue to be decided at Philippi was, whether the laws should resume their majesty, the senate its reverence, and the people their power; but, after the second battle on that memorable field, Antony and Octavius Cæsar found themselves masters of the empire. Octavius had very narrowly escaped after his defeat on the first encounter, for he had to spend three nights hid in a morass in a worse condition than Charles the Second's in the oak after the battle of Worcester. Antony, on his return from Pharsalia, carried beyond all bounds of decorum by the flow of fortune, appeared at Rome in a chariot drawn by lions-the first spectacle of the kind that the Romans had ever seen; and the subjection of those fierce animals to the yoke was looked upon (as Pliny says) as an omen of breaking the spirit of the Roman people. Antony and Octavius Cæsar, after their victory over Brutus, shared the empire, Antony taking for his portion the rich eastern provinces from the Adriatic to the Euphrates, and leaving Italy, Gaul, and Spain to his great rival.

Octavius Cæsar was now free to listen to the advice of counsellors older and wiser than himself; and while his natural sagacity (as Tytler has remarked) enabled him to discern the character that was best fitted to gain the popular regard, his genius and versatility of temper enabled him to assume it. To his credit, he soon began to repose unlimited confidence in Mæcenas; and there is no doubt that his success and reformation and future greatness were essentially due to the counsels of that wise and faithful minister. Mæcenas, who boasted the lineage of the old Tuscan kings, was a man of noble and enlightened mind, and had sincerely at heart the welfare of the Roman people. Aiming at the salvation of Octavius Cæsar, and of Rome by his means, Mæcenas at first disguised the statesman in the man of pleasure, and he succeeded so well that his good counsels directed public affairs, and dictated salutary legis lation as soon as the city was delivered from the confiscations and the military violence that followed the return of the victorious legions.

Those confiscations led to an incident which has an interest for every age, inasmuch as they were the occasion of Virgil being made known to Octavius Cæsar. A centurion had seized his patrimony; and Pollio and Gallus-themselves poets as well as statesmen-anxious to protect genius in the person of the young poet of Mantua, took him to Mæcenas, then governor of Rome. Mæcenas presented him to Octavius, who reinstated him in his paternal fields upon the Mincio, little conscious that his protection of Virgil was destined to procure for the world immortal works of genius, and to surround his own name with its most unfading honours, So, too, although Virgil's friend Pollio took a prominent part in the public affairs of his day, was a patriot, an orator, a poet, and a lover of

learning, it is as the protector of Virgil and Horace that he has acquired his more lasting fame. To him Virgil addressed his well-known Birthday Ode; and Horace, some years afterwards, commemorates him as oracle of the senate and supporter of the state, and (in the first Ode of the Second Book) presents him shining with the honours of the Dalmatian triumph.

Virgil was about seven years older than Octavius Cæsar, and was at this time in his thirtieth year. At Naples, which having been a Grecian colony, retained much of the manners and language of its Athenian founders, he seems to have acquired that taste for the polished literature of Greece of which his works afford continual examples; but after the restoration of his patrimony he resided chiefly at the capital, in favour not only with Maecenas but with Octavius himself, and enjoying the friendship of the learned men who then surrounded the great minister. It would seem that Virgil produced his celebrated Eclogues soon after the restoration of his paternal fields. He is said to have applied himself to pastoral composition at the suggestion of Pollio, and to have taken the Sicilian poetry of Theocritus for his example. At all events, we may imagine how welcome rural images and pictures of the days of innocence must have been to statesmen and officers wearied by scenes of military usurpation and the storms of civil war.

Poetry and literature had not then become popular, and indeed are said to have stolen on the Romans against their will. Their frugal, conquering, and laborious life had been almost as incompatible with literature as with luxury. But even before "the Augustan era," the stage, and the encouragement given by eminent men to learning, greatly influenced the public taste; and from the time of the second war with Carthage, the martial Romans are said to have owned the nobler influence of the Muses. At the time, however, of Virgil's introduction to the heir of Cæsar, and for several years afterwards, the two greatest Roman poets (Cinna and Calidius, who are mentioned by Catullus and Cicero) were men whose names are now scarcely known even to scholars, and even in his lifetime Virgil's fame quite outshone that of his predecessors.

Soon after he had acquired the friendship of Mæcenas, Virgil and his friend Varius showed the minister some early poems of another favourite of the muse and coheir of fame-the youthful Horace. His learning, wit, and manners so recommended him to Mæcenas, that ere many months had passed, Horace, then aged about twenty-six, became his familiar friend, and his introduction to Octavius Cæsar, who was about two years younger than himself, soon followed. Most important were its results. Horace had been made a military tribune by Brutus, and was present at the battle of Philippi, but was more inclined to court the Muses' favour than that of Mars. Fortunately for posterity, he escaped shipwreck on his return from the East, and by the aid of Mæcenas obtained a pardon for having borne arms under Brutus. Although a zealous friend, he loved ease and literary leisure, and being of convivial disposition, and fond of good company, and possessed of great amenity of temper and powers of pleasing, his society was much valued, and he soon acquired the esteem of the greatest men in Rome, including Octavius himself. In a letter written to Horace, in commendation of one of his writings, Cæsar expresses his wish that he had been introduced in the dialogue, so that he might appear in it to futurity. "Are you afraid,"