You have heard those tales; shall I tell you | And the hidden thoughts of the bygone days one A greater and better than all? Looked out to answer his steadfast gaze. Have you heard of Him whom the heavens Gran as she was long years ago. adore, Before whom the hosts of them fallHow he left the choirs and anthems above For earth, in its wailings and woes, To suffer the shame and pain of the cross, And die for the life of his foes? O Prince of the noble! O Sufferer divine! What sorrow and sacrifice equal to thine? 'A bonnie lass' were the words they said When they hung the veil o'er the young bride's head." A hush fell over the eager tone As she mused a while on the days long flown, And a dreamlight shone in the tear-dimmed. sight As she looked afar in the fireside light. Have you heard this tale-the best of them He, watching her face with a childish awe, With honest heart the deception saw, "I didn't say 'bonny,' but 'bony,' gran.' Till the sparks rushed out in scarlet show- | And his hand forbore to smite the ore, That the land was red with the blood they Love born in hours of joy and mirth The spear and the sword for men whose joy It looks beyond the clouds of time Is to slay their fellow-man!" And for many a day old Tubal Cain Sat brooding o'er his woe, And through death's shadowy portal, Made by adversity sublime; By faith and hope, immortal. BERNARD BARTON. FABIUS MAXIMUS AND HANNIBAL. HEN the Romans lost the this declaration : 66 Romans, we have lost a great battle, our army is cut in pieces, and Flaminius the consul is slain; think, therefore, what is to be done for your safety." The same commotion which a furious wind causes in the ocean did these words of the prætor produce in so vast a multitude. In the first consternation they could not fix upon anything, but at length all agreed that affairs required the direction of an absolute power, which they called the dictatorship, and that a man should be fixed upon for it who would exercise it with steadiness and intrepidity; that such a man was Fabius Maximus, who had a spirit and dignity of manners equal to so great a command, and besides was of an age in which the vigor of the body is sufficient to execute the purposes of the mind and courage is tempered with prudence. Pursuant to these resolutions, Fabius was chosen dictator, and he appointed Lucius Minutius his general of the horse. But first he desired permission of the Senate to make use of a horse when in the field. This was forbidden by an ancient law, either because they placed their greatest strength in the infantry, and therefore chose that the commander-inchief should be always posted among them, or else because they would have the dictator, whose power in all other respects was very great, and indeed arbitrary, in this case at least appear to be dependent upon the people. In the next place, Fabius, willing to show the high authority and grandeur of his office in order to make the people more tractable and submissive, appeared in public with twenty-four lictors carrying the fasces before him; and when the surviving consul met him, he sent one of his officers to order him to dismiss his lictors and the other ensigns of his employment, and to join him as a private man. Then, beginning with an act of religion-which is the best of all beginningsand assuring the people that their defeats. were not owing to the cowardice of the soldiers, but to the general's neglect of the sacred rites and auspices, he exhorted them to entertain no dread of the enemy, but by extraordinary honors to propitiate the gods. Not that he wanted to infuse into them a spirit of superstition, but to confirm their valor by piety, and to deliver them from every other fear by a sense of the divine | my's horse, he took care to encamp above protection. On that occasion he consulted them on high and mountainous places. several of those mysterious books of the When they sat still, he did the same; sybils which contained matters of great when they were in motion, he showed use to the state, and it is said that some himself upon the heights at such a disof the prophecies found there perfectly tance as not to be obliged to fight against agreed with the circumstances of those his inclination, and yet near enough to keep times; but it was not lawful for him to them in perpetual alarm, as if, amidst his divulge them. However, in full assembly arts to gain time, he intended every moment he vowed to the gods a ver sacrum-that is, to give them battle. These dilatory proall the young which the next spring should ceedings exposed him to contempt among the produce, on the mountains, the fields, the Romans in general, and even in his own army. rivers and meadows, of Italy from the goats, The enemy, too, excepting Hannibal, thought the swine, the sheep and the cows. He like him a man of no spirit. He alone was senwise vowed to exhibit the great games in sible of the keenness of Fabius and of the honor of the gods, and to expend upon those manner in which he intended to carry on the games three hundred and thirty-three thou- war, and therefore was determined, if possisand sesterces, three hundred and thirty-three ble, either by stratagem or force, to bring him denarii, and one third of a denarius, which to a battle, concluding that otherwise the sum in our Greek money is eighty-three thou- Carthaginians must be undone, since they sand five hundred and eighty-three drachmas could not decide the matter in the field, where and two oboli. What his reason might be they had the advantage, but must gradually for fixing upon that precise number is not wear away and be reduced to nothing, when easy to determine, unless it were on account the dispute was only who should be superior of the perfection of the number three, as in men and money. Hence it was that he being the first of odd numbers, the first of exhausted the whole art of war, like a skilplurals, and containing in itself the first dif- ful wrestler, who watches every opportunity ferences and the first elements of all numbers. to lay hold of his adversary. Sometimes he Fabius, having taught the people to repose advanced and alarmed him with the apprethemselves on acts of religion, made them hensions of an attack; sometimes by marchmore easy as to future events. For his own ing and countermarching he led him from part, he placed all his hopes of victory in place to place, hoping to draw him from his himself, believing that Heaven blesses men plan of caution. But, as he was fully perwith success on account of their virtue and suaded of its utility, he kept immovable to prudence; and therefore he watched the mo- his resolution. Minutius, the general of the tions of Hannibal, not with a design to give horse, gave him, however, no small trouble him battle, but by length of time to waste by his unseasonable courage and heat, hahis spirit and vigor, and gradually to destroy ranguing the army and filling them with a him by means of his superiority in men and furious desire to come to action and a vain money. To secure himself against the ene- confidence of success. As soon as Hannibal was entered into this valley, Fabius, availing himself of his knowledge of the country, seized the narrow outlet and placed in it a guard of four thousand men. The main body of his army he posted to advantage on the surrounding hills, and with the lightest and most active of his troops fell upon the enemy's rear, put their whole army in disorder, and killed about eight hundred of them. Thus the soldiers were brought to despise | call Vulturnus. The adjacent country is surFabius and by way of derision to call him rounded by mountains, except only a valley the pedagogue of Hannibal, while they ex- that stretches out to the sea. Near the sea the tolled Minutius as a great man and one that ground is very marshy and full of large banks acted up to the dignity of Rome. This led of sand, by reason of the overflowing of the Minutius to give a freer scope to his arro- river. The sea is there very rough, and the gance and pride, and to ridicule the dictator coast almost impracticable. for encamping constantly upon the mountains. -"as if he did it on purpose that his men might more clearly behold Italy laid waste with fire and sword." And he asked the friends of Fabius "whether he intended to take his army up to heaven, as he had bid adieu to the world below, or whether he would screen himself from the enemy with clouds and fogs." When the dictator's friends brought him an account of these aspersions and exhorted him to wipe them off by risking a battle, "In that case," said he, "I should be of a more dastardly spirit than they represent me, if, through fear of insults and reproaches, I should depart from my own resolution. But to fear for my country is not a disagreeable fear. That man is unworthy of such a command as this who shrinks under calumnies and slanders and complies with the humor of those whom he ought to govern, and whose folly and rashness it is his duty to restrain." After this Hannibal made a disagreeable mistake; for, intending to lead his army farther from Fabius and to move into a part of the country that would afford him forage, he ordered the guides, immediately after supper, to conduct him to the plains of Casinum. They, taking the word wrong by reason of his barbarous pronunciation of it, led his forces to the borders of Campania, near the town of Casilinum, through which runs the river Lothronus, which the Romans Hannibal then wanted to get clear of so disadvantageous a situation, and, in revenge of the mistake the guides had made and the danger they had brought him into, he crucified them all. But not knowing how to drive the enemy from the heights they were masters of, and sensible, besides, of the terror and confusion that reigned amongst his men, who concluded themselves fallen into a snare from which there was no escaping, he had recourse to stratagem. The contrivance was this: He caused two thousand oxen which he had in his camp to have torches and dry bavins well fastened to their horns. These, in the night, upon a signal given, were to be lighted, and the oxen to be driven to the mountains, near the the mountains, near the narrow pass that was guarded by the enemy. While those that had it in charge were thus employed, he decamped and marched slowly forward. So long as the fire was moderate and burnt only the torches and bavins the oxen moved softly on as they were driven up the hills, |