Yet said I naught. Shame on me, that my | Devours the pride of glory; as the sea cheek And eye my hoarded secret should betray! Why wept I? And why was I sudden weak So weak his manly arm was stretched to stay? How like a suppliant god he looked! His sweet, Low voice, heart-shaken, spoke, and all was known; Yet from the first I felt our souls must meet Like stars that rush together and shine on, ROBERT T. CONRAD. THE DEATH OF MESHCHERSKY. FROM THE RUSSIAN OF GABRIEL ROMANOVICH DER AH ZHAVIN. Insatiate drinks the waters, even so days And years are lost in deep eternity ; Cities and empires vandal Death decays. We tremble on the borders of the abyss, And, giddy, totter headlong from on high, For death with life our common portion is, And man is only born that he may die. Death knows no sympathy: he tramples on All tenderness, extinguishes the stars, Tears from the firmament the glowing sun, And blots out worlds in his gigantic wars. But mortal man forgets mortality: His dreams crowd ages into life's short day; While, like a midnight robber stealing by, Death plunders time by hour and hour away. H, that funereal toll, loud tongue of When least we fear, then is the traitor time! What woes are centred in that frightful sound! It calls it calls me with a voice sublimeTo the lone chambers of the burial-ground. My life's first footsteps are midst yawning graves; nigh; Where most secure we seem, he loves to come: Less swift than he, the bolts of thunder fly; Less sure than he, the lightning strikes the dome. A pale, teeth-clattering spectre passes Thou son of luxury, child of dance and nigh; Where love and joy and health and worldly | Even like an infant's sweet imagining good, My early, lovely springtide hurried on: And all life's pleasures, in their splendor Beauty just smiled and sported, then took glow, He dries the nerves up, he congeals the blood, wing; Joy laughed a moment, and then Joy was gone. And shakes the very soul with mighty Now, less susceptible of bliss, less blest, The woe. songs of joy are funeral cries become, And luxury's board is covered with a pall; The chamber of the banquet is a tomb: Wiser and worldlier, panting for a name, With a vain thirst of honor, pained, opprest, I labor wearied up the hill of fame. Death, the pale autocrat, he rules o'er all. But manhood too, and manhood's care, will THE CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE. ATILINE had twice failed in his designs upon the consulship; he solicited it again for the year 692, without abandoning his plans of conspiracy. The moment seemed favorable. Pompey being in Asia, Italy was bared of troops; Antonius, associated in the plot, shared the consulship with Cicero. Calm existed on the surface, whilst passions half extinguished and bruised interests offered to the first man bold enough numerous means of raising commotions. The men whom Sylla had despoiled, as well as those he had enriched, but who had dissipated the fruits of their immense plunder, were equally discontented; so that the same idea of subversion formed a bond of union between the victims and the accomplices of the past oppression. Addicted to excesses of every kind, Catiline dreamed, in the midst of his orgies, of the overthrow of the oligarchy; but we may doubt his desire to put all to fire and sword, as Cicero says, and as most historians have repeated after him. Of illustrious birth, questor in 677, he distinguished himself in Macedonia in the army of Curio; he had been prætor in 686 and governor of Africa the year following. He was accused of having in his youth imbrued his hands in Sylla's murders, of having associated with the most infamous men, and of having been guilty of incest and other crimes; there would be no reason for exculpating him if we did not know how prodigal political parties in their triumph are of calumnies against the vanquished. Besides, we must acknowledge that the vices with which he was charged he shared in common with many personages of that epoch-among others, with Antonius, the colleague of Cicero, who subsequently undertook his defence. Gifted with a high intelligence and a rare energy, Catiline could not have meditated a thing so insensate as massacre and burning. It would have been to seek to reign over ruins and tombs. The truth will present itself better in the following portrait, traced by Cicero seven years after the death of Catiline, when, returning to a calmer appreciation, the great orator painted in less sombre colors him whom he had so disfigured: "This Catiline, you cannot have forgotten, I think had, if not the reality, at least the appearance, of the greatest virtues. He associated with a crowd of perverse men, but he affected to be devoted to men of greatest estimation. If for him debauchery had powerful attractions, he applied himself with no less ardor to labor and affairs. The fire of passions devoured his heart, but he had also a taste for the labors of war. No, I do not believe there ever existed on this earth a man who offered so monstrous an assemblage of passions and The conspiracy, conducted by the adventurous spirit of its chief, had acquired considerable development. Senators, knights, young patricians, a great number of the notable citizens of the allied towns, partook in it. Cicero, informed of these designs, assembles the Senate in the Temple of Concord and communicates to it the information he had received: he informs it that on the 5th of the calends of November a rising was to take place in Etruria; that on the morrow a riot would break out in Rome; that the lives of the consuls were threatened; that, lastly, every where stores of warlike arms and attempts to enlist the gladiators indicated the most alarming preparations. Catiline, questioned by the consul, exclaims that the tyranny of some men, their avarice, their inhumanity, are the true causes of the uneasiness which torments the republic; then, repelling with scorn the projects of revolt which they imputed to him, he concludes with this threatening figure of speech: "The Roman people is a robust body, but without head: I shall be that head." He departed with these words, leaving the Senate undecided and trembling. The assembly, meanwhile, passed the usual decree enjoining the consuls to watch that the republic received no injury. The election of consuls for the following year, till then deferred, took place on the 21st of October, 691, and, Silanus having been nominated with Murena, Catiline was a third time rejected. He then despatched to different parts of Italy his agents, and, among others, C. Mallius into Etruria, Septimius to the Picenum, and C. Julius into Apulia, to organize the revolt. At the mouth of the Tiber a division of the fleet previously employed against the pirates was ready to second his projects. At Rome even the assassination of Cicero was boldly attempted. The Senate was convened again on the 8th of November. Catiline dared to attend and take his seat in the midst of his colleagues. Cicero, in a speech which has become celebrated, apostrophized him in terms of the strongest indignation, and by a crushing denunciation forced him to retire. Catiline, accompanied by three hundred of his adherents, left the capital next morning to join Mallius. During the following days alarming news arriving from all parts threw Rome into the utmost. anxiety. Stupor reigned there. To the animation of fêtes and pleasures had all of a sudden succeeded a gloomy silence. Troops were raised; armed outposts were placed at various points: Q. Marcius Rex is despatched to Fasule (Fiesole), Q. Metellus Creticus into Apulia, Pomponius Rufus to Capua, Q. Metellus Celer into the Picenum, and, lastly, the consul, C. Antonius, led an army into Etruria. Cicero had detached the latter from the conspiracy by giving him the lucrative government of Macedonia. He accepted in exchange that of Gaul, which he also subsequently renounced, not wishing, after his consulship, to quit the city and depart as proconsul. The principal conspirators, at the head of whom were the prætor Lentulus and Cethegus, remained at Rome. They continued energetically the preparations for the insurrection, and entered into communication with the envoys of the Allobroges. Cicero, secretly informed by his |