Calendar: 1882-1883 Page 610

GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 607 and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world we bring impurity much rather that which purifies us is trial and trial is by what is contrary That virtue therefore which is but youngling in the contemplation of evil and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers and rejects it is but blank virtue not pure which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser whom dare be known to think better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas describing true temperance under the person of Guyon brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon and the bower of earthly bliss that he might see and know and yet abstain We read in Livy that Perseus the last King of Macedon became involved within few years after his accession to the throne in long and bloody contest with the Romans which ended in his own ruin and the ruin of his house and in the total extinction of monarchy that had once brought under its sway large part of Europe and the most of Asia The poor king it would appear by no means played the hero in the hour of misfortune though perhaps on such point Roman testimony should hardly be trusted Be this as it may rfew will consider it matter of surprise that when sent to Rome as prisoner to grace the triumph which his conqueror Lucius Aemilius Paullus celebrated we are told for three days to- gether with unprecedented magnificence he shou'd have begged to be spared this humiliation and failed to recollect what Paullus pointed out to him that that hnd long ago been and still continued to be in his own power for the disgrace he dreaded might be escaped by magnanimous death It was the true spirit of Roman to despise one who seemed too much of coward to put an end to his own life When Croesus king of Lydia was going to make war on Cyrus king of Persia he called together few of his most faithful friends and thus addressed them -" Put on an Egyptian dress and go to th3 oracle of Apollo at Delphi