his best works, he visited Asia, and there became acquainted with Zeno'bia, the future queen of Palmy'ra. He became her instructor in Greek literature, and, after she had attained the throne, was appointed her confidential adviser and prime minister. In this position, incited by his ardent love of liberty, he induced her to rebel against Rome. The natural result followed. She was defeated and captured, and her city taken. Longinus, being accused by the captive queen as her adviser to the rebellion, was beheaded as a traitor, by command of the Emperor Aurelian, 273 A.D. He met his fate with the firmness and cheerfulness of a Socrates.

Longinus was possessed of immense knowledge, so much so that he was called a "living library," and a "walking museum." His taste and critical acuteness were in accord with his acquirements, he being probably the best critic of all antiquity. In him the spirit of both Demosthenes and Plato was reproduced, of the former in his love of liberty, of the latter in his philosophical judgment and sound sense. His talents were the more remarkable if we consider the character of his contemporaries, whose philosophy was the fantastic imaginings of Neo-Platonism, the exponent of which, Plotinus, denied that Longinus was a philosopher at all, declaring that he was a mere philologist, since he had criticised the style and diction of Plato.

In style he was clear, lofty and rational, and surpassed in oratorical power anything existing after the great days of Greek oratory. Of all his works only a portion of one exists, this being a treatise On the Sublime.

There is scarcely any work in existence containing so many excellent remarks on oratory, poetry, and good taste in general; or equaling it in sound judgment, liveliness of style, felicity of illustration, and general good sense.

BY WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES IS THE SUBLIME PRODUCED?

As there are no subjects which are not attended by some adherent circumstances, an accurate and judicious choice of the most suitable of these circumstances, and an ingenious and skillful connection of them into one body, must necessarily produce the sublime. For what by the judicious choice, and what by the skillful connection, they cannot but very much affect the imagination.

Sappho is an instance of this, who, having observed the anxieties and tortures inseparable to jealous love, has collected and displayed them all with the most lively exactness. But in what particular has she shown her excellence? In selecting those cir cumstances which suit best with her object, and afterward connecting them together with so much art.

"Blest as the Gods methinks is he,

The enamoured youth who sits by thee,
Hearing thy silver tones the while,
Warmed by thy love-exciting smile.

While gazing on thee, fair and blest,
What transports heaved my glowing breast,
My faltering accents soon grew weak,
My quivering lips refused to speak;

My voice was lost, the subtle flame
Of love pervaded all my frame,
O'er my filmed eyes a dimness hung,
My cars with hollow murmurs rung;

Cold moisture every pore distilled,
My frame a sudden tremor chilled,
My color went, I felt decay,

I sunk, and fell, and swooned away."

Are you not amazed, my friend, to find how, in the same moment, she is at a loss for her soul, her body, her ears, her tongue, her eyes, her color, all of them as much absent from her as if they had never belonged to her? And what contrary effects does she feel together? She glows, she chills, she raves, she reasons; now she is in tumults, and now she is dying away. In a word she seems to be attacked not by one alone, but by a combination of the most violent passions.

THE INFINITE EXCELLENCE OF THE GREAT AUTHORS.

With regard, therefore, to those sublime writers, whose flight, however exalted, never fails of its use and advantage, we must add another consideration. Those, their inferior beauties, show their authors to be men, but the sublime makes near approaches to the height of God. What is correct and virtuous comes off barely without censure, but the grand and the elevated command admiration. What can I add further? One exalted and sublime sentiment in these noble authors makes ample amends for all their defects. And what is most remarkable, were the errors of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and the rest of the most celebrated authors, to be culled carefully out and thrown together, they would not bear the least proportion to those infinite, those inimitable excellencies, which are so conspicuous in these heroes of antiquity.

And for this reason has every age and every generation, unmoved by partiality and unbiased by envy, awarded the laurels to those great masters, which flourish still green and unfading on their brows, and will flourish

"As long as streams in silver mazes rove,

Or Spring with annual green renews the grove."

PART II.

THE LITERATURE OF ROME.

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

In a review of Roman literature we must start from a different standpoint, and pursue a different course, than with the literature of the Greeks. The latter were essentially "to the manner born." Their literary spirit was native, their styles and modes of treatment indigenous. Their productions were a birth, not a transmigration of soul, into the world of books; and though they doubtless received a first impulse from without, all subsequent growth was in the fertile soil of their own genius.

Not so with the Romans. They had no aboriginal literature. When they had conquered leisure, and gained time to rest and to think, we find no home growth springing up in their minds. They began to think in Greek forms, and to write after Greek models. Imitation, not creation, was the mode of their intellectual proceeding, and throughout their whole literary history the same condition prevailed; they originated no new forms, but were content to follow where the great intellectual race of the past had trodden.

With so many romantic legends connected with their early history, they were favorably circumstanced for the growth of a native poetry, yet how different is their record

in this respect from that of the Greeks. Everywhere through the prehistoric gloom that envelops the early days of the latter, the names and half-seen forms of famous writers loom up, like giants of the Brocken. But for the first five centuries of its existence the literary life of the great Roman republic is a blank, nothing being produced but some half-barbarous chants, which no alchemist could transform into the gold of literature. Not until Magna Græcia was conquered and Sicily overrun, and the Roman mind felt the impact of Grecian art, did any literary spirit arise in the Latin-speaking race, and then they rather learned the art than caught the flame of poetry, copying the picture presented to them instead of limning original Nature herself.

Even Horace, the most original poet which Rome produced, recommends the study of Greek authors as an indispensable requisite, and shows in his own writings the strong influence of this study. An imitator, with them, was one who imitated a Roman author. Imitation of the Greeks was, in a measure, an implication of excellence. In short, the history of Latin literature is simply the history of the action of the Greek mind upon the Roman.

This was, of course, partly due to their admiration for and delight in Greek literature, which was carried to such an extent as to act as a check on the formation of any distinctive Roman style, nothing being favorably received that had not in it a flavor of the Hellenic modes of thought.

But lack of originality cannot be fully ascribed to this cause. A Dante, a Shakespere, or a Milton, would have forced recognition, and successfully fought down the prevailing Greek domination. For the true origin of this condition of things we must look deeper, and will find it to be an inevitable result of the difference in character of the two races.

The Romans were devoted to war, their mental vigor all