Septimus Severus, on the throne. The prætorians were disbanded and ban

ished from Rome.

The assassin of Henry III was killed at once by the royal guards.

7 Witches were supposed to come wholly under the power of Satan when they died.

"OF RICHES"

1 Hindrances or impediments. The baggage of an army.

2 Imagination.

3 Ecclesiastes v. 11.

4 Enjoyment.

5 Proverbs x. 15.

6 Rabirius Posthumus, a Roman knight whom the senate accused of having lent large amounts of money to the King of Egypt. Cicero defended him and he was acquitted.

7 "In studio rei," etc. "In his desire to increase his riches, it was evident that he sought not the gratification of avarice but the means of doing good." 8 Proverbs xxviii. 20. "He that maketh haste to be rich, shall not be innocent."

9 Plutus, the god of riches.

10 Jupiter, the king of gods and men.

11 Pluto, the god of the lower world.

12 Audits, rent rolls.

13 Expect, wait for.

14 Overcome, take advantage of.

15 Broke by, make use of an agent to draw a man on.

16 Chapmen, merchants, buyers.

17 Buying up large quantities of a commodity in order to raise the price, a "corner."

18 Sharings, partnerships.

19 Usury, interest.

20 "In sudore," etc. "In the sweat of another's brow."

21 Plow on Sundays.-Receiving interest money on Sundays as well as week days.

22 Scrivener, one who draws up business papers.

23 Brokers, agents.

24 Unsound financially.

25 Skilled in logic; one who exercises judgment.

26 Co-emption of wares, the purchase of the whole quantity of a commodity. 27 Public service.

28 "Wills and childless parents, taken as with a net."

Insipid.

7 Conversation.

8 Quick wit.

9"Abeunt studia," etc. "Studies pass into habits."

10 Stond-stoppage, obstacle.

11 Kidneys.

12 The Schoolmen, philosophers of the Middle Ages.

13 "Cymini sectores," splitters of cummin seed; splitters of hairs.

"OF GREAT PLACE"

1 "Cum non sis," etc. "Since you are not what you were, there is no reason why you should wish to live."

2 "Illi mors gravis,” etc. “Death presses heavily upon him who, too well known to all others, dies unknown to himself."

3 To be able.

4 God's work.

5 "Et conversus Deus," etc. "And God turned to behold the works that his hands had made, and saw that all was very good."-Gen. I. 31.

G Bravado, boasting.

7 De facto, as though unchallenged, in fact, actually.

8 To hide the fact.

9 Facility—yielding easily, pliabilty.

10 Proverbs xxviii. 21.

11 "Omnium consensu," etc. "Had he never been emperor, universal opinion would have held him fit to rule."

12 Galba's career before becoming emperor of Rome was of such a nature that he would always have been thought fit to be an emperor, if he had never reigned. He gave himself up to be ruled by favorites, and was deposed and killed by the prætorians.

13 Vespasian, the only Roman emperor who was made better by the office. 14 "Solus imperantium," etc. "Alone of all the emperors, Vespasian was changed for the better."

"OF FRIENDSHIP"

1 Him-Aristotle in his "Politica."

2 Epimenides, a poet of Crete. According to the story, he fell asleep in a cave and slept for fifty-seven years.

3 Numa, the second king of Rome. He is said to have been helped by the nymph Egeria to devise wise laws for Rome.

4 Empedocles, a Sicilian philosopher who is said to have thrown himself into the crater of Mt. Etna so that he would so completely disappear from the earth that he would be regarded as a god. An eruption of the volcano, however, threw up one of his sandals and so his disappearance was explained. 5 Apollonius was a magician. He pretended to perform miracles.

6 See I Corinthians XIII. 1.

7 "Magna civitas," etc. "A great city is a great solitude."

8 Sorteth to,-results in.

9 "Participes curarum,"-sharers of cares.

10 L. Sylla-Sulla, dictator of Rome, B. C. 82-79.

11 Agrippa, a Roman general under Augustus.

12 Mæcenas, the chief favorite of Augustus. He was a friend and patron of Virgil.

13 Sejanus, chief minister of Tiberius and commander of the prætorian guard. He became so infamous and disloyal that Tiberius finally had him put to death.

14 "Hace pro amicitia," etc. "These things, because of our friendship, I have not kept secret from you."

15 Septimius Severus, a Roman emperor (A. D. 193–211).

16 Trajan and Marcus Aurelius were known as good emperors of Rome. 17 Comineus-Philip de Comines, a French historian under Charles the

Bold of Burgundy, and, later, Louis XI of France. Charles and Louis were bitter enemies.

18 Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher (B. C 540-510).

19 Themistocles, the Greek statesman who created the naval greatness of Athens. In the last part of his life he was ostracized and took refuge in Persia. Here the Persian king Artaxerxes made him governor of Magnesia in Asia Minor.

20 The great tapestry industry at Arras, France, was not built up until during the Middle Ages. Themistocles, who died about 460 B. C., could have known nothing about it. What he said was, "A man's discourse is like a rich Persian carpet."

21 Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher. His outlook on life was so severe and gloomy that he was called the weeping philosopher.

22 James i. 23.

23 Bestowing-providing for.

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

REFLECTIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

When I am in a serious humor, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person but that he was born upon one day and died upon another; the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons who had left no other memorial of them but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. The life of these men is finely described in Holy Writ by "the Path of an Arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries,1 were crumbled amongst one another and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty,

strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality, as it were, in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed indeed that the present war 2 had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.

4

I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honor to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence. Instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument; for instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honor. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves; and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea weed, shells, and coral.

But to return to our subject. I have left the repository of our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes, with