wholly uncongenial spirit in President Lincoln. A brief extract from one
of the earlier chapters is not without interest, both as showing the
practical Latin style, and as giving the prose groundwork of Virgil's
stately and beautiful embroidery in the _Georgics_.

_Opera omnia mature conficias face. Nam res rustica sic est; si unam rem
sero feceris, omnia opera sero facies. Stramenta si deerunt frondem
iligneam legito; earn substernito ovibus bubusque. Sterquilinium magnum
stude ut habeas. Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportabis spargito et
comminuito; per autumnum evehito. Circum oleas autumnitate ablaqueato et
stercus addito. Frondem populneam, ulmeam, querneam caedito, per tempus
eam condito, non peraridam, pabulum ovibus. Item foenum cordum,
sicilimenta de prato; ea arida condito. Post imbrem autumni rapinam,
pabulum, lupinumque serito._

To the Virgilian student, every sentence here is full of reminiscences.

In his partial yielding, towards the end of a long and uncompromising
life, to the rising tide of Greek influence, Cato was probably moved to a
large degree by his personal admiration for the younger Scipio, whom he
hailed as the single great personality among younger statesmen, and to
whom he paid (strangely enough, in a line quoted from Homer) what is
probably the most splendid compliment ever paid by one statesman to
another. Scipio was the centre of a school which included nearly the
whole literary impulse of his time. He was himself a distinguished orator
and a fine scholar; after the conquest of Perseus, the royal library was
the share of the spoils of Macedonia which he chose for himself, and
bequeathed to his family. His celebrated friend, Gaius Laelius, known in
Rome as "the Wise," was not only an orator, but a philosopher, or deeply
read, at all events, in the philosophy of Greece. Another member of the