heifer, there are a breadth, a grasp, and an epic grandeur, which recall
Homer, arouse thoughts of Dante, and which Virgil himself, whilst much
less unequal though never greater, has not attained.

THE AUGUSTAN AGE.--The Augustan Age, which was only really very great if
under this title is also included the epoch of Caesar and also that of
Octavius, and thus it was understood by our ancestors, does not fail to
offer writers of fine genius. These are Virgil, Horace, and Titus-Livy.

TITUS-LIVY.--Titus-Livy, who is one of the purest and most beautiful
writers and an orator of seductive talent in his own chamber, wrote a
Roman history composed, as to the first portion, of the legends
transmitted at Rome from generation to generation, and in which it is
impossible for us to distinguish the false from the true; for two-thirds
of the work made very accurate investigations of all that previous
historians and the annals of the pontiffs could give the author. As has
been observed, Titus-Livy, being a Cisalpine, was a Gaul who already
possessed the French qualities: order, clearness, regulated development,
sustained and careful style, oratorical tastes. An ardent patriot,
republican at his soul, yet treated in friendly fashion by Augustus, he
wrote Roman history at first, no doubt, to make it known, but above all
to inspire the Romans of his own time with admiration, respect, and love
for the austere morals and exalted virtues of their ancestors. He erected
a monument, one portion of which is unhappily destroyed, but into which
modern tragedians have often quarried and which orators have not scorned
when desiring to instruct themselves in their art.

VIRGIL.--Virgil came from almost the same country. His was a charming
soul, tender and gentle, infinitely capable of friendship, very pure and
white, as Horace said, with a tendency to melancholy. The two sources of