he also, here as elsewhere, was hurried into extreme expressions as to the absoluteness of divine grace and the extent of human corruption. Like his great disciple in a later age-Luther-Augustine was prone to emphasise the side of truth which he had most realised in his own experience, and, in contradistinction to the Pelagian exaltation of human nature, to depreciate its capabilities beyond measure. There are few thoughtful, minds who would not concede the deeper truthfulness of Augustine's spiritual and theological analysis, in comparison with that of his opponent, as well as its greater consistency with Scripture; but there are also few who would now be disposed to identify themselves with the dogmatism of the orthodox bishop any more than with the dogmatism of the heretical monk. And on one particular point, which more or less runs through all the controversy-the salvation of infants-the Christian consciousness, in its later and higher growth, may be said to have pronounced itself decisively on the side of the monk rather than of the bishop. In addition to these controversial writings, which mark the great epochs of Augustine's life and ecclesiastical activity after his settlement as a bishop at Hippo, he was the author of other works, some of them better known and even more important. His great work, the most elaborate, and in some respects the most significant, that came from his pen, is The City of God. It is designed as a great apologetic treatise in vindication of Christianity and the Christian church,-the latter conceived as rising in the form of a new civic order on the crumbling ruins of the Roman empire, but it is also, perhaps, the earliest contribution to the philosophy of history, as it is a repertory throughout of his cherished theological opinions. This work and his Confessions are, probably, those by which he is best known, the one as the highest expression of his thought, and the other as the best monument of his living piety and Christian experience. The City of God was begun in 413, and continued to be issued in its several portions for a period of thirteen years, or till 426. The Confessions were written shortly after he became a bishop, about 397, and give a vivid sketch of his early career. To the devout utterances and aspirations of a great soul they add the charm of personal disclosure, and have never ceased to excite admiration in all spirits of kindred piety. His systematic treatise on The Trinity, which extends to fifteen books, and occupied him for nearly thirty years, must not be passed over. "I began," he says (Retract., ii. 15), as a very young man, and have published in my old age some books concerning the Trinity." This important dogmatic work, unlike most of his dogmatic writings, was not provoked by any special controversial emergency, but grew up silently during this long period in the author's mind. This has given it something more of completeness and organic arrangement than is usual with him, if it has also led him into the prolonged discussion of various analogies, more curious than apt in their bearing on the doctrine which he expounds. The exegetical writings of Augustine, his lengthened Commentary on St John and on the Sermon on the Mount, &c.,-and then his Letters, remain to be mentioned. The former have a value from his insight into the deeper spiritual meanings of Scripture, but hardly for their exegetical characteristics. The latter are full of interest in reference to many points in the ecclesiastical history of the time, and his relation to contemporary theologians like Jerome. They have neither the liveliness nor variety of interest, however, which belong to the letters of Jerome himself. The closing years of the great bishop were full of sorrow. The Vandals, who had been gradualy enclosing the Roman empire, appeared before the gates of Hippo, and laid siege to it. Augustine was ill with his last illness, and could " only pray for his fellow-citizens. He passed away during the progress of the siege, on the 28th of August 430, at the age of seventy-five, and was spared the indignity of seeing the city in the hands of the enemy. The character of Augustine, both as a man and a theologian, has been briefly indicated in the course of our sketch. Little remains to be added without entering into discussions too extended for our space. None can deny the greatness of Augustine's soul-his enthusiasm, his unceasing search after truth, his affectionateness, his ardour, his self-devotion. And even those who may doubt the soundness or value of some of his dogmatic conclusions, cannot hesitate to acknowledge the depth of his spiritual convictions, and the strength, solidity, and penetration with which he handled the most difficult questions, and wrought all the elements of his experience and of his profound Scriptural knowledge into a great system of Christian thought. The best complete edition of Augustine's writings is that of the Benedictines, in 11 vols. folio, published at Paris, 1679-1800, and reprinted in 1836-38 in 22 half-volumes. Tillemont, in his Ecclesiastical History, has devoted a quarto volume to his life and writings. Two extensive monographs have appeared on him; the one by Kloth, a Roman Catholic (Aachen, 1840), and the other by Bindemann, a Protestant (Berlin, 1844, 1855). See also Ritter's Hist. of Christian Philosophy, vol. i.; Böhringer's Hist. of the Church; Dr P. Schaff's St Augustine (Berlin, New York, and London, 1854); Nourrisson, La Philosophie de S. Augustine (Paris, 1866); A. Dorner, Augustinus (Berlin, 1872); Neander's Church History; Mozley's Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, 1855; Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. (J. T.) AUGUSTINE, or AUSTIN, ST, the first archbishop of Canterbury, was originally a monk in the Benedictine convent of St Andrew at Rome, and was educated under the famous Gregory, afterwards Pope Gregory L, by whom he was sent to Britain with forty monks of the same order, to carry out the favourite project of converting the English to Christianity. The missionaries set out with much reluctance, for the journey was long and perilous, and on the way they endeavoured to persuade the Pope to allow them to return. His orders, however, were peremptory; they proceeded, therefore, on their journey, and at last landed, some time in the year 596, on the isle of Thanet. Having sent interpreters to explain their mission to King Ethelbert, whose queen, Bertha, was a Christian, they received from him permission to preach and to make converts. He treated them with great favour, held a public conference with them, and assigned them a residence at Durovernum, now Canterbury. His own conversion to the Christian faith, which took place shortly afterwards, had a powerful influence with his subjects, who joined the new church in great numbers. Augustine, seeing the success of his labours, crossed to France, and received consecration at Arles. He then despatched messengers to the Pope to inform him of what had been done, and to propose for his consideration certain practical difficulties that had arisen. They brought back the pallium, with which Augustine was consecrated as first archbishop of Canterbury, and certain vestments and utensils for the new churches. Gregory also gave most prudent counsel for dealing with the new converts, strongly advising the archbishop to make the change of faith, so far as ceremonial went, as gradual as possible, and not on any account to wound the feelings of the people by destroying their temples, but rather to consecrate them afresh, and use them for Christian worship. Augustine passed the remainder of his life principally at Canterbury, where he died, probably in 607, on the 26th May. See Lives of the English Saints, No. III. 1847, and Mrs Jameson's Legends of the Monastic Orders. AUGUSTINIANS, a monastic order of the Roman Catholic Church, claiming to have received its rule from St Augustine. See ABBEY and MONASTICISM, AUGUSTOVO, a city in Russian Poland, in the government of Suvalki, situated on the river Netta, near a lake, which abounds in fish. It was founded in 1557 by Sigismund II. (Augustus), and is laid out in a very regular manner, with a large market-place. It carries on a large trade in cattle and horses, and manufactures linen and huckaback. Population, 9383. AUGUSTUS AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE. The name of Augustus was the title of honour given by the Romans to the emperor Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus, or, as he was originally designated, Caius Octavius. This title was intended to be hereditary in his family, but all the succeeding Cæsars or emperors of Rome continued to adopt it, long after they had ceased to be connected with the first Augustus by blood. The era of Augustus formed an illustrious epoch in Roman history, and was distinguished for its splendid attainments in arts and arms, and more especially in literature. The Romans in later times looked back to the age of Augustus with great complacency, as the most prosperous and the most distinguished in their annals. The name of the "Augustan Age" has been specially applied to it in modern times, and the same title has been given, with more or less justice, to certain epochs in modern history as the highest compliment to their glory. The reign of Louis XIV. is called the Augustan age of France; the reign of Anne, the Augustan age of England. Caius Octavius was the son of a noble Roman of the same name, of the plebeian order. The father had married Atia, the daughter of Julia, sister to the great C. Julius Cesar, who was accordingly great-uncle to the young Octavius. Cæsar, the dictator, having no son of his own, took an interest in this youth, caused him to be enrolled among the Patricians, and bred him with a view to the highest honours of the republic. Already, in his eighteenth year, he had chosen him for his "master of the horse," but this was a merely nominal distinction. The young man was sent to carry on his education at the camp at Apollonia in Illyricum, and there, at the age of nineteen, he heard of his great kinsman's assassination (44 B.C.) He had already become a favourite with the soldiers, who offered to escort him to Rome, and follow his fortunes. But this he declined, and crossed over alone to Italy. On landing he learnt that Cæsar had made him his heir and adopted him into the Julian gens, whereby he acquired the designation of C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus. The inheritance was a perilous one; his mother and others would have dissuaded him from accepting it, but he, confident in his abilities, declared at once that he would undertake its obligations, and discharge the sums bequeathed by the dictator to the Roman people. M. Antonius had possessed himself of Caesar's papers and effects, and made light of his young nephew's pretensions. The liberators paid him little regard, and dispersed to their respective provinces. Cicero, much charmed at the attitude of Antonius, hoped to make use of him, and flattered him to the utmost, with the expectation, however, of getting rid of him as soon as he had served his purpose. Octavianus conducted himself with consummate adroitness, making use of all competitors for power, but assisting none. Considerable forces attached themselves to him. The senate, when it armed the consuls against Antonius, called upon him for assistance; and he took part in the campaign in which Antonius was defeated at Mutina, but both the consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, slain. The soldiers of Octavianus demanded the consulship for him, and the senate, though now much alarmed, could not prevent his election. He now effected a junction with Antonius, who quickly overthrew the power of the republican party in their stronghold, the Cisalpine provinces, with the death of Decimus Brutus, the ablest of the liberators. Thereupon Octavianus and Antonius, taking Lepidus into union with them, met on the river Rhenus near Bononia, and proclaimed themselves a triumvirate for the reconstitution of the commonwealth. They divided the western provinces among them, the east being held for the republic by M. Brutus and Cassius. They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, entered Rome together, and caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand knights. They further con. fiscated the territories of many cities throughout Italy, and divided them among their soldiers. Cicero was murdered at the demand of Antonius. The remnant of the republican party took refuge either with Brutus and Cassius in the East, or with Sextus Pompeius, who had made himself master of the seas. Octavianus and Antonius crossed the Adriatic in 42 B.C. to reduce the last defenders of the republic. Brutus and Cassius were defeated, and fell at the battle of Philippi. War soon broke out between the victors, the chief incident of which was the siege and capture by famine of Perusia, and the alleged sacrifice of three hundred of its defenders by the young Cæsar at the altar of his uncle. But peace was again made between them. Antonius married Octavia, his rival's sister, and took for himself the eastern half of the empire, leaving the west to Cæsar. Lepidus was reduced to the single province of Africa. Meanwhile Sextus Pompeius made himself formidable by cutting off the supplies of grain from Rome. The triumvirs were obliged to concede to him the islands in the western Mediterranean. But Octavianus could not allow the capital to be kept in alarm for its daily sustenance. He picked a quarrel with Sextus, and when his colleagues failed to support him, undertook to attack him alone. Antonius, indeed, came at last to his aid, in return for military assistance in the campaign he meditated in the East. But Octavianus was well served by the commander of his fleet, M. Vipsanius Agrippa. Sextus was completely routed, and driven into Asia, where he perished soon afterwards. Lepidus was an object of contempt to all parties, and Octavianus and Antonius remained to fight for supreme power. The alliance of Antonius with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, alienated the Romans from him. They now gladly accepted the heir of Cæsar as the true successor of the most illustrious of their heroes. It was felt almost universally that the empire required a single head, and that repose could only be assured by the sovereignty of the chief of its armies. The battle of Actium, followed by the death of Antonius, 31 B.C., raised the victor to universal empire. Nevertheless, Octavianus did not hasten to assume his position. He first regulated the affairs of Egypt, which he annexed to the Roman dominions, then lingered for a time in Greece, and entered upon a fifth consulship at Samos, 29 B.C. On his return to Rome he distributed the vast sums he had accumulated among the people and the soldiers, while he soothed the pride of the nobles by maintaining unchanged the outward show of republican government. Of his personal history from this period there remains little to be said. He continued to reside almost constantly at Rome and in the neighbourhood, making one expedition into Spain, 27 B.C., and a journey through Greece in 21, on which occasion he advanced into Syria, and received back the standards taken by the Parthians from Crassus. In 16 B.C. he went to Gaul to regulate the affairs of that province, an expedition which he repeated, 9 B.C. But from thenceforth he intrusted the defence of the position to his lieutenants, and more especially to the young princes of his own family. The empire continued to enjoy profound internal tranquillity. More than one plot was formed against the head of the state by some of the discontented nobility, but these were discovered and disconcerted; and when it was evident that they met with no favour from the people generally, he could afford to treat them with a signal clemency, which | seems to have secured him from any further attempts. The serenity and placability which he displayed in his latter years forms a marked contrast to his jealousy and ferocity at an earlier period; and the character of the Emperor Augustus Cæsar has been a problem to historians in consequence. The life of the emperor was prolonged to the year 14 A.D. He died at Nola in his seventy-fifth year, after holding supreme power in the state for nearly half a century. further, at least, than might be necessary for his main object. He caused himself to be appointed censor, not for one but for five years, in order to give him full time to revise the list of senators, to supply the fearful gaps in the ranks of the old nobility, and to expel such members, and many they were, who seemed unworthy, from their foreign extraction, their low birth, their scanty means, or their bad character, to have a place in that august assembly. The irregularities of the epoch which he hoped now to close had filled its benches with personages who degraded the order in the eyes of genuine citizens. The nobles and good citizens generally hailed this revision with deep satisfaction. It accorded with the national taste as well as with historical traditions. From the individual resentments it provoked, it was an act of some personal danger to the censor; but the danger was more than repaid by the popularity attend. ing upon it, which was enhanced to the utmost by the liberality with which provision was made for raising some of the poor but honourable members of the order to the standard of property now to be required of them. During the years which had intervened between his accepting the inheritance of Cæsar, and his attaining to Cæsar's undivided sovereignty, the young aspirant had been meditating how to secure the retention of his power. At first, excited by fears for his own personal safety, and urged by the examples of party leaders around him, and of others who had gone before him, he plunged into a career of wholesale bloodshed, and cut off without scruple every public man from whose principles or whose passions he night have cause of apprehension. A large proportion, perhaps, of the senators and nobles had perished in the The emperor placed himself at the head of this reconstiproscriptions and bloody wars of the triumvirate. Still it tuted body, by assuming the office and title of Princeps could not be expected that the germs of republican sentiment Senatus. The office was indeed little more than nominal; would ever be wholly eradicated. The sense of patriotism it gave the right of proposing measures and of speaking and the sense of interest would not fail to raise up enemies first in the highest legislative assembly of the state, and to the sovereign ruler of the Roman commonwealth. The having been borne in earlier times by some of the most conqueror's first object was to protect himself by force of distinguished of Roman patriots, it carried with it the rearms, his next to soothe the passions of the class from spect and affection of the people. The titular precedence it whose resentment he had most cause of fear, and after that gave was all the more valuable, inasmuch as it might be to raise up another class in direct sympathy with himself conceded without a blush by the sturdiest republican in to balance the power which the first must necessarily retain the senate. But it was the consul who possessed practically in a well-ordered government. It was to the attainment the chief authority in the assembly. Octavianus had been of these three objects that Octavianus directed his organisa- already five times consul, and he shrank from seizing in tion of the commonwealth. perpetuity an office which, according to Roman ideas, differed in nothing from royalty, except that it was elective, and that it was limited to the tenure of a single year. Yet he could hardly afford to yield it to the citizen whom the people might at any time elect to thwart or to rival him. What should he do? He took what was certainly a bold step. It was a manifest innovation upon the forms of the free state when he required from the citizens the perpetual "potestas," or power of the consulship, at the same moment that he resigned the office itself, and suffered consuls to be annually elected to sit, one on each side of him, in the senate. The potestas which was thus conceded to him rendered him the head of the state, both in its legislative and executive departments. When he quitted the city he carried with him into the provinces a proconsular authority, and became to all intents and purposes king for life of the Romans and of their subjects. Even in the senatorial provinces he was now recognised as supreme; and thus it was that in him were centred all the great political functions which had been hitherto divided by the great assembly of the Roman magnates. The powers of the imperator or commander of the Roman army ceased on bis return to the city. He then became once more a plain citizen. If war again arose he must seek his reappointment to command with the usual forms. Cæsar had not trusted his countrymen so far. He had claimed from them the title of imperator in perpetuity. With this title prefixed to his name, he continued to be still the commander of the legions, whether in the city or in the provinces. With this power his successor dared not dispense. On his arrival at Rome from the East he at once required the senate to accord it to him, as to his uncle before him; but he pretended only to ask it for a limited period of five years. At the expiration of that term, however, he assumed it again and again, though each time for ten years only, but never actually relin. quished it to the end of his career. He thus received authority to command the whole force of the state in chief, and the officers who acted under him became simply his lieutenants. If they gained victories, the honours of the triumph were reserved for the imperator "under whose auspices" they were reputed to have served. It followed hat all the provinces on the frontiers, or in which armies were maintained, were placed under the emperor's direct authority, while it was only the central and peaceful portions of the empire that were handed over to the government of the senate. The imperial provinces were administered by the legati Cæsaris, the senatorial by proconsuls. The person of the emperor was thus secured as far as the power of the sword could secure it. But he was anxious that the source of this power should not be too apparent. The second Cæsar wished to maintain the appearance at least of government by the constitutional powers of the republic. The senate had once been practically the ruling power, as far as it was not actually controlled by the masters of the legions. He would not degrade it in its own estimation, or in the estimation of the people, any But the emperor did not limit his views to becoming the chief of the nobles. It was the part of a wary statesman to associate himself not less intimately with the opposite faction, which, under the name of the plebeians, had aimed at securing co-ordinate power with the patricians. The original meaning of these designations had indeed long been lost. The plebeians could boast many families as eminent both for honours and possessions as their haughty rivals. Step by step they had won an equal share with them in political privileges. But the class which still bore the title of plebeian was much more widely extended, and embraced the great mass of the knights and men of business in the city, and also of the citizens settled throughout the provinces. This large class had for more than a century contended with the nobles for the perquisites of office, and their mutual rivalry had armed Sulla against Marius and Caesar against Pompeius. | things, and re-establish the old Roman religion on its firm The heir of Cæsar inherited the favour of the plebeians, and was bound to requite it by distinguished patronage. The plebeians were still the electors to the tribunate, and still regarded the tribunes as their protectors against the encroachments of the patricians represented by the senate. The tribunes had proved themselves most useful allies to Casar, and might yet again array themselves in support of the faithful inheritor of his principles. The emperor proposed to balance the consular potestas by assuming at the same time a tribunician potestas also. He thus endowed himself with the authority of the tribune for life, and assured the commons of the city and empire that he could at any time exercise the formidable veto upon the proceedings of the consuls which had served them so well, even down to recent times. Thus did he become emperor indeed,—the sovereign both of the nobles and the people in the city, as well as the commander of the army in the field and in the provinces. There remained yet another sovereign authority in the state, namely, that which the chief pontiff exercised over the affairs of religion. However much the religious scntiment had been weakened throughout the Roman world, there was yet enough superstition left among the citizens to confer great and sometimes overwhelming influence upon the legitimate interpreter of divine things to the nation. The senate had exercised this power with great effect, as long as the appointment to the chief pontificate rested with the patrician curia. Of late years, however, this important dignity had been thrown open to the commons also. Octavianus was well pleased to accept it on the nomination of the whole people combined. He allowed, indeed, his former colleague Lepidus to retain it unmolested during his lifetime, but upon his death he assumed himself the exalted position which he might hesitate to intrust to any other. With this last addition to his prerogatives the emperor might well be content. The name of king he had from the first utterly repudiated. The office of dictator approached too near to that of a king to be acceptable to a ruler, who studied to confine himself within the limits of the republican constitution. Yet there still lacked some general appellative which might reflect in a single word the full dignity and power resulting from the combination of so many honours and prerogatives. The emperor proposed at first, it is said, to assume the name of Romulus; but Romulus had been a king; and further, Romulus had been destroyed, according to the tradition, by the senate, just as Cæsar had been in later times. Such associations were ominous. At last he fixed upon the epithet Augustus, a name which no man had borne before, and which, on the contrary, had been applied to things the most noble, most venerable, and most sacred. The rites of the gods were called august; their temples were august. The word itself was derived from the holy auguries; it was connected in meaning with the abstract term authority, and with all that increases and flourishes upon earth. The use of this glorious title could not fail to smooth the way to the general acceptance of the divine character of the mortal who was deemed worthy to bear it. The senate had just decreed the divinity of the defunct Caesar; the courtiers were beginning now to insinuate that his successor, while yet alive, enjoyed an effluence from deity; the poets were even suggesting that altars should be raised to him; and in the provinces, among the subjects of the state at least, temples to his divinity were actually rising, and the cult of Augustus was beginning to assume a name, a ritual, and a priesthood. Augustus, as we may now call him, viewed all this with secret satisfaction. It was one of his first objects, indeed, to restore the outward show at least of reverence for divine political basis. It was easy to rebuild, or cause to be rebuilt, the fallen or dilapidated temples of the national gods. The nobles paid their court to their master by seconding his efforts in this direction. The Pantheon, the temple of all the gods, if such was its original destination, remains still as a monument of his minister Agrippa's munificence; but Virgil would assure us that not less than three hundred "grand" temples were erected throughout the city. Perhaps, indeed, these were mostly the sacella or chapels of the Lares, which are placed at the corners of the streets. Augustus took the sentiment of the people at a favourable moment. They were thoroughly sickened by the miseries of the civil wars; they were ashamed of the crimes for which the whole nation were more or less responsible; they were eager to rush into any scheme of expiation and reparation that should be offered to them, and lend their hands to the material work of restoring at least the outward semblance of penitence for sin, and thankfulness for the mercy vouchsafed them. There can be no doubt that the conscience of the nation was awakened to a sense of the divine retribution under which they had suffered, but which had been at last averted under the blessed influence of the ruler whom they had at last chosen. The Romans had not lost their belief in a divine Providence, which oppressed them with anxiety and terror, however little they connected it with a sense of moral duty. The spirit of materialistic philosophy had, however, been rife among them, and during the past century the antireligious dogmas of Epicurus had sapped the belief of the educated and literary classes. The patrician youth of Rome had been trained in the schools of Greece, and especially at Athens, or had been placed under the teaching of Greek instructors at home; and of the three contending schools, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and the Academics, the second was that which had carried off far the greater number of disciples. The men of books or of speculative character might be generally Academics, and claim Cicero as their noblest leader; the men of imagination and deep religious fervour might follow, with Cato and Brutus, the teaching of the Stoics; but the practical men, the men of arts and arms and business, if they adhered to any school of thought at all, were almost all, like Cæsar himself and his associates generally, addicted to the easy precepts and still laxer morality of Epicurus. This philosophy was noted for its utter denial of Providence and, for all practical objects, of divinity altogether None of these rival systems, whatever degrees of right sense and reason they might embrace respectively, could sanction any real belief in the still current mythology of the national worship, which was assailed and derided on all sides. Nevertheless, such was the pertinacious adherence of the Roman people to their ancient forms, especially where they had any connection with their national polity, that the outward ritual of their religion was still maintained, though a mere shadow of its former substance. Statesmen, indeed, had invented a formula for reconciling their actual unbelief with their outward profession. Varro had said, and the dictum was favourably accepted, that the ancient beliefs were to be upheld as a matter of public policy. Such, no doubt, was the principle on which Augustus, who was himself neither a believer nor a philosopher, but a politician only, proceeded, when he assumed the part of a restorer of the national religion. He touched, with great sagacity, a chord which vibrated to the heart of the people, who firmly believed that the destinies of the city were bound up with the due observance of the ancient rites, and statesmen looked on with decorous acquiescence at shows and ceremonies to which they attached no significance whatever. The world " composes its countenance to the expression III. II assumed by the king." Such was the aphorism of the man of the world, and in this particular Augustus was a king indeed. The Romans rushed forward in the course he marked out for them. His word dictated the fashions of the day, not in sentiment only, but in many particulars of external conduct. He was anxious to restore the dignity of the Roman citizen, as one of the conquering race which ruled its subjects as much by the prestige of its character as by its arms, and he resented all relaxation from the strait-laced discipline of the ancients, even to the petty matters of their dress and deportment. He marked his sovereign displeasure at the degenerate Romans who indulged in the loose habiliments of Greece. "Are these," he exclaimed, in the language of Virgil," the rulers of the world, the nation of the gown?" And in order to keep up the high distinction of Roman citizenship at a period when provincials from all sides were crowding into it, he reversed, in this single instance, the policy of Cæsar, and was very sparing in granting admission to the Roman franchise. He was, indeed, extremely careful in striking a balance between the tendency of the age to a general fusion of castes and privileges and the ancient spirit of exclusion, in which he thought the strength of the republic still really reposed. The policy of Augustus was one, on the whole, of cautious and moderate reaction. He made an effort to stay the process of disintegration, which he found so rife throughout the vital forces of the empire. The lawlessness of his own usurpation did indeed combine with the gross selfishness of his personal character to sap the moral principles of society, and render its ultimate dissolution inevitable; but he made a vigorous effort to stem the tide, and succeeded in giving the Roman world a period of rest in the downward path which it was generally pursuing. The character of the period, however, as an epoch of rest for reflection and self-control, was chiefly marked in the literature, which, more than anything else, has contributed to give it the name of the Augustan Age. The religious sentiment which has been described, resting as it did upon a deep sympathy with historical antiquity, coloured by a bold and vigorous imagination, is reflected in the poetry of Virgil, and more particularly in the spirit of his great epic, the Eneid. No doubt, both depth and tenderness of feeling may be traced even in the eclogues of the same master, however slight for the most part their subjects, and however imitative their treatment. The Georgics present us with more serious and dignified characteristics, and though these pieces are directed mainly to the practical treatment of practical operations, they admit of high moral as well as religious colouring. They recall the Roman reader to the moral foundations of the national character, its honest simplicity, its love of nature, its devotion to labour, its conviction that industry is the appointed path to virtue and to honour. But this moral feeling is elevated by a sense of the divine within man and around him. The Roman husbandman, the breed of heroes, is never suffered to forget that there is a God and a Providence, or that the favour of the divine power has always fallen upon the industrious and the virtuous. "Thus it is that Etruria of old, and Rome in later times, waxed illustrious and mighty; thus that the city on the seven hills became the fairest object of creation." The Georgics are undoubtedly animated throughout with a religious sentiment, and bespeak the high religious purpose of their author. But in the Eneid this religious sentiment and purpose are both still more distinctly proclaimed to us. The great epic of Virgil, the national epic of the Roman people, glorifies the divine Providence which founded Rome in the beginning, and carried her through all her triumphs to the consummation of her greatness in the era of Augustus. It begins with the divine Æneas, and it leads us on to the divine Cæsar. The greatness and the weakness of the hero of the poem equally tend to this one end, the illustration of the Providence which has educed strength out of weakness, and overruled everything to the glory of the Roman people. The moral to be deduced from the story of Æneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven_and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one is for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected. The names of Virgil and Horace are familiarly united in every review of the age of Augustus; yet no two men can stand more in contrast one with the other in their personal character, in the scope of their writings, and in the influences they respectively exercised upon their contemporaries. Horace, as is well known, had been a republican in his youth; he had espoused the cause of Brutus and Cassius, and, while yet a student in the schools at Athens, had obtained a commission in their army. He fought in person in the battle of Fhilippi, and, as he tells us himself, threw away his shield in his rapid flight from the swords of the Cæsarians. From that time he abjured the losing cause, and obtained, perhaps without seeking it, the advice of the minister Mæcenas, by whom he was taken into favour and introduced to Augustus himself. However agreeable might be his temper and manners, it is not likely that the politic usurper would distinguish a mere upstart with admission to his society without at least tacitly exacting some return. The character of this poet's compositions, both in his lyrics and his satires and epistles, seems pretty clearly to betray the inspiration of the emperor and his astute associates. The most animated and imaginative of his pieces are almost invariably employed in sounding the praises of the Cæsar and his family. When he descends from his highest flights of poetry, he finds congenial matter for his muse in delicate flattery of Maecenas and other magnates of the court. But it will be observed that he seldom, if ever, addresses the haughty nobles of Rome except in a strain of prudential advice, soothing their pride, but lowering their ambition, and directing them to scek contentment and happiness not in objects of public interest, but in the tranquil enjoyment of ease, which he dignifies with the name of philosophy. The poetry of Horace is full of pleasing sentiments, but it contains perhaps no single strain of generous and ennobling enthusiasm. Such feelings it was the policy of Augustus to discourage, and the policy of Augustus is faithfully represented in the utterances of his courtly flatterer. But there was another task imposed upon him, and it is to this that his satires and epistles are more commonly directed, namely, to put out of countenance the offensive self-assertion of the "new men" of the empire, the men whom the fortunes of the civil war had suddenly raised from their native obscurity, and enriched or ennobled, notwithstanding the barrenness of their origin and the vulgarity of their breeding. Augustus wanted, no doubt, to tame the aspiring spirits of his genuine nobles, but he shrank from driving them to desperation by swamping them with an inundation of baseborn inferiors, perhaps their own former clients and freedIt was part of Horace's office, as a gentleman usher at court, to discountenance all such undue pretensions, and shut the door with consummate urbanity upon the most disagreeable or the most importunate of the courtiers. He men. |