We shall now, to justify our assertion that it is in the dramatic poets of modern Europe that a parallel can alone be found to the condensed power of ancient eloquence, proceed to give a few quotations from the most celebrated speeches of antiquity. We have selected, in general, those from the historians, as they are shorter than the orations delivered in the forum, and can be given entire. A fragment from a speech of Demosthenes or Cicero gives no sort of idea of the original, because what goes before is withheld. To scholars we need not plead indulgence for the inadequacy of our translations: they will not expect what they know to be impossible. Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, puts into the mouth of Galgacus the following oration, when he was animating the Caledonians to their last battle with the Romans under Agricola. "As often as I reflect on the origin of the war, and our necessities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your will, are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For we have all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies behind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet hovers around. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the brave, are now the only refuge of the cowardly. In former actions, in which the Britons fought with various success against the Romans, our valour was a resource to look to, for we, the noblest of all the nation, and on that account placed in its inmost recesses, unused to the spectacle of servitude, had our eyes even inviolate from its hateful sight. We, the last of the earth, and of freedom, unknown to fame, have been hitherto defended by our remoteness; now, the extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever regarded as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have in vain sought to deprecate by moderation and subservience. The robbers of the globe, when the land fails they scour the sea. Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor, they are ambitious--the East and the West are unable to satiate their desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity. To carry off, massacre, seize on false pretences, they call empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace.