But he forsook her! He did--and in obedience to the will of heaven. Throughout the whole of his Tale of Troy, at that fatal banquet, he tells her whither, and to what fated region, the fleet is bound--he is not sailing under scaled orders--Dido hears the Hero's destiny from the lips of Moestissimus Hector, from the lips of Creusa's Shade. But Dido is deaf to all those solemn enunciations--none so deaf as those who will not hear; the Likeness of Ascanius lying-by her on her Royal Couch fired her vital blood--and she already is so insane as to dream of lying ere long on that God-like breast. He had forgot--and he remembers his duty--yes--his duty; according to the Creed of his country--of the whole heathen world--in deserting Dido, he obeyed the Gods. TALBOYS. He sneaked away! says Knight. Go he must--would it have been more heroic to set fire to the Town, and embark in the General Illumination? SEWARD. Would Payne Knight have seriously advised Virgil to marry Æneas, in good earnest, to Dido, and make him King of Carthage? BULLER. Would they have been a happy Couple? SEWARD. Does not our sympathy go with Æneas to the Shades? Is he unworthy to look on the Campos Lugentes? On the Elysian Fields? To be shown by Anchises the Shades of the predestined Heroes of unexisting Rome? TALBOYS. Do we--because of Dido--despise him when first he kens, on a calm bright morning, that great Grove on the Latian shore near the mouth of the Tiber? "Æneas, primique duces, et pulcher Iulus, Corpora sub ramis deponunt arboris altæ, Instituuntque dapes." SEWARD. But he was a robber--a pirate--an invader--an usurper--so say the Payne Knights. Virgil sanctifies the Landing with the spirit of peace--and a hundred olive-crowned Envoys are sent to Laurentum with such peace-offerings as had never been laid at the feet of an Ausonian King. TALBOYS. Nothing can exceed in simple grandeur the advent of Æneas--the reception of the Envoys by old Latinus. The right of the Prince to the region he has reached is established by grant human and divine. Surely a father, who is a king, may dispose of his daughter in marriage--and here he must; he knew, from omen and oracle, the Hour and the Man. Lavinia belonged to Æneas--not to Turnus--though we must not severely blame the fiery Rutulian because he would not give her up. Amata, in and out of her wits, was on his side; but their betrothment--if betrothed they were--was unhallowed--and might not bind in face of Fate. BULLER. Turnus was in the wrong from beginning to end. Virgil, however, has made him a hero--and idiots have said that he eclipses Æneas--the same idiots, who, at the same time, have told us that Virgil could not paint a hero at all. TALBOYS. That his genius has no martial fervour. Had the blockheads read the Rising--the Gathering--in the Seventh Æneid? NORTH.