talents Virgil was little at ease in society, seems likely enough, both from the laboured subtlety of his style, and the nature of his poetry; it is also confirmed by what we read towards the end of the Second Book of the Georgics. There the poet expresses a wish for a quiet and solitary life, as though he regarded it as a remedy and refuge more than an advantage in itself. Now, seeing that with rare exceptions men of these two species are never esteemed until they are dead, and are of little power in the world; he asserted as a general rule, that the only way to gain esteem during life is to live unnaturally. And since the first class, which is the mean of the two extremes, represents the civilisation of our times; he concluded from this and other circumstances that the conduct of human affairs is entirely in the hands of mediocrity. He distinguished also three conditions of old age, compared with the other ages of man. When nature and manners were first instituted, men were just and virtuous at all ages. Experience and knowledge of the world did not make men less honest and upright. Old age was then the most venerable time of life; for besides having all the good qualities common to other men, the aged were naturally possessed of greater prudence and judgment than their juniors. But in process of time, the conduct of men changed; their manners became debased and corrupt. Then were the aged the vilest of the vile; for they had served a longer apprenticeship to vice, had been longer under the influence of the wickedness of their neighbours, and were besides possessed of the spirit of cold indifference natural to their time of life. Under such conditions they were powerless to act, save by calumny, fraud, perfidy, cunning, dissimulation, and other such despicable means. The corruption of men at length exceeded all bounds. They despised virtue and well-doing before they knew anything of the world, and its sad truth. In their youth they drained the cup of evil and dissipation. Old age was then not indeed venerable, for few things thence-forward could be so called, but the most bearable time of life. For whereas the mental ardour and bodily strength which formerly stimulated the imagination and the conception of noble thoughts, had often given rise to virtuous habits, sentiments, and actions; the same causes latterly increased man's wickedness by enlarging his capacity for evil, to which it lent an additional attractiveness. But this ardour diminished with age, bodily decrepitude, and the coldness incident to age, things ordinarily more dangerous to virtue than vice. In addition to this, excessive knowledge of the world became so dissatisfactory and wearisome a thing, that instead of conducting men from good to evil, as formerly, it gave them strength to resist wickedness, and sometimes even to hate it. So that, comparing old age with the other periods of life, it may be said to have been as better to good in the earliest times; as worse