High on her prow stood the form of a noble-looking leader, in the very prime of strength and manhood, his frame displaying all the graces of Antinous mingled with all the sinewy strength of Hercules. To the first might be referred the massive brow, the short curled, clustering locks that shaded it, and the somewhat effeminate cast of his singularly beautiful features—to the latter, the broad shoulders, the brawny neck, and the firmness of the muscular development that was displayed at every motion. His eyes were of that long-cut narrow form which has been supposed to be typical of a soft luxurious character; but in the dark orbs themselves there lurked, when they were raised, a sparkle, which might easily be kindled into lightning splendidly different from the dream-like softness of their wonted expression. In the curve, too, of his well-defined and ruddy lips there was that firmness, that bold decision, which almost belied the dimples at their corners, and the voluptuous curve of the chin. He seemed a man who possessed the energy to battle with the universe, to win a world, and when won, the recklessness to cast it away as worthless. Nor did his countenance misrepresent the character of the Triumvir. It was Marc Antony, the glorious winner of the Roman world, and its reckless loser. It was Marc Antony, returning in defeat—with any other it had been despair; but his was not a temper to yield even for a moment to so base a sinking of the spirit—returning with a single trireme from the half-conquered strife of Actium—hurrying away from his almost victorious fleet on the very instant of victory in a pursuit of a fair but faithless mistress; leaving his devoted followers to the mercy of a heartless conqueror, leaving a world, which another hour would have rendered irrecoverably his own, to cast its subject diadems at the feet of young Octavius. Bravely, fiercely, had he striven, while the humor was upon him; and farthest into the yielding ranks of the enemy had his brave galley forced her way, until the fatal cry was heard, that Cleopatra, with her sixty light-armed ships, had abandoned the conflict, and was flying at the utmost speed of sail and oar, toward her native shores. At once, and with a double exertion of valor almost supernatural, he had forced his retrograde passage through the shattered and reeling galleys of Augustus, and expending tenfold the quantity of noble blood to lose a half-won battle, which would have secured to him the empire of the universe. Even now, although he knew that his all was set upon a single die, that he who might have been an emperor, was now a vanquished fugitive, without a home, a country, a place of refuge, there was no touch of humiliation or sadness in his mien. His eye was thoughtful, indeed, and perhaps somewhat melancholy in its expression, but at all events such was, when unexcited, its usual character.