PYGMALION’S STATUE. “The sculptor sought His home, and, bending o’er the couch that bore His Maiden’s life-like image, to her lips Fond pressed his own—and lo! her lips seemed warm, And warmer, kissed again; and dimpling to his touch The ivory seems to yield,—as in the sun The waxen labor of Hymettus’ bees, By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled, Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form He loves again and yet again his hand Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse Within throbs answering palpable: ’twas flesh! ’Twas very life!—Then forth in eloquent flood His grateful heart its thanks to Venus poured! The lips he kissed were living lips that felt His passionate pressure; o’er the virgin cheeks Stole deepening crimson; and the unclosing eyes At once on heaven and on their lover looked!” HENRY KING. With the death of Ovid, the flourishing period of poetry terminated. Among his contemporaries, we may mention, in passing, the epic poets ALBINOVA’NUS author of the These’id, and CORNELIUS SEVE’RUS, who wrote an heroic on the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. The didactic poets GRATIUS and MANILIUS also flourished in the Augustan age; the former memorable for his poem on hunting, the latter for his “Astronomica.” PROSE WRITERS. =Titus Livius.=—The last ornament of the Augustan Era is the historian Livy, born at Pata’vium (now Padua) about 59 B.C.—the scion of a noble line that had figured proudly in the annals of the Republic. His was the uneventful life of the scholar, and few particulars of his biography have therefore been preserved. He appears to have begun his career as a rhetorician; to have come to the capital about B.C. 31, for what precise purpose we cannot say, and there to have gained a ready introduction at court. The emperor, already favorably impressed with his ability, is said to have placed at his disposal a suite of rooms in the palace.