And thou hast listened, with entranced desire, The first rude sounds that would my lips inspire; Thy watchful ear would snatch, with keen delight, My verse, low-murmured through the live-long night. To only thee my lengthened toils were known, And with thy years has my Thebaid grown. I saw thee, what thou art, when late I stood On the dark verge of the Lethæan flood; When glazed in death, I closed my quivering eyes, Relenting Fate restored me to thy sighs; Thou wert alone the cause, the Power above Feared thy despair and melted to thy love.”—ELTON. SULPICIA.—We must not pass over the Roman lyric poetess Sulpicia, the Sappho of Domitian’s age—a noble lady of exceptional genius, who claims that she “First taught the Roman dames to vie With Græcia’s nymphs of lyric minstrelsy.” A short satire on Domitian’s expulsion of the Greek philosophers from Italy, bearing the name of Sulpicia, still survives. It is valuable, as the only fragment we have from a Roman poetess. From it we extract the following apt simile:— “It fares with Romans as with wasps, whose home Is hung where Juno’s temple rears its dome; A bristling crowd, they wave their flickering wings, Their yellow bodies barbed with quivering stings. But not like wasps, thus tremblingly alive, The bee, secure returning, haunts her hive; Forgetful of the comb, by sloth oppressed, The swarm, the queen, die slow in pampered rest: And this the sons of Romulus have found, Sunk in the lap of peace, in long perdition drowned.” =Quintilian= (35-95 A.D.), of Spanish parentage but Roman education, for many years taught eloquence successfully in the capital, numbering among his pupils the nephews of Domitian. He had the good fortune to enjoy the favor of the emperor, and filled a professorship to which was attached an annual salary of about $4,000. Quintilian is honored as the author of the “Institutes of Oratory,” an exhaustive rhetorical treatise in twelve books, devoted to the education of the orator from infancy. “No other author,” it has been said, “ever adorned a scientific treatise with so many happy metaphors.” No other author, it may be added, ever succeeded better in investing a dry subject with general interest. The “Institutes” may be read with profit by all who desire to improve their style. Quintilian insists on virtue as a requisite of the perfect orator; yet with strange inconsistency excuses a falsehood if told in a good cause, and justifies the doing of evil that good may come. We present a few paragraphs on THE EMBELLISHMENT OF STYLE.