His reign was perfect tranquillity abroad, and great comfort in Rome; but it was visited with calamities. There was an immense fire in the city, besides the catastrophe of Herculanum and Pompeii, when Vesuvius, which had been quiet since the time of the Greek settlements, all at once began to throw up fire—fortunately for us. The love of the people for Titus was the more decided, as they were by no means mistaken with regard to Domitian. Domitian was a bad son and a bad brother, and there is no doubt of his having sought the life of his father and his brother; especially of the latter, who, however, never tried to avenge himself upon him, and even treated him with confidence. Domitian is one of those men, who are too lightly thought of because they are bad. What he is reproached with may be true, that he showed himself a coward in war; although this is still problematical: that his boundless vanity led to no corresponding achievements, is certain; his cruelty, his falseness, are beyond a doubt; yet for all that he ought not to be estimated too low. He was a very accomplished man, and of a decided talent for literature. Rutgertsius has already remarked, that the paraphrase of the _Phænomena_ of Aratus commonly ascribed to Germanicus, is by Domitian, who as emperor had taken the name of Cæsar Germanicus, as it was more illustrious than that of the Flavii. That it cannot have been the adopted son of Tiberius, is evident from the way in which the poet speaks of his father, whom he introduces as a ruler, and as one who had had the apotheosis. I believe that the poem was written in the time of Titus. It is very respectable as to its general composition, poor as the subject is. Moreover, although Quintilian may have said too much in what he tells us of Domitian, and this exaggeration may have been slavish and in the court-style of despotism; still he certainly would not from mere flattery have praised what was thoroughly worthless. Domitian had a taste for Roman literature, which has done good: he established the great endowment for rhetoricians which Quinctilian received, and he instituted the _Agon Capitolinus_ in which poets were crowned: Roman literature, therefore, took a fresh start in his time. Not to speak of Tacitus, who was then a youth, and of Pliny, the younger,—however little one may admire him,—who was growing up (many well educated people of his day wrote as well as he did); there is Statius belonging to that age, whose _Silvæ_ are among the most agreeable works of antiquity which are left to us, there is Juvenal, who was also one of the greatest minds, but who bore a deadly hatred to Domitian. We see from Domitian’s poem, that he was against the false taste of his times. He slighted Statius; yet for this we are not so much to accuse him of partiality, as to acknowledge the correctness of his judgment. Statius is great in his little poems, which are some of those genuine effusions which are tinged