constituted authorities; and, indeed, the strength or weakness of such an opposition is no bad test, after all, of the merits of an administration; for if the majority of the people are well-to-do, the inference must be favourable to the government. Peace was concluded with the Samnites, but Rome was now on the brink of a war with the Latins, who sent ambassadors, proposing that the two people should henceforth be considered as one, in order to establish their unity. The Senate was to be half Latin and half Roman; but the latter declared they would not recognise this sort of half and half in any of their measures. The Consul, T. Manlius, when he heard the terms, went off into a series of clap-traps, in which he knew he was perfectly safe; for the contingency in which he might have been called upon to keep his word, was not at all likely to happen. He exclaimed, that if the Senate should be half Latin, he would enter the assembly with his drawn sword, and cause vacancies in half the seats of the house by slaying all the Latin occupants. This species of paulo-post-future patriotism is equally common and convenient, for it pledges the professor to do nothing until after the doing of something else, which, in all probability, may never happen. T. Manlius was not put to the test, though he certainly proved himself, in some respects, ready for the Latins, had they come on in earnest; for poor Annius, their spokesman, having tumbled down stairs from top to bottom, the consul brutally chuckled over the weak legs of the unhappy legate. "Ha! ha!" roared Manlius, with savage mirth, "thus will I prostrate all the Latins;" and he proceeded to kick at the ambassador, who, being a man of several stone, was completely stunned by his too facile descent from the upper landing to the basement of the Temple of Jupiter. [Illustration: Metius aggravating Titus Manlius.]