and in an old Latin mystery-play of the eleventh century, when the witnesses are summoned to give evidence as to the Nativity, there appear among them, in company with the Hebrew prophets, Virgil and the Sibyl, who both join in a general “_Benedicamus Domino_” at the end. St. Augustine quotes twenty-seven Latin verses (which, however, seem very fragmentary and unconnected) as actual utterances of the Sibyl of Erythræ, which contain prophecies, more or less clear, of the great Advent. The original, he says, was in Greek, and the initial letters of each verse formed a sentence, “Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour.”[7] Whatever truth there may be in any special predictions of this nature as existing in the heathen world, it is at least certain that there prevailed very largely, about the date of the Christian era, a vague expectation of some personal advent which should in some way regenerate society. The new “cycle of centuries,” which the poet supposes to begin with the birth of the Child, refers to the doctrine held by Plato and his disciples (possibly of Etruscan origin) of an “Annus Magnus,” or Great Year. It was believed that there were certain recurring periods at long intervals, in which the history of the world repeated itself.[8] A curious story in illustration of this belief is told by Plutarch in his live of Sulla. “While the horizon was clear and cloudless, there was heard suddenly the sound of a trumpet, shrill, prolonged, and as it were wailing, so that all men were startled and awed by its loudness. The Etruscan soothsayers declared that it foreboded the coming of a new generation and the revolution of the world. For that there were eight generations of man in all, differing from each other in habits and ways of life, and each had its allotted space of time, when heaven brought round again the recurrence of the Great Year, and that when the end of one and the rise of another was at hand, some wondrous sign appeared in earth or heaven.”--PLUTARCH, Sulla, c. 7. Enough has perhaps been said to give some idea of the genius and character of Virgil’s pastoral poetry. It laid the foundation of a taste which was long prevalent in European literature, but which may be said to have now become obsolete. English poets were at one time strongly imbued with it. Spenser, Milton, Drayton, Pope, and Ambrose Phillips,--the last perhaps the most successful,--were all more or less imitators of Virgil in this line of poetry. But it would seem to require a more than ordinary revolution in literature ever to bring such a style into popularity again. THE GEORGICS.