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This is the loss of losses.* Where are now

Your hopes of power and wealth? All turned to ashes.
False hope has barbed the sting of poverty.

Mand. Lay down, poor friends, your melancholy burthen.
Our tears are due to this cinereal urn.

Oh, most false treasure! have I followed thee
Through seas and winds? Made prosperous navigation ?
Magic and mathematics have I studied,

That buried men might cheat me? And expounded
Their fate to others, ignorant of my own?
Here is a buried father. I, who wept not
My own, now mourn a stranger's. Querolus
Mourns not, to whom alone this grief is due.
Sard. Oh, cruel treasure! What was the disease

Mand.

Sard.

Syc.

That carried thee from life? What funeral pyre
Turned thee to ashes? Us, thy expectant heirs,
Why hast thou disinherited, oh treasure?
Whither shall we, cut off without a sesterce,
Now bend our steps?

Look to the urn once more.

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I cannot touch: nothing I dread so deeply.
Thou hast a timid soul, Sardanapalus.

(Reads) HERE LIES TRIERINUS, SON OF TRICIPITINUS,
DEPOSITED AND BURIED. Oh me, miserable!

My heart is in my throat. The smell of gold,

I have heard, is always sweet:† but this is redolent
Of dire aromata; even through the mass

Of treacherous lead,§ that covers down the ashes.

Mand. So well perfumed, the dead has been much honoured.
Syc. Had I but listened to the magpie's warning,

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I had not fall'n in this calamity.

Sard. Nor I, had I obeyed the admonition

Given me this morning by a crop-tailed dog.

Mand. What admonition?

Sard.

As I left the house,

He ran between my legs, and tripped me backward.
Mand. What had I done to thee, old Euclio,

Syc.

Mand.

Thou shouldst deride me in thy life and death?
What shall we do now?

What remains to us,

But to revenge ourselves on Euclio's son,
And make us pastime of his credulous fear?
Peep in, and mark. Take care he sees you not.

Sard. He and his men are ranged within the doors,
All armed with rods and cudgels.

majore domus gemitu, majore tumultu,
Planguntur nummi, quam funera. Nemo dolorem
Fingit in hoc casu, vestem deducere summam
Contentus, vexare oculos humore coacto.

Ploratur lacrimis amissa pecunia veris.

Juv. xiii. 130-134.

Feigned sorrow oft in funeral rites appears;
The loss of gold is wept with real tears.
Lucri bonus est odor ex re

+

Qualibet.

Juv. xiv. 204, 5.

Alluding to the well-known anecdote of Vespasian.-Sueton. Vesp. 23. Alluding to the sweet herbs which it was customary to lay over the ashes; and which may have been placed in the urn by Euclio, to increase the deception. § The lead was well imagined, to give probability to the apparent weight.

Mand.

Keeping guard

'Gainst Evil Fortune. Now approach, and frighten them.
Say thou art she, and threaten to break in.

Sard. Ho! Querolus ?

Quer.

Sard.

Quer. For what?

Sard.

Who calls?

Quick! let me in.

That I may enter my old quarters.
Quer. Zeta! Pantolabus! stand by the doors,
Hence, Evil Fortune! whither the Great Master
Conveyed thee.

Sard.

He predicted my return;

And I am here.

Quer.

Wert thou Good Fortune even,

Thou shouldst not enter.

Mand.

Thunder at the door,

To draw the men aside, while through the window
We cast this funeral urn. Oh, Querolus!
Receive the treasure which old Euclio left thee.
Such wealth be ever thine, and such thy children's.
Now, all on board, lest from this sacrilege

Arise some peril to our liberties.

They make off accordingly; but Sardanapalus cannot be satisfied, s he enjoys the terror of Querolus, on receiving through his window & rs from the dead. He puts his ear to the door. He is astounded by sho of joy, and the jingling of gold. The broken urn has scattered its conte on the floor. He hastens back to his comrades; thinking that, if remains, he may be apprehended for a thief, without having the pleas of their company.

The Lar enters again :

Lar. The urn has yielded up its weight of gold;
Rendered true faith to its depositor;

Deluded the deluders; robbed the thieves.

The simulated death gives the son life,

Restoring what the living father hid.

Hence let men learn, that none may win or lose,

But by the will of a divinity.*

My office is absolved to Querolus ;

But now that thief and cheat, Mandrogerus,

Will I draw thither, to put forth his claim
To half the treasure, on old Euclio's letter,
Where he shall find himself in deep dilemma,
And bear the burthen of his own misdeed.

Querolus, and his friend the Arbiter, enter, discussing the circumstances of the buried treasure, the provident device of Euclio, the singular modes of abstraction and restoration. Mandrogerus enters, and after some preliminary, presents the letter.. Querolus reads it:

'Euclio bids health to his son, Querolus.

Dreading to trust a stranger, or a slave,
I send my faithful friend, Mandrogerus,

To show thee, without fraud, what I have left thee.
This being done, give him one half the treasure,
In compensation of his faith and pains.'

Quer. You were, abroad, my father's friend and comrade?
Mand. The letter shows it.

Quer.

Show me, then, the treasure

Which we are to divide.

* There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we may.

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Do you deny it?

Quer. To me? an untouched treasure? Why, what treasure?
Mand. That which your father left.

Quer.
Where is it, then?
Here is the Arbiter, to make partition.
Mand. I say 'tis in your hands.

Quer.

Mand.

From yours?

From mine.

Quer. 'Twas in your hands, then?
Mand.

Yes, and might have staid there:

The whole: I only claim my honest share.
Quer. You stir not hence until you render it.
Mand. Why, I have rendered it.
Quer.

Mand. To-day.
Quer.

To whom? When? How?

Here. Through the window.

Whence, then, came it?

How went it thence?

Mand. From the sacrarium.
Quer.

You bore it out yourself.

Mand. Out through the door.
Quer. You were to show it to me without fraud.
But this is idle talk. The thing appears not.
Where is this treasure?

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

Quer.

Mand.

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I swear by all the gods.
I pitched it through the window.

This, then, is he, oh worthy Arbiter!
Who hurled into my house that funeral urn.
Pantolabus, the fragments.-Can you read
What here is written?

I have read, and read it.
'HERE LIES TRIERINUS, SON OF TRICIPITINUS,
DEPOSITED AND BURIED.'

Not content

With failing in your duty to the living,

You have made sport and mockery of the dead;
Broken into the tomb; dug up the ashes;
Borne them abroad into the public way;

Stolen the treasure which was buried with them;
And hurled the fatal relics through the window,
To scatter on the floor, and thus pollute
The house thou first hadst plundered.

Fare thee well.

I seek no more. Fortune abandons me. Querolus, however, will not let him go. They examine and crossexamine him; threaten to take him to the prætor; but give him the choice of the charge which they shall make against him, whether it shall be for robbery or sacrilege. He tries a defence on each charge severally, and gives up both points in despair, leaving it to them to charge him with whichever they please-either the theft, which he could not commit, or the sacrilege, which he would not have committed. But he throws himself on their mercy, and only entreats to be allowed to depart. The Arbiter now intercedes for him, as having been really, however unfaithfully, the means of Querolus's wealth. And Querolus, who had been previously disposed to be generous towards him, agrees to give him maintenance, and receive him

into his household.

Sycophanta and Sardanapalus then present themselves. They solicit a small participation in Querofus's bounty. They are aware, that one house

does not take three hungry idlers; but they implore a moderate donation. to speed them on another quest. Querolus replies:

Let the beaten parasite

Have compensation for his injuries.

And immediately follows a sort of epilogue, in the form of a senate consultum, fixing a tariff of compensation for torn clothes, bruises, broke bones, and all other forms of injury to which parasites are liable. The was most probably subjoined as an exposition of Querolus's last words.

In this view of the conclusion, we follow the old reading: Mercede vulnerum victus recipiat Parasitus. In convivio si fuerit veste disciu &c. Klinkhämer terminates the comedy thus:

vulnerum mercedem victus recipiat.

Pauca desiderantur.

And after some preliminary, presents the final passage as a pannus assutu. PARASITUS. In convivio si fuerit, &c.

Three of the editors of this comedy, and many other writers, har spoken of it in the highest terms of praise. Gruter and Pareus disparage it. Cannegeiter thinks that none can disparage it but those who do understand it.' The ill-humour of Gruter and Pareus appears to har been excited chiefly from the MSS. bearing on the title, Plauti Querolu. but this was not the fault of the author, who speaks of himself as treading in Plautus's steps. The assignment of the authorship to Plautus must have been very ancient, for Servius, in his Commentary on Virgil (Æn. iii. 2. cites it as Plauti Querolus.

Danielis calls it a comedy, not less remarkable as a singular relie d antiquity, than admirable from the novelty of its argument.' Rittershus says, this comedy 'requires no eulogium from him, being sufficiently reco mended by its wonderful variety of argument, the gravity of its sentences and the elegance of its comic diction." Klinkhämer concurs in these est mates, and adds the commendation of exemplary propriety and modesty. He expresses his surprise, that a work so well worthy to be generally read

should have been left to lurk in the libraries of the curious.

Barthius panegyrizes the simple elegance and acute sense of the c loquies, and their excellent adaptation to the several characters of the speakers; adding, that the more it is read, the more its sense and ele quence will be perceived.'

Klinkhämer's pains on this comedy have been worthily and successfully bestowed. We feel grateful to him, for the form in which he has presented it to us; and shall be highly gratified if our readers shall derive, from our necessarily limited exposition, any portion of the pleasure which we have

received from the work itself.

M. S. 0.

HYPATIA;

OR,

New Foes with an Old Face.

BY THE AUTHOR OF YEAST,' AND 'THE SAINT'S TRAGEDY.'

CHAPTER V.

A DAY IN ALEXANDRIA.

IN the meanwhile Philammon, with

his hosts, the Goths, had been slipping down the stream. Passing, one after another, world-old cities now dwindled to decaying towns, and numberless canal-mouths, now fast falling into ruin with the fields to which they ensured fertility, under the pressure of Roman extortion and mis-rule, they had entered one evening the mouth of the great canal of Alexandria, slid easily all night across the star-bespangled shallows of Lake Mareotis, and found themselves, when the next morning dawned, among the countless masts and noisy quays of the greatest seaport in the world. The motley crowd of foreigners, the hubbub of all dialects from the Crimea to Cadiz, the vast piles of merchandize, and heaps of wheat, lying unsheltered in that rainless air, the huge bulk of the corn ships lading for Rome, whose tall sides rose story over story, like floating palaces, above the buildings of some inner dock-these sights, and a hundred more, made the young monk think that the world did not look at first sight a thing to be despised. In front of heaps of fruit, fresh from the market-boats, black groups of glossy negro slaves were basking and laughing on the quay, looking anxiously and coquettishly round in hopes of a purchaser ;they evidently did not think the change from desert toil to city luxuries a change for the worse.

Phi

lammon turned away his eyes from beholding vanity; but only to meet fresh vanity wheresoever they fell. He felt crushed by the multitude of new objects, stunned by the din around; and scarcely recollected himself enough to seize the first opportunity of escaping from his dangerous companions.

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Holloa!' roared Smid, the armourer, as he scrambled on to the steps of the slip; you are not going to run away without bidding us good-bye?'

Stop with me, boy!' said old Wulf. I saved you; and you are my man.'

Philammon turned and hesitated. 'I am a monk, and God's man.' You can be that anywhere. I will make you a warrior."

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The weapons of my warfare are not of flesh and blood, but prayer and fasting,' answered poor Philammon, who felt already that he should have ten times more need of the said weapons in Alexandria, than ever he had had in the desert. . . 'Let me go! I am not made for your life! I thank you, bless you! I will pray for you, sir! but let me go!'

'Curse the craven hound!' roared half a dozen voices. Why did you not let us have our will with him, Prince Wulf? You might have expected such gratitude from a monk.'

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He owes me my share of the sport,' quoth Smid. And here it is!' And a hatchet, thrown with practised aim, whistled right for Philammon's head-He had just time to swerve, and the weapon struck and snapped against the granite wall behind.

'Well saved!' said Wulf, coolly, while the sailors and market-women above yelled murder, and the custom-house officers, and other constables and catchpoles of the harbour, rushed to the place-and retired again quietly at the thunder of the Amal from the boat's stern

Never mind! my good fellows! we're only Goths; and on a visit to the Prefect, too.'

Only Goths, my donkey-riding friends!' echoed Smid, and at that ominous name the whole posse comitatus tried to look unconcerned, and found suddenly that their presence was absolutely required in an opposite direction.

'Let him go,' said Wulf, as he stalked up the steps. Let the boy go. I never set my heart on any

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