and could fight. And so could my father- couldn't he, mother?" 11. "Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us," said Letty, frowning. "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak." ،، Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps from the tub. "When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so." (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) "Now, Ben." 12. "Well-oh-well-why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and I can't tell it just how you told it-but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything—" "Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her mother repent. "Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously. "But that isn't a good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates." "Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious. "Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open it." LESSON LXXIII. BIRDS. BY MARY B. HOWITT. Mary Botham Howitt, wife of the eminent English author, William Howitt, was born in England in 1804. She commenced her literary career shortly after her marriage, by a volume of poems called the Forest Minstrel. Among her published works are translations from Miss Bremer and Hans C. Andersen, Ballads and other Poems, Sketches of Natural History in Verse, two novels, called The Heir of Wast-Wayland, and Wood Leighton; and in conjunction with her husband, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe. 'Mong the wortle-berries green; There the joyous Bird is seen. 3. Wheel amid the breezy air, Wakes the mavis, and the merle; Wakes the cuckoo on the bough; Wakes the jay with ruddy breast; Wakes the mother ring-dove 4. Some are strong and some are weak; In the joyous song it sings; In the liquid air it cleaves; 5. Do we wake, or do we sleep, Sing and soar up from the hill! LESSON LXXIV. VERRES DENOUNCED. CICERO. Marcus Tullius Cicero was an illustrious Roman orator, philosopher, and statesman. He was born at Arpinum, about seventy miles southeast of Rome, on the 3d of January, 106 B. C. He was educated at Rome, and was profoundly versed in Greek literature and philosophy, He held several important and honorable offices, among which was that of Consul. The most memorable act of his administration appears in the ability and courage with which he overthrew the designs of Catiline, who had formed a conspiracy to burn the city, massacre the Senators, and seize the chief power himself. The following extract is from one of his orations against the infamous Caius Verres, who was impeached by the Sicilians for cruelty. He was killed by the soldiers of Antony on the 7th of December, 43 B. C. THE opinion has long prevailed, Fathers, that in public prosecutions, men of wealth, however clearly convicted, are always safe. This opinion, so injurious to your order, so detrimental to the state, it is now in your power to refute. A man is on trial before you who is rich, and who hopes his riches will compass his acquittal: but whose life and actions are his sufficient condemnation in the eyes of all candid men. 2. I speak of Caius Verres. If he do not now receive the sentence his crimes deserve, it shall not be through the lack of a criminal, or a prosecutor, but through the failure of the ministers of justice to do their duty. Passing over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does the prætorship of Verres exhibit but one continued scene of villainies? 3. Behold the public treasury squandered, a Consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people trampled on! But his prætorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness, and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. 4. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most worthy have been condemned and banished without a hearing, while the most atrocious criminals have, with money, purchased exemption from the punishment due to their guilt. 5. I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against these charges? Are you not the tyrant prætor, who, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, dared to put to an infamous death on the cross that ill-fated and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Coranus? And what was his offense? He had declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against your brutal persecutions! 6. For this, when about to embark for home, he was seized, brought before you, charged with being a spy, scourged and tortured. In vain did he exclaim, "I am a Roman citizen! I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my innocence!" 7. Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted. While the sacred words, "I am a Roman citizen!" were on his lips-words which, in the remotest regions, are a passport to protection-you ordered him to death upon the cross! 8. O Liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred, now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power from the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death a Roman citizen? 9. Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Romar commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the merciless monster, who, in the confidence of his |