Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-07-04

afterwards put 10 ueAtH ny augustus 40
an impostor." Froude, however. ad-
mits that there might have been an
amour with Cleopatra but to suppose
that Caesar. with the concerns OF the
world on his shoulders, would have al
lowed his public action to be influenced
by loose girl of sixteen. Is to make
too large demand upon human credu-
lity. He would not have added to bis
embarrassments by an intrigue. The
salons of Rome, like the salons OF Lon
don and Paris, took their revenge on
greatness by soiliug it with filth"
Equally preposterous is the story that
he would have taken the Nile voyage
with her if his army had not refused to
90 with him. There was not moment
during his stay at Alexandria when such
an expedition could have been thought
of, for he was blockaded in the palace.
The reader will also even fail to discover
in this d" sketch the famous story of
:. came, l saw, conquered"
These illustrations will serve to show
the spirit with which Mr.. Froude cham
pions his hero. Ga the other hand,
the reader will be amply compensated
for the absence of many familiar an.
ecdotes by marvellous realism and
vividness in the authors dramatic pic
tnres OF the Roman people at this
period, and the living, moving person
ages OF the great tragedy in which
Cesar and his contemporaries bore 30
prominent a part. What generations
of school boys have with dictionary and
grammar painfully dug out, and OBJ
tanned therefrom a very faint and dry
conception of Caesar and Cicero,
Pompey, Catiline, and Cato, Mr..
Froude has depicted with such excep.
tional skill that they seem rather to be
men of our day and time politicians
OF Berlin, London, Paris or Washing
ton. Ancient Rome with its tumults,
its riches, its luxury, its poverty, its
violence and bloodshed seems almost
accessible by rail or steamer. In a
rapid sweep of hundred pages the
historian tells the tale OF the great con-
quest OF Gaul and Germany and the ex.
petition to Britain, with condensed
and graphic vivacity that thrills and
holds one like the swift and intense ad-
ventures Of u day, or night; where the
hero Is pursuing or pursued by savage
men or beasts through painless woods,
over snowy mountains and across al
most impossible rivers. His transla.
tons are wonderfully we'll done. Cice-
TO, though still expressing in his own
words the ambitious and fears which
weakened and agitated him two thousand
years ago. is made to talk with Saxon di-
rect ess, and in the clear, vigorous
idlom of Mr.. Froudes native tongue.
We can almost imagine the Roman ora
tor an Euglishman of the nineteenth
century censuring or pralsing the poll
cies of Gladstone or Disraeli. CAESARS
campaigns, as we have limited, are not
mere obscure and dismal annals pre-
served in dead language upon musty
parchment or in tedious text books.
He opens his "sketch with a
thoughtful and suggestive essay upon
the growth and death of national life-a
profound essay written with great ease
and simplicity, and SO aptly enforced
and illustrated that youthful mind
could scarcely fail to comprehend it.
In succinct but comprehensive para
graph he lays out the problem of ma
tional vicissitudes:
Goethe compares life to game of
whist, where the cards are dealt out Of
destiny, and the rules of the game are
fixed subject to conditions, the play
ers are left to win or lose according to
their skill or want of skill. The life of
nation, like the life of man may be
prolonged in honor into the fullness Of
its time, or it may perish prematurely,
for want of guidance, by violence or
internal disorders. And thus the his
tory of national revolutions is to states
manship what the pathology of disease
is to the art of medicine. The physi-
clan cannot arrest the coming on of age.
Where disease has laid hold upon the
constitution he cannot expel it. But
he may check the progress Of the evil if
he can recognize the symptoms in time.
He can save life at the cost of an un.
sound limb. He can tell us how to
preserve our health when we have it !;
he can warn US of the conditions under
which particular disorders will have us
at disadvantage. And 80 with ma
tons; amidst the endless variety of
circumstances there are constant phe-
nomena which give notice of approach
ing danger; there are courses of action
which have uniformly produced the
same results, and the wise politicians
are those who have learned from ex-
perience the real tendencies of things,
unmisled by superficial differences :
who can shun the rocks where others
have been wrecked, or from foresight
OF what is coming can be cool when the
peril is upon them"
There are particular epochs, too,
which have the charms for us viii ch
dramas have, periods "when the great
actors on the stage of life stand before
us with the distinctness with which they
appear in the creations of the poet"
There are not many such periods.
Generation after generation passes by,
and is crumbled into the sand as rocks
are crumbled by the sea-" The figures
of the actors are indistinct as the rude
ballad or ruder inscription which may
be the only authentic record OF them,
and we know only the broad results as
measured from century to century.
Philosophy may tseat of these. But
there are few periods in which intel