tages enjoyed by those who serve need scarcely be enumerated, as they are so obvious-an almost certain supply of all the main requisites of life-duties which, being definite, occasion no feverish excitement or fret-exemption from all the taxing responsibilities which so much embitter the existence of their superiors. The results of the lives of both classes seem to come more nearly to an equality, than the fact of its being a point of ambition to rise from the one to the other would seem to indicate. We deceive ourselves, if we think this ambition an acknowledgment of there being a real superiority in the one state over the other. It is only the exponent of a kind of mind to which the lower state is unsuitable, and which desires to be engaged in circumstances and duties in harmony with itself. If the relation of master and servant superior and dependant-were correctly understood, an improvement to the happiness of both parties might be the consequence. It is simply an arrangement for a distribution of duties with a regard to the natural or acquired qualifications of individuals, and therefore does not necessarily imply any right on the one side to domineer, or a duty on the other to be over-obsequious. The commands and obediences which the relation implies, may very well consist with a degree of kindly regard on the master's part, and of respectful attachment on the servant's, which would tend to make the situation of both agreeable. There is one point in the conduct of the former to which too much attention can not be given-an avoidance of everything in language and in deed that can make a servant feel his situation to be one at all compromising his personal respectability or freedom. Servants are often cooped up in a more or less solitary manner, without permission either to go abroad or to receive visits, and are expected in these circumstances to be perfectly happy, as well as cheerfully assiduous in the performance of their duties. It is an outrage on nature, and therefore nothing but evil can come of it. The social feelings of servants call for exercise, as well as those of their masters and mistresses, and a reasonable indulgence should be allowed to them. on the 26th of August, B. C. 55), Cæsar reached the British coast, near Dover, at about the worst possible point to effect a landing in face of an enemy, and the Britons were not disposed to be friends. The submission they had offered through their ambassadors was intended only to prevent or retard invasion; and seeing it fail of either of these effects, on the return of their ambassadors with Comius, as Cæsar's envoy, they made that prince a prisoner, loaded him with chains, prepared for their defence as well as the shortness of time would permit; and when the Romans looked from their ships to the steep white cliffs above them, they saw them covered all over by the armed Britons. Finding that this was not a convenient landing-place, Cæsar resolved to lie by till the third hour after noon, in order, he says, to wait the arrival of the rest of his fleet. Some laggard vessels appear to have come up, but the eighteen transports, bearing the cavalry, were nowhere seen. Cæsar, however, favored by both wind and tide, proceeded at the appointed hour, and sailing about seven miles further along the coast, prepared to land his forces, on an open, flat shore, which presents itself between Walmer Castle and Sandwich. The Britons on the cliffs, perceiving his design, followed his motions, and sending their cavalry and war-chariots before, marched rapidly on with their main force to oppose his landing anywhere. Cæsar confesses that the opposition of the natives was a bold one, and that the difficulties he had to encounter were very great on many accounts; but superior skill and discipline, and the employment of some military engines on board the war-galleys, to which the British were unaccustomed, and which projected missiles of various kinds, at last triumphed over them, and he disembarked his two legions. We must not omit the act of the standardbearer of the tenth legion, which has been thought deserving of particular commemoration by his general. While the Roman soldiers were hesitating to leave the ships, chiefly deterred, according to Cæsar's account, by the depth of the water, this officer, having first solemnly besought the gods that what he was about to do might prove fortunate for the legion, and then exclaiming with a loud voice, "Follow me, my fellow-soldiers, unless you will give up your eagle to the enemy! I, at least, will do my duty to the republic and to our general!" leaped into the sea as he spoke, and dashed with his ensign among the enemy's ranks. The men instantly followed their heroic leader; and the soldiers in the other ships, excited by the example, also crowded forward along with them. The two armies were for some time mixed in combat; but at length the Britons withdrew in disorder from the well-contested beach. As their cavalry, however, was not yet arrived, the Romans could not pursue them or advance into the island, which Cæsar says prevented his rendering the victory complete. The native maritime tribes, thus defeated, sought the advantage of a hollow peace. They despatcred ambassadors to Cæsar, offering hostages and an entire submission. They liberated Comius, and restored him to his employer, throwing the blame of the harsh treatment his envoy had met with upon the multitude or common people, and entreating Cæsar to excuse a fault which proceeded solely from the popular ignorance. The conqueror, after reproaching them for sending of their own accord ambassadors into Gaul to sue for peace, and then making war upon him without any reason, forgave them their offences, and ordered them to send in a certain number of hostages, as security for their good behavior in future. Some of these hostages were presented immediately, and the Britons promised to deliver the rest, who lived at a distance, in the course of a few days. The native forces then seemed entirely disbanded, and the several chiefs came to Cæsar's camp to offer allegiance, and negotiate or intrigue for their own separate interests. On the day that this peace was concluded, and not before, the unlucky transports with the Roman cavalry, were enabled to quit their port on the coast of Gaul. They stood across the channel with a gentle gale; but when they neared the British coast, and were even within view of Casar's camp, they were dispersed by a tempest, and were finally obliged to return to the port where they had been so long detained, and whence they had set out that morning. That very night, Cæsar says, it happened to be full moon, when the tides always rise highest, "a fact at that time wholly unknown to the Romans," and the galleys which he had with him, and which were hauled up on the beach, were filled with the rising waters, while his heavier transports, that lay at anchor in the roadstead, were either dashed to pieces, or rendered altogether unfit for sailing. This disaster spread a general consternation through the camp; for, as every legionary knew, there were no other vessels to carry back the troops, nor any materials with the army to repair the ships that were disabled; and as it had been from the beginning Cæsar's design not to winter in Britain, but in Gaul, he was wholly unprovided with corn and provisions to feed his troops. Suetonius says, that during the nine years Cæsar held the military command in Gaul, amid a most brilliant series of successes, he experienced only three signal disasters; and he counts the almost entire destruction of his fleet by a storm in Britain as one of the three. Nor were the invaded people slow in perceiving the extent of Cæsar's calamity, and devising means to profit by it. They plainly saw he was in want of cavalry, provisions, and ships; a close inspection showed that his troops were not so numerous as they. had fancied, and probably familiarized them in some measure to their warlike weapons and demeanor; and they confidently hoped, that by defeating this force, or surrounding and cutting off their retreat, and starving them, they should prevent all future invasions. The chiefs in the camp, having previously held secret consultations among themselves, retired, mius, the Atrebatian, had brought over from Gaul. The Romans pursued the fugitives as far as their strength would permit; they slaughtered many of them, set fire to some houses and villages, and then returned again to the protection of their camp. On the same day the Britons again sued for peace, and Cæsar, being anxious to return to Gaul as quickly as possible, "because the equinox was approaching, and his ships were leaky," granted it to them on no harder condition than that of doubling the number of hostages they had promised after their first defeat. He did not even wait for the hostages, but a fair wind springing up, he set sail at midnight, and arrived safely in Gaul. THE IRON AGE. by degrees, from the Romans, and began | In this victory he attaches great importo draw the islanders together. Cæsar tance to a body of thirty horse, which Cosays, that though he was not fully apprized of their designs, he partly guessed them, and from their delay in sending in the hostages promised from a distance, and from other circumstances, and instantly took measures to provide for the worst. He set part of his army to repair his shattered fleet, using the materials of the vessels most injured to patch up the rest; and as the soldiers wrought with an indefatigability suiting the dangerous urgency of the case, he had soon a number of vessels fit for sea. He then sent to Gaul, for other materials wanting, and probably for some provisions also. Another portion of his troops he employed in foraging parties, to bring into the camp what corn they could collect in the adjacent country. This supply could not have been great, for the natives had everywhere gathered in their harvest, except in one field; and there, by lying in ambush, the Britons made a bold and bloody attack, which had well nigh proved fatal to the invaders. As one of the two legions that formed the expedition were cutting down the corn in that field, Cæsar, who was in his fortified camp, suddenly saw a great cloud of dust in that direction. He rushed to the spot with two cohorts, leaving orders for all the other soldiers of the legion to follow as soon as possible. His arrival was very opportune, for he found the legion which had been surprised in the cornfield, and which had suffered considerable loss, now surrounded and pressed on all sides by the cavalry and war-chariots of the British, who had been concealed by the neighboring woods. He succeeded in bringing off the engaged legion, with which he withdrew to his intrenched camp, declining a general engagement for the present. Heavy rains, that followed for some days, confined the Romans within their intrenchments. Meanwhile, the British force of horse and foot was increased from all sides, and they gradually drew round the intrenchments. Casar, anticipating their attack, marshalled his legions outside of the camp, and, at the proper moment, fell upon the islanders, who, he says, not being able to sustain the shock, were soon put to flight. E live in the iron age, as poets, from time immemorial, sung of the days in which they lived. Who has not heard that the age of chivalry is gone that the spirit of poetry has left this world-that the sordid vices of Mammon, restless and vigilant, have extinguished in our time the true constituents of happiness-faith, hope, and love. There was much of poetical and moral beauty, and of philosophical truth, though darkly obscured, in many opinions and superstitions which; literally understood, were erroneous or idolatrous. In the degrading system of polytheism itself, the devotee dimly recognised the power and presence of the only and universal God, who by day and night, through the varied phenomena of nature, ever speaks with a still voice to the soul of the intelligent and pious worshipper. And thus in many an error and superstition of bygone ages there was originally a moral and a meaning which we have not always advantageously exchanged for the proud intelligence of our own. But those who deem that poetry and romance have left us, proclaim only their own dulness. Nature is yet fresh in her beauty as she was centuries ago the skies, rivers, forests, lakes, the blue ocean, the everlasting mountains, and the varying seasons are all to him "who has a soul attuned aright," as glorious as ever. The hopes and buoyancy of youth-ever extinguished by advancing years and reproduced in the child-the calmer and more resolute passions of maturer age"whatever stirs this mortal frame," shall furnish the materials of romance and poetry so long as the world and the divine portions of our nature continue to exist. We live in the iron age, but iron has accomplished for us results of which the poet or alchymist never dreamed. The native of our woods could only by a most wearisome process fell the tree which the iron axe so quickly prostrates-the instrument through which the ground, so recently covered with forests and tenanted by wild animal, has become dotted by the flocks and cities of a civilized nation, whose rapid peopling of an entire continent, familiar and common-place to us, shall be the theme of poetry and wonder to many a future age. Our weapons, more terrible than lightning, teach us the folly of war. One instrument of science shows us myriads of animated beings, susceptible of pleasure and pain in the drop of stagnant water, and covering in similar proportions nearly all matter, while another displays to our vision the mountains and oceans of heavenly orbs, and teaches us that far in the regions of infinite space are innumerable worlds, each it may be equalling our own, and like it, teeming in its atoms, with life incalculable. Machinery which to the Roman or Greek would have appeared impossible, propels the huge train of carriages on the iron road, and urges the iron boat against the power of wind and water, through the storms of mid-ocean, or the crashing and solemn icebergs, where the ordinary ship must inevitably perish. A recent publication of high authority assures us that "writing paper has been manufactured from iron, and that books with both leaves and binding have been made from the same material." Manufacturing machinery performs the work of millions of men; and chymistry in a thousand methods produces changes inore beneficial than the avaricious alchymist vainly toiled to discover. When the Macedonian conqueror Alexander wished to prove the truth of the Delphian oracle, knowing no better test, he asked to be told what his father then at a distance was doing. Our magnetic telegraph, claiming no supernatural agency, might accurately have answered-and by the same mysterious and subjugated power, the recent corpse itself, starting rudely as if indignant at the interruption of its last repose, may be roused into energy wild and lifelike, but transient. The discoveries of science, and varied information of the arts and thoughts of other men and nations, are diffused through the medium of the iron press. We in our iron age have realized things more wonderful, than nursed amid the romance of wild Arabia, The wandering tribes require, Stretched in the desert round the evening fire." It is true that the fairy tales and strange legends which our forefathers ceased to believe have now become almost extinct. The chivalry and glory, pomp and savage sports of feudalism have departed, but like a gaudy and imperfect picture, or the illuminated transparency of a theatre, the fascination of feeling which we experience when regarding them through distance or darkness, changes upon a closer view in the light of day to indignant dissatisfaction. Rather than admire the spirit of those times, which colored and gilt by time and imagination may sometimes appear poetically beautiful, as clouds of noxious vapor receive from the sun a brilliancy which is not their own, we should regret that in dark places of the earth are legends and stories as unreasonable as cver, and that ancient feudalism, tyrannical as it was, is surpassed by modern slavery. A few only of the sublime and wonderful discoveries of our age have been mentioned. Volumes would not suffice to tell all. The riches of the past, most of its histories, experience, literature, and inventions-itself no poorer for the legacythe vast discoveries and powers of the present day-and the bright hope for the future, which, reasoning from that which |