the Palatine and the Cælian hills. Against the outer walls of this edifice leaned a mass of wooden booths and stores filled chiefly with combustible articles. The wind from the east drove the flames towards the corner of the Palatine, whence they forked in two directions, following the draught of the valleys. At neither point were they encountered by the massive masonry of halls or temples, till they had gained such head that the mere intensity of the heat crumbled brick and stone like paper. The Circus itself was filled from end to end with wooden galleries, along which the fire coursed with a speed which defied all check and pursuit. The flames shot up to the heights adjacent, and swept the basements of many noble structures on the Palatine and Aventine. Again they plunged into the lowest levels of the city, the dense habitations and narrow winding streets of the Velabrum and Forum Boarium, till stopped by the river and the walls. At the same time another torrent rushed towards the Velia and the Esquiline, and sucked up all the dwellings within its reach; till it was finally arrested by the cliffs beneath the gardens of Mæcenas. Amidst the horror and confusion of the scene, the smoke, the blaze, the din, and the scorching heat, with half the population, bond and free, cast loose and houseless into the streets, ruffians were seen to thrust blazing brands into the buildings, who affirmed, when seized by the indignant sufferers, that they were acting with orders; and the crime, which was probably the desperate resource of slaves and robbers, was imputed by fierce suspicions to the government itself. At such a moment of sorrow and consternation every trifle is seized to confirm the suspicion of foul play. The flames, it seems, had subsided after raging for six days, and the wretched outcasts were beginning to take breath and visit the ruins of their habitations, when a second conflagration burst out in a different quarter. This fire commenced at the point where the Emilian gardens of Tigellinus abutted on the outskirts of the city beneath the Pincian hill; and it was on Tigellinus himself, the object already of popular scorn if not of anger, that the suspicion now fell. The wind, it seems, had now changed, for the fire spread from the northwest towards the Quirinal and the Viminal, destroying the buildings, more sparsely planted, of the quarter denominated the Via Lata. Three days exhausted the fury of this second visitation, in which the loss of life and property was less, but the edifices it overthrew were generally of greater interest, shrines and temples of the gods, and halls and porticos devoted to the amusement or convenience of the people. Altogether, the disaster, whether it sprang from accident or design, involved nearly the whole of Rome. Of the fourteen regions of the city, three we are assured were entirely destroyed, while seven others were injured more or less severely; four only of the whole number escaped unhurt. The fire made a complete clearance of the central quarters, leaving perhaps but few public buildings erect, even on the Palatine and Aventine; but it was, for the most part, hemmed in by the crests of the surrounding eminences, and confined to the seething crater which had been the cradle of the Roman people. The day of its outburst, it was remarked, was that of the first burning of Rome by the Gauls, and some curious calculators computed that the addition of an equal number of years, months, and days together would give the complete period which had elapsed in the long interval of her greatness. Of the number of houses and insulæ destroyed Tacitus does not venture to hazard a statement; he only tantalizes us by his slender notice of the famous fanes and monuments which sank in the common ruin. Among them were the temple of Diana, which Servius Tullius had erected; the shrine and altar of Hercules, consecrated by Evander, as affirmed in the tradition impressed upon us by Virgil; the Romulean temple of Jupiter Stator, the remembrance of which thrilled the soul of the banished Ovid; the little Regia of Numa, which armed so many a sarcasm against the pride of consuls and imperators; the sanctuary of Vesta herself, with the Palladium, the Penates, and the ever-glowing hearth of the Roman people. But the loss of these decayed though venerable objects was not the worst disaster. Many an unblemished masterpiece of the Grecian pencil or chisel or graver- the prize of victory was devoured by the flames; and amidst all the splendor with which Rome rose afterwards from her ashes, old men could lament to the historian the irreparable sacrifice of these ancient glories. Writings and documents of no common interest may have perished at the same time irrecoverably; and with them, trophies, images, and family devices. At a moment when the heads of patrician houses were falling rapidly by the sword, the loss of such memorials was the more deplorable. HOLMES. 1809 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, one of the wittiest and wisest of American writers, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809, and graduated at Harvard University in 1829. He began the study of law, but feeling a stronger bent toward the profession of medicine, applied himself zealously to preparation for its practice. In 1836, having spent several years in study abroad, he received his medical degree at Cambridge; two years later was appointed to a professorship in the Dartmouth Medical School, and in 1847 succeeded Dr. Warren as Professor of Anatomy in Harvard University. His first considerable literary effort was a poem delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard in 1836. It received warm praise from competent critics, and its success undoubtedly confirmed his not yet openly confessed penchant for literary labors. The first edition of his collected poems was published in 1836, and at least a dozen editions have followed it in this country and England. His range in poetry is limited, though perhaps not necessarily; he confined his efforts in former years almost exclusively to long poems, like Urania and Astræa, metrical essays, melodious, polished, and glittering with wit, and in later days he has been content to throw off short lyrics and “occasional pieces," which are so exquisite that the public reasonably asks for more. The most conspicuous characteristic of Dr. Holmes's verse is humor, of indescribable and rarely equaled delicacy and brilliancy. Several of his humorous poems, like the One-Hoss Shay, have by common consent been elevated to the rank of classics in our literature. Not less felicitous has he been in a few pieces in which a fine pathos relieves the glow of his wit. But admirable as are his poems, his greatest triumphs have been won in prose. He was one of the founders of the Atlantic Monthly, and in its first years was a regular and favorite contributor to its pages. For it he wrote The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, and later, The Professor and The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, a series of papers which are unique in our literature, combining in a marvelous degree the rarest qualities of the light essay, freshness of thought, deftness of touch, keen, but good-humored satire, and a pervading atmosphere of wit that keeps the reader in a state of continual exhilaration. As a novelist, Dr. Holmes has succeeded in spite of, rather than in accordance with, the rules which govern the composition of fiction; the abounding riches of his fancy and the play of his unfailing wit overleap the ordinary bounds prescribed to the novelist, to the delight of his readers, if not to the honor of literary canons. In no writer of the present day, in Europe or America, is there found so potent a combination of those intellectual qualities which mainly contribute to a writer's power, as is seen in Dr. Holmes. While he is surpassed by some of his contemporaries in single gifts, though by none in wit and grace of style, of the harmonious and fruitful union of them all he seems to stand out the superior representative. His success in prose and poetry may be mainly attributed to his dexterous avoidance of the didactic; he is never tedious, and always presents even his driest matter in a guise that commends it to readers of all tastes. ON AMATEUR WRITERS. If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, I would tell inexperienced persons that nothing is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers and here and there a literary man knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain degree of education. In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these young persons that most of them labored under a delusion. It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and besides one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was to print and be famous ! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred. But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some other channel. Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counselled more than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor's board or his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of a profession which asked only for the diligent use of average, ordinary talents. It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown correspondents throw upon their chosen counselors. One whom you have never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you specimens more or less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send back an answer informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor of the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him to leave all, the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant plane, and follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course of life for him, and the means of judgment he gives you are about as adequate as the brick which the simpleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the house he had to sell. My advice to all young men that write to me depends somewhat on the handwriting and spelling. If these are of a certain character, and they have reached a mature age, I recommend some honest manual calling, such as they have very probably been bred to, and which will, at least, give them a chance of becoming President of the United States by and by, if that is any object to them. What would you have done with the young person who called on me a good many years ago, so many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort, and read as specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor you with presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he would ever be pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the pleasure of submitting it to the reader. The following is an exact transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot: . "Are you in the vein for cider? Are you in the tune for pork? Do not judge too hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selection of our bodily sustenance. But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of narrative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that never was and so forth. I did not say this in these very words, but I gave him to understand, without being too hard upon him, that he had better not desert his honest toil in pursuit of the poet's bays. This, it must be confessed, was a rather discouraging case. A young person like this may pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the chances are all the other way. I advise aimless young men to choose some profession without needless delay, and so get into a good strong current of human affairs, and find themselves bound up in interests with a compact body of their fellow-men. I advise young women who write to me for counsel, perhaps I do not advise them at all, only sympathize a little with them, and listen to what they have to say (eight closely written pages on the average, which I always read from beginning to end, thinking of the widow's cruse and myself in the character of Elijah) and — and come now, I don't believe Methuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to young ladies, written when he was in his nine hundred and sixty-ninth year. |