cational word-count to be sacred to the chief deity of the Romans, and reveals the sacred cult-word triumpe as the glorification of the ancestral rhythm of song and dance. The same rhythm of the double and triple word-count marks the Keltic counterpart to the Carmen Arvale, the Hymn of St. Patrick a thousand years later in Ireland, where we find that the sacredness of the number three has been transferred from the rhythm of verse and prayer to the Godhead himself, and in place of the magical spear we have the magical collar or breastplate of faith.

The magical efficacy of rhythm invades even the prescriptions of codified law. Among our oldest fragments of Latin are the remains of the Laws of the Kings, or Leges Regiæ, and of the Twelve Tables, or Leges Duodecim Tabularum. We are now able to understand why the ancients speak of them as verses, or carmina, and thus to get to the bottom of the rhythm of Latin prose, which is nothing more nor less than a free continuous tripudic word-count. Cicero tells us that in his boyhood (at the beginning of the first century before Christ) he and his fellows were required to commit the Laws of the Twelve Tables to memory "as an obligatory poem" (ut carmen necessarium). As a matter of course, all such ancient documents have come down to us in sadly mutilated and often corrupted text, but even so we can detect in what is left us unmistakable suggestions of the rhythm of the word-foot and word-measure. A couple of these fragments, one from the Leges Regiæ and one from the Twelve Tables, will serve to illustrate not only the rhythm of the wordcount, but also the fascinating content of this ancient legislation: A. Leges Regiae:

(If a boy should strike his father, and he should cry aloud, the boy shall be dedicate to the Manes of his parents.)

(If one should commit a theft by night and one should kill him,

he shall be rightly slain.)

Not only the earliest prescriptions of divine and human jurisprudence, but the lore of practical life in general, whether as maxim of thought and conduct, or as popular charm or incantation, found instinctive expression in the tripudic word-count. Indeed, nowhere is the Roman spirit and native genius more clearly portrayed than in the entire body of these prehistoric and undatable fragments. Everywhere we recognize the practical bent of this world-compelling, world-ordering stock, who found in the ordered count of rhythm the profoundest symbol and expression of human and divine energy, and invoked its magical efficacy in every possible relation of purposive action and thought.

The dawn of Roman tradition is marked by a shadowy figure, who seems to have been known as the Seer of Mars (Martius vates), and who was reputed to have been the first to compose precepts of practical wisdom for the guidance of life. One of these wise sayings reads as follows:

Postremus dicas primus: taceas

(Be last to speak, first to keep silence.)

Thus philosophy as well as religion took its first steps in tripudic rhythm, and we may be quite sure that apart from the formulae of religion and law such didactic verse constituted the bulk of Roman literary output in prehistoric times. This enables us to understand why all ancient references to this prehistoric literature speak of it as verse (carmina). Thus Aulus Gellius speaks of a remarkable verse copied by Nigidius Figulus from ancient poetry (ex antiquo carmine):

Réligéntem esse oportet || réligiósus | ne fuas

(One must be religious, in order not to become superstitious.) And Macrobius quotes what he calls an old country ditty from a volume of very ancient poetry, said to have been composed before everything written by the Latins (in libro vetustissimorum carminum, qui ante omnia quae a Latinis scripta sunt compositus ferebatur, invenitur hoc rusticum vetus canticum):

Hiberno pulvere | verno luto || grandia: farra | camille : metes (With winter dust and springtime mud, large the crops you'll reap, my lad.)

Such examples as the last two show us very clearly how the Indo

european long verse arose as a rhythmical contrast between two short verses, thus making a thoroughgoing application of the duplicational count principle from the double word and double measure to the double verse or distich, as is so prettily illustrated in the Carmen Arvale above.

The magical and supernatural virtue of the three-count is evidenced especially by a number of charms or incantations, which have been handed down by Roman antiquarians. The most interesting of these is one quoted by Varro in his treatise on Agriculture as efficacious against pains in the feet:

Ego tui méminí
Médére meis pedibus
Terra pestem | ténéto
Salus hic mánéto
In meis pédibús.

(I remember you. Heal my feet. Let the ground hold the pest. Let health stay here. In my feet.)

This had to be chanted 3 times 3 times 3 times to accomplish the full tripudic cure (hoc ter noviens cantare iubet, terram tangere, despuere, ieiunum cantare).

And finally, the magic of tripudic rhythm was invoked by Roman mothers to lull their babies to sleep. An ancient commentator on Persius records such a tripudic lullaby:

Lalla : lalla | lalla: i
Aut

dormi | aut lacte.

(Lalla, lalla, lalla, go. Either sleep or take your milk.)

What I have done thus far has been merely to present typical examples from the whole wide field of prehistoric tradition. These examples might be indefinitely multiplied, not only from Old-Latin, but especially from a field to which I have only briefly referred, and which is less familiar as yet to Americans, namely Old-Irish. Every line of verse from both of these Indoeuropean fields reveals the same principle of the double and triple wordcount with the rhythmical summing up in the tripudic wordmeasure. But the triumphant confirmation of our theory of the origin of verse greets us, when we enter the portals of literary history itself both in Italy and in Ireland, where the old rhythm maintained itself with greater or less tenacity against the charm.

of the Greek muse and the still more subtle change at work in the accentual system of Indoeuropean speech in general. Latin literary history begins about two hundred years before Christ with Livius Andronicus' Odyssia and Gnaeus Naevius' Bellum Punicum, Irish literary history some thousand years later with the Christian Hymns of Colmán, Fiacc, Ultan, Broccán, Sanctán, and St. Patrick himself. The tripudic word-count, often refined upon by an instinctive rhythmical uniformity in the number of individual stresses in each line, furnishes the simple rhythmical key to all of these monuments of pre-Hellenistic verse, which have been made the victims in modern philology of the most bizarre constructions, now of "accentual," now of "quantitative," now (and worst of all) of "syllable-counting" theories. A typical example from each monument may fittingly conclude our investigation:

Andronicus' Odyssey:

Virum mihi | Cáména || insecé

:

vérsútum

(Sing to me, O Muse, of the versatile man)

Naevius' Punic War:

Novem Iovis | cóncórdes || fíliáe | sóróres (Jove's daughters, harmonious sisters nine)

Colmán's Hymn:

Sen De donfe | fórdónte | Macc Maire | rónféladar
(God's grace guide us, help us; Mary's Son protect us)

Fiacc's Hymn:

Genair Patraice | in Némthur | iss ed: adfet | híscélaib
(Patrick was born in Nemthur: it is that he declares in story)

Ultan's Hymn:

Brigit be bithmáith || breo orde | óibléch

(Brigit, woman ever good, bright golden flame)

Broccán's Hymn:

Ni car Brigit buadach : bith || siasair : suide | eoin inailt (Triumphant Brigit loved not the world: She sat the seat of bird on cliff)

(I arise today in strong might of invoking the Trinity, through faith in the Threehood, through confession of the Oneness, of the Creator of all.)

Thus our prehistoric hypothesis is beautifully verified by historical fact. The classic Saturnian of Italy and Ireland is nothing but the artistic culmination of the prehistoric tripudium, which we saw so richly illustrated in the Carmen Arvale.

The successful unravelling of this old verse has inaugurated a complete revolution in our sciences of Indoeuropean accent, rhythm, and meter. The fundamental truth revealed is the principle of the double accent in speech and rhythm. In the light of this new truth we have been able to show that the Roman grammarians with their inordinate zeal for things Hellenic have only transmitted to us Greek rules of accent, rhythm, and meter, accommodated as best they could to the wholly alien facts of Latin speech and verse.

WHY A STUDENT SHOULD CHOOSE VIRGINIA.

BY D. HIDEN RAMSEY.

Every college or university has some distinctive appeal that it can make to the consideration of young men who are casting about in an effort to determine upon the institution that they will choose for their Alma Mater. Each college or university has some phase of its corporate personality which attracts the enthusiasm of prospective students-something which bulks large in their ideal of what one's Alma Mater should be.

The question of choosing a college should not be a hit-or-miss proposition. It should represent deliberate judgment that has been made after all the facts have been entered and a true understanding reached. When a college is selected because of some