fifteen, it fell to my province to regulate the ceremonies. Let it not be imagined that this is said from motives of vanity."

And, dear Tacitus! we will not so imagine.

B. A.D. 61. PLINY THE YOUNGER. D. A.D. 116.

IN the days of Pliny, eighteen hundred years ago, books were multiplied by copyists only; and yet, when it was known that Tacitus was at work upon his History, it excited a wide and lively interest. Pliny says in a letter: "If my uncle is mentioned in your immortal work, his name will live forever in the records of fame." In another letter he shows some anxiety himself to "live forever," and says: "I presage that your history will be immortal. I ingenuously own, therefore, that I wish to find a place in it. If we are generally careful to have our faces taken by the best artist, ought we not to desire that our actions may be celebrated by an author of your distinguished character?" He then adds: "Whatever my merit may be in this business [the prosecution of Bebius Massa], it is in your power to heighten and spread the lustre of it; though I am far from desiring you should in the least exceed the bounds of reality." Still, it is clear he would have him "heighten and spread the lustre of it."

From Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" I copy the following:

"Pliny doth ingenuously confess to his dear friend Angurinus, all thy writings are most acceptable, but those especially that speak of us.' Again, a little after to Maximus, 'I cannot express how pleasing it is to me to have myself commended.""

Nearly all of our candidates for the Presidency become the slaves of fame and popular opinion. Each of them could say with Trebellius Pollio, "'T is all my desire night and day, 't is all my study, to raise my name."

Even proud Pliny was not ashamed to say in an epistle to a friend, "I burn with incredible desire to have my name registered in thy book."

Pliny early received favors from Domitian the tyrant, and thus explains himself:

“If I appeared, in the reign of a disguised, a politic, and insidious prince, to go forward in the career of honors, it was at a time when the tyrant had not unmasked himself. As soon as he showed himself the avowed enemy of every virtue, I gave a check to ambition; and though I saw the shortest way to the highest dignities, the longest appeared to me the best."

AUGUSTUS, CAIUS OCTAVIUS CÆSAR.

B. B.C. 63. D. A.D. 14.

AUGUSTUS was the second Emperor of Rome, and hardly claimed too much when he said, "I found Rome brick, I leave it marble."

B. B.C. 356. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. D. B.C. 323.

"Go," said Alexander the Great to his soldiers, when they refused to follow him to the Indus,-"go tell your countrymen that you left Alexander completing the conquest of the world."

After the battle on the Granicus, Alexander had very great offers made to him by Darius. Consulting with his captains concerning them, Parmenio said, "Sure I would accept of these offers, if I were as Alexander." To which Alexander answered, "So would I, if I were as Parmenio."

He was wont to say that he knew he was mortal by two things, sleep and lust.

When his father wished Alexander to run for the prize of the race at the Olympian games (for he was very swift), he said, "He would, if he might run with kings."

Hearing when a boy of the military achievements of Philip, he said, "My father will leave me nothing to do."

THE CZAR OF RUSSIA.

THE Czar of Russia once made war upon Sweden because he was not treated with sufficient honors when he passed through the country in disguise.

THE Mad Czar, commonly spoken of as Paul I., son of Catherine the Great, was possibly the greatest and most brutal tyrant of all the rulers of Russia, though he was murdered in 1801, after a reign of less than five years. His education was studiously neglected, and his mother caused him to be treated with constant insult; and yet, though himself the ugliest man in his empire, having married for his second wife a woman "divinely tall and most divinely fair," there were born to the imperial pair four sons and six daughters, - all save one son distinguished for their stateliness and personal beauty, seeming to have been children solely of their mother. It has been widely conceded that from this union resulted the handsomest ruling race in Europe.

Paul's reply to General Dumouriez offers a specimen of his immense conceit. The General having absented himself from the court one day, Paul asked him if he had been unwell. "No, Sire; but one of the most important persons of your court having asked me to dinner, I could not refuse him." "Sir," replied the Czar, "I would have you know that there is no person of importance here except me and the person I am speaking to; and he only so long as I am speaking to him."

Paul I., like his father, was murdered by his own family.

B. 1706. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

D. 1790.

IN his "Autobiography," Franklin says: "And lastly (I may as well confess it, since my denial of it will be believed by nobody), perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own vanity. Indeed, I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, 'Without vanity I may say,' etc., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they may have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore in many cases it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity, among the other comforts of life."

In one of his letters he writes: "What you mention concerning the love of praise is indeed very true: it reigns more or less in every heart; though we are generally hypocrites in that respect, and pretend to disregard praise, and our nice, modest ears are offended, forsooth! with what one of the ancients calls the sweetest kind of music. I wish the out-of-fashion practice of praising ourselves would, like other old fashions, come round into fashion again. But this, I fear, will not be in our time."

When, on June 15, 1775, Franklin sent up his kite and received the electric shock, heaving a deep sigh, he felt, as he has himself said, "a deep consciousness