Cincinnatiis. [January, 



filled that manly foinn with firm and rounded fullness. His crisp glossy 

 beard and curling locks — which had surnamed him in his youth — still 

 flowed with patriarchal beauty around a face where glowed the ruddy 

 bronze of health, while the large, lustrous eye beamed beneath a fore- 

 head upon whose towering amplitude commanding thought and self- 

 reliant power sat enthroned. Amid the moistly fragrant earth, now 

 new upturned, with spade in hand, his toga laid aside, in graceful 

 attitude he stood gazing with kindling eye upon the rising sun as his 

 effulgent disc slowl}^ rose above the glittering summits of the distant 

 Appenines. His soul was rapt in pious adoration of the gods, as, 

 ceasing thus from labor, he gazed devoutly upon the brightly rolling 

 chariot of Phoebus coursing up the sky, which erst the Tenant Jove 

 had covered o'er with clouds and seamed with vivid lightnings. At her 

 cottage door, near by, embowered in dewy blossoms, stood his wife, 

 Eacilia, gazing with admiring fondness on her lordly looking husband, 

 as he admiring gazed upon the glowing loveliness of earth and sky 

 around him. 



As the Eoman turned to resume his labor with the soil, a lightly 

 built and elegantly decorated boat, such as the patricians used, shot out 

 from the city shore of the Tiber, and was swiftly rowed, by stalwart 

 arms, to the opposite side, where cheerfully wrought the "Great Eoman 

 Farmer." That patrician boat carried a deputation of Eoman Senators 

 to wait upon that Farmer, whose morning labor was suddenly inter- 

 rupted by their salutation: "Hail to thee, Lucius Quinctius Cincin- 

 NATUS I The Senate calls thee to the city, and declares thee Supreme 

 Dictator of Eome ! " " Hail, Patres Conscripti ! " he wonderingly 

 replied, " Hath aught of evil befallen the State ? " " Yea, verily, 

 most noble Cincinnatus," said the Senators, " peril the most imminent 

 is impending over the Commonwealth! The faithless J^quians, scorning 

 alike the laws of the gods and men, have broken their treaty of peace ; 

 have plundered the villages of the Lavici, and the lands of Tusculum ; 

 and, proceeding toward Eome, pitched their hostile camp on Mount 

 Algidus. A Eoman army under Lucius Minucius was sent against 

 them. By pretending to retreat, Gracchus, the wily leader of the 

 ^Equians, has led Minucius and his army into a defile among the Alban 

 Hills, and by a secret and rapid counter-movement, has cut off our 

 Consul's retreat, and is about, we fear, to put the whole Eoman army 

 to the sword!" "Can this be so!" exclaimed the Eoman Farmer, 

 with flushing cheek and flashing eye ; " But how know ye this? Think 

 ye 'tis not false — a trick to lure our Eomans from the city walls, and 

 'bus to leave our hearths and homes defenceless ? " " Nay, my lord 



