hill-tops, men and beasts fight for standing room. Still the thunders roar, and the lightnings flash, and the rains descend, and the waters rise, till the last survivor of the shrieking crowd is washed off, and the head of the highest Alp goes down beneath the wave. Now the waters rise no more. God's servant has done his work. He rests from his

labours; and, all land drowned, all life destroyed, an awful silence reigning and a shoreless ocean rolling, Death for once has nothing to do, but ride in triumph on the top of some giant billow, which, meeting no coast, no continent, no Alp, no Andes against which to break, sweeps round and round the world.

sea.

We stand aghast at the scene; and as the corpses of gentle children and sweet infants float by, we exclaim, Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? No; assuredly not. Where, then, is his mercy? Look here; behold this ark, as, steered by an invisible hand, she comes dimly through the gloom. Lonely ship on a shoreless ocean, she carries mercy on board. She holds the costliest freight that ever sailed the The germs of the Church are there—the children of the old world, and the fathers of the new. Suddenly, amid the awful gloom, as she drifts over that dead and silent sea, a grating noise is heard. Her keel has grounded on the top of Ararat. The door is opened; and beneath the sign of the olive branch, her tenants come forth from their baptismal burial, like life from the dead, or like souls which have passed from a state of nature into the light and the liberty of grace, or like the saints when they shall rise at the summons of the trumpet to behold a new heaven and a new earth, and see the sign which these "grey fathers" hailed encircling a head that was crowned with thorns.

Nor is this all. Our heavenly Father's character is dear to us; and therefore I must remind you that ere Mercy flew, like the dove, to that welcome asylum, she had swept the wide world with her wings. Were there but eight saved, only eight? There were thousands, millions sought. Nor is it doing justice to God to forget how long a period of patience, and preaching, and warning, and compassion preceded that dreadful Deluge. Long before the lightning

flashed from angry heavens, or thunders rolled along dissolving skies, or the clouds rained down death, or the solid floor of this earth, under the prodigious agencies at work, broke up, like the deck of a leaking ship, and the waters rushed from below to meet the waters from above, and sink a guilty world; long before the time when the ark floated away by town and tower, and those crowded hill-tops where frantic groups were clustered, and amid prayers and curses, and shrieks and shouts, hung out their signals of distress, -very long before this, God had beer calling an impenitent world to repentance. Had they no warning in Noah's preaching? Was there nothing to alarm their fears in the sight of the ark as storey rose upon storey?—not enough in the very sound of those ceaseless hammers to waken all but the dead? It was not till Mercy's arm grew weary, as she rang the warning bell, that, to use the words of my text, God poured out his fury upon them. I appeal to the story of this awful judgment. True, for forty days it rained incessantly, and for one hundred and fifty days more the waters prevailed on the earth; but while the period of God's justice is reckoned by days, the period of his long-suffering was drawn out into years. There was a truce of one hundred and twenty years between the first stroke of the bell and the first crash of the thunder. Noah grew grey preaching repentance. The ark stood useless for years, a huge laughing-stock for the scoffer's wit. Covered with the marks of age, it covered its builders with the contempt of the world; and many a bitter sneer had these men to bear, as, pointing to the serene heavens above and an empty ark below, the ungodly asked, Where is the promise of his coming? Most patient God! then, as now, thou wert slow to punish, long-suffering and of great mercy.

SECTION IV.-ORATORY.

I-CICERO FOR MILO.

(MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.)

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators, was born near Arpinum in 106 B.C. He was assassinated by the orders of Antony, in 43 B.C.

P. Clodius, and T. Annius Milo, were, in the year 53 B.C., candidates for public offices, the former for the Prætorship, and the latter for the Consulship. Each kept in his service a band of gladiators, who, entering into the jealousies which actuated their masters, had frequent scuffles in the streets of Rome. Finally, Milo and Clodius, with their followers, met on the Appian Road, some distance from Rome, when a fight ensued, and Clodius was slain. Milo was accordingly accused, but went into banishment to Marseilles, to escape the trial. Thus Cicero's "speech" in his defence was never delivered; but after the exile of Milo, the author recast it in the form in which it has been handed down to us.

MY LORDS,-That you may be able the more easily to determine upon that point before you, I shall beg the favour of an attentive hearing, while, in a few words, I lay open the whole affair. Clodius being determined, when` created prætor, to harass his country with every species of oppression, and finding the comitia had been delayed so long the year before, that he could not hold this office many months, all on a sudden threw up his own year, and reserved himself to the next; not from any religious scruple, but that he might have, as he said himself, a full, entire year for exercising his prætorship-that is, for overturning the commonwealth. Being sensible he must be controlled and cramped in the exercise of his prætorian authority under Milo, who, he plainly saw, would be chosen consul by the unanimous consent of the Roman people, he joined the candidates that opposed Milo-but in such a manner, that he overruled them in everything, had the sole management of the election, and, as he used often to boast, bore all the comitia upon his own shoulders. He assembled the tribes, he thrust himself into their councils, and formed a new tribe of the most abandoned of the citizens. The more confusion

and disturbance he made, the more Milo prevailed. When this wretch, who was bent upon all manner of wickedness, saw that so brave a man, and his most inveterate enemy, would certainly be consul-when he perceived this, not only by the discourses, but by the votes of the Roman people, he began to throw off all disguise, and to declare openly that Milo must be killed. He often intimated this in the Senate, and declared it expressly before the people; insomuch, that when Favonius, that brave man, asked him what prospect he could have of carrying out his furious designs while Milo was alive, he replied, that, in three or four days at most, he should be taken out of the way-which reply Favonius immediately communicated to Cato.

In the meantime, as soon as Clodius knew-nor indeed was there any difficulty to come at the intelligence-that Milo was obliged by the 18th of January to be at Lanuvium, where he was dictator, in order to nominate a priest-a duty which the laws rendered necessary to be performed every year; he went suddenly from Rome the day before, in order, as it appears by the event, to waylay Milo in his own grounds; and this at a time when he was obliged to leave a tumultuous assembly, which he had summoned that very day, where his presence was necessary to carry on his mad designs-a thing he never would have done, if he had not been desirous to take the advantage of that particular time and place for perpetrating his villany. But Milo, after having stayed in the Senate that day till the house had broken up, went home, changed his clothes, waited a while, as usual, till his wife had got ready to attend him, and then set forward, about the time that Clodius, if he had proposed to come back to Rome that day, might have returned. He meets Clodius near his own estate, a little before sunset, and is immediately attacked by a body of men, who throw their darts at him from an eminence, and kill his coachman. Upon which he threw off his cloak, leaped from his chariot, and defended himself with great bravery. In the meantime, Clodius's attendants drawing their swords, some of them ran back to the chariot in order to attack Milo in the rear; whilst others, thinking that he was already killed, fell upon his servants who were behind. These being resolute

and faithful to their master, were some of them slain, whilst the rest, seeing a warm engagement near the chariot, being prevented from going to their master's assistance, hearing besides from Clodius himself that Milo was killed, and believing it to be a fact, acted upon this occasion-I mention it, not with a view to elude the accusation, but because it was the true state of the case-without the orders, without the knowledge, without the presence of their master, as every man would wish his own servants should act in the like circumstances. . . . . . .

The proper question then, is, not whether Clodius was killed-for that we grant: but whether justly or unjustly? If it appear that Milo was the aggressor, we ask no favour; but if Clodius, you will then acquit him of the crime that has been laid to his charge.

Every circumstance, my lords, concurs to prove that it was for Milo's interest Clodius should live; that, on the contrary, Milo's death was a most desirable event for answering the purposes of Clodius: that, on the one side, there was a most implacable hatred; on the other, not the least: that the one had been continually employing himself in acts of violence; the other, only in opposing them: that the life of Milo was threatened, and his death publicly foretold by Clodius, whereas nothing of that kind was ever heard from Milo: that the day fixed for Milo's journey was well known to his adversary, while Milo knew not when Clodius was to return that Milo's journey was necessary, but that of Clodius rather the contrary: that the one openly declared his intention of leaving Rome that day, while the other concealed his intention of returning: that Milo made no alteration in his measures, but that Clodius feigned an excuse for altering his: that, if Milo had designed to waylay Clodius, he would have waited for him near the city till it was dark; but that Clodius, even if he had been under no apprehensions from Milo, ought to have been afraid of coming to town so late at night.

Let us now consider whether the place where the encounter happened was most favourable to Milo or to Clodius. But can there, my lords, be any room for doubt or deliberation upon that? It was near the estate of