and also to the object of his grossness, or suffer a loss of general esteem, besides having possibly to answer with his life for his language. But the Roman Senate did not feel its dignity offended by the scene; nor had Cæsar any thought of calling Cato to personal account for such coarse, insulting words; nor did it enter into the mind of any witness that, on the adjournment of the Senate, Cæsar would despatch his young friend Anthony with a brief note, which Cato would answer through his friend Hortensius, (the same to whom Cato obligingly lent his wife,) and that the following dawn would find the four, with attendant surgeons, issuing mysteriously out of the Capenian gate to interchange cuts and thrusts, (mankind had not yet the benefit of pistols,) possibly under cover of the Egerian grove. Had such a proceeding been foreshadowed on the brain of Cæsar, it would doubtless though he of course was "as brave as Julius Cæsar". have modified his action; so that, instead of indelicately thrusting such a billet, in open Senate, under Cato's nose, he would

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have privately shown it to a friend of Cato, who would then have whispered in the latter's ear, - "Nothing to do with public affairs: of a very private nature; " and so the matter had ended. And this, the gentlemanly course, Cæsar would have pursued, not for the direct purpose of avoiding a duel, but cordially to conform to the requirements made by personal susceptibility and the reciprocal demand of respectfulness, - feelings, the existence of which would have been proved by the very fact of their being guarded by a penalty so mortal and semi-judicial. But owing to the causes just now adverted to, and which are closely connected with the fact, that in ancient Paganism, the State was all in all, the individual citizen nothing, - Man being, as it were, first consecrated by Christianity, there scarcely existed, even in the highest class, the sense of individual sanctity, with its bloody symbol, the Duel.

The duel has undoubtedly had, in ruder times, a salutary influence on manners, albeit its growing infrequency in the most cultivated portions of Christendom proves that in the more advanced stages of social development it is not essential to the protection of those personal rights and sensibilities that are unguarded by the law. In acknowledgment of its social services it has been called the cheapest and most effective police-measure ever contrived, protecting, by the occasional sacrifice of life, thousands, especially women and the physically weak, against outrages of word or act, and insults from the brutal and overbearing. Its institution was a token and a fruit of a lively sense of personal honor, of a laudable jealousy, - however at times exaggerated, -of individual dignity, of a manly readiness to hold inviolate, at peril even of life, the sacredness of private sensibilities. In battles and in brawls, the Greeks and the Romans were no less brave than we moderns, and surely they were not more moral or tender, or regardful of life; and that in their higher classes they had not introduced the duel, is evidence of the absence of that susceptibility to personal outrage, of that sense of fine responsibility which characterize gentlemen throughout Christendom, and to secure which they have found deadly weapons the best shield, which weapons are only now getting into disuse, their efficiency being merged in the fuller growth of inward refinement and outward courtesy, to which the consciousness of personal accountability has no doubt contributed.

The sanctity of the individual, the inviolableness of one's personality, lies at the basis of the modern duel, which in its essence means, - whoever invades these does so at the risk of his life. As Christian civilization advances, this sanctity gets to be so recognized, that, to guard it, such liability is no longer needed. Infringement is so visited with general reprobation, that the violator is rebuked as by a universal hiss, which, freighting the violation with consequences even more formidable than under the grosser penalty, checks the impulse to violation, while at the same time, through the elevating influence of moral culture, there takes place a solution of the duelling point of honor in the predominance of general reciprocal respect and reverence, personal sensitiveness being modulated by a freer, purer atmosphere, enfolding social intercourse in the transparent mail of cordial good-breeding.

In the celebrated Banquet of Plato will be found another exemplification of the want of gentlemanly delicacy among the Ancients. The evidence furnished by parts of the speeches of the guests, especially that of Alcibiades, is not less cogent, if the scene, instead of being the description of a supper that actually took place at the house of Agathon, be an invention of Plato, to set off one of his elaborate discussions; for in the latter case he would have adhered, even unconsciously, to the verisimilitudes of the occasion, and his recital, though otherwise fanciful, would be a picture of the sentiment and manners of the interlocutors. It is true, Alcibiades, on arriving late, declares himself already drunk; but he not only makes a clear continuous speech, but at the end of it Socrates says, - "You seem to me, Alcibiades, to be sober." Indeed, what the Greeks called drunk, (Shelley in his