translation has it "excessively drunk,") must have been very different from the mental dethronement we thus designate, if one in that state could speak so intelligently and consecutively as Alcibiades in this long discourse.

Most significant, well-nigh decisive, as to the non-existence of the gentlemanly among the Ancients, was the position of women. Upon constant, daily, life-long, female social intervention and participation, freely accepted and enjoyed, depends the culture of the finer sensibilities. To the formation of gentlemanly and lady-like habits of feeling, thinking, and demeanor, a free, frequent, trustful interchange of services and sentiments, a steady interplay of powers between the sexes is indispensable. The Ancients seem hardly to have had mothers and sisters and wives and daughters, so completely are these kept in the background, so unparticipant in Greek and Roman converse. There was little of that mental intermarriage between the sexes, which is so profound and beneficent an element of Christian society, - a union fruitful of proprieties and refinements, of purities and elegancies. Among the Ancients the two sexes lived almost in barren, mental isolation. Their men were never inspired or encouraged by the thought of woman's approval. Very slight are the traces of female influence upon conduct. Of no young Grecian or Roman warrior would it have been sung as of Chaucer's Squire,

"And borne him wel, as of so litel space,
In hope to stonden in his ladies grace."

VI.

CESAR BRUTUS SOCRATES GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY - HOMERIC HEROES - IDEALS.

CESAR, the foremost man of all the Ro

mans, compels the admiration of the world by his easy superiority, by the dazzling brilliancy of his practical genius, by his magnanimity and by the grandeur of his bearing; but he was withal a lofty worldling, a criminal self-seeker. And therefore, notwithstanding the splendor of his intellectual nature, - not having the spiritual buoyancy to rise above the moral level of his time, - he does not shine a premature impersonation of gentlemanhood. This distinction belongs, among the Romans, to Brutus.

However short-sighted, politically, Brutus may have shown himself in slaying Cæsar, neither that nor any other act of his life was prompted by ambition. Had he been a worldly climber, a selfish calculator, he might prob

ably-through Cæsar's partiality for him have shared and succeeded to Cæsar's power. But, as was said by the contemporary Romans, while Cassius hated the Emperor, the Imperial sway it was that Brutus hated. When appointed by Cæsar Governor of Cisalpine Gaul, for himself by his administration he won esteem and love, and popularity for Cæsar; for he was just, self-denying, humane, in shameless, ravenous times, when it was the custom of governors to be tyrannical and rapacious. A man of lofty but pure aspirations, and wide sympathies, all men trusted Brutus. Of a refined, impressible nature, he was not organized for the tumults, the coarse conflicts of public life, into which he was drawn by his patriotic spirit, by zeal for the general good, and by an innate, active love of justice.

In the character of Brutus as drawn by Shakspeare, there is such warmth of coloring, such fulness and finish, that I have pleased myself with thinking that in it there is discernible - what there is not in any other of his vivid delineations - a personal partiality, an individual fondness, as though he had wrought at the portrait of Brutus with something more than the broad artistic love of the creative Master.

A crowning confirmation of the claim put forward for Brutus, is his relation to Portia, which, in its confidential equality and mental intimacy, approaches much nearer to our modern conjugal relation than was customary among the Romans. And in confirmation of the importance claimed for female influence in the moulding of gentlemen, the first fact I cite in regard to Socrates, - who, living four centuries before our era, was nevertheless an indefeasible Christian gentleman, - is, that this transcendent Greek sought the society of women of talent, avowedly for the culture of his head and heart.

Equally on the battle-field, at the banquet, in talk on the market-place, in philosophic disquisition, in political discussion, Socrates was the easy master of the situation and the company. Always calm, apparently indifferent, while doing or saying better things than any