[33] Justinian has not condescended to give usury a place in his Institutes; but the necessary rules and restrictions are inserted in the Pandects and the Code.

[34] Cato, Seneca, Plutarch, have loudly condemned the practice or abuse of usury.  According to etymology, the principal is supposed to generate the interest:  “A breed for barren metal,” exclaims Shakspeare—­and the stage is an echo of the public voice.

[35] Livy mentions two remarkable and flagitious eras, of three thousand persons accused, and of one hundred and ninety noble matrons convicted, of the crime of poisoning.  Hume discriminates the ages of private and public virtue.  Rather say that such ebullitions of mischief (as in France in the year 1680) are accidents and prodigies which leave no marks on the manners of a nation.

[36] The first parricide at Rome was L. Ostius, after the Second Punic War.  During the Cimbric, P. Malleolus was guilty of the first matricide.

[37] Verres lived near thirty years after his trial, till the Second Triumvirate, when he was proscribed by the taste of Mark Antony for the sake of his Corinthian plate.

[38] Montesquieu, that eloquent philosopher, conciliates the rights of liberty and of nature, which should never be placed in opposition to each other.

[39] We are indebted for this interesting fact to a fragment of Asconius Pedianus, who flourished under the reign of Tiberius.  The loss of his Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero has deprived us of a valuable fund of historical and legal knowledge.

[40] The extension of the Empire and city of Rome obliged the exile to seek a more distant place of retirement.

[41] When he fatigued his subjects in building the Capitol, many of the laborers were provoked to despatch themselves:  he nailed their dead bodies to crosses.

[42] The sole resemblance of a violent and premature death has engaged Vergil to confound suicides with infants, lovers, and persons unjustly condemned.  Some of his editors are at a loss to deduce the idea or ascertain the jurisprudence of the Roman poet.

AUGUSTINE’S MISSIONARY WORK IN ENGLAND

A.D. 597

THE VENERABLE BEDE[43] JOHN RICHARD GREEN

St. Augustine was the first archbishop of Canterbury.  He was educated in Rome under Pope Gregory I, by whom he was sent to Britain with forty monks of the Benedictine order, for the purpose of converting the English to Christianity.  Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, king of Kent, was a Christian.  She was a daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, and had brought her chaplain with her, who held services in the ruined church of St. Martin, near Canterbury.

There seemed little prospect, however, of the faith spreading among the wild islanders