Messalla.—­In that battle I had a considerable share.  So I had in encouraging the liberal arts and sciences, which Augustus protected.  Under his judicious patronage the muses made Rome their capital seat.  It would have pleased you to have known Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Ovid, Livy, and many more, whose names will be illustrious to all generations.

Cato.—­I understand you, Messalla.  Your Augustus and you, after the ruin of our liberty, made Rome a Greek city, an academy of fine wits, another Athens under the government of Demetrius Phalareus.  I had much rather have seen her under Fabricius and Curius, and her other honest old consuls, who could not read.

Messalla.—­Yet to these writers she will owe as much of her glory as she did to those heroes.  I could say more, a great deal more, on the happiness of the mild dominion of Augustus.  I might even add, that the vast extent of the empire, the factions of the nobility, and the corruption of the people, which no laws under the ordinary magistrates of the state were able to restrain, seemed necessarily to require some change in the government; that Cato himself, had he remained upon earth, could have done us no good, unless he would have yielded to become our prince.  But I see you consider me as a deserter from the republic, and an apologist for a tyrant.  I, therefore, leave you to the company of those ancient Romans, for whose society you were always much fitter than for that of your contemporaries.  Cato should have lived with Fabricius and Curius, not with Pompey and Caesar.

DIALOGUE X.

CHRISTINA, Queen Of Sweden—­Chancellor OXENSTIERN.

Christina.—­You seem to avoid me, Oxenstiern; and, now we are met, you don’t pay me the reverence that is due to your queen!  Have you forgotten that I was your sovereign?

Oxenstiern.—­I am not your subject here, madam; but you have forgotten that you yourself broke that bond, and freed me from my allegiance, many years before you died, by abdicating the crown, against my advice and the inclination of your people.  Reverence here is paid only to virtue.

Christina.—­I see you would mortify me if it were in your power for acting against your advice.  But my fame does not depend upon your judgment.  All Europe admired the greatness of my mind in resigning a crown to dedicate myself entirely to the love of the sciences and the fine arts; things of which you had no taste in barbarous Sweden, the realm of Goths and Vandals.

Oxenstiern.—­There is hardly any mind too great for a crown, but there are many too little.  Are you sure, madam, it was magnanimity that caused you to fly from the government of a kingdom which your ancestors, and particularly your heroic father Gustavus, had ruled with so much glory?

Christina.—­Am I sure of it?  Yes; and to confirm my own judgment, I have that of many learned men and beaux esprits of all countries, who have celebrated my action as the perfection of heroism.