Gaul, moreover, was not occupied by one and the same nation, with the same traditions and the same chiefs. Tribes very different in origin, habits, and date of settlement, were continually disputing the territory. In the south were Iberians or Aquitanians, Phoenicians, and Greeks; in the north and in the northwest were Kymrians or Belgians; everywhere else Gauls or Celts -the most numerous settlers, who had the honor of giving their name to the country. Who were the first to come there, and what was the date of their settlement, nobody knows. Of the Greeks alone does history mark with any precision the arrival in southern Gaul. The Phoenicians preceded them by several centuries; but it is impossible to fix any exact time. Information is equally vague as to the period when the Kymrians invaded the north of Gaul. As for the Gauls and the Iberians, there is not a word about their first entrance into the country; for they are discovered there already at the first appearance of the country itself in the domain of history. The Iberians, whom the Romans call Aquitanians, dwelt at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory comprised between the mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged to the race which, under the same appellation, had peopled Spain ; but by what route they came into Gaul is a problem which we cannot solve. It is much the same in tracing the origin of every nation, for in those barbarous times men lived and died without leaving any enduring memorials of their deeds and their destinies; no monuments, no writings; just a few oral traditions, perhaps, which are speedily lost or altered.-History of France; translation of ROBERT BLACK.

CÆSAR IN GAUL.

The greatest minds are far from foreseeing all the consequences of their deeds, and all the perils proceeding from their successes. Cæsar was by nature neither violent or cruel; but he did not trouble himself about justice or humanity, and the success of his enterprise, no matter by what means or at what price, was his sole law of conduct. He could show, on occasions, moderation and mercy; but when he had to put down an ob

stinate resistance, dr when a long and arduous effort had irritated him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious severity and perfidious promises. During his first campaign in Belgica (A.U.C. 697, or 57 B.C.), two peoplets, the Nervians and the Aduaticans, had gallantly struggled, with brief moments of success, against the Roman legions. The Nervians were conquered and almost annihilated. Their last remnants, huddled for refuge in the midst of their morasses, sent a deputation to Cæsar to make submission, saying, "Of six hundred senators three only are left, and of sixty thousand men that bore arms scarce five hundred have escaped." Cæsar received them kindly, returned to them their lands, and warned their neighbors to do them no harm. The Aduaticans, on the contrary, defended themselves to the last extremity. Cæsar, having slain four thousand, had all that remained sold by auction; and fiftysix thousand human beings, according to his own statement, passed as slaves into the hands of their purchasers. Some years later, another Belgian peoplet, the Eburons, settled between the Meuse and the Rhine, rose and inflicted great losses upon the Roman legions. Cæsar put them beyond the pale of military and human law, and had all the neighboring peoplets and all the roving bands invited to come and "pillage and destroy that accursed race," promising to whoever would join in the work the friendship of the Roman people. A little later still, some insurgents in the centre of Gaul had concentrated in a place to the southwest, called Uxellodunum (now, it is said, Puy d'Issola, in the department of the Lot, between Vayrac and Martel). After a long resistance they were obliged to surrender, and Cæsar had all the combatants' hands cut off, and sent them, thus mutilated, to live and rove throughout Gaul, as a spectacle to all the country that was or was to be brought to. submission.

Nor were the rigors of administration less than those of warfare. Cæsar wanted a great deal of money, not only to maintain satisfactorily his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous expenses he was at in Italy for the purpose of enriching his partisans, or securing the favor of the Roman people. It was with the produce of

plunder and imposts in Gaul that he undertook the reconstruction at Rome of the Basilica of the Forum, the site whereof, extending to the Temple of Liberty, was valued, it is said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand francs. Cicero who took the direction of the work, wrote to his friend Atticus: "We shall make it the most glorious thing in the world." Cato was less satisfied; three years previously despatches from Cæsar had announced to the Senate his victories over the Belgian and German insurgents. The Senators had voted a general thanksgiving, but, "Thanksgiving!" cried Cato, "rather expiation! Pray the Gods not to visit upon our armies the sin of a guilty general. Give up Cæsar to the Germans, and let the foreigner know that Rome does not enjoin perjury, and rejects with horror the fruit thereof!"-History of France; translation of ROBERT BLACK.

THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE.

We might multiply indefinitely the anecdotal scenes of the massacre-most of them brutally ferocious, others painfully pathetic; some generous and calculated to preserve the credit of humanity amidst one of its most direful aberrations. History must show no pity for the vices and crimes of men, whether princes or people; and it is her duty as well as her right to depict them so truthfully that men's souls and imaginations may be sufficiently impressed by them to conceive disgust and horror at them. But it is not by dwelling upon them, and by describing them minutely, as if she had to exhibit a gallery of monsters and madmen, that history can lead men's minds to sound judgments and salutary impressions. We take no pleasure, and we see no use, in setting forth in detail the works of evil. We would be inclined to fear that, by familiarity with such a spectacle men would lose the perception of good, and cease to put hope in its legitimate and ultimate superiority.

Nor will we pause either to discuss the secondary questions which meet us at the period of which we are telling the story. For example, the question whether

MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.

Drawing by A. de Neuville.