Viola replied that he was not in Tissaret.

"Do you mean to say that you were not in the village?” "No!"

The attorney sent for the old Liptaka, to whom he read her depositions, from which it appeared that the prisoner attempted to inform Tengelyi of the intended robbery.

"What do you say to this evidence?" added he.

"That it is true, every word of it. I'll swear to the truth of my words!" said she.

"Viola has confessed," said Mr. Catspaw, "that he told you of the matter when hiding in the notary's house, while we pursued him through Tissaret. Is there any truth in this statement?"

The Liptaka, feeling convinced that Viola must have confessed as much, said it was quite true, but that Tengelyi was ignorant of the prisoner's presence. The old woman was sent away, and

Mr. Catspaw, turning to the court, asked triumphantly:

"Did you ever hear of such impertinence? The prisoner protests that he did not inform anybody of the alleged intended robbery; and the old woman swears that Viola did inform her, for the purpose of cautioning the notary. Then again, the old woman. did not say anything to the notary, without having any ostensible reason for not doing what she alleges she promised to do. The prisoner will have it that he was not in Tissaret at the time we pursued him; and the witness-why, gentlemen, the witness deposes that the subject in question was mentioned to her at that very time. I say, you great fool! if you had time for another batch of lies, I would advise you to make out a better story. But let us go on. Who told you that the Jew and Tzifra intended to rob the notary?"

"I cannot answer that question," replied Viola.

“Indeed? What a pity! I'd like to know the gentleman who gives you such correct information; unless, indeed, you keep a 'familiaris,'-a devil, I mean."

"The only thing I told you was that I knew of the robbery." "But how did you know of it?"

"The Jew and Tzifra talked about it in the pot-house near Dustbury."

"Were you present? Did you hear them?»

"No; I had it from a friend."

"I'm sure it was your familiaris,' your devil,— your artful dodger!" said Mr. Catspaw smiling; "but since you knew that

the robbery was to take place, why did you not inform the justice of it?"

"I was outlawed; a prize was offered for my head."

"Indeed, so it was; but your friend-why did not he inform the proper authorities? Was he also wanted? and if so, why did he not inform Tengelyi, or Mr. Vandory, who I understand has likewise lost his papers?"

"I cannot tell you. Perhaps he did not find the notary. At all events, he knew that I would prevent the robbery, so he told me of it."

"A very extraordinary thing, this!" said Mr. Catspaw; "for a man to apply to a robber with a view to prevent a robbery! And you wanted to prevent the robbery, did you not? Now tell me, did you set about it by yourself? And what became of your comrade—I mean the man who told you about it? Did he too go to Tissaret ?"

"There was no occasion for it."

Still, it is very extraordinary that you should not have hunted in couples, knowing as you did that there were two men to commit the robbery. What a capital thing for you, if you could summon your comrades to explain it all! For if some went to Tissaret to prevent the robbery, there can be no harm in our knowing who your comrade is. He ought to be rewarded for his zeal."

"I had no comrade.

I was alone," said Viola.

"Very well, you were alone; let it be so. Whom did you see in the notary's house?"

"No one but the Jew; he who is now waiting in the hall." "Did you see Tzifra?»

«No. The Jew was alone in the house."

"But the Jew swears that it was you who committed the robbery!"

"I don't care. I've said what I've said."

"Is there anything else you have to say?"

"No."

"Very well. I've done with you," said the attorney, as he rang for the servants.

"Take him away," said he, as the haiduks made their appearance. Viola turned round and left the room.

SF

EPICTETUS

(FIRST CENTURY A. D. ?)

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

THE three great authors among the later Stoics, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus offers the most cultivated literary flavor, Seneca the most varied and discursive knowledge, and Epictetus the simplest and most practical tonic. As compared with the two other writers, Epictetus shortens his sword; that is, his sentences. They have the merit which Thoreau set above all others: they are (( concentrated and witty." Some of them have attained to the rank of proverbs, that is, of being quoted by those who never heard of the author; as when men say, "All things have two handles; beware of the wrong one," which is not the precise phrase used by Epictetus, but comes very near it. What is more essential than any matter of language is that he, like the other later Stoics, and even more than the rest of these, had outgrown the earlier tradition of their predecessors and recognized human feeling. In this respect, indeed, he went further than many Christian teachers. When Cardinal Manning was on his way to Rome, after his conversion, he lost his portmanteau containing family letters. The moral lesson to be drawn from this is thus noted in his diary: "To be dead to earthly and natural affections." Epictetus, although a Stoic by profession and practice, would not have gone so far.

The system of Epictetus is not hard to grasp, for it is very simple, and wholly practical. All objects, all events, in short, everything earthly, may be divided into classes: the things which are within our own control and the things over which we have no control. We must live for the one class- the things controllable; and must hold the other as absolutely secondary. All possessions that come to us from without, all joys, even those of domestic happiness, are beyond our own control and must be held as loans, not as gifts; the inward life is apart from these and goes on the same, whether they come or go, and this alone we can control. Children are dear, love is real, God is good; but we must acquiesce quietly in the loss of every human joy at the word of command, and never murmur. There is no hardness, as of the elder Stoics; no jaunty refusal of personal ties, as with Epicurus; behind the brief, terse maxims of this slave-philosopher there is an atmosphere of love and faith. It even

meets curiously the maxims of some of the mystics. It teaches humility, unselfishness, forgiveness, trust in Providence. "What is the first business of one who studies philosophy? To part with selfconceit." The philosopher, "when beaten, must love those who beat him." There is a special chapter, headed "That we ought not to be angry with the erring." "All is full of beloved ones by nature endeared to one another." "Who is there, whom bright and agreeable children do not attract to play and creep and prattle with them ?» In several places he speaks with contempt of suicide; although he vindicates Divine providence by showing that we are not forcibly held down to a life of sorrow, since we always keep the power of exit in our own hands. To make this exit, at any rate, is but the cowardice of a moment, while a life of wailing is prolonged cowardice.*

There is absolutely no hair-splitting, no cloud of metaphysics. He does not aim at these things; he bears hard on all pretenders to abstract philosophy, and brings all to a strict practical test. Even the man who professes such a modest practical philosophy as his own must bring it constantly to the proof. "It is not reasonings that are wanted now," he says; "for there are books stuffed full of Stoical reasonings. What is wanted, then? The man who shall apply them; whose actions may bear testimony to his doctrines. Assume this character for one, that we may no longer make use in the schools of the examples of the ancients, and may have some examples of our own." Elsewhere, in a similar spirit, he spurns the thought of measuring virtue by the mere degree of familiarity with some great teacher. He refers, for instance to Chrysippus, who was accepted as the highest authority among the later Stoics, although not one of his seven hundred volumes has come down to the present age. "Who is in a state of progress? He who has best studied Chrysippus? Does virtue consist in having read Chrysippus through? . . Show me your progress! As if I should say to a wrestler, 'Show me your muscle!' and he should answer, 'See my dumb-bells.'-'Your dumbbells are your own affair; I desire to see the effect of them." "The only real thing," he adds, "is to study how to rid life of lamentation and complaint, and 'Alas!' and 'I am undone and misfortune and failure." Thus at every step Epictetus brings us resolutely down to real life; let others, if they will, rest in the clouds.

He thus leaves, it may be, some of the loftiest spiritual heights and the profoundest intellectual processes to others; no man can do

*The passages here cited may be found in Higginson's Discourses of Epictetus. (Revised Edition: Boston, 1891.)

+ Ibid.

5499 everything. Yet he has found readers at all periods, alike among men of thought and men of action. Marcus Aurelius ranked him with Socrates, and Origen thought that his writings had done more good than those of Plato. In modern times, Niebuhr has said of him, "Epictetus's greatness cannot be questioned, and it is impossible for any person of sound mind not to be charmed by his works." Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black patriot and general, kept this book by him; and one of the most delightful of modern actresses has the same habit. There is something extremely interesting in the thought that a Phrygian slave should have uttered thoughts which thus kept their hold for eighteen hundred years upon minds thus widely varying.

Little is known of Epictetus personally, except that he was probably born at Hierapolis in Phrygia, and that he was the slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero, living in Rome in the first century of our era. Origen preserves an anecdote of him, that when his master once put his leg in the torture, Epictetus quietly said, “You will break my leg!" and when this happened he added in the same tone, "Did I not tell you so?" Becoming in some way free, he lived afterwards at Rome, teaching philosophy. According to his commentator Simplicius, he lived so frugally that the whole furniture of his house consisted of a bed, a cooking vessel, and a lamp; and Lucian ridiculed a man who bought the latter, after the death of Epictetus, in hopes to become a philosopher by using it. When Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, Epictetus returned to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus, and taught in the same way there; still living in his frugal way, but adopting a child whose parents had abandoned it. He suffered greatly from lameness. After Hadrian became emperor (A. D. 117), Epictetus was treated with favor, but did not return to Rome. In his later life his discourses were written down by his disciple Arrian. Only four of the original eight books are extant. This, with the Enchiridion,' a more condensed and aphoristic work, and a few fragments preserved as quotations by various authors, are all that we know of his teachings. Even the date of his death is unknown; but he wrote his own epitaph in two lines, preserved by Aulus Gellius (B. ii., Chap. 18): "Epictetus, a slave, maimed in body, an Irus in poverty, and favored by the Immortals."

His works have gone through many editions and a variety of translations, of which that of Elizabeth Carter Dr. Johnson's friend, and pronounced by him to be the best Greek scholar in England has been most popular, being many times reprinted. It was somewhat formal and archaic in style, however, and was followed by that of Long, which was however the work of that author's old age, was somewhat stiff and cramped in style, and not nearly so readable as