ing off the head of one of
his boys, perhaps for doing something of a praiseworthy nature. Old
Junius Brutus was doubly favored by Fortune, for he was enabled to kill
two of his sons in the name of Patriotism, and thereby to gain a
reputation for virtue that endures to this day,--though, after all, he
was but the first of the brutes. The Romans kept up the paternal rule
for many ages, and theoretically it long survived the Republic. It had
existed in the Kingdom, and it was not unknown to the Empire. We have an
anecdote that shows how strong was the supremacy of _paterfamilias_ at
the beginning of the eighth century, when Young Rome had already made
more than one audacious display of contempt for the Conscript Fathers.
When Pompeius was asked what he would do, if Caesar should resist the
requirements of the Senate, he answered,--"What if my son should raise
his stick against me?"--meaning to imply, that, in his opinion,
resistance from Caesar was something too absurd to be thought of. Yet
Caesar _did_ resist, and triumphed; and, judging from their after-lives,
we should say that the Young Pompeys would have had small hesitation in
raising their sticks against their august governor, had he proved too
disobedient. A few years earlier, according to Sallust, a Roman, one
Fulvius, had caused his son to be put to death, because he had sought to
join Catiline. The old gentleman heard what his son was about, and when
Young Hopeful was arrested and brought before him, he availed himself of
his fatherly privilege, and had him strangled, or disposed of after some
other of those charming fashions which were so common in the model
republic of antiquity. "This imitation of the discipline of the ancient
republic," says Merivale, "excited neither applause nor indignation
among the languid voluptuaries of the Senate." They probably voted
Fulvius a brute, but they no more thought of questioning the legality of
his conduct than they did of imitating it. Law was one thing, opinion
another. If he liked to play Lucius Junius, well and good; but they had
no taste for the part. They felt much as we used to feel in
Fugitive-Slave-Law times: we did not question the law, but we would have
nothing to do with its execution.

Modern fathers have had no such powers as were held by those of Rome,
and if an Englishman of Red-Rose views had killed his son for setting
off to join Edward IV. when he had landed at Ravenspur, no one would
think of praising