avorite stepson,
Drusus, all died early; while his stepson, Tiberius, was an unamiable
character whom he could not love. Age, sorrow, and failing health warned
him to seek repose; and, to recruit his strength, he undertook a
journey to Campania; but his infirmity increased, and he died at Nola
(14 A.D.), in the seventy-seventh year of his age. According to
tradition, shortly before his death, he called for a mirror, arranged
his hair neatly, and said to his attendants: "Did I play my part well?
If so, applaud me!" Augustus had consummate tact and address as a ruler
and politician, and made use of the passions and talents of others to
forward his own designs. The good and great measures which marked his
reign were originated mostly by himself. He encouraged agriculture,
patronized the arts and literature, and was himself an author; though
only a few fragments of his writings have been preserved. Horace,
Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus, and Livy--greatest of Latin poets
and scholars--belonged to the Augustan Age, a name since applied in
France to the reign of Louis XIV., in England to that of Queen Anne.

ST. AMBROSE[7]

By REV. A. A. LAMBING, LL.D.

(340-397)

[Footnote 7: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: St. Ambrose. [TN]]

Biographical history presents few characters more interesting either to
the statesman or the churchman than that of St. Ambrose. As a
statesman--though but a small part of his life was devoted to the
affairs of civil government--he showed great prudence, was sincerely
devoted to the interests of his imperial master, and yet he was at the
same time an uncompromising advocate and defender of the rights of the
people. As a churchman he united a high degree of personal sanctity and
a fatherly care of those intrusted to his pastoral vigilance--especially
the poor--to an extraordinary firmness in maintaining the rights of the
Church against imperial usurpation, and the purity of doctrine against
the inroads of heresy.

St. Ambrose was born about the year 340, of a Roman of the same name who
was at that time prefect of the pretorium in Gaul, a province which then
embraced a large portion of western and southwestern Europe. Arles,
Lyons, and Treves contend for the honor of being his birthplace, but it
is most probable that it was in the latter he first saw the light.
Legends, too, are not wanting of extraordinary occurrences which took
place during his infancy, t