! But, see! he
leaves me, he turns his back upon me with cool contempt! Alas! do I not
deserve this scorn? In spite of myself I must confess that I do. O
vanity, how short-lived are the pleasures thou bestowest! I was thy
votary. Thou wast the god for whom I changed my religion. For thee I
forsook my country and my throne. What compensation have I gained for
all these sacrifices so lavishly, so imprudently made? Some puffs of
incense from authors who thought their flattery due to the rank I had
held, or hoped to advance themselves by my recommendation, or, at best,
over-rated my passion for literature, and praised me to raise the value
of those talents with which they were endowed. But in the esteem of wise
men I stand very low, and their esteem alone is the true measure of
glory. Nothing, I perceive, can give the mind a lasting joy but the
consciousness of having performed our duty in that station which it has
pleased the Divine Providence to assign to us. The glory of virtue is
solid and eternal. All other will fade away like a thin vapoury cloud,
on which the casual glance of some faint beams of light has superficially
imprinted their weak and transient colours.

DIALOGUE XI.

TITUS VESPASIANUS--PUBLIUS CORNELIUS SCIPIO AFRICANUS.

_Titus_.--No, Scipio, I can't give place to you in this. In other
respects I acknowledge myself your inferior, though I was Emperor of Rome
and you only her consul. I think your triumph over Carthage more
glorious than mine over Judaea. But in that I gained over love I must
esteem myself superior to you, though your generosity with regard to the
fair Celtiberian, your captive, has been celebrated so highly.

_Scipio_.--Fame has been, then, unjust to your merit, for little is said
of the continence of Titus, but mine has been the favourite topic of
eloquence in every age and country.

_Titus_.--It has; and in particular your great historian Livy has poured
forth all the ornaments of his admirable rhetoric to embellish and
dignify that part of your story. I had a great historian too--Cornelius
Tacitus; but either from the brevity which he affected in writing, or
from the severity of his nature, which never having felt the passion of
love, thought the subduing of it too easy a victory to deserve great
encomiums, he has bestowed but three lines upon my parting with Berenice,
which cost me more pain and greater efforts of mind than the conquest of
Jerusalem.

_Scip