emed to Hadrian) was exhibited in Alexandria, of all men
earning their bread in the sweat of their brow. In Rome only, (and at one
time in some of the Grecian states,) it was the very meaning of _citizen_
that he could vote and be idle.

In these circumstances, where the whole sum of life's duties amounted
to voting, all the business a man _could_ have was to attend the public
assemblies, electioneering, or factious. These, and any judicial trial
(public or private) that might happen to interest him for the persons
concerned, or for the questions, amused him through the morning; that
is, from eight till one. He might also extract some diversion from
the _columnae_, or pillars of certain porticoes to which they pasted
advertisements. These _affiches_ must have been numerous; for all the girls
in Rome who lost a trinket, or a pet bird, or a lap-dog, took this mode of
angling in the great ocean of the public for the missing articles.

But all this time we take for granted that there were no shows in a course
of exhibition, either the dreadful ones of the amphitheatre, or the
bloodless ones of the circus. If there were, then that became the business
of all Romans; and it was a business which would have occupied him from
daylight until the light began to fail. Here we see another effect from the
scarcity of artificial light amongst the ancients. These magnificent shows
went on by daylight. But how incomparably greater would have been the
splendor by lamp-light! What a gigantic conception! Eighty thousand human
faces all revealed under one blaze of lamp-light! Lord Bacon saw the mighty
advantage of candle-light for the pomps and glories of this world. But the
poverty of the earth was the ultimate cause that the Pagan shows proceeded
by day. Not that the masters of the world, who rained Arabian odors and
perfumed waters of the most costly description from a thousand fountains,
simply to cool the summer heats, would have regarded the expense of light;
cedar and other odorous woods burning upon vast altars, together with every
variety of fragrant torch, would have created light enough to shed a new
day over the distant Adriatic.

However, as there are no public spectacles, we will suppose, and the courts
or political meetings, (if not closed altogether by superstition,) would at
any rate be closed in the ordinary course by twelve or one o'clock, nothing
remains for him to do, before returning home, except perhaps to attend the