Q. Which construction? “Thus were music and poetry born in the same family, and we shall notice how that they have clung to each other,” or “how they have clung?”
A. The latter is preferred. The conjunctive particle is not needed, and though occasionally thus used by a good writer, only encumbers the sentence.
Q. Who was Caius Cestius?
A. A wealthy Roman citizen of the Augustan age, a client of Cicero, of not much distinction, though rich. A part of his estate was employed in building for him a fine mausoleum, which remains to the present day, though most of the contemporaneous surrounding structures have long been in ruins. Near it lie the ashes of Keats and Shelly. After the death of Keats, Shelly wrote of his friend: “He lies in the lovely, romantic cemetery of the Protestants of Rome, near the tomb of Caius Cestius, and within the mossy walls and towns, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think of being buried in so sweet a place.”
Q. Can you give the date of Mrs. Browning’s birth in 1809?
A. We can not. No records now at hand give the day or month. It is not best to be greatly troubled over our want of information on the subject, as it is quite safe to conclude she was “well born” some time during the year mentioned. Many other eminent writers have gone into history with the same uncertainty as to the day of their birth.
Q. In whose hands was the government of the United States from 1783 to 1789?
A. Nominally in the Continental Congress—a kind of quasi central government. Practically in the hands of the colonists and their legislators. The war was ended and the United States acknowledged a free, sovereign, and independent nation. But they were, as yet, united only by the “articles of confederation” adopted in 1778; a bond of union that was soon found inadequate to secure a strong, permanent government amidst the perils that threatened the new republic. The regulation of commerce, the adjustment of difficulties between States, and the public defense were not sufficiently provided for. Congress could devise and recommend measures, but had little power to legislate, even on subjects that concerned the whole. There was still more need of an efficient executive department. Feeling that the articles of confederation were, in the changed state of the country, no longer sufficient, the leading statesmen wisely framed, and the country adopted the American Constitution, giving us a strong central government, with the least possible surrender of rights by the States thus united.
Q. Was there any reason for calling Alexander the Great a Greek?
A. Alexander was not a Greek, though educated by Greek teachers, and, as other Macedonians, using the Greek language. Macedon was not a part of Greece, but held Greece as a dependency, and used her power in expelling the Persians.