Therefore, he affected no self-importance, but was affable to all, and repaid by cordial attachment. Cicero asserts that during the whole period of his reign, he was never heard to speak a rough or angry word. Xenophon speaks of him, as exhibiting the "model of a perfect government." Herodotus modifies this praise, and charges him with some faults. But the most exalted characters are subject to error, and the purest may be misunderstood or misrepresented. Even patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, have taught us by their own failings, the infirmity of our nature, and we should not require or expect perfection in others, until we are able to give an example of it ourselves.
When Cyrus approached death, he called around him his children and chief officers, gave them solemn and excellent advice by which to regulate their future conduct, and, thanking Heaven for all its blessings, calmly resigned his breath.
Cambyses, his successor, supplied mournful proof of the contrast that may exist between the son and the father. He was barbarous both at home and abroad, and put to death his own brother, from malignant envy, because he was able to shoot with a larger bow than himself. We will turn from the contemplation of such wickedness, to some of the last words of the great Cyrus to his children, which are here presented in a poetical garb:
Behold, I die! Restore my form
To dust, to darkness, and the worm:
For from the earth it first arose.
And there, at last, it finds repose.
Yet when this breath forsakes the clay,
Think ye the spirit shall decay?
No, no, my sons! Its mystic flight
Hath ever mock'd your keenest sight,
Even when it deign'd with mortal care
This prison of the flesh to share:
So, when stern Death my frame shall blot,
It lives, though you perceive it not.
Believe you trace through yonder sky
Your disembodied father's eye,
And be your motives pure and high:
But dread the ages yet unborn
Who stamp your deeds with praise or scorn:
Dread more than all, the Powers who seal
That sentence, man can ne'er repeal.
Rome and its Rulers.
The magnificent city of Rome was at first a rude hamlet of ruder people. Its earliest buildings were upon the Palatine Hill, near the Tiber. In process of time, it extended itself over the six adjacent eminences. Hence the name that it sometimes bears of the "seven-hilled city."
Two brothers, Romulus and Remus, were its founders, 752 years before the birth of Christ. They were twins, and trained up in the humble and hardy habits of a shepherd's life. But from feeding their peaceful flocks they aspired to rule men.
Romulus reared a wall around a portion of the new settlement, in which he took pride. Remus, in sport, or contempt, jumped over it, saying that he had given proof it would afford no protection against invaders. Romulus, forgetting the love he should have borne to his twin-brother, in a transport of rage struck him dead upon the spot. Thus, to the first king of Rome, as to the first-born of Eden, might have been said, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto thee from the ground." He who gave his own name to the Mistress of the World, left that name stained with the crime of fratricide.