Where shall we find in Paris, Strasburg, Ratisbon, or Vienna young men who have learned arithmetic, the mathematics and music without assistance, and who have been fathers at fourteen?
Doubtless it is no fable that Atlas, prince of Mauritania, called by the Greeks the son of heaven, was a celebrated astronomer, and constructed a celestial sphere such as the Chinese have had for so many ages. The ancients, who expressed everything in allegory, likened this prince to the mountain which bears his name, because it lifts its head above the clouds, which have been called the heavens by all mankind who have judged of things only from the testimony of their eyes.
These Moors cultivated the sciences with success, and taught Spain and Italy for five centuries. Things are greatly altered. The country of Augustine is now but a den of pirates, while England, Italy, Germany, and France, which were involved in barbarism, are greater cultivators of the arts than ever the Arabians were.
Our only object, then, in this article is to show how changeable a scene this world is. Augustine, from a debauchee, becomes an orator and a philosopher; he puts himself forward in the world; he teaches rhetoric; he turns Manichæan, and from Manichæanism passes to Christianity. He causes himself to be baptized, together with one of his bastards, named Deodatus; he becomes a bishop, and a father of the Church. His system of grace has been reverenced for eleven hundred years as an article of faith. At the end of eleven hundred years some Jesuits find means to procure an anathema against Augustine's system, word for word, under the names of Jansenius, St. Cyril, Arnaud, and Quesnel. We ask if this revolution is not, in its kind, as great as that of Africa, and if there be anything permanent upon earth?
AUGUSTUS (OCTAVIUS).
The Morals of Augustus.
Manners can be known only from facts, which facts must be incontestable. It is beyond doubt that this man, so immoderately praised as the restorer of morals and of laws, was long one of the most infamous debauchees in the Roman commonwealth. His epigram on Fulvia, written after the horrors of the proscriptions, proves that he was no less a despiser of decency in his language than he was a barbarian in his conduct. This abominable epigram is one of the strongest testimonies to Augustus' infamous immorality. Sextus Pompeius also reproached him with shameful weaknesses: "Effeminatum infectatus est." Antony, before the triumvirate, declared that Cæsar, great-uncle to Augustus, had adopted him as his son only because he had been subservient to his pleasures; "Adopt ionem avunculi stupro meritum."
Lucius Cæsar charged him with the same crime, and even asserted that he had been base enough to sell himself to Hirtius for a very considerable sum. He was so shameless as to take the wife of a consul from her husband in the midst of a supper; he took her to a neighboring closet, staid with her there for some time, and brought her back to table without himself, the woman, or her husband blushing at all at the proceeding.
We have also a letter from Antony to Augustus, couched in these terms: "Ita valeas ut hanc epistolam cum leges, non inieris Testullam, aut Terentillam, aut Russillam, aut Salviam, aut omnes. Anne refert ubi et in quam arrigas?" We are afraid to translate this licentious letter.