His [Tiberius Gracchus'] immediate object was, not the enrichment or elevation of the Plebeians, but simply the restoration of the needier citizens to a state of honorable independence. · MERIVALE.

His [Tiberius Gracchus'] great aim was to enforce the observance of previous laws, to correct the grave abuses of the system under which the public lands were held, and to raise up a new class of small proprietors and cultivators of the soil, who would have constituted an industrious and stable middle class to stand between the haughty nobles and the hungry populace. MAY.

There never was a milder law [i. e. the Licinian, which prohibited any man from occupying more than five hundred acres of public land, and which law, with some modifications, Gracchus sought to revive] made against so much injustice and oppression. For they who deserved to have been punished for their infringement on the rights of the community were to have a consideration for giving up their groundless claims. . . . In this just and glorious cause Tiberius exerted an eloquence which might have adorned a worse subject, and which nothing could resist. - PLUTARCH.

The aristocracy were foiled by the courage and patriotism of the Gracchi, who acted with that thorough faith in the truth and justice of their cause which affords the surest promise of success. The agrarian laws were carried, though their authors perished in the struggle, and these enactments proved thoroughly too intricate and impracticable to be ever executed. But, imperfectly as they were administered, their effect was still stringent and salutary. Hence the extraordinary energy which the republic displayed during the thirty years that followed. - MERIVALE.

The history of Rome from the time of the Gracchi is the history of a state that was hurried to its ruin by the ignorance of the people and the vices of their leaders. We now and then meet with an honest man, but the number is small. LONG.

The defeat of the Teutones by the consul, Caius Marius, in a great battle near Aquæ Sextiæ, in Gaul, in the year 102 B. C. is one of the chief events in Roman history. It saved Rome from being overthrown, not by a civilized race, but by a people who were essentially barbarous. Marius is justly entitled to rank among the most illustrious men of Rome.

THE MACCABEES.

IT was during this century that the Jews, under the leadership of a celebrated family surnamed the Maccabees (from the Hebrew Makkab, a hammer), obtained a temporary independence. About the year 165 B. C. Judas Maccabæus won a great victory over the Syrian King Antiochus. This is the heroic period of Jewish history.

[Judas Maccabæus] gat his people great honor, and put on a breastplate as a giant, and girt his warlike harness about him, and he made battles, protecting the host with his sword. In his acts he was like

a lion, and like a lion's whelp roaring for his prey. —1 MACCABEES, iii. 3.

So did not Maccabæus: he indeed
Retired unto the desert, but with arms;

And o'er a mighty king so oft prevailed,

That by strong hand his family obtained,

Though priests, the crown, and David's throne usurped,
With Modin and her suburbs once content.

I saw athwart the Cross a splendor drawn
By naming Joshua (even as he did it),
Nor noted I the word before the deed;
And at the name of the great Maccabee
I saw another move itself revolving,
And gladness was the whip unto that top.

MILTON.

DANTE, Paradiso. Tr. Longfellow.