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Dividend Two Directory 09
Page 09
The internal history of Rome during this period is one of great interest. The Patricians and Plebeians formed two distinct orders in the state. After the banishment of the kings the Patricians retained exclusive possession of political power. The Plebeians, it is true, could vote in the Comitia Centuriata, but, as they were mostly poor, they were outvoted by the Patricians and their clients. The Consuls and other magistrates were taken entirely from the Patricians, who also possessed the exclusive knowledge and administration of the law. In one word, the Patricians were a ruling and the Plebeians a subject class. But this was not all. The Patricians formed not only a separate _class_, but a separate _caste_, not marrying with the Plebeians, and worshiping the gods with different religious rites. If a Patrician man married a Plebeian wife, or a Patrician woman a Plebeian husband, the state refused to recognize the marriage, and the offspring was treated as illegitimate.
In the _International Studio_ of March, 1903, we read: "The portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt, by Miss Cecilia Beaux, seemed to me to be one of the happiest of her creations. Nothing could exceed the skill and daintiness with which the costume is painted, and the characterization of the head is more sympathetic than usual, offering a most winsome type of beautiful, good womanhood. A little child has been added to the picture--an afterthought, I understand, and scarcely a fortunate one; at least in the manner of its presentment. The figure is cleverly merged in half shadow, but the treatment of the face is brusque, and a most unpleasant smirk distorts the child's mouth. It is the portrait of the mother that carries the picture, and its superiority to many of Miss Beaux's portraits consists in the sympathy with her subject which the painter has displayed."--_Charles H. Caffin_.
Those that have joined with their honor great travels, cares, or perils, are less subject to envy. For men think that they earn their honors hardly, and pity them sometimes; and pity ever healeth envy. Wherefore you shall observe, that the more deep and sober sort of politic persons, in their greataess, are ever bemoaning themselves, what a life they lead; chanting a quanta patimur! Not that they feel it so, but only to abate the edge of envy. But this is to be understood, of business that is laid upon men, and not such, as they call unto themselves. For nothing increaseth envy more, than an unnecessary and ambitious engrossing of business. And nothing doth extinguish envy more, than for a great person to preserve all other inferior officers, in their full lights and pre-eminences of their places. For by that means, there be so many screens between him and envy.
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