fair, and the wit with
which for a few moments you will throw off your ridicule. You may ask,
if the shooting of your corns are not as sure and as serious
prognostications? Be it so; and why not, Eusebius? You can tell by
them what weather to expect; and, after all, you know little more of
the material world, less of the immaterial, and nothing of their
mystical union. Nothing now, past, present, and future, may be but
terms for we know not what, and cannot comprehend how they can be lost
in an eternity. There they become submerged. So take the thing
represented, not the paltry, perhaps ridiculous, one through which it
is represented. It is the picture, the attitude, the position, the
undignified familiarity of yourself with the defects of your own
person, that make the ridiculous; but there is grave philosophy,
nevertheless, to be drawn from every atom of your own person, if you
view it aright. I have heard you eloquent against the "hypocrite
Cicero," as you called him, for his saying, that one Augur meeting
another could scarcely help laughing. If mankind chose augury as a
sign, it might have been permitted them to find a sign in it. But this
is plunging into deeper matter, and one which you will think a
quagmire, wherein wiser thoughts may flounder and be lost. When the
officers of Hannibal's army were heard to laugh by the soldiery on the
morning of the battle of Cannae, they took it as a good omen. It was
generally received, and the day was fatal to the Romans. "Possunt quia
posse videntur," you will say; but whence comes the "videntur?" There,
Eusebius, you beg the whole question. The wonders and omens, gravely
related by Livy, at least portray a general feeling--an impression
before events. In the absence of a better religion, I would not have
quarrelled with the superstition, and very much join you in your
condemnation of the passage in Cicero.

The fatal necessity of event upon event, of omen, dream, and vision,
is the great characteristic of the wondrous Greek drama. So awfully
portrayed is the _OEdipus_--and with more grand and prophetic
mystery pervading the _Agamemnon_. Had it not been congenial with
popular belief, it could never have been so received; nor, indeed,
could somewhat similar (though degraded from their high authority, as
standing less alone by their amalgamation with a purer creed)
characteristics in some of the plays of our own Shakspeare have
touched the mind to wonderment, had there been n