military decorations that had been
given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each
began to try to win the other over--Flavius boasting the power of Rome
and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the
name of their country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by
the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the
betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon proceeded to
mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and
his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother;
nor would he have been checked from doing so had not the Roman general
Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on
the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.

I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in
which Praed has described this scene--a scene among the most affecting,
as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect
on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives
in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against
him. The great liberator of our German race was there, with every source
of human happiness denied him except the consciousness of doing his duty
to his country.

"Back, back! he fears not foaming flood
Who fears not steel-clad line:
No warrior thou of German blood,
No brother thou of mine.
Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
Her gems to deck thy hilt;
And blazon honor's hapless wreck
With all the gauds of guilt.

"But wouldst thou have _me_ share the prey?
By all that I have done,
The Varian bones that day by day
Lie whitening in the sun,
The legion's trampled panoply,
The eagle's shatter'd wing--
I would not be for earth or sky
So scorn'd and mean a thing.

"Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
Of dark and subtle skill,
To agonize but not destroy,
To torture, not to kill.
When swords are out and shriek and shout
Leave little room for prayer,
No fetter on man's arm or heart
Hangs half so heavy there.

"I curse him by the gifts the land
Hath won from him and Rome,
The riving axe, the wasting brand,
Rent forest, blazing home.
I curse him by our country's gods,
The terrible, the dark,
The breakers of the Roman rods,
The smiters of the bark.

"Oh, misery that su