eping there came out to see what was
the matter. Now a mother, of whatever race, is irresistibly drawn by
an _instinct_, if incapable of a _sentiment_, of affection, to love
and to cherish any thing that is newly born. The wolf caressed the
helpless babes, imagining perhaps that they were her own offspring;
and lying down by their side she cherished and fed them, watching all
the time with a fierce and vigilant eye for any approaching enemy or
danger. The rude nursery might very naturally be supposed to be in
dangerous proximity to the water, but it happened that the river, when
the babes were set adrift in it, was very high, from the effect of
rains upon the mountains, and thus soon after the children were thrown
upon the land, the water began to subside. In a short time it wholly
returned to its accustomed channel, leaving the children on the warm
sand, high above all danger. The wolf was not their only guardian. A
woodpecker, the tradition says, watched over them too, and brought
them berries and other sylvan food. The reader will perhaps be
disposed to hesitate a little in receiving this last statement for
sober history, but as no part of the whole narrative will bear any
very rigid scrutiny, we may as well take the story of the woodpecker
along with the rest.

In a short time the children were rescued from their exposed situation
by a shepherd, who is called Faustulus, and may or may not have been
the same with the Faustulus by whom they had been exposed. Faustulus
carried the children to his hut; and there the maternal attentions of
the wolf and the woodpecker were replaced by those of the shepherd's
wife. Her name was Larentia. Faustulus was one of Amulius's herdsmen,
having the care of the flocks and herds that grazed on this part of
the royal domain, but living, like any other shepherd, in great
seclusion, in his hut in the forests. He not only rescued the
children, but he brought home and preserved the trough in which they
had been floated down the river. He put this relic aside, thinking
that the day might perhaps come in which there would be occasion to
produce it. He told the story of the children only to a very few
trustworthy friends, and he accompanied the communication, in the
cases where he made it, with many injunctions of secrecy. He named the
foundlings Romulus and Remus, and as they grew up they passed
generally for the shepherd's sons.

Faustulus felt a great degree of interest, and a high sense