in the same valuable collection, from Thrasea Pætus, to his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus, which exhibits a striking contrast to that which is attributed to Petronius Arbiter.

It shows, that the miseries of Italy, and of the Roman Empire, after the usurpations of Sylla and Marius, and the destruction of the Republic by Julius Cæsar, were rather to be imputed to the effects of absolute monarchy, under the mask of the forms of the old constitution, than to any general corruption, (such as we see in Britain,) that had pervaded the Commonwealth.

This letter, likewise, I flatter myself, accompanied with biographical anecdotes of the Thrasean and Helvidian families, so rich in exalted female characters, may be found agreeable to the ladies who honour the Bee with their perusal, and confirm many of them in a belief which they begin to enter. tain, that it is not absolutely necessary that a book should be false or fictitious to give the same pleasure afforded by a novel.

Perhaps, indeed, as I find I am suspected of fabricating the letter to Capito, my publication may receive from this circumstance an additional interest. But on this head I may say, after the manner of Cardinal Richlieu to the courtier who congratulated his Eminence on the appearance of a comet when he lay upon his death-bed, Ah! mon ami, la comete me fait trop d'honneur. Ah! Monsieur

d'Abeille, votres lecteurs me font trop d'hou neur *.

I am, Monsieur d'Abeille, with regard,
Your constant reader,

A. B.

THRASEA PÆTUS TO HELVIDIUS PRISCUS.

I AM just returned from a most agreeable visit to our friend Quintus Volusius, at his Baian Villa, on which I was accompanied by Seneca and his wife, young Lucan and Fabius Rusticus; nor was my Arria, as you may sup pose, left out of the party, which was indeed

"Ah! my friend, the comet does me too much honour."—"Ah! Mr Bee, your readers do me too much honour."

Thrasea Pætus, a Roman senator in the reign of Tiberius and Nero, the origin of whose family is unknown, became publicly distinguished for the first time in the reign of Nero, during the Emperor's third consulship with Valerius Messala, by opposing the unreasonable and pernicious request of the citizens of Syracuse to increase the number of their gladiators.

After Nero's horrid matricide, an edict of the Senate passed, to place the statue of the monster in the senate-house, close to that of the goddess Minerva, and to insert the birth-day of Agrippina in the list of unhallowed days. Thrasea Pætus walked out of the Senate indignant, and brought upon himself the hatred and revenge of the tyrant, which, by a bold and continued opposition to the enemies of freedom, he at last

raised

made up at her request, to shun the continued scene of horror at Rome, and to soothe her frame, after the strange confusions of the late public spectacles which she was forced, though with the greatest reluctance, to attend, from the fear of offending the harper.

The weather was delightful, and we had no sooner got out of the suburbs, than we

raised to a fixed purpose for his destruction, which wag soon after perpetrated by a decree of the venal Senate, and he received from the Senate by the Questor the notice of his condemnation, and submitted to a voluntary death with the same magnanimity with which he had resisted the allurements and the threats of the Emperor.

Helvidius Priscus was the son-in-law of Thrasea Pætus, having married his daughter Arria, whose mother of the same name was the wife of Cæcinna Pætus, and remarkable, not only for her consummate virtue, but for her having killed herself to remove her husband's cowardly terror of a voluntary death, when he was condemned to die by the Senate.

As she drew away the fatal steel from her breast, looking tenderly at Cæcinna, she said, with her dying accents, "Pætus, it is nothing,-it is not painful." Then Pætus, animated by the courage of Arria, struck himself to the heart with the same dagger; when Arria, expiring said, "Ah, Patus! that blow was agony indeed!"

When she was prevented formerly by the soldiery from accompanying her husband from Dalmatia to Rome, she hired a fishing boat, and exposed herself to imminent danger, that she might attend him in the extremity of his misfortunes.

found ourselves, as it were, out of Tartarus, and tending towards the mansions of the blessed in Elysium.

About the tenth hour, we reached the beautiful and magnificent villa of Volusius, a magnificence which he himself would have shunned, but which grew from the sixty years improvements of his excellent father, who, shunning the troubles and enormities of the times, died there, peaceably, in the ninetyfourth year of his age, full of riches and repu-tation, that had never been obnoxious to the Cæsars.

Quintus and his family we found looking out for us from an eminence in his garden, where he was in company with Flaccus Persius, Barcas Soranus, and others, who had been that day listening to the recital of the satires of Persius, and the history of Pamphila, the Greek.

Serene and lovely was the day, and we partook of the bath; when, after changing our raiments, we went to supper in the hall of Ancient Virtue, which was, for the first time, that day to be dedicated to social inter

course.

The supper abounded in all the excellent meats and fruits of the season, and ice was not wanting in abundance, to cool both our water and our wine, which were super-excellent. I write water with an emphasis, as you know I use more of it than of the other. It was served up with an order and elegance with.

which the whole company seemed charmed, and Attic conversation was not deficient, to give a higher relish to the pleasures of the social board.

Seneca, after having most learnedly and pathetically lamented the luxury of the times, Laid in a most sumptuous supper of the greatest delicacies, except where there were condiments of mushrooms and oysters, which he vowed never to taste, in consequence of a vio lent indigestion, but as he gave out to the Stoics, on account of their tendency to whet sensuality.

Flaccus was a cook upon the occasion, in his own stile, and roasted the good old philosopher almost to a cinder on the gridiron of temperance.

Seneca bore this raillery with great good humour, saying, that he found his rules were not proof against the wholesome and simple viands of Volusius's table, or against the assemblage of the best men, and the most amiable and virtuous women in Italy. Paulina smiled, and said, she always thought her husband carried his temperance to extremes ;' but would not allow Persius to be an unprejudiced critic, as having no great relish for the doctrines of the Stoics, or the rigid manners of Seneca.

After this, the conversation turned on the calamities of the nones of February, the earthquakes and inundations of Campania, and the distresses of the people. Barcas Soranus