So Nature prompts: drawn by her secret tie,
We view a parent's deeds with reverent eye;
Take, with pernicious haste, the example take,
And love the sin for the dear sinner's sake.

One youth perhaps, form'd of superior clay,
And animated by a purer ray,

May dare to spurn proximity of blood,

And in despite of nature, to be good;

One youth: the rest the beaten pathway tread,
And blindly follow where their fathers lead.
Pernicious guides! this reason should suffice,
To make you shun the dangerous route of vice,
This powerful reason; lest your race pursue,
The guilty track too plainly mark'd by you!
For youth is facile, and its yielding will,
Receives, with fatal ease, th' imprint of ill:
Hence Catilines in every soil abound,
While Catos, Brutuses, are rarely found.

O friend! far from the walls where children dwell,
Every immodest sight and sound repel;

VER. 62. Ofriend! &c.] Fully sensible of the vast importance of his maxims, Juvenal delivers them in this place with a kind of religious solemnity. That they were highly necessary, may be learned from Quintilian, who wrote about the same time. Gaudemus (i. e. parentes) si quid filius licentius dixerit ; verba nec Alexandrinis quidem permittenda deliciis, risu et osculo excipimus, nec mirum: nos docuimus, ex nobis audierunt, nostras amicas, nostros concubinos vident, omne convivium obscœnis canticis strepit; fit ex iis consuetudo, deinde natura. Discunt hæc miseri antequam sciunt vitia esse: inde soluti ac fluentes, non accipiunt ex

THE PLACE IS SACRED. Far, far hence, remove,
Ye venal votaries of illicit love!

Ye dangerous knaves, who pander to be fed,
And sell yourselves to infamy for bread!
Reverence to children, as to heaven, is due:
When thou would'st, then, some darling sin pursue,
Think that thy infant offspring eyes the deed;
And let the thought abate thy guilty speed,
Back from the headlong steep thy steps entice,
And check thee, tottering on the verge of vice.
O yet reflect; for should he e'er provoke,
As sure he will, the law's avenging stroke,
(Since not in person and in face alone,

But e'en in morals, he will prove thy son,)
Oh! thou wilt then, forsooth, with anger flame,
And threaten, from thy Will, to dash his name.
Audacious! with what front dost thou aspire,
To exercise the license of a sire?

When all, with rising indignation, see

The youth, in turpitude, surpass'd by thee,

scholis mala ista, sed in scholas afferunt. Lib. 1. How strong, yet how affecting a picture!

But does it suit the fathers of a former age only? Have we none at present who labour, with a perversity truly diabolical, to assimilate the morals of their sons to their own? Can the acquaintance of my reader furnish him with no parent who encourages his child to lisp indecencies, who forms his infant tongue to ribaldry, who accustoms him to spectacles of impurity, till what was habit becomes nature; who initiates him in debaucheries before the boy

By thee, old fool, whose windy, brainlesss head,
Long since requir'd the cupping-glass's aid!

Is there a guest expected? all is haste,

All hurry in the house, from first to last.

66

Up, up, ye slaves!" th' impatient master cries, Whips in his hand, and fury in his eyes;

Up, up, ye loiterers! ope the saloon doors, "Furbish the clouded columns, scour the floors,

66

66

Sweep the dry cobwebs from the ceiling; clean,
You, sir, the figur'd silver; you,
the plain."
O inconsistent wretch! make you this coil,
Lest your front-hall or gallery, daub'd with soil,
(Which yet a little sand removes) offend
The prying eye of an indifferent friend?
And do you stir not, that your son may see,
Your house from moral filth, from vices, free!
True, you have given a citizen to Rome;
And she shall thank you, if the youth become,
By your o'er-ruling care, or soon or late,
A useful member of the parent state:

For all depends on you; the stamp he'll take,
From the strong impress which at first

you make,

is sensible of their heinousness, and who finally dismisses him from his arms, to corrupt the seminaries of learning, and amaze his tutors with a professor of licentiousness just escaped from the bib, and go-cart!

I trust there is no such person:-if there be, let him profit by the morality of an unenlightened heathen, and retrace his steps with prudence and dispatch: so Juvenal will not have written in vain.

And prove, as vice or virtue was your aim,
His country's glory, or his country's shame.

The stork, with newts and serpents from the wood,
And pathless wild, supports her callow brood;
And the fledg'd storklings, when to wing they take,
Seek the same reptiles through the devious brake.
The vulture snuffs from far the tainted gale,
And hurrying where the putrid scents exhale,
From gibbets and from graves the carcass tears,
And to her young the loathsome dainty bears;
Her

young, grown vigorous, hasten from the nest,
And gorge on carrion with the parent's zest.
While Jove's own eagle, bird of noble blood,
Scours the wide champaign for untainted food,
Sweeps the swift hare, or swifter fawn, away,
And feeds her nestlings with the generous prey;
Her nestlings hence, when from the rock they spring,
And pinch'd by hunger, to the quarry wing,
Stoop only to the game they tasted first,

When, from the parent shell, they, clamorous, burst.

VER. 119. Scours the wide champaign for untainted food, &c.] This is a vulgar prejudice. Buffon, who has too many errors of this kind, asserts, that the eagle, though famishing, will not touch carrion. Quelqu' affamé qu'il soit, il ne se jette jamais sur les cadavres: and the editors of the "History of British Birds," unwarily follow him! 'Twas never well for truth, since naturalists took poets for their guides. The fact is, that the eagle is hardly more delicate in the choice of his food than the vulture. Alas, for the credit of the feathered king!

Centronius plann'd and built, and built and plann'd;
And now along Cajeta's winding strand,

And now amid Prænesté's hills, and now
On lofty Tibur's solitary brow,

He rear'd prodigious piles, with marble brought
From distant realms, and exquisitely wrought:
Prodigious piles! that tower'd o'er Fortune's shrine,
As gelt Posides towers, O Jove! o'er thine.
While thus Centronius crowded seat on seat,
He spent his cash, and mortgag'd his estate;
Yet left enough his family to content:
Which his mad son to the last farthing spent,
While, building on, he strove, with fond desire,
To top the stately structures of his sire.

Sprung from a father who the sabbath fears,
There is, who nought but clouds and skies reveres ;

VER. 133. Ut spado Posides.] "By the word spado," Mr. Gibbon says, "the Romans very forcibly expressed their abhorrence" (rather, their contempt) "of that mutilated condition: the Greek appellation of eunuch, which insensibly prevailed, had a milder sound, and a more ambiguous sense."

With respect to Posides, he was one of the freedmen of Claudius, who prostituted some of the most honourable rewards of military merit in his favour: thus Suet. Libertorum præcipuè suspexit Posidem spadonem, (Juvenal's words,) quem etiam Britannico triumpho inter militares viros hasta pura donavit. Claud. 28. Posides, like most of this emperor's favourites, amassed vast wealth, which he lavished in building.

VER. 141. who nought but clouds and skies reveres; &c.] This popular error, with regard to the Jews, arose from their having no visible representation of the deity. When Pompey using, says Tacitus, the license of