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THE ROMAN EMPERORS IN MARBLE. 1
9
sa maison et des mat&iaux dont elle ^tait forin^e,Aiigiiste
semble avoir chercM a troniper siir la nature de son pouvoir
.
Near his house, Augustus built a stately temple of
Apollo, in which he arranged a select library, ornament-
ed with statues or busts of renowned writers. Another
snare! Toujours le inenie calcul : il se faisait petit, pour
se /aire puissant. When he laid out for the Romans a
new forum, it was to exorcise the memories of freedom
that haunted the old ; although it must be allowed that
these ghosts in the shape of temples, basilicas, statues,
orator’s chairs, and so forth, left the crowd of citizens
but very scanty elbow-room. And when stubborn house-
owners hindered him from giving his market a regular
form, the respect he in this matter paid to private right,
was only a means for affronting public right with im-
punity.
As I read these explanations of Ampere, I get an
impression of over-exertion. Augustus over-exerts him-
self; so does Ampere ; one to deceive, in little and great,
in weighty and worthless matters, in possible and impos-
sible ; the other to be sharp-sighted at the right time
and the wrong, and convince the reader that if cunning
Octaviushas succeeded thus far in hoodwinking the whole
world, he has at last met an eye that pursues the treach-
erous man through all his winding ways, into all his hid-
ing places, and finds him out even in his peperine.
For our own part, we have no desire to strip Augus-
tus of all other human qualities, in order to make of him
a bodily abstract of deceitfulness. We must not deny
him the relief of sometimes being himself, in the presence
of the world. This self of his very likely had, as every
other, its contrasts and contradictions. The human soul
is an elastic thing, and has room for such. Not quite
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