given up all campaigns, except in the congenial fields of love and literature. No doubt, he had no objection on occasion to fight his few battles over again; and, as the broken soldier in Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village,'
"Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields were won,"—
so our poet was quite at home in telling as well as hearing the soldier's tale, with the aid of the wine-flask to map out the battle-fields with miost finger on the table. But Peace approved herself so much more to his mind that we find him constantly attributing to it the whole cycle of blessings; amongst others—
That the sire's jar his offspring's soul should cheer;"
and it is with perhaps more heartfelt enthusiasm than that which he bestowed on the Gallic or Asiatic campaigns that he commemorates on Messala's birthday, already referred to, the peaceful services of that general to his country in reconstructing a portion of the Flaminian way out of the spoils which he had captured from the enemy. The lines in the original indicate that this great work was in course of construction when the seventh elegy was written; and it is not an uninteresting note that, as in our day, so of old, the road-maker was esteemed a public benefactor and the pioneer of civilisation. "Be thine," ends the poet—
And, gathering round thine age, swell honour's meed.
Frascati's youth and glistening Alba's son
Tell out the civil work thine hand hath done.
