were always sending him, to set up his home in Latium at all costs. All these estimable qualities are enough to furnish forth a dozen heroes. He is also ready to fight on all proper occasions; and as to the charge that he is equally ready to weep upon all occasions, which has been brought against him by one set of critics, and excused by others, both might have spared their pens; for it is a weakness which may be charged with equal truth upon most of the heroes, not only of classical fiction, but of classical history. It is not only that the chiefs of the Iliad weep without fearing any imputation against their manliness, but if we are to trust the unsensational chronicles of Cæsar, the whole rank and file of his army, even the veterans of the tenth legion—the "fighting division"—when first they heard that they were to be led against the tall and truculent-looking Germans, "could not restrain their tears," and set to work to make their wills forthwith. The thing is unaccountable, except from some strange difference of temperament; for who can imagine a company of our veriest raw ploughboy recruits so behaving themselves? They might shake in their very shoes; they might even very probably run away: but crying and howling is not our way of expressing emotion, after childhood is past. But we are accustomed to read of such exhibitions of feeling in the natives of warmer climates, as, for instance, in the characters of Scripture; and an occasional burst of tears on Æneas's part would not have unheroed him in our estimation one whit. It is his desertion of Dido which makes an irredeemable poltroon of him in
