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IMAGINARY CONVERSATION. R SCIPIO EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANETIUS. SCIPIO. X 0LYBIUS5 if you have found me slow in rising to you, if I lifted not up my eyes to salute you on your enterance^ do not hold me ungrateful . . proud there is no danger that you will ever call me : this day of all days would least make me so: it shews me the power of the immortal gods, the mutability of fortune, the instability of empire, the feeble- ness, the nothingness, of man. The earth stands motion- less ; the grass upon it bends and returns, the same today as yesterday, the same in this age as in a thousand past ; the sky darkens and is serene again ; the clouds melt away, but they are clouds another time, and float like triumphal pa- geants along the heavens. Carthage is fallen ! to rise no more ! the funereal horns have this hour announced to us that, after eighteen days and eighteen nights of conflagration, her last embers are extinguished. POLYBIUS. Perhaps, O Emilianus, I ought not to have come in. SCIPIO. Welcome, my friend. POLYBIUS. While you were speaking I would by no means interrupt you so idly, as to ask you to whom have you been proud, or to whom could you be ungrateful. SCIPIO. To him, if to any, whose hand is on my heart ; to him on whose shoulder I rest my head, weary with presages and vigils. Collect my thoughts for me, O my friend ! the fall Vol. IL No. 4. A