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Rh nuptial vows, or if maidens are wronged, how ought the adulterer or the seducer to be dealt with?' Such is the skimble-scamble stuff with which our budding orators are now crammed! Even in the lecture-room these themes are hackneyed, while in the courts of justice they are never debated. The language in which such frivolous exercises are written is on a par with the emptiness of the questions. It is unnatural, gaudy, bombastic. The superstructure is answerable to the foundation. In such 'schools of impudence' our lads may be taught to chatter, but not to speak either in the senate or at the bar."

The close of Messala's portion in the 'Dialogue,' and the earlier sections of that of Maternus, are unfortunately lost. He is made to discourse at the end, as he is reported to have done at first, with a fervour that seemed to lift him above himself. He evidently in part agreed with the defender of the moderns, Marcus Aper, and partly with the defender of the ancients, Vipstanus Messala. That we no longer produce such orators as adorned the commonwealth, as well in its decline as in its "most high and palmy