Domestic pleasures | Page 8

has so many duties to fulfil, and they are so important, that I am sure I had much rather be a subject.
_Mr. B._. I am quite of your opinion, my dear boy, that there is much more happiness to be found in the private walks of life; and I can with truth declare, that I would not exchange my own fire-side, enlivened by so many happy countenances, for the gilded palace of the greatest monarch.
"Nor would we change our dear father and mother," said the cheerful little Louisa, "to be the gayest lords and ladies in the land."
_Mr. B._. Well, my little lady, now let me hear how Numa goes on in his new dignity.
Louisa. He was so well calculated to be a king, by his goodness as well as his knowledge, papa, that you may suppose he made his subjects very happy. His whole time was spent in endeavouring to render them pious and virtuous. He built a great many new temples for religious worship; and, amongst others, one to Janus, which was always open in time of war, and shut in time of peace. He did every thing in his power to encourage agriculture, and, for this purpose, divided the lands which Romulus had conquered in war, among the poor people. His subjects loved him very much, and he lived till he was eighty years old, and then died in peace, after having reigned forty-three years. The temple of Janus was shut during his whole reign.
_Mr. B._ You have given your account very correctly, Louisa; Numa was, indeed, a wise and discreet prince. You have, however, omitted mentionaing his distribution of the tradesmen of Rome into distinct corporations, which Plutarch considered the master-piece of his policy. The city had been long divided into two factions, occasioned by the mixture of the Sabines with the first Romans. Hence arose jealousies, which were an inexhaustible source of discord. Numa, to remedy this evil, made all the artists and tradesmen of Rome, of whatever nation they originally were, enter into separate companies, according to their respective professions. The musicians, goldsmiths, carpenters, curriers, dyers, tailors, &c. formed distinct communities. He ordained particular statutes for each of them, and granted them peculiar privileges. Every corporation was permitted to hold lands, to have a common treasury, and to celebrate festivals and sacrifices proper to itself;--in short, to become a sort of little republic. By this means the Sabines and Romans, forgetting all their old partialities and party names, were brought to an entire union.
_Ferdinand._ That was a capital contrivance. What a clever man Numa was; and how much good such a king can do to his people.
_Edward._ You did not mention, Louisa, what pains Numa took to reform the calendar. The year, before his time, consisted of but three hundred and four days, which is neither agreeable to the solar nor the lunar year. Numa endeavoured to make it agree with both: he added January and February to the old year, which before consisted of only ten months. Although he did not render the calendar so complete as it is at present, he remedied the disorders as far as he was able, and put it into a condition of more easily admitting of new corections.
_Mr. B._ Louisa has alreay told us that the temple of Janus was not opened during the whole reign of Numa: he was, indeed a most pacific and amiable prince. He was beloved by his neighbours, and became the arbiter of all the differences among them; and his virtues seemed to have communicated themselves to all the nations around Rome. As to the Romans themselves, it might be literally said, that their weapons of war were changed into implements of husbandry. No seditions, no ambitious desires of the throne, nor so much as any murmurs against the person or administration of the king, appeared amongst his subjects. When he died, they lamented him as severely as if every man had lost his own father; and the concourse of strangers to Rome, to pay the last tribute of respect to his remains, was exceedingly great. Numa had forbidden the Romans to burn his body; they therefore put it into a stone coffin, and, according to his own orders, buried the greatest part of the books he had written, in the same sepulchre with himself. He had made a law, forbidding that any dead body should be buried within the city, and had, himself, chosen a burying-place beyond the Tiber. Thither he was carried, on the shoulders of his senators, and followed by all the people, who bewailed their loss with tears.
_Mrs. B._ How superior to brass and marble, is such a monument of a people's love.
_Ferdinand._ I suppose Numa named one of his new months January, in compliment to the god