The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the calm severity characteristic of him.

Practices so unnatural and iniquitous as those you state, of our own citizens converting their property and personal exertions into the means of annoying our trade and injuring their fellow-citizens, deserve legal severity commensurate with their turpitude.

"You have your revenge for some personal liberties that were certainly taken, not a fortnight since, with this boat and her crew; still, I have much mistaken your character, if unnecessary severity forms one of its features.

When I write down in the evening what I have seen and thought in the day, I allow myself to blame with severity men that inspired me formerly with some kind of sympathy.

IPHIGENIA Uncertain ever is the chance of arms, No prudent warrior doth despise his foe; Nor yet defenceless 'gainst severity Hath nature left the weak; she gives him craft

This exceptional severity springs from a primitive and natural conception of the Statea conception most logically expressed by Hobbes of Malmesbury under the similitude of a "mortal God" or Leviathan, the almost omnipotent and unlimited source of authority.

But to complete the disgust we seem so careful to inspire, the learned languages are ever surrounded with the severity verity of discipline; and it would probably be thought little short of sacrilege to discompose their features with a smile.