the beautiful daughter of Timandra, might not have been the

prototype of the ravishing Laura, daughter of the plebeian house of

Hawkins; but the orators add statesmen who were the purchasers of

the favors of the one, may have been as incorruptible as the

Republican statesmen who learned how to love and how to vote from

the sweet lips of the Washington lobbyist; and perhaps the modern

Lais would never have departed from the national Capital if there

had been there even one republican Xenocrates who resisted her

blandishments. But here the parallel: fails. Lais, wandering away

with the youth Rippostratus, is slain by the women who are jealous

of her charms. Laura, straying into her Thessaly with the youth

Brierly, slays her other lover and becomes the champion of the

wrongs of her sex.

Another journal began its editorial with less lyrical beauty, but with

equal force. It closed as follows:--

With Laura Hawkins, fair, fascinating and fatal, and with the

dissolute Colonel of a lost cause, who has reaped the harvest he

sowed, we have nothing to do. But as the curtain rises on this

awful tragedy, we catch a glimpse of the society at the capital

under this Administration, which we cannot contemplate without alarm

for the fate of the Republic.

A third newspaper took up the subject in a different tone. It said:--

507

The Gilded Age