{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4058/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4058","id":"gutenberg_4058","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4058","summary":null,"tags":["Bildungsromans","Category: Novels","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Christian fiction","Christianity and other religions -- Roman -- Fiction","Historical Fiction","Historical fiction","Rome -- Fiction","Young men -- Fiction"],"text":"Marius the Epicurean\n\nHIS SENSATIONS AND IDEAS\n\nby WALTER PATER\n\nVOLUME TWO\n\nLondon: 1910.\n(The Library Edition.)\n\n\nContents\n\n PART THE THIRD\n 15. Stoicism at Court\n 16. Second Thoughts\n 17. Beata Urbs\n 18. \u201cThe Ceremony of the Dart\u201d\n 19. The Will as Vision\n\n PART THE FOURTH\n 20. Two Curious Houses\u20141. Guests\n 21. Two Curious Houses\u20142. The Church in Cecilia\u2019s House\n 22. \u201cThe Minor Peace of the Church\u201d\n 23. Divine Service\n 24. A Conversation Not Imaginary\n 25. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum\n 26. The Martyrs\n 27. The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius\n 28. Anima Naturaliter Christiana\n\n\n\n\nNOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:\n\nNotes: I have placed an asterisk immediately after each of Pater\u2019s\nfootnotes and a + sign after my own notes, and have listed each of my\nnotes at that chapter\u2019s end.\n\nGreek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated\nPater\u2019s Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, it\ncan be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a Victorianist\narchive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater and many other\nnineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions.\n\n\u03a7\u03b5\u03b9\u03bc\u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f44\u03bd\u03b5\u03b9\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2, \u1f45\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bc\u03ae\u03ba\u03b9\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03b1\u1f31 \u03bd\u03cd\u03ba\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2+\n\n\n+\u201cA winter\u2019s dream, when nights are longest.\u201d\nLucian, The Dream, Vol. 3.\n\n\n\n\nPART THE THIRD\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\nSTOICISM AT COURT\n\n\nThe very finest flower of the same company\u2014Aurelius with the gilded\nfasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the empress Faustina\nherself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, who maintained,\npeople said, their private \u201csophists\u201d to whisper philosophy into their\nears winsomely as they performed the duties of the toilet\u2014was assembled\nagain a few months later, in a different place and for a very different\npurpose. The temple of Peace, a \u201cmodernising\u201d foundation of Hadrian,\nenlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, had grown into an institution\nlike something between a college and a literary club; and here\nCornelius Fronto was to pronounce a discourse on the Nature of Morals.\nThere were some, indeed, who had desired the emperor Aurelius himself\nto declare his whole mind on this matter. Rhetoric was become almost a\nfunction of the state: philosophy was upon the throne; and had from\ntime to time, by request, delivered an official utterance with\nwell-nigh divine authority. And it was as the delegate of this\nauthority, under the full sanction of the philosophic emperor\u2014emperor\nand pontiff, that the aged Fronto purposed to-day to expound some parts\nof the Stoic doctrine, with the view of recommending morals to that\nrefined but perhaps prejudiced company, as being, in effect, one mode\nof comeliness in things\u2014as it were music, or a kind of artistic order,\nin life. And he did this earnestly, with an outlay of all his science\nof mind, and that eloquence of which he was known to be a master. For\nStoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing. Received at court, it\nhad largely decorated itself: it was grown persuasive and insinuating,\nand sought not only to convince men\u2019s intelligence but to allure their\nsouls. Associated with the beautiful old age of the great rhetorician,\nand his winning voice, it was almost Epicurean. And the old man was at\nhis best on the occasion; the last on which he ever appeared in this\nway. To-day was his own birthday. Early in the morning the imperial\nletter of congratulation had reached him; and all the pleasant\nanimation it had caused was in his face, when assisted by his daughter\nGratia he took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the\nAthenaeum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful grace the philosophic\npall,\u2014in reality neither more nor less than the loose woollen cloak of\nthe common soldier, but fastened on his right shoulder with a\nmagnificent clasp, the emperor\u2019s birthday gift.\n\nIt was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoric\nwas but one result of a general susceptibility\u2014an age not merely taking\npleasure in words, but experiencing a great moral power in them.\nFronto\u2019s quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and also\nassisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as sometimes\nhappened, the recommendation of an object of charity. As it was,\narranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, these\namateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open for careful\nrecord of felicitous word or phrase, were ready to give themselves\nwholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them, applauding, blowing\nloud kisses through the air sometimes, at the speaker\u2019s triumphant exit\nfrom one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences; while the younger\nof them meant to imitate everything about him, down to the inflections\nof his voice and the very folds of his mantle. Certainly there was\nrhetoric enough:\u2014a wealth of imagery; illustrations from painting,\nmusic, mythology, the experiences of love; a management, by which\nsubtle, unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms, like\nflies from morsels of amber, to use Fronto\u2019s own figure. But with all\nits richness, the higher claim of his style was rightly understood to\nlie in gravity and self-command, and an especial care for the purities\nof a vocabulary which rejected every expression unsanctioned by the\nauthority of approved ancient models.\n\nAnd it happened with Marius, as it will sometimes happen, that this\ngeneral discourse to a general audience had the effect of an utterance\nadroitly designed for him. His conscience still vibrating painfully\nunder the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of the\nethical charm of Cornelius, he was questioning himself with much\nimpatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his own\nelaborately thought-out intellectual scheme and the \u201cold morality.\u201d In\nthat intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far been\nallowed no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission of\ncertain first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in his\nefforts towards a complete, many-sided existence; or distort the\nrevelations of the experience of life; or curtail his natural liberty\nof heart and mind. But now (his imagination being occupied for the\nmoment with the noble and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call it,\nwhich composed the outward mien and presentment of his strange friend\u2019s\ninflexible ethics) he felt already some nascent suspicion of his\nphilosophic programme, in regard, precisely, to the question of good\ntaste. There was the taint of a graceless \u201cantinomianism\u201d perceptible\nin it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the actual\nimpression of which on other men might rebound upon himself in some\nloss of that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of life\nto allow so much. And it was exactly a moral situation such as this\nthat Fronto appeared to be contemplating. He seemed to have before his\nmind the case of one\u2014Cyrenaic or Epicurean, as the courtier tends to\nbe, by habit and instinct, if not on principle\u2014who yet experiences,\nactually, a strong tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with as\nlittle logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place for duty and\nrighteousness in his house of thought.\n\nAnd the Stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purely\n\u00e6sthetic beauty of the old morality, as an element in things,\nfascinating to the imagination, to good taste in its most highly\ndeveloped form, through association\u2014a system or order, as a matter of\nfact, in possession, not only of the larger world, but of the rare\nminority of _\u00e9lite_ intelligences; from which, therefore, least of all\nwould the sort of Epicurean he had in view endure to become, so to\nspeak, an outlaw. He supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, in\nsearch after some principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemed\nto Marius to be speaking straight to him) which might give unity of\nmotive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life,\ndetermined partly by natural affection, partly by enlightened\nself-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the mere\nfear of penalties; no element of which, however, was distinctively\nmoral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no\ncommon ground with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like\nthe philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices; actually\nsatisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to\nall their dues\u2014one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless,\nin the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. How\ntenderly\u2014more tenderly than many stricter souls\u2014he might yield himself\nto kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in passing judgment on\nothers! what an exquisite conscience of other men\u2019s susceptibilities!\nHe knows for how much the manner, because the heart itself, counts, in\ndoing a kindness. He goes beyond most people in his care for all weakly\ncreatures; judging, instinctively, that to be but sentient is to\npossess rights. He conceives a hundred duties, though he may not call\nthem by that name, of the existence of which purely duteous souls may\nhave no suspicion. He has a kind of pride in doing more than they, in a\nway of his own. Sometimes, he may think that those men of line and rule\ndo not really understand their own business. How narrow, inflexible,\nunintelligent! what poor guardians (he may reason) of the inward spirit\nof righteousness, are some supposed careful walkers according to its\nletter and form. And yet all the while he admits, as such, no moral\nworld at all: no theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the\nfacts of life.\n\nBut, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by\nnatural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a\nremnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains\nfrom doing, not so much through his own free election, as from a\ndeference, an \u201cassent,\u201d entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom\u2014to the\nactual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure to\nbreak away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement with\nthem on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. Yes! there\nwere the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a failure\nin good taste. An assent, such as this, to the preferences of others,\nmight seem to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could\ndetermine the least considerable element in a moral life. Yet here,\naccording to Cornelius Fronto, was in truth the revealing example,\nalbeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principle\nrequired. There was one great idea associated with which that\ndetermination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest,\nthe fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action; a principle\nunder which one might subsume men\u2019s most strenuous efforts after\nrighteousness. And he proceeded to expound the idea of Humanity\u2014of a\nuniversal commonwealth of mind, which becomes explicit, and as if\nincarnate, in a select communion of just men made perfect.\n\nHo kosmos h\u00f4sanei polis estin+\u2014the world is as it were a commonwealth,\na city: and there are observances, customs, usages, actually current in\nit, things our friends and companions will expect of us, as the\ncondition of our living there with them at all, as really their peers\nor fellow-citizens. Those observances were, indeed, the creation of a\nvisible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual manners, whose\npreferences from of old, become now a weighty tradition as to the way\nin which things should or should not be done, are like a music, to\nwhich the intercourse of life proceeds\u2014such a music as no one who had\nonce caught its harmonies would willingly jar. In this way, the\nbecoming, as in Greek\u2014to prepon: or ta \u00eath\u00ea+ mores, manners, as both\nGreeks and Romans said, would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty.\nRighteousness would be, in the words of \u201cCaesar\u201d himself, of the\nphilosophic Aurelius, but a \u201cfollowing of the reasonable will of the\noldest, the most venerable, of cities, of polities\u2014of the royal, the\nlaw-giving element, therein\u2014forasmuch as we are citizens also in that\nsupreme city on high, of which all other cities beside are but as\nsingle habitations.\u201d But as the old man spoke with animation of this\nsupreme city, this invisible society, whose conscience was become\nexplicit in its inner circle of inspired souls, of whose common spirit,\nthe trusted leaders of human conscience had been but the mouthpiece, of\nwhose successive personal preferences in the conduct of life, the \u201cold\nmorality\u201d was the sum,\u2014Marius felt that his own thoughts were passing\nbeyond the actual intention of the speaker; not in the direction of any\nclearer theoretic or abstract definition of that ideal commonwealth,\nbut rather as if in search of its visible locality and abiding-place,\nthe walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and\ntell, according to his own old, natural habit of mind. It would be the\nfabric, the outward fabric, of a system reaching, certainly, far beyond\nthe great city around him, even if conceived in all the machinery of\nits visible and invisible influences at their grandest\u2014as Augustus or\nTrajan might have conceived of them\u2014however well the visible Rome might\npass for a figure of that new, unseen, Rome on high. At moments, Marius\neven asked himself with surprise, whether it might be some vast secret\nsociety the speaker had in view:\u2014that august community, to be an outlaw\nfrom which, to be foreign to the manners of which, was a loss so much\ngreater than to be excluded, into the ends of the earth, from the\nsovereign Roman commonwealth. Humanity, a universal order, the great\npolity, its aristocracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their example\nover their successors\u2014these were the ideas, stimulating enough in their\nway, by association with which the Stoic professor had attempted to\nelevate, to unite under a single principle, men\u2019s moral efforts,\nhimself lifted up with so genuine an enthusiasm. But where might Marius\nsearch for all this, as more than an intellectual abstraction? Where\nwere those elect souls in whom the claim of Humanity became so amiable,\nwinning, persuasive\u2014whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful\nin the actual order he saw\u2014whose faces averted from him, would be more\nthan he could bear? Where was that comely order, to which as a great\nfact of experience he must give its due; to which, as to all other\nbeautiful \u201cphenomena\u201d in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust\nhimself?\n\nRome did well to be serious. The discourse ended somewhat abruptly, as\nthe noise of a great crowd in motion was heard below the walls;\nwhereupon, the audience, following the humour of the younger element in\nit, poured into the colonnade, from the steps of which the famous\nprocession, or transvectio, of the military knights was to be seen\npassing over the Forum, from their trysting-place at the temple of\nMars, to the temple of the Dioscuri. The ceremony took place this year,\nnot on the day accustomed\u2014anniversary of the victory of Lake Regillus,\nwith its pair of celestial assistants\u2014and amid the heat and roses of a\nRoman July, but, by anticipation, some months earlier, the almond-trees\nalong the way being still in leafless flower. Through that light\ntrellis-work, Marius watched the riders, arrayed in all their gleaming\nornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive around their helmets, the faces\nbelow which, what with battle and the plague, were almost all youthful.\nIt was a flowery scene enough, but had to-day its fulness of war-like\nmeaning; the return of the army to the North, where the enemy was again\nupon the move, being now imminent. Cornelius had ridden along in his\nplace, and, on the dismissal of the company, passed below the steps\nwhere Marius stood, with that new song he had heard once before\nfloating from his lips.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n10. +Transliteration: Ho kosmos h\u00f4sanei polis estin. Translation: \u201cThe\nworld is like a city.\u201d\n\n\n10. +Transliteration: to prepon ... ta \u00eath\u00ea. Translation: \u201cThat which\nis seemly ... mores.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI.\nSECOND THOUGHTS\n\n\nAnd Marius, for his part, was grave enough. The discourse of Cornelius\nFronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon,\nhad set him on a review\u2014on a review of the isolating narrowness, in\nparticular, of his own theoretic scheme. Long after the very latest\nroses were faded, when \u201cthe town\u201d had departed to country villas, or\nthe baths, or the war, he remained behind in Rome; anxious to try the\nlastingness of his own Epicurean rose-garden; setting to work over\nagain, and deliberately passing from point to point of his old argument\nwith himself, down to its practical conclusions. That age and our own\nhave much in common\u2014many difficulties and hopes. Let the reader pardon\nme if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to his modern\nrepresentatives\u2014from Rome, to Paris or London.\n\nWhat really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathies\nthat determine practice? It had been a theory, avowedly, of loss and\ngain (so to call it) of an economy. If, therefore, it missed something\nin the commerce of life, which some other theory of practice was able\nto include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must be, in a\nmanner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness. Did\nit make such a sacrifice? What did it lose, or cause one to lose?\n\nAnd we may note, as Marius could hardly have done, that Cyrenaicism is\never the characteristic philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in its\nsurvey\u2014sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It is\none of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, because\nlimited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in this\ncase, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man\u2019s life there)\nwhich it may be said to be the special vocation of the young to\nexpress. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greek\nworld, we see this philosophy where it is least blas\u00e9, as we say; in\nits most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form,\nyouthfully bright in the youth of European thought. But it grows young\nagain for a while in almost every youthful soul. It is spoken of\nsometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men; but in them it can\nhardly be sincere, or, by the nature of the case, an enthusiasm. \u201cWalk\nin the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes,\u201d is,\nindeed, most often, according to the supposition of the book from which\nI quote it, the counsel of the young, who feel that the sunshine is\npleasant along their veins, and wintry weather, though in a general\nsense foreseen, a long way off. The youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism,\nthe self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, which\noccurs, quite naturally, at the outset of every really vigorous\nintellectual career, finds its special opportunity in a theory such as\nthat so carefully put together by Marius, just because it seems to call\non one to make the sacrifice, accompanied by a vivid sensation of power\nand will, of what others value\u2014sacrifice of some conviction, or\ndoctrine, or supposed first principle\u2014for the sake of that clear-eyed\nintellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily cleanliness, or\nscrupulous personal honour, and has itself for the mind of the youthful\nstudent, when he first comes to appreciate it, the fascination of an\nideal.\n\nThe Cyrenaic doctrine, then, realised as a motive of strenuousness or\nenthusiasm, is not so properly the utterance of the \u201cjaded Epicurean,\u201d\nas of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling,\nfascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daring\ntheory, while, in the first genial heat of existence, the beauty of the\nphysical world strikes potently upon his wide-open, unwearied senses.\nHe discovers a great new poem every spring, with a hundred delightful\nthings he too has felt, but which have never been expressed, or at\nleast never so truly, before. The workshops of the artists, who can\nselect and set before us what is really most distinguished in visible\nlife, are open to him. He thinks that the old Platonic, or the new\nBaconian philosophy, has been better explained than by the authors\nthemselves, or with some striking original development, this very\nmonth. In the quiet heat of early summer, on the dusty gold morning,\nthe music comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from some\nneighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now, perhaps,\nonly for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or the\nmere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and\nrighteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels himself\nto be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to the\ncontemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious\nservice. Afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await\nhim! At that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choice\nor exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm\nsomething like this. Life in modern London even, in the heavy glow of\nsummer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to\nbuild its \u201cpalace of art\u201d of; and the very sense and enjoyment of an\nexperience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of\nsummer itself, by the thought of its brevity, giving him something of a\ngambler\u2019s zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or diligently\nappreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which are to pass\naway so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his elaborately developed\nself-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fierce grasp upon the\nthings he values at all, he has, beyond all others, an inward need of\nsomething permanent in its character, to hold by: of which\ncircumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the\nbrilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure, it is, in truth, but darkness\nhe is, \u201cencountering, like a bride.\u201d But the inevitable falling of the\ncurtain is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not\noften that he really shudders at the thought of the grave\u2014the weight\nabove, the narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of it\ndoes occur to him, he may say to himself:\u2014Well! and the rude monk, for\ninstance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim world\nbeyond it, really acquiesces in that \u201cfifth act,\u201d amid all the\nconsoling ministries around him, as little as I should at this moment;\nthough I may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however well\nacted, I may already have had quite enough of it, and find a true\nwell-being in eternal sleep.\n\nAnd precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the\nfunction of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or less\nthe special philosophy, or \u201cprophecy,\u201d of the young, when the ideal of\na rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the receptive, if\nnot of the reflective, powers\u2014precisely in this circumstance, if we\nrightly consider it, lies the duly prescribed corrective of that\nphilosophy. For it is by its exclusiveness, and by negation rather than\npositively, that such theories fail to satisfy us permanently; and what\nthey really need for their correction, is the complementary influence\nof some greater system, in which they may find their due place. That\nSturm und Drang of the spirit, as it has been called, that ardent and\nspecial apprehension of half-truths, in the enthusiastic, and as it\nwere \u201cprophetic\u201d advocacy of which, devotion to truth, in the case of\nthe young\u2014apprehending but one point at a time in the great\ncircumference\u2014most usually embodies itself, is levelled down, safely\nenough, afterwards, as in history so in the individual, by the weakness\nand mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, of our nature.\nAnd though truth indeed, resides, as has been said, \u201cin the whole\u201d\u2014in\nharmonisings and adjustments like this\u2014yet those special apprehensions\nmay still owe their full value, in this sense of \u201cthe whole,\u201d to that\nearlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupation with them.\n\nCynicism and Cyrenaicism:\u2014they are the earlier Greek forms of Roman\nStoicism and Epicureanism, and in that world of old Greek thought, we\nmay notice with some surprise that, in a little while, the nobler form\nof Cyrenaicism\u2014Cyrenaicism cured of its faults\u2014met the nobler form of\nCynicism half-way. Starting from opposed points, they merged, each in\nits most refined form, in a single ideal of temperance or moderation.\nSomething of the same kind may be noticed regarding some later phases\nof Cyrenaic theory. If it starts with considerations opposed to the\nreligious temper, which the religious temper holds it a duty to\nrepress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any lower\ndevelopment of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its serious\napplication to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. The\nsaint, and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would at\nleast understand each other better than either would understand the\nmere man of the world. Carry their respective positions a point\nfurther, shift the terms a little, and they might actually touch.\n\nPerhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise to their best, as\nunderstood by their worthiest representatives, to identification with\neach other. For the variety of men\u2019s possible reflections on their\nexperience, as of that experience itself, is not really so great as it\nseems; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formulae,\nfiltering down into men\u2019s everyday existence, reach the same poor level\nof vulgar egotism, so, we may fairly suppose that all the highest\nspirits, from whatever contrasted points they have started, would yet\nbe found to entertain, in the moral consciousness realised by\nthemselves, much the same kind of mental company; to hold, far more\nthan might be thought probable, at first sight, the same personal types\nof character, and even the same artistic and literary types, in esteem\nor aversion; to convey, all of them alike, the same savour of\nunworldliness. And Cyrenaicism or Epicureanism too, new or old, may be\nnoticed, in proportion to the completeness of its development, to\napproach, as to the nobler form of Cynicism, so also to the more nobly\ndeveloped phases of the old, or traditional morality. In the gravity of\nits conception of life, in its pursuit after nothing less than a\nperfection, in its apprehension of the value of time\u2014the passion and\nthe seriousness which are like a consecration\u2014la passion et le s\u00e9rieux\nqui consacrent\u2014it may be conceived, as regards its main drift, to be\nnot so much opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of one\nspecial motive in it.\n\nSome cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one part of his own\nnature, and of the nature of things, to another, Marius seemed to have\ndetected in himself, meantime,\u2014in himself, as also in those old masters\nof the Cyrenaic philosophy. If they did realise the monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea+\nas it was called\u2014the pleasure of the \u201cIdeal Now\u201d\u2014if certain moments of\ntheir lives were high-pitched, passionately coloured, intent with\nsensation, and a kind of knowledge which, in its vivid clearness, was\nlike sensation\u2014if, now and then, they apprehended the world in its\nfulness, and had a vision, almost \u201cbeatific,\u201d of ideal personalities in\nlife and art, yet these moments were a very costly matter: they paid a\ngreat price for them, in the sacrifice of a thousand possible\nsympathies, of things only to be enjoyed through sympathy, from which\nthey detached themselves, in intellectual pride, in loyalty to a mere\ntheory that would take nothing for granted, and assent to no\napproximate or hypothetical truths. In their unfriendly, repellent\nattitude towards the Greek religion, and the old Greek morality,\nsurely, they had been but faulty economists. The Greek religion was\nthen alive: then, still more than in its later day of dissolution, the\nhigher view of it was possible, even for the philosopher. Its story\nmade little or no demand for a reasoned or formal acceptance. A\nreligion, which had grown through and through man\u2019s life, with so much\nnatural strength; had meant so much for so many generations; which\nexpressed so much of their hopes, in forms so familiar and so winning;\nlinked by associations so manifold to man as he had been and was\u2014a\nreligion like this, one would think, might have had its uses, even for\na philosophic sceptic. Yet those beautiful gods, with the whole round\nof their poetic worship, the school of Cyrene definitely renounced.\n\nThe old Greek morality, again, with all its imperfections, was\ncertainly a comely thing.\u2014Yes! a harmony, a music, in men\u2019s ways, one\nmight well hesitate to jar. The merely \u00e6sthetic sense might have had a\nlegitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choice\nmanners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so gracefully,\nthe whole of life, insuring some sweetness, some security at least\nagainst offence, in the intercourse of the world. Beyond an obvious\nutility, it could claim, indeed but custom\u2014use-and-wont, as we say\u2014for\nits sanction. But then, one of the advantages of that liberty of spirit\namong the Cyrenaics (in which, through theory, they had become dead to\ntheory, so that all theory, as such, was really indifferent to them,\nand indeed nothing valuable but in its tangible ministration to life)\nwas precisely this, that it gave them free play in using as their\nministers or servants, things which, to the uninitiated, must be\nmasters or nothing. Yet, how little the followers of Aristippus made of\nthat whole comely system of manners or morals, then actually in\npossession of life, is shown by the bold practical consequence, which\none of them maintained (with a hard, self-opinionated adherence to his\npeculiar theory of values) in the not very amiable paradox that\nfriendship and patriotism were things one could do without; while\nanother\u2014Death\u2019s-advocate, as he was called\u2014helped so many to\nself-destruction, by his pessimistic eloquence on the evils of life,\nthat his lecture-room was closed. That this was in the range of their\nconsequences\u2014that this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the\npremisses of the discreet Aristippus\u2014was surely an inconsistency in a\nthinker who professed above all things an economy of the moments of\nlife. And yet those old Cyrenaics felt their way, as if in the dark, we\nmay be sure, like other men in the ordinary transactions of life,\nbeyond the narrow limits they drew of clear and absolutely legitimate\nknowledge, admitting what was not of immediate sensation, and drawing\nupon that \u201cfantastic\u201d future which might never come. A little more of\nsuch \u201cwalking by faith,\u201d a little more of such not unreasonable\n\u201cassent,\u201d and they might have profited by a hundred services to their\nculture, from Greek religion and Greek morality, as they actually were.\nThe spectacle of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on their own\nnarrow apprehension, makes one think of a picture with no relief, no\nsoft shadows nor breadth of space, or of a drama without proportionate\nrepose.\n\nYet it was of perfection that Marius (to return to him again from his\nmasters, his intellectual heirs) had been really thinking all the time:\na narrow perfection it might be objected, the perfection of but one\npart of his nature\u2014his capacities of feeling, of exquisite physical\nimpressions, of an imaginative sympathy\u2014but still, a true perfection of\nthose capacities, wrought out to their utmost degree, admirable enough\nin its way. He too is an economist: he hopes, by that \u201cinsight\u201d of\nwhich the old Cyrenaics made so much, by skilful apprehension of the\nconditions of spiritual success as they really are, the special\ncircumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal, the special\nfelicities of his own nature, to make the most, in no mean or vulgar\nsense, of the few years of life; few, indeed, for the attainment of\nanything like general perfection! With the brevity of that sum of years\nhis mind is exceptionally impressed; and this purpose makes him no\nfrivolous dilettante, but graver than other men: his scheme is not that\nof a trifler, but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a\nvery real one, to those old words\u2014Let us work while it is day! He has a\nstrong apprehension, also, of the beauty of the visible things around\nhim; their fading, momentary, graces and attractions. His natural\nsusceptibility in this direction, enlarged by experience, seems to\ndemand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupation with the aspects of\nthings; with their \u00e6sthetic character, as it is called\u2014their\nrevelations to the eye and the imagination: not so much because those\naspects of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as because\nto be occupied, in this way, with the \u00e6sthetic or imaginative side of\nthings, is to be in real contact with those elements of his own nature,\nand of theirs, which, for him at least, are matter of the most real\nkind of apprehension. As other men are concentrated upon truths of\nnumber, for instance, or on business, or it may be on the pleasures of\nappetite, so he is wholly bent on living in that full stream of refined\nsensation. And in the prosecution of this love of beauty, he claims an\nentire personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above all,\nfrom what may seem conventional answers to first questions.\n\nBut, without him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea,\nwidely extended in time and place, in a kind of impregnable possession\nof human life\u2014a system, which, like some other great products of the\nconjoint efforts of human mind through many generations, is rich in the\nworld\u2019s experience; so that, in attaching oneself to it, one lets in a\ngreat tide of that experience, and makes, as it were with a single\nstep, a great experience of one\u2019s own, and with great consequent\nincrease to one\u2019s sense of colour, variety, and relief, in the\nspectacle of men and things. The mere sense that one belongs to a\nsystem\u2014an imperial system or organisation\u2014has, in itself, the expanding\npower of a great experience; as some have felt who have been admitted\nfrom narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church; or as\nthe old Roman citizen felt. It is, we might fancy, what the coming into\npossession of a very widely spoken language might be, with a great\nliterature, which is also the speech of the people we have to live\namong.\n\nA wonderful order, actually in possession of human life!\u2014grown\ninextricably through and through it; penetrating into its laws, its\nvery language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-conscious\nways; yet still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal; and, as\nsuch, awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one only\nconsistent aspiration of mankind! In the apprehension of that, just\nthen, Marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own old\nself; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to Rome,\nwith absolute sincerity, on the search for perfection. It defined not\nso much a change of practice, as of sympathy\u2014a new departure, an\nexpansion, of sympathy. It involved, certainly, some curtailment of his\nliberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the\nenactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected\nso, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to\ngive one, so to term it, an \u201cindulgence.\u201d But then, under the\nsupposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth\nplucking again. The authority they exercised was like that of classic\ntaste\u2014an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty of\nthe scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every\nobservance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found,\nthe more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable significance\nand a natural history.\n\nAnd Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistaken\nin his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to the\nwell-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to\nRome\u2014that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground\u2014if he\ndid not make that concession, if he did but remain just there.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n21. +Transliteration: monochronos h\u00eadon\u00ea. Pater\u2019s definition \u201cthe\npleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now.\u201d The definition is\nfitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, \u201csingle or\nunitary time.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII.\nBEATA URBS\n\n\n\u201cMany prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see.\u201d\n\n\nThe enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the mighty\ninvading hosts of the fifth century. Illusively repressed just now,\nthose confused movements along the northern boundary of the Empire were\ndestined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which,\npowerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress for a\ntime the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of Christ was\nto grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty of\nthe kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken\ntradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at\ntimes, for eventual reconciliation thereto. Meantime Italy had armed\nitself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the\nAlps.\n\nWhatever misgiving the Roman people may have felt as to the leadership\nof the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though with some temporary\nregret for the loss of what had been, after all, a popular figure on\nthe world\u2019s stage. Travelling fraternally in the same litter with\nAurelius, Lucius Verus was struck with sudden and mysterious disease,\nand died as he hastened back to Rome. His death awoke a swarm of\nsinister rumours, to settle on Lucilla, jealous, it was said, of Fabia\nher sister, perhaps of Faustina\u2014on Faustina herself, who had\naccompanied the imperial progress, and was anxious now to hide a crime\nof her own\u2014even on the elder brother, who, beforehand with the\ntreasonable designs of his colleague, should have helped him at supper\nto a favourite morsel, cut with a knife poisoned ingeniously on one\nside only. Aurelius, certainly, with sincere distress, his long\nirritations, so dutifully concealed or repressed, turning now into a\nsingle feeling of regret for the human creature, carried the remains\nback to Rome, and demanded of the Senate a public funeral, with a\ndecree for the apothe\u00f4sis, or canonisation, of the dead.\n\nFor three days the body lay in state in the Forum, enclosed in an open\ncoffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of ivory and gold, in the centre of a\nsort of temporary chapel, representing the temple of his patroness\nVenus Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it, while choirs of\nselect voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or\nmonologues from the great tragedians.\n\nAt the head of the couch were displayed the various personal\ndecorations which had belonged to Verus in life. Like all the rest of\nRome, Marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely\ndisguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried,\nat night-fall, along one of the streets below the palace, to some\namorous appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, he was\ntaken by surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by\nthe piteous change there; even the skill of Galen having been not\nwholly successful in the process of embalming. It was as if a brother\nof his own were lying low before him, with that meek and helpless\nexpression it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely.\n\nMeantime, in the centre of the Campus Martius, within the grove of\npoplars which enclosed the space where the body of Augustus had been\nburnt, the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of various\naromatic woods, was built up in many stages, separated from each other\nby a light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carved\nand tapestried images. Upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structure\nlay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incense\nbrought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for the\nwanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by a waxen\neffigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. At last the\nCenturions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to\nignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild\nexcitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames the\ndecorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead\nemperor\u2019s command.\n\nIt had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last\nmoment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle\u2014not a\nvery noble or youthful specimen of its kind\u2014was caused to take flight\namid the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing\nremains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette,\nsubsequently making official declaration before the Senate, that the\nimperial \u201cgenius\u201d had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire.\nAnd Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by\n\u201cacclamation,\u201d muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low,\nrhythmical chant, decreed Caelum\u2014the privilege of divine rank to the\ndeparted.\n\nThe actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed\nLucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine;\nand the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the\ncentral mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour of\nits statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty;\nafter the due accomplishment of which Aurelius was at liberty to retire\nfor a time into the privacy of his beloved apartments of the Palatine.\nAnd hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned a second time, to\nreceive from the imperial hands the great pile of Manuscripts it would\nbe his business to revise and arrange.\n\nOne year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he\nclimbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the\nsunless sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a long\nsubterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial\napartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as\nsmooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floor\nafter the return of the emperor from the shows. It was here, on such an\noccasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-nine, had\ncome by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few\nmoments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths at\ntheir exercise in the courtyard below. As Marius waited, a second time,\nin that little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious\nto look once more upon its painted walls\u2014the very place whither the\nassassins were said to have turned for refuge after the murder\u2014he could\nall but see the figure, which in its surrounding light and darkness\nseemed to him the most melancholy in the entire history of Rome. He\ncalled to mind the greatness of that popularity and early promise\u2014the\nstupefying height of irresponsible power, from which, after all, only\nmen\u2019s viler side had been clearly visible\u2014the overthrow of reason\u2014the\nseemingly irredeemable memory; and still, above all, the beautiful head\nin which the noble lines of the race of Augustus were united to, he\nknew not what expression of sensibility and fineness, not theirs, and\nfor the like of which one must pass onward to the Antonines. Popular\nhatred had been careful to destroy its semblance wherever it was to be\nfound; but one bust, in dark bronze-like basalt of a wonderful\nperfection of finish, preserved in the museum of the Capitol, may have\nseemed to some visitors there perhaps the finest extant relic of Roman\nart. Had the very seal of empire upon those sombre brows, reflected\nfrom his mirror, suggested his insane attempt upon the liberties, the\ndignity of men?\u2014\u201cO humanity!\u201d he seems to ask, \u201cwhat hast thou done to\nme that I should so despise thee?\u201d\u2014And might not this be indeed the\ntrue meaning of kingship, if the world would have one man to reign over\nit? The like of this: or, some incredible, surely never to be realised,\nheight of disinterestedness, in a king who should be the servant of\nall, quite at the other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in\nsuch a position. Not till some while after his death had the body been\ndecently interred by the piety of the sisters he had driven into exile.\nFraternity of feeling had been no invariable feature in the incidents\nof Roman story. One long Vicus Sceleratus, from its first dim\nfoundation in fraternal quarrel on the morrow of a common deliverance\nso touching\u2014had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory of\nunnatural violence? Romans did well to fancy the traitress Tarpeia\nstill \u201cgreen in earth,\u201d crowned, enthroned, at the roots of the\nCapitoline rock. If in truth the religion of Rome was everywhere in it,\nlike that perfume of the funeral incense still upon the air, so also\nwas the memory of crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, down to the\nerring, or not erring, Vesta calmly buried alive there, only eighty\nyears ago, under Domitian.\n\nIt was with a sense of relief that Marius found himself in the presence\nof Aurelius, whose gesture of friendly intelligence, as he entered,\nraised a smile at the gloomy train of his own thoughts just then,\nalthough since his first visit to the palace a great change had passed\nover it. The clear daylight found its way now into empty rooms. To\nraise funds for the war, Aurelius, his luxurious brother being no more,\nhad determined to sell by auction the accumulated treasures of the\nimperial household. The works of art, the dainty furniture, had been\nremoved, and were now \u201con view\u201d in the Forum, to be the delight or\ndismay, for many weeks to come, of the large public of those who were\ncurious in these things. In such wise had Aurelius come to the\ncondition of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardly\npersuaded to wear warm clothing, or to sleep in more luxurious manner\nthan on the bare floor. But, in his empty house, the man of mind, who\nhad always made so much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation,\nfelt freer in thought than ever. He had been reading, with less\nself-reproach than usual, in the Republic of Plato, those passages\nwhich describe the life of the philosopher-kings\u2014like that of hired\nservants in their own house\u2014who, possessed of the \u201cgold undefiled\u201d of\nintellectual vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. It was one\nof his happy days: one of those rare days, when, almost with none of\nthe effort, otherwise so constant with him, his thoughts came rich and\nfull, and converged in a mental view, as exhilarating to him as the\nprospect of some wide expanse of landscape to another man\u2019s bodily eye.\nHe seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the imaginative influence\nof the philosophic reason\u2014to its suggestions of a possible open\ncountry, commencing just where all actual experience leaves off, but\nwhich experience, one\u2019s own and not another\u2019s, may one day occupy. In\nfact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, before he\nstarted for that ambiguous earthly warfare which was to occupy the\nremainder of his life. \u201cEver remember this,\u201d he writes, \u201cthat a happy\nlife depends, not on many things\u2014en oligistois keitai.\u201d+ And to-day,\ncommitting himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silence\nof the great empty apartments, he might be said to have escaped,\naccording to Plato\u2019s promise to those who live closely with philosophy,\nfrom the evils of the world.\n\nIn his \u201cconversations with himself\u201d Marcus Aurelius speaks often of\nthat City on high, of which all other cities are but single\nhabitations. From him in fact Cornelius Fronto, in his late discourse,\nhad borrowed the expression; and he certainly meant by it more than the\nwhole commonwealth of Rome, in any idealisation of it, however sublime.\nIncorporate somehow with the actual city whose goodly stones were lying\nbeneath his gaze, it was also implicate in that reasonable constitution\nof nature, by devout contemplation of which it is possible for man to\nassociate himself to the consciousness of God. In that New Rome he had\ntaken up his rest for awhile on this day, deliberately feeding his\nthoughts on the better air of it, as another might have gone for mental\nrenewal to a favourite villa.\n\n\u201cMen seek retirement in country-houses,\u201d he writes, \u201con the sea-coast,\non the mountains; and you have yourself as much fondness for such\nplaces as another. But there is little proof of culture therein; since\nthe privilege is yours of retiring into yourself whensoever you\nplease,\u2014into that little farm of one\u2019s own mind, where a silence so\nprofound may be enjoyed.\u201d That it could make these retreats, was a\nplain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominion\nover circumstance, its inherent liberty.\u2014\u201cIt is in thy power to think\nas thou wilt: The essence of things is in thy thoughts about them: All\nis opinion, conception: No man can be hindered by another: What is\noutside thy circle of thought is nothing at all to it; hold to this,\nand you are safe: One thing is needful\u2014to live close to the divine\ngenius within thee, and minister thereto worthily.\u201d And the first point\nin this true ministry, this culture, was to maintain one\u2019s soul in a\ncondition of indifference and calm. How continually had public claims,\nthe claims of other persons, with their rough angularities of\ncharacter, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the flock. But after all\nhe had at least this privilege he could not part with, of thinking as\nhe would; and it was well, now and then, by a conscious effort of will,\nto indulge it for a while, under systematic direction. The duty of thus\nmaking discreet, systematic use of the power of imaginative vision for\npurposes of spiritual culture, \u201csince the soul takes colour from its\nfantasies,\u201d is a point he has frequently insisted on.\n\nThe influence of these seasonable meditations\u2014a symbol, or sacrament,\nbecause an intensified condition, of the soul\u2019s own ordinary and\nnatural life\u2014would remain upon it, perhaps for many days. There were\nexperiences he could not forget, intuitions beyond price, he had come\nby in this way, which were almost like the breaking of a physical light\nupon his mind; as the great Augustus was said to have seen a mysterious\nphysical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where the\naltar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for inward\nquiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some select\npassages of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in all\nits forms, with itself\u2014\u201cCould there be Cosmos, that wonderful,\nreasonable order, in him, and nothing but disorder in the world\nwithout?\u201d It was from this question he had passed on to the vision of a\nreasonable, a divine, order, not in nature, but in the condition of\nhuman affairs\u2014that unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis, Urbs\nBeata\u2014in which, a consciousness of the divine will being everywhere\nrealised, there would be, among other felicitous differences from this\nlower visible world, no more quite hopeless death, of men, or children,\nor of their affections. He had tried to-day, as never before, to make\nthe most of this vision of a New Rome, to realise it as distinctly as\nhe could,\u2014and, as it were, find his way along its streets, ere he went\ndown into a world so irksomely different, to make his practical effort\ntowards it, with a soul full of compassion for men as they were.\nHowever distinct the mental image might have been to him, with the\ndescent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below, it must\nhave retreated again, as if at touch of some malign magic wand, beyond\nthe utmost verge of the horizon. But it had been actually, in his\nclearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry,\na tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whose\nnovel expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read.\nPlato, indeed, had been able to articulate, to see, at least in\nthought, his ideal city. But just because Aurelius had passed beyond\nPlato, in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-supposed there, he\nhad been unable really to track his way about it. Ah! after all,\naccording to Plato himself, all vision was but reminiscence, and this,\nhis heart\u2019s desire, no place his soul could ever have visited in any\nregion of the old world\u2019s achievements. He had but divined, by a kind\nof generosity of spirit, the void place, which another experience than\nhis must fill.\n\nYet Marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, of quiet pleasure,\non the countenance of Aurelius, as he received from him the rolls of\nfine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied at\nthe moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban hills, from those\nlofty windows.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n37. +Transliteration: en oligistois keitai. Definition \u201cit lies in the\nfewest [things].\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII.\n\u201cTHE CEREMONY OF THE DART\u201d\n\n\nThe ideas of Stoicism, so precious to Marcus Aurelius, ideas of large\ngeneralisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whose intellects\nthey have had real power, a coldness of heart. It was the distinction\nof Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with the kindness, one\nmight almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as also with the\npopular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptions of the\nlater Greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sort of\nausterely opinionative \u201cnatural theology,\u201d and how often has that led\nto religious dryness\u2014a hard contempt of everything in religion, which\ntouches the senses, or charms the fancy, or really concerns the\naffections. Aurelius had made his own the secret of passing, naturally,\nand with no violence to his thought, to and fro, between the richly\ncoloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had still been\nhuman beings, and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive,\nuniversal soul\u2014that circle whose centre is everywhere, the\ncircumference nowhere\u2014of which a series of purely logical necessities\nhad evolved the formula. As in many another instance, those traditional\npieties of the place and the hour had been derived by him from his\nmother:\u2014para t\u00eas m\u00eatros to theosebes.+ Purified, as all such religion\nof concrete time and place needs to be, by frequent confronting with\nthe ideal of godhead as revealed to that innate religious sense in the\npossession of which Aurelius differed from the people around him, it\nwas the ground of many a sociability with their simpler souls, and for\nhimself, certainly, a consolation, whenever the wings of his own soul\nflagged in the trying atmosphere of purely intellectual vision. A host\nof companions, guides, helpers, about him from of old time, \u201cthe very\ncourt and company of heaven,\u201d objects for him of personal reverence and\naffection\u2014the supposed presence of the ancient popular gods determined\nthe character of much of his daily life, and might prove the last stay\nof human nature at its weakest. \u201cIn every time and place,\u201d he had said,\n\u201cit rests with thyself to use the event of the hour religiously: at all\nseasons worship the gods.\u201d And when he said \u201cWorship the gods!\u201d he did\nit, as strenuously as everything else.\n\nYet here again, how often must he have experienced disillusion, or even\nsome revolt of feeling, at that contact with coarser natures to which\nhis religious conclusions exposed him. At the beginning of the year one\nhundred and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever; and as\nbefore it brought people\u2019s superstition into unreserved play. For seven\ndays the images of the old gods, and some of the graver new ones, lay\nsolemnly exposed in the open air, arrayed in all their ornaments, each\nin his separate resting-place, amid lights and burning incense, while\nthe crowd, following the imperial example, daily visited them, with\nofferings of flowers to this or that particular divinity, according to\nthe devotion of each.\n\nBut supplementing these older official observances, the very wildest\ngods had their share of worship,\u2014strange creatures with strange secrets\nstartled abroad into open daylight. The delirious sort of religion of\nwhich Marius was a spectator in the streets of Rome, during the seven\ndays of the Lectisternium, reminded him now and again of an observation\nof Apuleius: it was \u201cas if the presence of the gods did not do men\ngood, but disordered or weakened them.\u201d Some jaded women of fashion,\nespecially, found in certain oriental devotions, at once relief for\ntheir religiously tearful souls and an opportunity for personal\ndisplay; preferring this or that \u201cmystery,\u201d chiefly because the attire\nrequired in it was suitable to their peculiar manner of beauty. And one\nmorning Marius encountered an extraordinary crimson object, borne in a\nlitter through an excited crowd\u2014the famous courtesan Benedicta, still\nfresh from the bath of blood, to which she had submitted herself,\nsitting below the scaffold where the victims provided for that purpose\nwere slaughtered by the priests. Even on the last day of the solemnity,\nwhen the emperor himself performed one of the oldest ceremonies of the\nRoman religion, this fantastic piety had asserted itself. There were\nvictims enough certainly, brought from the choice pastures of the\nSabine mountains, and conducted around the city they were to die for,\nin almost continuous procession, covered with flowers and well-nigh\nworried to death before the time by the crowds of people\nsuperstitiously pressing to touch them. But certain old-fashioned\nRomans, in these exceptional circumstances, demanded something more\nthan this, in the way of a human sacrifice after the ancient pattern;\nas when, not so long since, some Greeks or Gauls had been buried alive\nin the Forum. At least, human blood should be shed; and it was through\na wild multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh with knives and whips\nand licking up ardently the crimson stream, that the emperor repaired\nto the temple of Bellona, and in solemn symbolic act cast the\nbloodstained spear, or \u201cdart,\u201d carefully preserved there, towards the\nenemy\u2019s country\u2014 towards that unknown world of German homes, still\nwarm, as some believed under the faint northern twilight, with those\ninnocent affections of which Romans had lost the sense. And this at\nleast was clear, amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong on either\nside, that the ruin of those homes was involved in what Aurelius was\nthen preparing for, with,\u2014Yes! the gods be thanked for that achievement\nof an invigorating philosophy!\u2014almost with a light heart.\n\nFor, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for which\nMarcus Aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came to\ntest the power of a long-studied theory of practice; and it was the\ndevelopment of this theory\u2014a the\u00f4ria, literally\u2014a view, an intuition,\nof the most important facts, and still more important possibilities,\nconcerning man in the world, that Marius now discovered, almost as if\nby accident, below the dry surface of the manuscripts entrusted to him.\nThe great purple rolls contained, first of all, statistics, a general\nhistorical account of the writer\u2019s own time, and an exact diary; all\nalike, though in three different degrees of nearness to the writer\u2019s\nown personal experience, laborious, formal, self-suppressing. This was\nfor the instruction of the public; and part of it has, perhaps, found\nits way into the Augustan Histories. But it was for the especial\nguidance of his son Commodus that he had permitted himself to break\nout, here and there, into reflections upon what was passing, into\nconversations with the reader. And then, as though he were put off his\nguard in this way, there had escaped into the heavy matter-of-fact, of\nwhich the main portion was composed, morsels of his conversation with\nhimself. It was the romance of a soul (to be traced only in hints,\nwayside notes, quotations from older masters), as it were in lifelong,\nand often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden fleece,\nor Hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious light of doctrine, ever\nretreating before him. A man, he had seemed to Marius from the first,\nof two lives, as we say. Of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, on\nthe day, for instance, when he had interrupted the emperor\u2019s musings in\nthe empty palace, might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant, who\nfrom amid the pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs looked\nout, as if surprised, at the things and faces around. Here, then, under\nthe tame surface of what was meant for a life of business, Marius\ndiscovered, welcoming a brother, the spontaneous self-revelation of a\nsoul as delicate as his own,\u2014a soul for which conversation with itself\nwas a necessity of existence. Marius, indeed, had always suspected that\nthe sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his. But here,\ncertainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again he\nseemed to detect the advent of some new or changed spirit into the\nworld, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly external\nand objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the old\nclassic soul. His purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated by\nthis example of a book of self-portraiture. It was in fact the position\nof the modern essayist,\u2014creature of efforts rather than of\nachievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at least\nconscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record,\nacknowledge. What seemed to underlie that position was the desire to\nmake the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or from\nwithin: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind of\ninstinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer\u2019s own\ntheory\u2014that theory of the \u201cperpetual flux\u201d of all things\u2014to Marius\nhimself, so plausible from of old.\n\nThere was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in the\nmaking of such conversation with one\u2019s self at all. The Logos, the\nreasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods\u2014koinos aut\u00f4\npros tous theous+\u2014cum diis communis. That might seem but the truism of\na certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly an original\nand lively apprehension. There could be no inward conversation with\none\u2019s self such as this, unless there were indeed some one else, aware\nof our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one\u2019s\ndisposition of one\u2019s self. Cornelius Fronto too could enounce that\ntheory of the reasonable community between men and God, in many\ndifferent ways. But then, he was a cheerful man, and Aurelius a\nsingularly sad one; and what to Fronto was but a doctrine, or a motive\nof mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. He walks and talks,\nfor a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint by the way,\nwith what to the learned professor is but matter of philosophic\neloquence.\n\nIn performing his public religious functions Marcus Aurelius had ever\nseemed like one who took part in some great process, a great thing\nreally done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him.\nHere, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought or\nlanguage, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of an\nactual conversation, in quotations from other older masters of the\ninward life, taking new significance from the chances of such\nintercourse, was the record of his communion with that eternal reason,\nwhich was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, whose\ntabernacle was in the intelligence of men\u2014the journal of his daily\ncommerce with that.\n\nChance: or Providence! Chance: or Wisdom, one with nature and man,\nreaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderly\ndisposing all things, according to fixed periods, as he describes it,\nin terms very like certain well-known words of the book of\nWisdom:\u2014those are the \u201cfenced opposites\u201d of the speculative dilemma,\nthe tragic embarras, of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himself\nas the summary of man\u2019s situation in the world. If there be, however, a\nprovident soul like this \u201cbehind the veil,\u201d truly, even to him, even in\nthe most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with\nany quite irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet one\u2019s choice in\nthat speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the whole a matter\nof will.\u2014\u201c\u2019Tis in thy power,\u201d here too, again, \u201cto think as thou wilt.\u201d\nFor his part he has asserted his will, and has the courage of his\nopinion. \u201cTo the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with\nthy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee.\u201d \u201cWisdom,\u201d\nsays that other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, \u201chath mingled\nHer wine, she hath also prepared Herself a table.\u201d Tou aristou\napolaue:+ \u201cPartake ever of Her best!\u201d And what Marius, peeping now very\nclosely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thing\nactually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer\u2019s bearing\nas in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous of\nany palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one\u2019s faith, never\nallowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only, he\nwould do his part, at least, in maintaining the constant fitness, the\nsweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to vary with the\nintellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account of\nexperience, to a sheer fantasy, only \u201cbelieved because it was\nimpossible,\u201d that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men\u2019s\ncommon pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonest\nvices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It bred in him a\nkind of magnificence of character, in the old Greek sense of the term;\na temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of his\nconvictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, or\ntalk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in their\nso visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever or\ngraceful. A soul thus disposed had \u201calready entered into the better\nlife\u201d:\u2014was indeed in some sort \u201ca priest, a minister of the gods.\u201d\nHence his constant \u201crecollection\u201d; a close watching of his soul, of a\nkind almost unique in the ancient world.\u2014Before all things examine into\nthyself: strive to be at home with thyself!\u2014Marius, a sympathetic\nwitness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight of\nmonasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companion\nhe had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence.\nHere was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which was\nabout to play so large a part in the forming of human mind, under the\nsanction of the Christian church.\n\nYet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on which\none must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushed\nfootsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying.\nSuch was the impression which occurred to Marius again and again as he\nread, with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author.\nBy certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded, in\nspite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor\u2019s ideas, how he\nhad sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public shows. For, actually,\nhis contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him that\nmelancholy\u2014Tristitia\u2014which even the monastic moralists have held to be\nof the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of Desidia or Inactivity.\nResignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patient bearing of the\nburden of a sad heart:\u2014Yes! this belonged doubtless to the situation of\nan honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this case there seemed to be\ntoo much of a complacent acquiescence in the world as it is. And there\ncould be no true Th\u00e9odic\u00e9 in that; no real accommodation of the world\nas it is, to the divine pattern of the Logos, the eternal reason, over\nagainst it. It amounted to a tolerance of evil.\n\nThe soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little\nunderstand, yet prospereth on the journey:\nIf thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of\nevil with thee therein.\nIf thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are\ncommunicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with\nthee\u2014nothing to be afraid of:\nWhatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man\naccording to his desert:\nIf reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require?\nDost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits?\nThat which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole.\nThe profit of the whole,\u2014that was sufficient!+\n\n\n\u2014Links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless,\nthe forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere,\nmight lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness. It left in\ntruth a weight upon the spirits; and with that weight unlifted, there\ncould be no real justification of the ways of Heaven to man. \u201cLet thine\nair be cheerful,\u201d he had said; and, with an effort, did himself at\ntimes attain to that serenity of aspect, which surely ought to\naccompany, as their outward flower and favour, hopeful assumptions like\nthose. Still, what in Aurelius was but a passing expression, was with\nCornelius (Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritable\nphysiognomy. With Cornelius, in fact, it was nothing less than the joy\nwhich Dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect, the\noutward semblance of which, like a reflex of physical light upon human\nfaces from \u201cthe land which is very far off,\u201d we may trace from Giotto\nonward to its consummation in the work of Raphael\u2014the serenity, the\ndurable cheerfulness, of those who have been indeed delivered from\ndeath, and of which the utmost degree of that famed \u201cblitheness\u201d of the\nGreeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in careless and wholly\nsuperficial youth. And yet, in Cornelius, it was certainly united with\nthe bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world; real as an aching\nin the head or heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured; an\nenemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, hatefully visible, in\na thousand forms\u2014the apparent waste of men\u2019s gifts in an early, or even\nin a late grave; the death, as such, of men, and even of animals; the\ndisease and pain of the body.\n\nAnd there was another point of dissidence between Aurelius and his\nreader.\u2014The philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body. Since it is\n\u201cthe peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself, and to be\nproof against corporeal impressions, suffering neither sensation nor\npassion to break in upon her,\u201d it follows that the true interest of the\nspirit must ever be to treat the body\u2014Well! as a corpse attached\nthereto, rather than as a living companion\u2014nay, actually to promote its\ndissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presenting\nitself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature,\nthe very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of that\nreverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body of man. Such\ndelight indeed had been but a natural consequence of the sensuous or\nmaterialistic character of the philosophy of his choice. Now to\nCornelius the body of man was unmistakeably, as a later seer terms it,\nthe one true temple in the world; or rather itself the proper object of\nworship, of a sacred service, in which the very finest gold might have\nits seemliness and due symbolic use:\u2014Ah! and of what awe-stricken pity\nalso, in its dejection, in the perishing gray bones of a poor man\u2019s\ngrave!\n\nSome flaw of vision, thought Marius, must be involved in the\nphilosopher\u2019s contempt for it\u2014some diseased point of thought, or moral\ndulness, leading logically to what seemed to him the strangest of all\nthe emperor\u2019s inhumanities, the temper of the suicide; for which there\nwas just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. \u201c\u2019Tis part of the\nbusiness of life,\u201d he read, \u201cto lose it handsomely.\u201d On due occasion,\n\u201cone might give life the slip.\u201d The moral or mental powers might fail\none; and then it were a fair question, precisely, whether the time for\ntaking leave was not come:\u2014\u201cThou canst leave this prison when thou\nwilt. Go forth boldly!\u201d Just there, in the bare capacity to entertain\nsuch question at all, there was what Marius, with a soul which must\nalways leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine, touching\nhim as it touched the flies in the air, could not away with. There,\nsurely, was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power of\napprehension. It was the attitude, the melancholy intellectual\nattitude, of one who might be greatly mistaken in things\u2014who might make\nthe greatest of mistakes.\n\nA heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in the\nweakness of others:\u2014of this Marius had certainly found the trace, as a\nconfidant of the emperor\u2019s conversations with himself, in spite of\nthose jarring inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoical\nindifference, and the many difficulties of his manner of writing. He\nfound it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence, in this\nway. As he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls of\nmanuscript a sealed letter with the emperor\u2019s superscription, which\nmight well be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once in\nperson; Aurelius being then absent from Rome in one of his favourite\nretreats, at Praeneste, taking a few days of quiet with his young\nchildren, before his departure for the war. A whole day passed as\nMarius crossed the Campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumn\nlights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, the shepherds\nin their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and villa; and it\nwas after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-town\nto the imperial residence. He was struck by an odd mixture of stillness\nand excitement about the place. Lights burned at the windows. It seemed\nthat numerous visitors were within, for the courtyard was crowded with\nlitters and horses in waiting. For the moment, indeed, all larger\ncares, even the cares of war, of late so heavy a pressure, had been\nforgotten in what was passing with the little Annius Verus; who for his\npart had forgotten his toys, lying all day across the knees of his\nmother, as a mere child\u2019s ear-ache grew rapidly to alarming sickness\nwith great and manifest agony, only suspended a little, from time to\ntime, when from very weariness he passed into a few moments of\nunconsciousness. The country surgeon called in, had removed the\nimposthume with the knife. There had been a great effort to bear this\noperation, for the terrified child, hardly persuaded to submit himself,\nwhen his pain was at its worst, and even more for the parents. At\nlength, amid a company of pupils pressing in with him, as the custom\nwas, to watch the proceedings in the sick-room, the eminent Galen had\narrived, only to pronounce the thing done visibly useless, the patient\nfalling now into longer intervals of delirium. And thus, thrust on one\nside by the crowd of departing visitors, Marius was forced into the\nprivacy of a grief, the desolate face of which went deep into his\nmemory, as he saw the emperor carry the child away\u2014quite conscious at\nlast, but with a touching expression upon it of weakness and\ndefeat\u2014pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned just then for one\nthing only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in its obscure\ndistress.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n42. +Transliteration: para t\u00eas m\u00eatros to theosebes. Translation: \u201crites\nderiving from [his] mother.\u201d\n\n\n47. +Transliteration: koinos aut\u00f4 pros tous theous. Translation:\n\u201ccommon to him together with the gods.\u201d\n\n\n49. +Transliteration: Tou aristou apolaue. Translation: \u201c[Always] take\nthe best.\u201d\n\n\n52. +Not indented in the original.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX.\nTHE WILL AS VISION\n\n\nParatum cor meum deus! paratum cor meum!\n\n\nThe emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the erection of images in\nmemory of the dead prince; that a golden one should be carried,\ntogether with the other images, in the great procession of the Circus,\nand the addition of the child\u2019s name to the Hymn of the Salian Priests:\nand so, stifling private grief, without further delay set forth for the\nwar.\n\nTrue kingship, as Plato, the old master of Aurelius, had understood it,\nwas essentially of the nature of a service. If so be, you can discover\na mode of life more desirable than the being a king, for those who\nshall be kings; then, the true Ideal of the State will become a\npossibility; but not otherwise. And if the life of Beatific Vision be\nindeed possible, if philosophy really \u201cconcludes in an ecstasy,\u201d\naffording full fruition to the entire nature of man; then, for certain\nelect souls at least, a mode of life will have been discovered more\ndesirable than to be a king. By love or fear you might induce such\npersons to forgo their privilege; to take upon them the distasteful\ntask of governing other men, or even of leading them to victory in\nbattle. But, by the very conditions of its tenure, their dominion would\nbe wholly a ministry to others: they would have taken upon them \u201cthe\nform of a servant\u201d: they would be reigning for the well-being of others\nrather than their own. The true king, the righteous king, would be\nSaint Lewis, exiling himself from the better land and its perfected\ncompany\u2014so real a thing to him, definite and real as the pictured\nscenes of his psalter\u2014to take part in or to arbitrate men\u2019s quarrels,\nabout the transitory appearances of things. In a lower degree (lower,\nin proportion as the highest Platonic dream is lower than any Christian\nvision) the true king would be Marcus Aurelius, drawn from the\nmeditation of books, to be the ruler of the Roman people in peace, and\nstill more, in war.\n\nTo Aurelius, certainly, the philosophic mood, the visions, however dim,\nwhich this mood brought with it, were sufficiently pleasant to him,\ntogether with the endearments of his home, to make public rule nothing\nless than a sacrifice of himself according to Plato\u2019s requirement, now\nconsummated in his setting forth for the campaign on the Danube. That\nit was such a sacrifice was to Marius visible fact, as he saw him\nceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the pageantry of an\nimperial departure, yet with the air less of a sanguine and\nself-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated.\nThrough the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and repassing so\ninexplicably from side to side, the rumour of which reached him amid\nhis own quiet studies, Marius seemed always to see that central figure,\nwith its habitually dejected hue grown now to an expression of positive\nsuffering, all the stranger from its contrast with the magnificent\narmour worn by the emperor on this occasion, as it had been worn by his\npredecessor Hadrian.\n\nTotus et argento contextus et auro:\n\n\nclothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely constructed\narmour of which Homer tells, but without its miraculous\nlightsomeness\u2014he looked out baffled, labouring, moribund; a mere\ncomfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of the\nlabours of Hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of the\ncivilised world. It was as if the familiar soul which had been so\nfriendly disposed towards him were actually departed to Hades; and when\nhe read the Conversations afterwards, though his judgment of them\nunderwent no material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance we\nmake for the dead. The memory of that suffering image, while it\ncertainly strengthened his adhesion to what he could accept at all in\nthe philosophy of Aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seem\nthe writer\u2019s mistakes. What, after all, had been the meaning of that\nincident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, when the prince,\nthen a little child much younger than was usual, had stood in ceremony\namong the priests of Mars and flung his crown of flowers with the rest\nat the sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar? The other crowns lodged\nthemselves here or there; when, Lo! the crown thrown by Aurelius, the\nyoungest of them all, alighted upon the very brows of the god, as if\nplaced there by a careful hand! He was still young, also, when on the\nday of his adoption by Antoninus Pius he saw himself in a dream, with\nas it were shoulders of ivory, like the images of the gods, and found\nthem more capable than shoulders of flesh. Yet he was now well-nigh\nfifty years of age, setting out with two-thirds of life behind him,\nupon a labour which would fill the remainder of it with anxious cares\u2014a\nlabour for which he had perhaps no capacity, and certainly no taste.\n\nThat ancient suit of armour was almost the only object Aurelius now\npossessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu collected by\nthe Caesars, making the imperial residence like a magnificent museum.\nNot men alone were needed for the war, so that it became necessary, to\nthe great disgust alike of timid persons and of the lovers of sport, to\narm the gladiators, but money also was lacking. Accordingly, at the\nsole motion of Aurelius himself, unwilling that the public burden\nshould be further increased, especially on the part of the poor, the\nwhole of the imperial ornaments and furniture, a sumptuous collection\nof gems formed by Hadrian, with many works of the most famous painters\nand sculptors, even the precious ornaments of the emperor\u2019s chapel or\nLararium, and the wardrobe of the empress Faustina, who seems to have\nborne the loss without a murmur, were exposed for public auction.\n\u201cThese treasures,\u201d said Aurelius, \u201clike all else that I possess, belong\nby right to the Senate and People.\u201d Was it not a characteristic of the\ntrue kings in Plato that they had in their houses nothing they could\ncall their own? Connoisseurs had a keen delight in the mere reading of\nthe Praetor\u2019s list of the property for sale. For two months the learned\nin these matters were daily occupied in the appraising of the\nembroidered hangings, the choice articles of personal use selected for\npreservation by each succeeding age, the great outlandish pearls from\nHadrian\u2019s favourite cabinet, the marvellous plate lying safe behind the\npretty iron wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths\u2019 quarter.\nMeantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the inspection of\nobjects which had been as daily companions to people so far above and\nremote from them\u2014things so fine also in workmanship and material as to\nseem, with their antique and delicate air, a worthy survival of the\ngrand bygone eras, like select thoughts or utterances embodying the\nvery spirit of the vanished past. The town became more pensive than\never over old fashions.\n\nThe welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great war\nbeing now over, all Rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet,\nlikely to last long, as though bent only on watching from afar the\nlanguid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself. Marius took\nadvantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study than of old,\nonly now and then going out to one of his favourite spots on the Sabine\nor Alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of Rome in the\ncountry air. On one of these occasions, as if by favour of an invisible\npower withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection from around him, he\nenjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession\u2014the possession of his\nown best and happiest self. After some gloomy thoughts over-night, he\nawoke under the full tide of the rising sun, himself full, in his\nentire refreshment, of that almost religious appreciation of sleep, the\ngraciousness of its influence on men\u2019s spirits, which had made the old\nGreeks conceive of it as a god. It was like one of those old joyful\nwakings of childhood, now becoming rarer and rarer with him, and looked\nback upon with much regret as a measure of advancing age. In fact, the\nlast bequest of this serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once\nbefore, he overheard those he loved best pronouncing his name very\npleasantly, as they passed through the rich light and shadow of a\nsummer morning, along the pavement of a city\u2014Ah! fairer far than Rome!\nIn a moment, as he arose, a certain oppression of late setting very\nheavily upon him was lifted away, as though by some physical motion in\nthe air.\n\nThat flawless serenity, better than the most pleasurable excitement,\nyet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things and\npersons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life, was to\nbe wholly his to-day, he thought, as he rode towards Tibur, under the\nearly sunshine; the marble of its villas glistening all the way before\nhim on the hillside. And why could he not hold such serenity of spirit\never at command? he asked, expert as he was at last become in the art\nof setting the house of his thoughts in order. \u201c\u2019Tis in thy power to\nthink as thou wilt:\u201d he repeated to himself: it was the most\nserviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by those imperial\nconversations.\u2014\u201c\u2019Tis in thy power to think as thou wilt.\u201d And were the\ncheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which he had there read so\nmuch, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of an eternal\nfriend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and material\norder, but only just behind it, ready perhaps even now to break\nthrough:\u2014were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on\nsome deliberate act of volition on his part? Were they doctrines one\nmight take for granted, generously take for granted, and led on by\nthem, at first as but well-defined objects of hope, come at last into\nthe region of a corresponding certitude of the intellect? \u201cIt is the\ntruth I seek,\u201d he had read, \u201cthe truth, by which no one,\u201d gray and\ndepressing though it might seem, \u201cwas ever really injured.\u201d And yet, on\nthe other hand, the imperial wayfarer, he had been able to go along\nwith so far on his intellectual pilgrimage, let fall many things\nconcerning the practicability of a methodical and self-forced assent to\ncertain principles or presuppositions \u201cone could not do without.\u201d Were\nthere, as the expression \u201cone could not do without\u201d seemed to hint,\nbeliefs, without which life itself must be almost impossible,\nprinciples which had their sufficient ground of evidence in that very\nfact? Experience certainly taught that, as regarding the sensible world\nhe could attend or not, almost at will, to this or that colour, this or\nthat train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourse of colour and\nsound, so it was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to\nthat hum of voices which besiege the inward no less than the outward\near. Might it be not otherwise with those various and competing\nhypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, in that open field for\nhypothesis\u2014one\u2019s own actual ignorance of the origin and tendency of our\nbeing\u2014present themselves so importunately, some of them with so\nemphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes of successive\nages? Might the will itself be an organ of knowledge, of vision?\n\nOn this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading hand\nfrom afar reached him; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of its\nfirst hour increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as he\nconceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had something\nto do. The air there, air supposed to possess the singular property of\nrestoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An even veil of\nlawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its broad,\nshadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellow\nold temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronal\nSibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamental\nrock. Some half-conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to have\ndetermined their grouping; in part resisting, partly going along with\nthe natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods and\nprecipices. An air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetation\naround\u2014a world of evergreen trees\u2014the olives especially, older than how\nmany generations of men\u2019s lives! fretted and twisted by the combining\nforces of life and death, into every conceivable caprice of form. In\nthe windless weather all seemed to be listening to the roar of the\nimmemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably among these human\nhabitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age to age as to\ncount, even in this time-worn place, as an image of unalterable rest.\nYet the clear sky all but broke to let through the ray which was\nsilently quickening everything in the late February afternoon, and the\nunseen violet refined itself through the air. It was as if the spirit\nof life in nature were but withholding any too precipitate revelation\nof itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work.\n\nThrough some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn where he\nrested, Marius had an unexpected delay. He sat down in an olive-garden,\nand, all around him and within still turning to reverie, the course of\nhis own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into some other world,\ndisparted from this spectacular point where he was now placed to survey\nit, like that distant road below, along which he had travelled this\nmorning across the Campagna. Through a dreamy land he could see himself\nmoving, as if in another life, and like another person, through all his\nfortunes and misfortunes, passing from point to point, weeping,\ndelighted, escaping from various dangers. That prospect brought him,\nfirst of all, an impulse of lively gratitude: it was as if he must look\nround for some one else to share his joy with: for some one to whom he\nmight tell the thing, for his own relief. Companionship, indeed,\nfamiliarity with others, gifted in this way or that, or at least\npleasant to him, had been, through one or another long span of it, the\nchief delight of the journey. And was it only the resultant general\nsense of such familiarity, diffused through his memory, that in a while\nsuggested the question whether there had not been\u2014besides Flavian,\nbesides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude he had which in spite of\nardent friendship perhaps loved best of all things\u2014some other\ncompanion, an unfailing companion, ever at his side throughout;\ndoubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient of his\npeevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his grateful\nrecognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he was\nthere at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for him\naltogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it? In his\ndeepest apparent solitude there had been rich entertainment. It was as\nif there were not one only, but two wayfarers, side by side, visible\nthere across the plain, as he indulged his fancy. A bird came and sang\namong the wattled hedge-roses: an animal feeding crept nearer: the\nchild who kept it was gazing quietly: and the scene and the hours still\nconspiring, he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself,\nbeside him in his coming and going, to those divinations of a living\nand companionable spirit at work in all things, of which he had become\naware from time to time in his old philosophic readings\u2014in Plato and\nothers, last but not least, in Aurelius. Through one reflection upon\nanother, he passed from such instinctive divinations, to the thoughts\nwhich give them logical consistency, formulating at last, as the\nnecessary exponent of our own and the world\u2019s life, that reasonable\nIdeal to which the Old Testament gives the name of Creator, which for\nthe philosophers of Greece is the Eternal Reason, and in the New\nTestament the Father of Men\u2014even as one builds up from act and word and\nexpression of the friend actually visible at one\u2019s side, an ideal of\nthe spirit within him.\n\nIn this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, as he could\nrecognise, although just then, in the whole sum of its capacities, so\nentirely possessed by him\u2014Nay! actually his very self\u2014was yet\ndetermined by a far-reaching system of material forces external to it,\na thousand combining currents from earth and sky. Its seemingly active\npowers of apprehension were, in fact, but susceptibilities to\ninfluence. The perfection of its capacity might be said to depend on\nits passive surrender, as of a leaf on the wind, to the motions of the\ngreat stream of physical energy without it. And might not the\nintellectual frame also, still more intimately himself as in truth it\nwas, after the analogy of the bodily life, be a moment only, an impulse\nor series of impulses, a single process, in an intellectual or\nspiritual system external to it, diffused through all time and\nplace\u2014that great stream of spiritual energy, of which his own imperfect\nthoughts, yesterday or to-day, would be but the remote, and therefore\nimperfect pulsations? It was the hypothesis (boldest, though in reality\nthe most conceivable of all hypotheses) which had dawned on the\ncontemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old Greek\nthought, alike:\u2014the \u201cWorld of Ideas,\u201d existent only because, and in so\nfar as, they are known, as Plato conceived; the \u201ccreative,\nincorruptible, informing mind,\u201d supposed by Aristotle, so sober-minded,\nyet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. Might\nnot this entire material world, the very scene around him, the\nimmemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the falling\nwater, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation of, that one\nindefectible mind, wherein he too became conscious, for an hour, a day,\nfor so many years? Upon what other hypothesis could he so well\nunderstand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittent\nconsciousness of them, for the intermittent consciousness of so many\ngenerations, fleeting away one after another? It was easier to conceive\nof the material fabric of things as but an element in a world of\nthought\u2014as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, or\naccident, or passing condition in a world of matter, because mind was\nreally nearer to himself: it was an explanation of what was less known\nby what was known better. The purely material world, that close,\nimpassable prison-wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to be\nactually dissolving away all around him: and he felt a quiet hope, a\nquiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him as\na really credible opinion. It was like the break of day over some vast\nprospect with the \u201cnew city,\u201d as it were some celestial New Rome, in\nthe midst of it. That divine companion figured no longer as but an\noccasional wayfarer beside him; but rather as the unfailing\n\u201cassistant,\u201d without whose inspiration and concurrence he could not\nbreathe or see, instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supporting\nhis imperfect thoughts. How often had the thought of their brevity\nspoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life, confusing even his\npresent sense of them by the suggestion of disease, of death, of a\ncoming end, in everything! How had he longed, sometimes, that there\nwere indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he could commit his\nown most fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, Ay! the very\nsorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense:\u2014one strong\nto retain them even though he forgot, in whose more vigorous\nconsciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere quickening\nof capacity which was all that remained of them in himself! \u201cOh! that\nthey might live before Thee\u201d\u2014To-day at least, in the peculiar clearness\nof one privileged hour, he seemed to have apprehended that in which the\nexperiences he valued most might find, one by one, an abiding-place.\nAnd again, the resultant sense of companionship, of a person beside\nhim, evoked the faculty of conscience\u2014of conscience, as of old and when\nhe had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, nor of self-reproach\neven, but of a certain lively gratitude.\n\nHimself\u2014his sensations and ideas\u2014never fell again precisely into focus\nas on that day, yet he was the richer by its experience. But for once\nonly to have come under the power of that peculiar mood, to have felt\nthe train of reflections which belong to it really forcible and\nconclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, to have\napprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably that it defined personal\ngratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid the\nshadows of the world, left this one particular hour a marked point in\nlife never to be forgotten. It gave him a definitely ascertained\nmeasure of his moral or intellectual need, of the demand his soul must\nmake upon the powers, whatsoever they might be, which had brought him,\nas he was, into the world at all. And again, would he be faithful to\nhimself, to his own habits of mind, his leading suppositions, if he did\nbut remain just there? Must not all that remained of life be but a\nsearch for the equivalent of that Ideal, among so-called actual\nthings\u2014a gathering together of every trace or token of it, which his\nactual experience might present?\n\n\n\n\nPART THE FOURTH\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX.\nTWO CURIOUS HOUSES\n\nI. GUESTS\n\n\u201cYour old men shall dream dreams.\u201d+\n\n\nA nature like that of Marius, composed, in about equal parts, of\ninstincts almost physical, and of slowly accumulated intellectual\njudgments, was perhaps even less susceptible than other men\u2019s\ncharacters of essential change. And yet the experience of that\nfortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision all\nthe deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not leave him\nquite as he had been. For his mental view, at least, it changed\nmeasurably the world about him, of which he was still indeed a curious\nspectator, but which looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and,\nin a sense, less real to him than ever. It was as if he viewed it\nthrough a diminishing glass. And the permanency of this change he could\nnote, some years later, when it happened that he was a guest at a\nfeast, in which the various exciting elements of Roman life, its\nphysical and intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity and\nfar-fetched elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen,\nwere elaborately combined. The great Apuleius, the literary ideal of\nhis boyhood, had arrived in Rome,\u2014was now visiting Tusculum, at the\nhouse of their common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who loved\nevery sort of superiorities; and Marius was favoured with an invitation\nto a supper given in his honour.\n\nIt was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own early\nboyish hero-worship, yet with some sense of superiority in himself,\nseeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on the\npoint of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster estimate of its\nobject, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, the\nfoot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gathered\nround a single great house under shadow of the \u201chaunted\u201d ruins of\nCicero\u2019s villa on the wooded heights. He found a touch of weirdness in\nthe circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meet\nthe writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages in\nhis own fiction. As he turned now and then to gaze at the evening scene\nthrough the tall narrow openings of the street, up which the cattle\nwere going home slowly from the pastures below, the Alban mountains,\nstretched between the great walls of the ancient houses, seemed close\nat hand\u2014a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun\u2014with\nthose waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate\nvolcanic formation. The coolness of the little brown market-place, for\nprofit of which even the working-people, in long file through the\nolive-gardens, were leaving the plain for the night, was grateful,\nafter the heats of Rome. Those wild country figures, clad in every kind\nof fantastic patchwork, stained by wind and weather fortunately enough\nfor the eye, under that significant light inclined him to poetry. And\nit was a very delicate poetry of its kind that seemed to enfold him, as\npassing into the poet\u2019s house he paused for a moment to glance back\ntowards the heights above; whereupon, the numerous cascades of the\nprecipitous garden of the villa, framed in the doorway of the hall,\nfell into a harmless picture, in its place among the pictures within,\nand scarcely more real than they\u2014a landscape-piece, in which the power\nof water (plunging into what unseen depths!) done to the life, was\npleasant, and without its natural terrors.\n\nAt the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rare\nwoods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from the\nready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of the\nguests, as with odours from the altars of the gods, the supper-table\nwas spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of the agreeable\npetit-ma\u00eetre, who entertained. He was already most carefully dressed,\nbut, like Martial\u2019s Stella, perhaps consciously, meant to change his\nattire once and again during the banquet; in the last instance, for an\nancient vesture (object of much rivalry among the young men of fashion,\nat that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) a toga, of altogether\nlost hue and texture. He wore it with a grace which became the leader\nof a thrilling movement then on foot for the restoration of that\ndisused garment, in which, laying aside the customary evening dress,\nall the visitors were requested to appear, setting off the delicate\nsinuosities and well-disposed \u201cgolden ways\u201d of its folds, with\nharmoniously tinted flowers. The opulent sunset, blending pleasantly\nwith artificial light, fell across the quiet ancestral effigies of old\nconsular dignitaries, along the wide floor strewn with sawdust of\nsandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of cool coronals, lying ready\nfor the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard of old citron. The\ncrystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues of the early autumn\nfruit\u2014mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that had long been hanging\nunder careful protection upon the vines, were almost as much a feast\nfor the eye, as the dusky fires of the rare twelve-petalled roses. A\nfavourite animal, white as snow, brought by one of the visitors, purred\nits way gracefully among the wine-cups, coaxed onward from place to\nplace by those at table, as they reclined easily on their cushions of\nGerman eider-down, spread over the long-legged, carved couches.\n\nA highly refined modification of the acroama\u2014a musical performance\nduring supper for the diversion of the guests\u2014was presently heard\nhovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that the\ncompany could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it had\nbeen designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole to think\nit some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wild neighbourhood,\nturning, as it did now and then, to a solitary reed-note, like a\nbird\u2019s, while it wandered into the distance. It wandered quite away at\nlast, as darkness with a bolder lamplight came on, and made way for\nanother sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid, phantasmal glitter,\nadvancing from the garden by torchlight, defined itself, as it came\nnearer, into a dance of young men in armour. Arrived at length in a\nportico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived that their\nmechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highly\nexpressive dramatic action; and with the utmost possible emphasis of\ndumb motion, their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air,\nthey danced the Death of Paris. The young Commodus, already an adept in\nthese matters, who had condescended to welcome the eminent Apuleius at\nthe banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place to take his share\nin the performance; and at its conclusion reappeared, still wearing the\ndainty accoutrements of Paris, including a breastplate, composed\nentirely of overlapping tigers\u2019 claws, skilfully gilt. The youthful\nprince had lately assumed the dress of manhood, on the return of the\nemperor for a brief visit from the North; putting up his hair, in\nimitation of Nero, in a golden box dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter. His\nlikeness to Aurelius, his father, was become, in consequence, more\nstriking than ever; and he had one source of genuine interest in the\ngreat literary guest of the occasion, in that the latter was the\nfortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition of wild beasts and\ngladiatorial shows in the province of Carthage, where he resided.\n\nStill, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes of\nthe emperor\u2019s son, it was felt that with a guest like Apuleius whom\nthey had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, the\nconversation should be learned and superior, and the host at last\ndeftly led his company round to literature, by the way of bindings.\nElegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient Greek\nbooks passed from hand to hand about the table. It was a sign for the\nvisitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiosities\nfrom their bags, as their contribution to the banquet; and one of them,\na famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenor voice\nthe piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whether it\ncould indeed be the composition of Lucian of Samosata,+ understood to\nbe the great mocker of that day:\u2014\n\n\u201cWhat sound was that, Socrates?\u201d asked Chaerephon. \u201cIt came from the\nbeach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way off.\u2014And how\nmelodious it was! Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all sea-birds were\nsongless.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye! a sea-bird,\u201d answered Socrates, \u201ca bird called the Halcyon, and\nhas a note full of plaining and tears. There is an old story people\ntell of it. It was a mortal woman once, daughter of Aeolus, god of the\nwinds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her early\nmaidenhood. The son was not less fair than the father; and when it came\nto pass that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented his sweet\nusage, was, Just that! And some while after, as Heaven willed, she was\nchanged into a bird. Floating now on bird\u2019s wings over the sea she\nseeks her lost Ceyx there; since she was not able to find him after\nlong wandering over the land.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat then is the Halcyon\u2014the kingfisher,\u201d said Chaerephon. \u201cI never\nheard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kind\nof a bird is it, Socrates?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a large bird, though she has received large honour from the gods\non account of her singular conjugal affection. For whensoever she makes\nher nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon\u2019s\nweather,\u2014days distinguishable among all others for their serenity,\nthough they come sometimes amid the storms of winter\u2014days like to-day!\nSee how transparent is the sky above us, and how motionless the\nsea!\u2014like a smooth mirror.\u201d\n\nTrue! A Halcyon day, indeed! and yesterday was the same. But tell me,\nSocrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been told\nfrom the beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals into\nbirds? To me nothing seems more incredible.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear Chaerephon,\u201d said Socrates, \u201cmethinks we are but half-blind\njudges of the impossible and the possible. We try the question by the\nstandard of our human faculty, which avails neither for true knowledge,\nnor for faith, nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us impossible\nwhich are really easy, many things unattainable which are within our\nreach; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness of\nour minds. For in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like a\nlittle child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life in\ncomparison of eternity. Then, how can we, who comprehend not the\nfaculties of gods and of the heavenly host, tell whether aught of that\nkind be possible or no?\u2014What a tempest you saw three days ago! One\ntrembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, the violence\nof the wind! You might have thought the whole world was going to ruin.\nAnd then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity of weather,\nwhich has continued till to-day. Which do you think the greater and\nmore difficult thing to do: to exchange the disorder of that\nirresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and becalm the whole\nworld again, or to refashion the form of a woman into that of a bird?\nWe can teach even little children to do something of that sort,\u2014to take\nwax or clay, and mould out of the same material many kinds of form, one\nafter another, without difficulty. And it may be that to the Deity,\nwhose power is too vast for comparison with ours, all processes of that\nkind are manageable and easy. How much wider is the whole circle of\nheaven than thyself?\u2014Wider than thou canst express.\n\n\u201cAmong ourselves also, how vast the difference we may observe in men\u2019s\ndegrees of power! To you and me, and many another like us, many things\nare impossible which are quite easy to others. For those who are\nunmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who have\nnot yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women of\nbirds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms of\nwinged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret\nart in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb a little\nmemberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightens and\nbeautifies it with quaint variety of colour:\u2014and Lo! the bee in her\nwisdom, making honey worthy of the gods.\n\n\u201cIt follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little account, able\nwholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little one, for\nthe most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves, may\nhardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortal\ngods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. Yet the glory of thy\nmythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, O tearful songstress! that\nwill I too hand on to my children, and tell it often to my wives,\nXanthippe and Myrto:\u2014the story of thy pious love to Ceyx, and of thy\nmelodious hymns; and, above all, of the honour thou hast with the\ngods!\u201d\n\nThe reader\u2019s well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almost\nuncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of letters\nthen present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before the\nrecital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no means\ndesigned, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beauty\nof his teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made ready to\ntranscribe what he would say, the sort of things of which a collection\nwas then forming, the \u201cFlorida\u201d or Flowers, so to call them, he was apt\nto let fall by the way\u2014no impromptu ventures at random; but rather\nelaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at length, out of the rich\ntreasure-house of a memory stored with such, and as with a fine savour\nof old musk about them. Certainly in this case, as Marius thought, it\nwas worth while to hear a charming writer speak. Discussing, quite in\nour modern way, the peculiarities of those suburban views, especially\nthe sea-views, of which he was a professed lover, he was also every\ninch a priest of Aesculapius, patronal god of Carthage. There was a\npiquancy in his rococo, very African, and as it were perfumed\npersonality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years old, a mixture\nthere of that sort of Platonic spiritualism which can speak of the soul\nof man as but a sojourner in the prison of the body\u2014a blending of that\nwith such a relish for merely bodily graces as availed to set the\nfashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and the like, nay!\nwith something also which reminded Marius of the vein of coarseness he\nhad found in the \u201cGolden Book.\u201d All this made the total impression he\nconveyed a very uncommon one. Marius did not wonder, as he watched him\nspeaking, that people freely attributed to him many of the marvellous\nadventures he had recounted in that famous romance, over and above the\nwildest version of his own actual story\u2014his extraordinary marriage, his\nreligious initiations, his acts of mad generosity, his trial as a\nsorcerer.\n\nBut a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for the\ncompany to separate. He was entertaining his immediate neighbours at\nthe table with a trick from the streets; tossing his olives in rapid\nsuccession into the air, and catching them, as they fell, between his\nlips. His dexterity in this performance made the mirth around him\nnoisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor: the learned party\nbroke up; and Marius withdrew, glad to escape into the open air. The\ncourtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were lurking for\nthe guests, with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration was\nvisible in the distance. Was it in Rome; or in one of the villages of\nthe country? Pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it,\nMarius was for the first time able to converse intimately with\nApuleius; and in this moment of confidence the \u201cilluminist,\u201d himself\nwith locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full of\naffectations, almost like one of those light women there, dropped a\nveil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting the play of a\ncertain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets, to be\nready to explain and defend his position reasonably. For a moment his\nfantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal vision seemed to\nfall into some intelligible congruity with each other. In truth, it was\nthe Platonic Idealism, as he conceived it, which for him literally\nanimated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this world of the\npurely outward aspects of men and things.\u2014Did material things, such\nthings as they had had around them all that evening, really need\napology for being there, to interest one, at all? Were not all visible\nobjects\u2014the whole material world indeed, according to the consistent\ntestimony of philosophy in many forms\u2014\u201cfull of souls\u201d? embarrassed\nperhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls? Certainly, the\ncontemplative philosophy of Plato, with its figurative imagery and\napologue, its manifold \u00e6sthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, its\nmusic for the outward ear, had been, like Plato\u2019s old master himself, a\ntwo-sided or two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a Platonist: only, for\nhim, the Ideas of Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, but\nin very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensible\nthings. Those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding through the\ntables and along the walls:\u2014were they only startings in the old\nrafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or rather\nimportunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of the\npersons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break through\ntheir frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abiding\nessentials beyond them, which might have their say, their judgment to\ngive, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life\u2019s\ntable would be over? And was not this the true significance of the\nPlatonic doctrine?\u2014a hierarchy of divine beings, associating themselves\nwith particular things and places, for the purpose of mediating between\nGod and man\u2014man, who does but need due attention on his part to become\naware of his celestial company, filling the air about him, thick as\nmotes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympathetic intelligence he\ncasts through it.\n\n\u201cTwo kinds there are, of animated beings,\u201d he exclaimed: \u201cGods,\nentirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode,\nsince one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision\u2014those\nmysterious stars!\u2014in the eternity of their existence, in the perfection\nof their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: and men,\ndwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, with infirm\nand mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain; taken\naltogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally,\nquitting the scene in irresistible succession.\n\n\u201cWhat then? Has nature connected itself together by no bond, allowed\nitself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and human\nelements? And you will say to me: If so it be, that man is thus\nentirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication is\ndenied him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as a shepherd\nhis sheep\u2014to whom shall I address my prayers? Whom, shall I invoke as\nthe helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good?\n\n\u201cWell! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whom\nour aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us. Passing\nbetween the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to the\nother prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kind\nof interpreters. This interval of the air is full of them! Through\nthem, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. For,\nspecially appointed members of this order have their special provinces,\nwith a ministry according to the disposition of each. They go to and\nfro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men\u2019s houses\u201d\u2014\n\nJust then a companion\u2019s hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder of\nthe speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly. Its\nsingular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on this\nstrange evening, in all its detail\u2014the dance, the readings, the distant\nfire\u2014a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character of one of\nthose famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then been in fact\nunder discussion. When Marius recalled its circumstances he seemed to\nhear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst\na scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldly mystical a view of\nman and his position in the world. For a moment, but only for a moment,\nas he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing \u201cclose\nagainst the sky.\u201d Yes! the reception of theory, of hypothesis, of\nbeliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament. They were, so to\nspeak, mere equivalents of temperament. A celestial ladder, a ladder\nfrom heaven to earth: that was the assumption which the experience of\nApuleius had suggested to him: it was what, in different forms, certain\npersons in every age had instinctively supposed: they would be glad to\nfind their supposition accredited by the authority of a grave\nphilosophy. Marius, however, yearning not less than they, in that hard\nworld of Rome, and below its unpeopled sky, for the trace of some\ncelestial wing across it, must still object that they assumed the thing\nwith too much facility, too much of self-complacency. And his second\nthought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies, fantastic\nvisions of that sort, only left the actual world more lonely than ever.\nFor him certainly, and for his solace, the little godship for whom the\nrude countryman, an unconscious Platonist, trimmed his twinkling lamp,\nwould never slip from the bark of these immemorial olive-trees.\u2014No! not\neven in the wildest moonlight. For himself, it was clear, he must still\nhold by what his eyes really saw. Only, he had to concede also, that\nthe very boldness of such theory bore witness, at least, to a variety\nof human disposition and a consequent variety of mental view, which\nmight\u2014who can tell?\u2014be correspondent to, be defined by and define,\nvarieties of facts, of truths, just \u201cbehind the veil,\u201d regarding the\nworld all alike had actually before them as their original premiss or\nstarting-point; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities than all\npossible fancies concerning it.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n75. Joel 2.28.\n\n\n81. +Halcyone.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI.\nTWO CURIOUS HOUSES\n\nII. THE CHURCH IN CECILIA\u2019S HOUSE\n\n\u201cYour old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see\nvisions.\u201d\n\n\nCornelius had certain friends in or near Rome, whose household, to\nMarius, as he pondered now and again what might be the determining\ninfluences of that peculiar character, presented itself as possibly its\nmain secret\u2014the hidden source from which the beauty and strength of a\nnature, so persistently fresh in the midst of a somewhat jaded world,\nmight be derived. But Marius had never yet seen these friends; and it\nwas almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last lifted,\nand, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet\u2019s villa at\nTusculum, he entered another curious house.\n\n\u201cThe house in which she lives,\u201d says that mystical German writer quoted\nonce before, \u201cis for the orderly soul, which does not live on blindly\nbefore her, but is ever, out of her passing experiences, building and\nadorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself, only an\nexpansion of the body; as the body, according to the philosophy of\nSwedenborg,+ is but a process, an expansion, of the soul. For such an\norderly soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinities\nestablish themselves, between herself and the doors and passage-ways,\nthe lights and shadows, of her outward dwelling-place, until she may\nseem incorporate with it\u2014until at last, in the entire expressiveness of\nwhat is outward, there is for her, to speak properly, between outward\nand inward, no longer any distinction at all; and the light which\ncreeps at a particular hour on a particular picture or space upon the\nwall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to\nher, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers of\napprehension and door-ways to things beyond\u2014the germ or rudiment of\ncertain new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends a\nmatter lying beyond her actually attained capacities of spirit and\nsense.\u201d\n\nSo it must needs be in a world which is itself, we may think, together\nwith that bodily \u201ctent\u201d or \u201ctabernacle,\u201d only one of many vestures for\nthe clothing of the pilgrim soul, to be left by her, surely, as if on\nthe wayside, worn-out one by one, as it was from her, indeed, they\nborrowed what momentary value or significance they had.\n\nThe two friends were returning to Rome from a visit to a country-house,\nwhere again a mixed company of guests had been assembled; Marius, for\nhis part, a little weary of gossip, and those sparks of ill-tempered\nrivalry, which would seem sometimes to be the only sort of fire the\nintercourse of people in general society can strike out of them. A mere\nreaction upon this, as they started in the clear morning, made their\ncompanionship, at least for one of them, hardly less tranquillising\nthan the solitude he so much valued. Something in the south-west wind,\ncombining with their own intention, favoured increasingly, as the hours\nwore on, a serenity like that Marius had felt once before in journeying\nover the great plain towards Tibur\u2014a serenity that was to-day brotherly\namity also, and seemed to draw into its own charmed circle whatever was\nthen present to eye or ear, while they talked or were silent together,\nand all petty irritations, and the like, shrank out of existence, or\nkept certainly beyond its limits. The natural fatigue of the long\njourney overcame them quite suddenly at last, when they were still\nabout two miles distant from Rome. The seemingly endless line of tombs\nand cypresses had been visible for hours against the sky towards the\nwest; and it was just where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into\nthe Appian, that Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall\u2014the\nouter wall of some villa courtyard, it might be supposed\u2014 as if at\nliberty to enter, and rest there awhile. He held the door open for his\ncompanion to enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted\nthe latch, which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrinking from a\npossible intrusion: \u201cWould you like to see it?\u201d Was he willing to look\nupon that, the seeing of which might define\u2014yes! define the critical\nturning-point in his days?\n\nThe little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into\nthe court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt natural\nhollows, which give its character to the country in this place; the\nhouse itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of\nwhich surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed from\npassengers along the road. All around, in those well-ordered precincts,\nwere the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste\u2014a taste, indeed,\nchiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it\nhad to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older\nart, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour\nand form, so delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer\nintelligence in these matters than lay within the resources of the\nancient world. It was the old way of true Renaissance\u2014being indeed the\nway of nature with her roses, the divine way with the body of man,\nperhaps with his soul\u2014conceiving the new organism by no sudden and\nabrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon\nelements, all of which had in truth already lived and died many times.\nThe fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns,\nthe precious corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such\njuxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave\nthought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, \u00e6sthetically, very\nseductive. Lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading their\nseed-bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air, above\nthe ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset. And from\nthe first they could hear singing, the singing of children mainly, it\nwould seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its effect, as to\nbring suddenly to the recollection of Marius, Flavian\u2019s early essays\ntowards a new world of poetic sound. It was the expression not\naltogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happiness\u2014the blithe\nself-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom some all-subduing\nexperience had wrought heroically, and who still remembered, on this\nbland afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance.\n\nHis old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special sympathies, of\nplaces,\u2014above all, to any hieratic or religious significance they might\nhave,\u2014was at its liveliest, as Marius, still encompassed by that\npeculiar singing, and still amid the evidences of a grave discretion\nall around him, passed into the house. That intelligent seriousness\nabout life, the absence of which had ever seemed to remove those who\nlacked it into some strange species wholly alien from himself,\naccumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first days\nat White-nights, was as it were translated here, as if in designed\ncongruity with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision,\ninto an actual picture. If the true value of souls is in proportion to\nwhat they can admire, Marius was just then an acceptable soul. As he\npassed through the various chambers, great and small, one dominant\nthought increased upon him, the thought of chaste women and their\nchildren\u2014of all the various affections of family life under its most\nnatural conditions, yet developed, as if in devout imitation of some\nsublime new type of it, into large controlling passions. There reigned\nthroughout, an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by way\nof making ready for some gracious spousals. The place itself was like a\nbride adorned for her husband; and its singular cheerfulness, the\nabundant light everywhere, the sense of peaceful industry, of which he\nreceived a deep impression though without precisely reckoning wherein\nit resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in forcible contrast just at\nfirst to the place to which he was next conducted by Cornelius still\nwith a sort of eager, hurried, half-troubled reluctance, and as if he\nforbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his\ncompanion.\n\nAn old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here and there with\na venerable olive-tree\u2014a picture in pensive shade and fiery blossom, as\ntransparent, under that afternoon light, as the old miniature-painters\u2019\nwork on the walls of the chambers within\u2014was bounded towards the west\nby a low, grass-grown hill. A narrow opening cut in its steep side,\nlike a solid blackness there, admitted Marius and his gleaming leader\ninto a hollow cavern or crypt, neither more nor less in fact than the\nfamily burial-place of the Cecilii, to whom this residence belonged,\nbrought thus, after an arrangement then becoming not unusual, into\nimmediate connexion with the abode of the living, in bold assertion of\nthat instinct of family life, which the sanction of the Holy Family\nwas, hereafter, more and more to reinforce. Here, in truth, was the\ncentre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of the sanctity, of\nthe entire scene. That \u201cany person may, at his own election, constitute\nthe place which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of\nhis dead into it\u201d:\u2014had been a maxim of old Roman law, which it was\nreserved for the early Christian societies, like that established here\nby the piety of a wealthy Roman matron, to realise in all its\nconsequences. Yet this was certainly unlike any cemetery Marius had\never before seen; most obviously in this, that these people had\nreturned to the older fashion of disposing of their dead by burial\ninstead of burning. Originally a family sepulchre, it was growing to a\nvast necropolis, a whole township of the deceased, by means of some\nfree expansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural\nlimits. That air of venerable beauty which characterised the house and\nits precincts above, was maintained also here. It was certainly with a\ngreat outlay of labour that these long, apparently endless, yet\nelaborately designed galleries, were increasing so rapidly, with their\nlayers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the\npath-way, in the porous tufa, through which all the moisture filters\ndownwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were\ncarefully closed, and with all the delicate costliness at command; some\nwith simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs of marble, enriched by\nfair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan\ntombs\u2014the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, the new epitaph being\nwoven into the faded letters of an earlier one.\n\nAs in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for the\nworship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around\u2014incense,\nlights, flowers, their flame or their freshness being relieved to the\nutmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, a\nvolcanic sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires. Would they ever kindle\nagain?\u2014possess, transform, the place?\u2014Turning to an ashen pallor where,\nat regular intervals, an air-hole or luminare let in a hard beam of\nclear but sunless light, with the heavy sleepers, row upon row within,\nleaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a time could move\nalong, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls seemed to shut one in\ninto the great company of the dead. Only the long straight pathway lay\nbefore him; opening, however, here and there, into a small chamber,\naround a broad, table-like coffin or \u201caltar-tomb,\u201d adorned even more\nprofusely than the rest as if for some anniversary observance. Clearly,\nthese people, concurring in this with the special sympathies of Marius\nhimself, had adopted the practice of burial from some peculiar feeling\nof hope they entertained concerning the body; a feeling which, in no\nirreverent curiosity, he would fain have penetrated. The complete and\nirreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so crushing\nto the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since induced in\nhim a preference for that other mode of settlement to the last sleep,\nas having something about it more home-like and hopeful, at least in\noutward seeming. But whence the strange confidence that these \u201chandfuls\nof white dust\u201d would hereafter recompose themselves once more into\nexulting human creatures? By what heavenly alchemy, what reviving dew\nfrom above, such as was certainly never again to reach the dead\nviolets?\u2014 Januarius, Agapetus, Felicitas; Martyrs! refresh, I pray you,\nthe soul of Cecil, of Cornelius! said an inscription, one of many,\nscratched, like a passing sigh, when it was still fresh in the mortar\nthat had closed up the prison-door. All critical estimate of this bold\nhope, as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim, being set\naside, here at least, carried further than ever before, was that pious,\nsystematic commemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal\nto forget or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius\nas the central exponent or symbol of all natural duty.\n\nThe stern soul of the excellent Jonathan Edwards, applying the faulty\ntheology of John Calvin, afforded him, we know, the vision of infants\nnot a span long, on the floor of hell. Every visitor to the Catacombs\nmust have observed, in a very different theological connexion, the\nnumerous children\u2019s graves there\u2014beds of infants, but a span long\nindeed, lowly \u201cprisoners of hope,\u201d on these sacred floors. It was with\ngreat curiosity, certainly, that Marius considered them, decked in some\ninstances with the favourite toys of their tiny occupants\u2014toy-soldiers,\nlittle chariot-wheels, the entire paraphernalia of a baby-house; and\nwhen he saw afterwards the living children, who sang and were busy\nabove\u2014sang their psalm Laudate Pueri Dominum!\u2014their very faces caught\nfor him a sort of quaint unreality from the memory of those others, the\nchildren of the Catacombs, but a little way below them.\n\nHere and there, mingling with the record of merely natural decease, and\nsometimes even at these children\u2019s graves, were the signs of violent\ndeath or \u201cmartyrdom,\u201d\u2014proofs that some \u201chad loved not their lives unto\nthe death\u201d\u2014in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the red\nflowers for their heavenly \u201cbirthday.\u201d About one sepulchre in\nparticular, distinguished in this way, and devoutly arrayed for what,\nby a bold paradox, was thus treated as, natalitia\u2014a birthday, the\npeculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly centered. And it was\nwith a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning of a fresh order\nof experiences upon him, that, standing beside those mournful relics,\nsnatched in haste from the common place of execution not many years\nbefore, Marius became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of the\nwhole force of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, defining in\nits turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths so\ntragic for the \u201cChristian superstition.\u201d Something of them he had heard\nindeed already. They had seemed to him but one savagery the more,\nsavagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world.\n\nAnd yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw him onwards\nto-day, as if towards an image of some still more pathetic suffering,\nin the remote background. Yes! the interest, the expression, of the\nentire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the savour of some\npriceless incense. Penetrating the whole atmosphere, touching\neverything around with its peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make all\nthis visible mortality, death\u2019s very self\u2014Ah! lovelier than any fable\nof old mythology had ever thought to render it, in the utmost limits of\nfantasy; and this, in simple candour of feeling about a supposed fact.\nPeace! Pax tecum!\u2014the word, the thought\u2014was put forth everywhere, with\nimages of hope, snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan world which\nhad really afforded men so little of it from first to last; the various\nconsoling images it had thrown off, of succour, of regeneration, of\nescape from the grave\u2014Hercules wrestling with Death for possession of\nAlcestis, Orpheus taming the wild beasts, the Shepherd with his sheep,\nthe Shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon his shoulders. Yet these\nimageries after all, it must be confessed, formed but a slight\ncontribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hope there\u2014a kind of\nheroic cheerfulness and grateful expansion of heart, as with the sense,\nagain, of some real deliverance, which seemed to deepen the longer one\nlingered through these strange and awful passages. A figure, partly\npagan in character, yet most frequently repeated of all these visible\nparables\u2014the figure of one just escaped from the sea, still clinging as\nfor life to the shore in surprised joy, together with the inscription\nbeneath it, seemed best to express the prevailing sentiment of the\nplace. And it was just as he had puzzled out this inscription\u2014\n\nI went down to the bottom of the mountains.\nThe earth with her bars was about me for ever:\nYet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption!\n\n\n\u2014that with no feeling of suddenness or change Marius found himself\nemerging again, like a later mystic traveller through similar dark\nplaces \u201cquieted by hope,\u201d into the daylight.\n\nThey were still within the precincts of the house, still in possession\nof that wonderful singing, although almost in the open country, with a\ngreat view of the Campagna before them, and the hills beyond. The\norchard or meadow, through which their path lay, was already gray with\ntwilight, though the western sky, where the greater stars were visible,\nwas still afloat in crimson splendour. The colour of all earthly things\nseemed repressed by the contrast, yet with a sense of great richness\nlingering in their shadows. At that moment the voice of the singers, a\n\u201cvoice of joy and health,\u201d concentrated itself with solemn antistrophic\nmovement, into an evening, or \u201ccandle\u201d hymn.\n\n\u201cHail! Heavenly Light, from his pure glory poured,\nWho is the Almighty Father, heavenly, blest:\u2014\nWorthiest art Thou, at all times to be sung\nWith undefiled tongue.\u201d\u2014\n\n\nIt was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes and fears, with\nthe stars shining in the midst of it. Half above, half below the level\nwhite mist, dividing the light from the darkness, came now the mistress\nof this place, the wealthy Roman matron, left early a widow a few years\nbefore, by Cecilius \u201cConfessor and Saint.\u201d With a certain antique\nseverity in the gathering of the long mantle, and with coif or veil\nfolded decorously below the chin, \u201cgray within gray,\u201d to the mind of\nMarius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious and\nvirile character of the best female statuary of Greece. Quite foreign,\nhowever, to any Greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care,\nwith which she carried a little child at rest in her arms. Another, a\nyear or two older, walked beside, the fingers of one hand within her\ngirdle. She paused for a moment with a greeting for Cornelius.\n\nThat visionary scene was the close, the fitting close, of the\nafternoon\u2019s strange experiences. A few minutes later, passing forward\non his way along the public road, he could have fancied it a dream. The\nhouse of Cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house he had\nlately visited at Tusculum. And what a contrast was presented by the\nformer, in its suggestions of hopeful industry, of immaculate\ncleanness, of responsive affection!\u2014all alike determined by that\ntransporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, in which the\nold puzzle of life had found its solution. In truth, one of his most\ncharacteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longing for\nescape\u2014for some sudden, relieving interchange, across the very spaces\nof life, it might be, along which he had lingered most pleasantly\u2014for a\nlifting, from time to time, of the actual horizon. It was like the\nnecessity under which the painter finds himself, to set a window or\nopen doorway in the background of his picture; or like a sick man\u2019s\nlonging for northern coolness, and the whispering willow-trees, amid\nthe breathless evergreen forests of the south. To some such effect had\nthis visit occurred to him, and through so slight an accident. Rome and\nRoman life, just then, were come to seem like some stifling forest of\nbronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the\ngenerations of living trees, yet with roots in a deep, down-trodden\nsoil of poignant human susceptibilities. In the midst of its\nsuffocation, that old longing for escape had been satisfied by this\nvision of the church in Cecilia\u2019s house, as never before. It was still,\nindeed, according to the unchangeable law of his temperament, to the\neye, to the visual faculty of mind, that those experiences appealed\u2014the\npeaceful light and shade, the boys whose very faces seemed to sing, the\nvirginal beauty of the mother and her children. But, in his case, what\nwas thus visible constituted a moral or spiritual influence, of a\nsomewhat exigent and controlling character, added anew to life, a new\nelement therein, with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he\nmust make terms.\n\nThe thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged by a philosophy\nwhich taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small, good or\nevil, had ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement, in\nwhich the boy-priest survived, prompting always the selection of what\nwas perfect of its kind, with subsequent loyal adherence of his soul\nthereto. This had carried him along in a continuous communion with\nideals, certainly realised in part, either in the conditions of his own\nbeing, or in the actual company about him, above all, in Cornelius.\nSurely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the first\ntime to-day\u2014in this strange family, like \u201ca garden enclosed\u201d\u2014was the\nfulfilment of all the preferences, the judgments, of that\nhalf-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection so\noften amid the perplexities of life. Here, it might be, was, if not the\ncure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows\u2014of that\nconstitutional sorrowfulness, not peculiar to himself perhaps, but\nwhich had made his life certainly like one long \u201cdisease of the\nspirit.\u201d Merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in the\nmere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching flesh. On the\nother hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might be\nawakened\u2014new and untried responsibilities\u2014a demand for something from\nhim in return. Might this new vision, like the malignant beauty of\npagan Medusa, be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything but\nitself? At least he suspected that, after the beholding of it, he could\nnever again be altogether as he had been before.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n93. +Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish mystic writer, 1688-1772. Return.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII.\n\u201cTHE MINOR PEACE OF THE CHURCH\u201d\n\n\nFaithful to the spirit of his early Epicurean philosophy and the\nimpulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal inquiry about it, to\nanything that, as a matter of fact, attracted or impressed him\nstrongly, Marius informed himself with much pains concerning the church\nin Cecilia\u2019s house; inclining at first to explain the peculiarities of\nthat place by the establishment there of the schola or common hall of\none of those burial-guilds, which then covered so much of the\nunofficial, and, as it might be called, subterranean enterprise of\nRoman society.\n\nAnd what he found, thus looking, literally, for the dead among the\nliving, was the vision of a natural, a scrupulously natural, love,\ntransforming, by some new gift of insight into the truth of human\nrelationships, and under the urgency of some new motive by him so far\nunfathomable, all the conditions of life. He saw, in all its primitive\nfreshness and amid the lively facts of its actual coming into the\nworld, as a reality of experience, that regenerate type of humanity,\nwhich, centuries later, Giotto and his successors, down to the best and\npurest days of the young Raphael, working under conditions very\nfriendly to the imagination, were to conceive as an artistic ideal. He\nfelt there, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful new hope within\nhimself, the genius, the unique power of Christianity; in exercise\nthen, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite of many hindrances,\nand under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity,\u2014as he seemed to\nunderstand\u2014the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions, and\nwith the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing\nin the world and the truest conservation of that creative energy by\nwhich men and women were first brought into it. The nature of the\nfamily, for which the better genius of old Rome itself had sincerely\ncared, of the family and its appropriate affections\u2014all that love of\none\u2019s kindred by which obviously one does triumph in some degree over\ndeath\u2014had never been so felt before. Here, surely! in its genial\nwarmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was opposed to it, to its own\nimmaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing on\nevery side, this development of the family did but carry forward, and\ngive effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly\nto man. As if by way of a due recognition of some immeasurable divine\ncondescension manifest in a certain historic fact, its influence was\nfelt more especially at those points which demanded some sacrifice of\none\u2019s self, for the weak, for the aged, for little children, and even\nfor the dead. And then, for its constant outward token, its significant\nmanner or index, it issued in a certain debonair grace, and a certain\nmystic attractiveness, a courtesy, which made Marius doubt whether that\nfamed Greek \u201cblitheness,\u201d or gaiety, or grace, in the handling of life,\nhad been, after all, an unrivalled success. Contrasting with the\nincurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher\nRoman life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness\namid its evil, the new creation he now looked on\u2014as it were a picture\nbeyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty\u2014had indeed all the\nappropriate freshness of a \u201cbride adorned for her husband.\u201d Things new\nand old seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house,\nthe brain full of science, the heart rich with various sentiment,\npossessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart.\n\n\u201cYou would hardly believe,\u201d writes Pliny,\u2014to his own wife!\u2014\u201cwhat a\nlonging for you possesses me. Habit\u2014that we have not been used to be\napart\u2014adds herein to the primary force of affection. It is this keeps\nme awake at night fancying I see you beside me. That is why my feet\ntake me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when I was\nwont to visit you there. That is why I turn from the door of the empty\nchamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover.\u201d\u2014\n\nThere, is a real idyll from that family life, the protection of which\nhad been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the Romans,\nstill surviving among them; as it survived also in Aurelius, his\ndisposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attained\nsweetness of his interior life. What Marius had been permitted to see\nwas a realisation of such life higher still: and with\u2014Yes! with a more\neffective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before, in\nthat fact, or series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would.\n\nThe central glory of the reign of the Antonines was that society had\nattained in it, though very imperfectly, and for the most part by\ncumbrous effort of law, many of those ends to which Christianity went\nstraight, with the sufficiency, the success, of a direct and\nappropriate instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touching charity-sermons\non occasions of great public distress; its charity-children in long\nfile, in memory of the elder empress Faustina; its prototype, under\npatronage of Aesculapius, of the modern hospital for the sick on the\nisland of Saint Bartholomew. But what pagan charity was doing tardily,\nand as if with the painful calculation of old age, the church was\ndoing, almost without thinking about it, with all the liberal\nenterprise of youth, because it was her very being thus to do. \u201cYou\nfail to realise your own good intentions,\u201d she seems to say, to pagan\nvirtue, pagan kindness. She identified herself with those intentions\nand advanced them with an unparalleled freedom and largeness. The\ngentle Seneca would have reverent burial provided even for the dead\nbody of a criminal. Yet when a certain woman collected for interment\nthe insulted remains of Nero, the pagan world surmised that she must be\na Christian: only a Christian would have been likely to conceive so\nchivalrous a devotion towards mere wretchedness. \u201cWe refuse to be\nwitnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law,\u201d boasts the dainty\nconscience of a Christian apologist, \u201cwe take no part in your cruel\nsports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and we hold that to\nwitness a murder is the same thing as to commit one.\u201d And there was\nanother duty almost forgotten, the sense of which Rousseau brought back\nto the degenerate society of a later age. In an impassioned discourse\nthe sophist Favorinus counsels mothers to suckle their own infants; and\nthere are Roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which gratefully record\nthis proof of natural affection as a thing then unusual. In this matter\ntoo, what a sanction, what a provocative to natural duty, lay in that\nimage discovered to Augustus by the Tiburtine Sibyl, amid the aurora of\na new age, the image of the Divine Mother and the Child, just then\nrising upon the world like the dawn!\n\nChristian belief, again, had presented itself as a great inspirer of\nchastity. Chastity, in turn, realised in the whole scope of its\nconditions, fortified that rehabilitation of peaceful labour, after the\nmind, the pattern, of the workman of Galilee, which was another of the\nnatural instincts of the catholic church, as being indeed the\nlong-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true lover\nof the industry\u2014so to term it\u2014the labour, the creation, of God.\n\nAnd this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman, of the\nfamily, of industry, of man\u2019s work in life, so close to the truth of\nnature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor \u201cPeace of the\nchurch,\u201d realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornment\nof life and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye plucked\nout, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those images\nexpress, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one side\nonly of the nature of the divine missionary of the New Testament.\nOpposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is the\nfunction of the Good Shepherd, serene, blithe and debonair, beyond the\ngentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; of a king under whom the beatific\nvision is realised of a reign of peace\u2014peace of heart\u2014among men. Such\naspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood, is indeed\nthe final consummation of that bold and brilliant hopefulness in man\u2019s\nnature, which had sustained him so far through his immense labours, his\nimmense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in the handling of life, is\nbut a minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, of those\ntwo contrasted aspects of its Founder, have, in different ages and\nunder the urgency of different human needs, been at work also in the\nChristian Church. Certainly, in that brief \u201cPeace of the church\u201d under\nthe Antonines, the spirit of a pastoral security and happiness seems to\nhave been largely expanded. There, in the early church of Rome, was to\nbe seen, and on sufficiently reasonable grounds, that satisfaction and\nserenity on a dispassionate survey of the facts of life, which all\nhearts had desired, though for the most part in vain, contrasting\nitself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, with the imperial\nphilosopher\u2019s so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy. It was\nChristianity in its humanity, or even its humanism, in its generous\nhopes for man, its common sense and alacrity of cheerful service, its\nsympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beauty and daylight.\n\n\u201cThe angel of righteousness,\u201d says the Shepherd of Hermas, the most\ncharacteristic religious book of that age, its Pilgrim\u2019s Progress\u2014\u201cthe\nangel of righteousness is modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Take\nfrom thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) \u2019tis the\nsister of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil than any other\nspirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of God, and beyond\nall spirits destroyeth man. For, as when good news is come to one in\ngrief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longer\nattendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so do\nye, also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholding\nof these good things. Put on therefore gladness that hath always favour\nbefore God, and is acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself in it; for\nevery man that is glad doeth the things that are good, and thinketh\ngood thoughts, despising grief.\u201d\u2014Such were the commonplaces of this new\npeople, among whom so much of what Marius had valued most in the old\nworld seemed to be under renewal and further promotion. Some\ntransforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts, to deepen\nexpression\u2014a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of ancient\nlife, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion,\njuxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a grave\nyet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outward\nworld was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty of\na certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, among the\nprerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom.\n\nThe reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who, Epicurean as he was,\nhad his visionary aptitudes, by an inversion of one of Plato\u2019s\npeculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must have\ndescended, by foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipated\nChristian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence of\nSaint Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed on one of those nights of\nthe beautiful house of Cecilia, its lights and flowers, of Cecilia\nherself moving among the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happens\nsometimes in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. He\nhad lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of his\nlife, upon a period when, even more than in the days of austere asc\u00easis\nwhich had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true for a\nmoment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element of\nprofound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected the\neternal goodwill of God to man, \u201cin whom,\u201d according to the oldest\nversion of the angelic message, \u201cHe is well-pleased.\u201d\n\nFor what Christianity did many centuries afterwards in the way of\ninforming an art, a poetry, of graver and higher beauty, we may think,\nthan that of Greek art and poetry at their best, was in truth\nconformable to the original tendency of its genius. The genuine\ncapacity of the catholic church in this direction, discoverable from\nthe first in the New Testament, was also really at work, in that\nearlier \u201cPeace,\u201d under the Antonines\u2014the minor \u201cPeace of the church,\u201d\nas we might call it, in distinction from the final \u201cPeace of the\nchurch,\u201d commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis, with his\nfollowing in the sphere of poetry and of the arts\u2014the voice of Dante,\nthe hand of Giotto\u2014giving visible feature and colour, and a palpable\nplace among men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establish a\ncontinuity, only suspended in part by those troublous intervening\ncenturies\u2014the \u201cdark ages,\u201d properly thus named\u2014with the gracious spirit\nof the primitive church, as manifested in that first early springtide\nof her success. The greater \u201cPeace\u201d of Constantine, on the other hand,\nin many ways, does but establish the exclusiveness, the puritanism, the\nascetic gloom which, in the period between Aurelius and the first\nChristian emperor, characterised a church under misunderstanding or\noppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless controversy, inwards\nupon herself.\n\nAlready, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, the time was gone by when men\nbecame Christians under some sudden and overpowering impression, and\nwith all the disturbing results of such a crisis. At this period the\nlarger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had been ever with\npeaceful hearts in their \u201cFather\u2019s house.\u201d That earlier belief in the\nspeedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with the\nconsequences it so naturally involved in the temper of men\u2019s minds, was\ndying out. Every day the contrast between the church and the world was\nbecoming less pronounced. And now also, as the church rested awhile\nfrom opposition, that rapid self-development outward from within,\nproper to times of peace, was in progress. Antoninus Pius, it might\nseem, more truly even than Marcus Aurelius himself, was of that group\nof pagan saints for whom Dante, like Augustine, has provided in his\nscheme of the house with many mansions. A sincere old Roman piety had\nurged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes, no offences\nagainst humanity. And of his entire freedom from guile one reward had\nbeen this singular happiness, that under his rule there was no shedding\nof Christian blood. To him belonged that half-humorous placidity of\nsoul, of a kind illustrated later very effectively by Montaigne, which,\nstarting with an instinct of mere fairness towards human nature and the\nworld, seems at last actually to qualify its possessor to be almost the\nfriend of the people of Christ. Amiable, in its own nature, and full of\na reasonable gaiety, Christianity has often had its advantage of\ncharacters such as that. The geniality of Antoninus Pius, like the\ngeniality of the earth itself, had permitted the church, as being in\ntruth no alien from that old mother earth, to expand and thrive for a\nseason as by natural process. And that charmed period under the\nAntonines, extending to the later years of the reign of Aurelius\n(beautiful, brief, chapter of ecclesiastical history!), contains, as\none of its motives of interest, the earliest development of Christian\nritual under the presidence of the church of Rome.\n\nAgain as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of the Shepherd of\nHermas, \u201cthe aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful.\nAnd in the third vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty:\nonly her hair was that of an aged woman. And at the last she was\njoyous, and seated upon a throne\u2014seated upon a throne, because her\nposition is a strong one.\u201d The subterranean worship of the church\nbelonged properly to those years of her early history in which it was\nillegal for her to worship at all. But, hiding herself for awhile as\nconflict grew violent, she resumed, when there was felt to be no more\nthan ordinary risk, her natural freedom. And the kind of outward\nprosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first \u201cPeace,\u201d her\nmodes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced by\nthe decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history.\n\nIn the history of the church, as throughout the moral history of\nmankind, there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possible\nto maintain\u2014two conceptions, under one or the other of which we may\nrepresent to ourselves men\u2019s efforts towards a better\nlife\u2014corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as\ndiscernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament itself of the\ncharacter of Christ. The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as\nessentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to\nanother, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it;\nwhile the ideal of culture represents it as a harmonious development of\nall the parts of human nature, in just proportion to each other. It was\nto the latter order of ideas that the church, and especially the church\nof Rome in the age of the Antonines, freely lent herself. In that\nearlier \u201cPeace\u201d she had set up for herself the ideal of spiritual\ndevelopment, under the guidance of an instinct by which, in those\nserene moments, she was absolutely true to the peaceful soul of her\nFounder. \u201cGoodwill to men,\u201d she said, \u201cin whom God Himself is\nwell-pleased!\u201d For a little while, at least, there was no forced\nopposition between the soul and the body, the world and the spirit, and\nthe grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently with the people of\nChrist. Tact, good sense, ever the note of a true orthodoxy, the\nmerciful compromises of the church, indicative of her imperial vocation\nin regard to all the varieties of human kind, with a universality of\nwhich the old Roman pastorship she was superseding is but a prototype,\nwas already become conspicuous, in spite of a discredited, irritating,\nvindictive society, all around her.\n\nAgainst that divine urbanity and moderation the old error of Montanus\nwe read of dimly, was a fanatical revolt\u2014sour, falsely anti-mundane,\never with an air of ascetic affectation, and a bigoted distaste in\nparticular for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. By it the desire\nto please was understood to come of the author of evil. In this\ninterval of quietness, it was perhaps inevitable, by the law of\nreaction, that some such extravagances of the religious temper should\narise. But again the church of Rome, now becoming every day more and\nmore completely the capital of the Christian world, checked the nascent\nMontanism, or puritanism of the moment, vindicating for all Christian\npeople a cheerful liberty of heart, against many a narrow group of\nsectaries, all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genial\ncreation of God. With her full, fresh faith in the Evangele\u2014in a\nveritable regeneration of the earth and the body, in the dignity of\nman\u2019s entire personal being\u2014for a season, at least, at that critical\nperiod in the development of Christianity, she was for reason, for\ncommon sense, for fairness to human nature, and generally for what may\nbe called the naturalness of Christianity.\u2014As also for its comely\norder: she would be \u201cbrought to her king in raiment of needlework.\u201d It\nwas by the bishops of Rome, diligently transforming themselves, in the\ntrue catholic sense, into universal pastors, that the path of what we\nmust call humanism was thus defined.\n\nAnd then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at last the catholic\nchurch might venture to show her outward lineaments as they really\nwere, worship\u2014\u201cthe beauty of holiness,\u201d nay! the elegance of\nsanctity\u2014was developed, with a bold and confident gladness, the like of\nwhich has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. The tables\nin fact were turned: the prize of a cheerful temper on a candid survey\nof life was no longer with the pagan world. The \u00e6sthetic charm of the\ncatholic church, her evocative power over all that is eloquent and\nexpressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeliness, her\ndignifying convictions about human nature:\u2014all this, as abundantly\nrealised centuries later by Dante and Giotto, by the great medieval\nchurch-builders, by the great ritualists like Saint Gregory, and the\nmasters of sacred music in the middle age\u2014we may see already, in dim\nanticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the second\ncentury. Dissipated or turned aside, partly through the fatal mistake\nof Marcus Aurelius himself, for a brief space of time we may discern\nthat influence clearly predominant there. What might seem harsh as\ndogma was already justifying itself as worship; according to the sound\nrule: Lex orandi, lex credendi\u2014Our Creeds are but the brief abstract of\nour prayer and song.\n\nThe wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her wholly unparalleled\ngenius for worship, being thus awake, she was rapidly re-organising\nboth pagan and Jewish elements of ritual, for the expanding therein of\nher own new heart of devotion. Like the institutions of monasticism,\nlike the Gothic style of architecture, the ritual system of the church,\nas we see it in historic retrospect, ranks as one of the great,\nconjoint, and (so to term them) necessary, products of human mind.\nDestined for ages to come, to direct with so deep a fascination men\u2019s\nreligious instincts, it was then already recognisable as a new and\nprecious fact in the sum of things. What has been on the whole the\nmethod of the church, as \u201ca power of sweetness and patience,\u201d in\ndealing with matters like pagan art, pagan literature was even then\nmanifest; and has the character of the moderation, the divine\nmoderation of Christ himself. It was only among the ignorant, indeed,\nonly in the \u201cvillages,\u201d that Christianity, even in conscious triumph\nover paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In the final\n\u201cPeace\u201d of the Church under Constantine, while there was plenty of\ndestructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution was accomplished\nin the larger towns, in a manner more orderly and discreet\u2014in the Roman\nmanner. The faithful were bent less on the destruction of the old pagan\ntemples than on their conversion to a new and higher use; and, with\nmuch beautiful furniture ready to hand, they became Christian\nsanctuaries.\n\nAlready, in accordance with such maturer wisdom, the church of the\n\u201cMinor Peace\u201d had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling and pagan\ncustom; as being indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming,\naccommodating still more closely to the human heart what of right\nbelonged to it. In this way an obscure synagogue was expanded into the\ncatholic church. Gathering, from a richer and more varied field of\nsound than had remained for him, those old Roman harmonies, some notes\nof which Gregory the Great, centuries later, and after generations of\ninterrupted development, formed into the Gregorian music, she was\nalready, as we have heard, the house of song\u2014of a wonderful new music\nand poesy. As if in anticipation of the sixteenth century, the church\nwas becoming \u201chumanistic,\u201d in an earlier, and unimpeachable\nRenaissance. Singing there had been in abundance from the first; though\noften it dared only be \u201cof the heart.\u201d And it burst forth, when it\nmight, into the beginnings of a true ecclesiastical music; the Jewish\npsalter, inherited from the synagogue, turning now, gradually, from\nGreek into Latin\u2014broken Latin, into Italian, as the ritual use of the\nrich, fresh, expressive vernacular superseded the earlier authorised\nlanguage of the Church. Through certain surviving remnants of Greek in\nthe later Latin liturgies, we may still discern a highly interesting\nintermediate phase of ritual development, when the Greek and the Latin\nwere in combination; the poor, surely!\u2014the poor and the children of\nthat liberal Roman church\u2014responding already in their own \u201cvulgar\ntongue,\u201d to an office said in the original, liturgical Greek. That hymn\nsung in the early morning, of which Pliny had heard, was kindling into\nthe service of the Mass.\n\nThe Mass, indeed, would appear to have been said continuously from the\nApostolic age. Its details, as one by one they become visible in later\nhistory, have already the character of what is ancient and venerable.\n\u201cWe are very old, and ye are young!\u201d they seem to protest, to those who\nfail to understand them. Ritual, in fact, like all other elements of\nreligion, must grow and cannot be made\u2014grow by the same law of\ndevelopment which prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in the\nphysical world. As regards this special phase of the religious life,\nhowever, such development seems to have been unusually rapid in the\nsubterranean age which preceded Constantine; and in the very first days\nof the final triumph of the church the Mass emerges to general view\nalready substantially complete. \u201cWisdom\u201d was dealing, as with the dust\nof creeds and philosophies, so also with the dust of outworn religious\nusage, like the very spirit of life itself, organising soul and body\nout of the lime and clay of the earth. In a generous eclecticism,\nwithin the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power\nwithin her, she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so\nin ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources\u2014Gnostic,\nJewish, Pagan\u2014to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the\nworld has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church came to be\u2014full\nof consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day,\nunder the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take\nexclusive possession of the religious consciousness.\n\nTANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM VENEREMUR CERNUI:\nET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUM\nNOVO CEDAT RITUI.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII.\nDIVINE SERVICE.\n\n\n\u201cWisdom hath builded herself a house: she hath mingled her wine: she\nhath also prepared for herself a table.\u201d\n\n\nThe more highly favoured ages of imaginative art present instances of\nthe summing up of an entire world of complex associations under some\nsingle form, like the Zeus of Olympia, or the series of frescoes which\ncommemorate The Acts of Saint Francis, at Assisi, or like the play of\nHamlet or Faust. It was not in an image, or series of images, yet still\nin a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of a single appeal to\neye and ear, that Marius about this time found all his new impressions\nset forth, regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, as\nfor him at least the most beautiful thing in the world.\n\nTo understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader must\nremember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense of\nvacuity in life. The fairest products of the earth seemed to be\ndropping to pieces, as if in men\u2019s very hands, around him. How real was\ntheir sorrow, and his! \u201cHis observation of life\u201d had come to be like\nthe constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till, as if\ntaking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eye also, the\nvery senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happened as with the\nactual morning on which he found himself a spectator of this new thing.\nThe long winter had been a season of unvarying sullenness. At last, on\nthis day he awoke with a sharp flash of lightning in the earliest\ntwilight: in a little while the heavy rain had filtered the air: the\nclear light was abroad; and, as though the spring had set in with a\nsudden leap in the heart of things, the whole scene around him lay like\nsome untarnished picture beneath a sky of delicate blue. Under the\nspell of his late depression, Marius had suddenly determined to leave\nRome for a while. But desiring first to advertise Cornelius of his\nmovements, and failing to find him in his lodgings, he had ventured,\nstill early in the day, to seek him in the Cecilian villa. Passing\nthrough its silent and empty court-yard he loitered for a moment, to\nadmire. Under the clear but immature light of winter morning after a\nstorm, all the details of form and colour in the old marbles were\ndistinctly visible, and with a kind of severity or sadness\u2014so it struck\nhim\u2014amid their beauty: in them, and in all other details of the\nscene\u2014the cypresses, the bunches of pale daffodils in the grass, the\ncurves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of virgin snow\nstill lying in their hollows.\n\nThe little open door, through which he passed from the court-yard,\nadmitted him into what was plainly the vast Lararium, or domestic\nsanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, but\nstill richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture in\nmetal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed to\nbe lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and here,\nthough at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of people\nwas assembled. In that brief period of peace, during which the church\nemerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, the\nrigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. And so it came\nto pass that, on this morning Marius saw for the first time the\nwonderful spectacle\u2014wonderful, especially, in its evidential power over\nhimself, over his own thoughts\u2014of those who believe.\n\nThere were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of\nage, of personal type. The Roman ingenuus, with the white toga and gold\nring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the whole\ncompany was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming\nthus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a\nsilence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a\nmoment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet\nthat could scarcely be, for the people here collected might have\nfigured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the\nvery face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the\nvariety of human type there present, was the various expression of\nevery form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of\ndesire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks of\naged men and women of humble condition? Those young men, bent down so\ndiscreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life and\nwere glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to which\nthere had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was some\ncredible message from beyond \u201cthe flaming rampart of the world\u201d\u2014a\nmessage of hope, regarding the place of men\u2019s souls and their interest\nin the sum of things\u2014already moulding anew their very bodies, and\nlooks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and\nkindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything else\nMarius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean. There were\nthe children, above all\u2014troops of children\u2014reminding him of those\npathetic children\u2019s graves, like cradles or garden- beds, he had\nnoticed in his first visit to these places; and they more than\nsatisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wondering\nin what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into the\ndaylight, if awakened from sleep. Children of the Catacombs, some but\n\u201ca span long,\u201d with features not so much beautiful as heroic (that\nworld of new, refining sentiment having set its seal even on\nchildhood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of anything\nsubterranean this morning, in the alacrity of their worship\u2014as ready as\nif they had been at play\u2014stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting\nin a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned faces, Christe Eleison!\n\nFor the silence\u2014silence, amid those lights of early morning to which\nMarius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in them\na certain reproachful austerity\u2014was broken suddenly by resounding cries\nof Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! repeated alternately, again and\nagain, until the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that this\nprayer should cease. But the voices burst out once more presently, in\nricher and more varied melody, though still of an antiphonal character;\nthe men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, answering one\nanother, somewhat after the manner of a Greek chorus. But again with\nwhat a novelty of poetic accent; what a genuine expansion of heart;\nwhat profound intimations for the intellect, as the meaning of the\nwords grew upon him! Cum grandi affectu et compunctione dicatur\u2014says an\nancient eucharistic order; and certainly, the mystic tone of this\npraying and singing was one with the expression of deliverance, of\ngrateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces of those assembled. As\nif some searching correction, a regeneration of the body by the spirit,\nhad begun, and was already gone a great way, the countenances of men,\nwomen, and children alike had a brightness on them which he could fancy\nreflected upon himself\u2014an amenity, a mystic amiability and unction,\nwhich found its way most readily of all to the hearts of children\nthemselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrew psalms\u2014Benedixisti\nDomine terram tuam: Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sede a dextris meis\u2014was\ncertainly in marvellous accord with the lyrical instinct of his own\ncharacter. Those august hymns, he thought, must thereafter ever remain\nby him as among the well-tested powers in things to soothe and fortify\nthe soul. One could never grow tired of them!\n\nIn the old pagan worship there had been little to call the\nunderstanding into play. Here, on the other hand, the utterance, the\neloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as Marius readily understood,\na fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. That became\nevident, more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which,\nlike the singing, in broken vernacular Latin, occurred at certain\nintervals, amid the silence of the assembly. There were readings, again\nwith bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on a\ndifficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy,\nhaunting men\u2019s minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than had\never belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention,\ninto the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, at\nlength complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with a\nthousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart,\ndisplaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournful\nfigure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistently\nturned\u2014a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincture\nin his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in the\nexperiences of the past.\n\nIt was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebrated\nto-day. Astiterunt reges terrae: so the Gradual, the \u201cSong of Degrees,\u201d\nproceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar responding in deep,\nclear, antiphon or chorus\u2014\n\nAstiterunt reges terrae\u2014\nAdversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum:\nNunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum\u2014\nEt signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu.\n\n\nAnd the proper action of the rite itself, like a half-opened book to be\nread by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, and carried\nthem forward into the present, as having reference to a power still\nefficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in action among the\npeople there assembled. The entire office, indeed, with its interchange\nof lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like a single piece of\nhighly composite, dramatic music; a \u201csong of degrees,\u201d rising steadily\nto a climax. Notwithstanding the absence of any central image visible\nto the eye, the entire ceremonial process, like the place in which it\nwas enacted, was weighty with symbolic significance, seemed to express\na single leading motive. The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered\nindeed in the actions of one visible person, distinguished among the\nassistants, who stood ranged in semicircle around him, by the extreme\nfineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden\nornaments upon his head.\n\nNor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceived\nit\u2014sicut unguentum in capite, descendens in oram vestimenti\u2014so fully\nrealised, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of this novel\npontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by the\nyoung men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved his\nhands\u2014hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysterious\npower\u2014at the Lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or to bless\ncertain objects on the table before him, chanting in cadence of a grave\nsweetness the leading parts of the rite. What profound unction and\nmysticity! The solemn character of the singing was at its height when\nhe opened his lips. Like some new sort of rhaps\u00f4dos, it was for the\nmoment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and they\nflowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him. The\ntable or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiral\ncolumns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful \u201cwitness,\u201d of the family of\nthe Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whose\nrelics were still in this place. It was for his sake the bishop put his\nlips so often to the surface before him; the regretful memory of that\ndeath entwining itself, though not without certain notes of triumph, as\na matter of special inward significance, throughout a service, which\nwas, before all else, from first to last, a commemoration of the dead.\n\nA sacrifice also,\u2014a sacrifice, it might seem, like the most primitive,\nthe most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices, of\nthe simplest fruits of the earth. And in connexion with this\ncircumstance again, as in the actual stones of the building so in the\nrite itself, what Marius observed was not so much new matter as a new\nspirit, moulding, informing, with a new intention, many observances not\nwitnessed for the first time to-day. Men and women came to the altar\nsuccessively, in perfect order, and deposited below the lattice-work of\npierced white marble, their baskets of wheat and grapes, incense, oil\nfor the sanctuary lamps; bread and wine especially\u2014pure wheaten bread,\nthe pure white wine of the Tusculan vineyards. There was here a\nveritable consecration, hopeful and animating, of the earth\u2019s gifts, of\nold dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of\nall that we can touch or see, in the midst of a jaded world that had\nlost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise\nemperor\u2019s renunciant and impassive attitude towards them. Certain\nportions of that bread and wine were taken into the bishop\u2019s hands; and\nthereafter, with an increasing mysticity and effusion the rite\nproceeded. Still in a strain of inspired supplication, the antiphonal\nsinging developed, from this point, into a kind of dialogue between the\nchief minister and the whole assisting company\u2014\n\nSURSUM CORDA!\nHABEMUS AD DOMINUM.\nGRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO!\u2014\n\n\nIt might have been thought the business, the duty or service of young\nmen more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severe\nand simple vesture of the purest white\u2014a service in which they would\nseem to be flying for refuge, as with their precious, their treacherous\nand critical youth in their hands, to one\u2014Yes! one like themselves, who\nyet claimed their worship, a worship, above all, in the way of\nAurelius, in the way of imitation. Adoramus te Christe, quia per crucem\ntuam redemisti mundum!\u2014they cry together. So deep is the emotion that\nat moments it seems to Marius as if some there present apprehend that\nprayer prevails, that the very object of this pathetic crying himself\ndraws near. From the first there had been the sense, an increasing\nassurance, of one coming:\u2014actually with them now, according to the\noft-repeated affirmation or petition, Dominus vobiscum! Some at least\nwere quite sure of it; and the confidence of this remnant fired the\nhearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all the rest\nabout them.\n\nPrompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old Jewish\npsalmody, so new to him\u2014lesson and hymn\u2014and catching therewith a\nportion of the enthusiasm of those beside him, Marius could discern\ndimly, behind the solemn recitation which now followed, at once a\nnarrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly that had ever\ncome within the scope of his mental or physical gaze. It was the image\nof a young man giving up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest of\nends, the greatest gifts; actually parting with himself, above all,\nwith the serenity, the divine serenity, of his own soul; yet from the\nmidst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of his success,\nas if foreseeing this very worship.* As centre of the supposed facts\nwhich for these people were become so constraining a motive of\nhopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display itself with an\noverwhelming claim on human gratitude. What Saint Lewis of France\ndiscerned, and found so irresistibly touching, across the dimness of\nmany centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him by one he had\nnever seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday; and their\nhearts were whole with it. It had the force, among their interests, of\nan almost recent event in the career of one whom their fathers\u2019 fathers\nmight have known. From memories so sublime, yet so close at hand, had\nthe narrative descended in which these acts of worship centered; though\nagain the names of some more recently dead were mingled in it. And it\nseemed as if the very dead were aware; to be stirring beneath the slabs\nof the sepulchres which lay so near, that they might associate\nthemselves to this enthusiasm\u2014to this exalted worship of Jesus.\n\n* Psalm xxii. 22-31.\n\n\nOne by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chief\nminister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken into\nhis hands\u2014Perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, as\nthey depart again, after discreet embraces. The Eucharist of those\nearly days was, even more entirely than at any later or happier time,\nan act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast are borne\naway for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of the rite\nreaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn like the\nspontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contending\naccordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness,\nprovoking one another\u2019s worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry.\n\nIte! Missa est!\u2014cried the young deacons: and Marius departed from that\nstrange scene along with the rest. What was it?\u2014Was it this made the\nway of Cornelius so pleasant through the world? As for Marius\nhimself,\u2014the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfied\nas never before. He felt, as he left that place, that he must hereafter\nexperience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for all this, over\nagain. And it seemed moreover to define what he must require of the\npowers, whatsoever they might be, that had brought him into the world\nat all, to make him not unhappy in it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIV.\nA CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY\n\n\nIn cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny\u2014studia\nhilaritate proveniunt. It was still the habit of Marius, encouraged by\nhis experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of\nstimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when\nhe might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night.\n\u201cThe morning for creation,\u201d he would say; \u201cthe afternoon for the\nperfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception\u2014the reception\nof matter from without one, of other men\u2019s words and thoughts\u2014matter\nfor our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain,\nbrooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers.\u201d To leave home early\nin the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do\non the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer Lucian, whom he\nhad been bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with the\nlearned guest, having offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a\nwell-known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic philosophy, a\nteacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of Rome. On\nreaching the place, however, they found the doors closed, with a slip\nof writing attached, which proclaimed \u201ca holiday\u201d; and the morning\nbeing a fine one, they walked further, along the Appian Way. Mortality,\nwith which the Queen of Ways\u2014in reality the favourite cemetery of\nRome\u2014was so closely crowded, in every imaginable form of sepulchre,\nfrom the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument out of which the\nMiddle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem, on a morning like\nthis, to be \u201csmiling through tears.\u201d The flower-stalls just beyond the\ncity gates presented to view an array of posies and garlands, fresh\nenough for a wedding. At one and another of them groups of persons,\ngravely clad, were making their bargains before starting for some\nperhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies rosationis, this\nbeing the time of roses, at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and\nthere, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to\nthe gaiety of the hour.\n\nThe two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolled\nalong. In one, reminding them of the poet\u2019s\u2014Si lacrimae prosunt, visis\nte ostende videri!\u2014a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her\ndreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an imploring cry, still\nto be sought after by the living. \u201cWhile I live,\u201d such was the promise\nof a lover to his dead mistress, \u201cyou will receive this homage: after\nmy death,\u2014who can tell?\u201d\u2014post mortem nescio. \u201cIf ghosts, my sons, do\nfeel anything after death, my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent\ncoming to me here!\u201d \u201cThis is a privileged tomb; to my family and\ndescendants has been conceded the right of visiting this place as often\nas they please.\u201d \u201cThis is an eternal habitation; here lie I; here I\nshall lie for ever.\u201d \u201cReader! if you doubt that the soul survives, make\nyour oblation and a prayer for me; and you shall understand!\u201d\n\nThe elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by those\npathetic suggestions. It was long ago that after visiting the banks of\nthe Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of\nPhaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for all\narranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to\nwhat might lie beyond its \u201cflaming barriers.\u201d And at the age of sixty\nhe had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far from\nunamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed\nhim. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine\naristocratic manners, with \u201ca rampart,\u201d through which he himself never\nbroke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay,\nanimated, content with his old age as it was, the aged student still\ntook a lively interest in studious youth.\u2014Could Marius inform him of\nany such, now known to him in Rome? What did the young men learn, just\nthen? and how?\n\nIn answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young\nstudent, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucian\nhimself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming\nalong briskly\u2014a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the\nsane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn of\nfeature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for\nfine glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused suddenly,\nand with a modest blush on recognising his companion, who straightway\ntook with the youth, so prettily enthusiastic, the freedom of an old\nfriend.\n\nIn a few moments the three were seated together, immediately above the\nfragrant borders of a rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of the\nexhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside, from which\nthey could overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Campagna, and\nenjoy the air. Fancying that the lad\u2019s plainly written enthusiasm had\ninduced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual with\nhim, Marius listened to the conversation which follows.\u2014\n\n\u201cAh! Hermotimus! Hurrying to lecture! \u2014if I may judge by your pace, and\nthat volume in your hand. You were thinking hard as you came along,\nmoving your lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech you were\npondering, some knotty question, some viewy doctrine\u2014not to be idle for\na moment, to be making progress in philosophy, even on your way to the\nschools. To-day, however, you need go no further. We read a notice at\nthe schools that there would be no lecture. Stay therefore, and talk\nawhile with us.\n\n\u2014With pleasure, Lucian.\u2014Yes! I was ruminating yesterday\u2019s conference.\nOne must not lose a moment. Life is short and art is long! And it was\nof the art of medicine, that was first said\u2014a thing so much easier than\ndivine philosophy, to which one can hardly attain in a lifetime, unless\none be ever wakeful, ever on the watch. And here the hazard is no\nlittle one:\u2014By the attainment of a true philosophy to attain happiness;\nor, having missed both, to perish, as one of the vulgar herd.\n\n\u2014The prize is a great one, Hermotimus! and you must needs be near it,\nafter these months of toil, and with that scholarly pallor of yours.\nUnless, indeed, you have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in the\ndark.\n\n\u2014How could that be, Lucian? Happiness, as Hesiod says, abides very far\nhence; and the way to it is long and steep and rough. I see myself\nstill at the beginning of my journey; still but at the mountain\u2019s foot.\nI am trying with all my might to get forward. What I need is a hand,\nstretched out to help me.\n\n\u2014And is not the master sufficient for that? Could he not, like Zeus in\nHomer, let down to you, from that high place, a golden cord, to draw\nyou up thither, to himself and to that Happiness, to which he ascended\nso long ago?\n\n\u2014The very point, Lucian! Had it depended on him I should long ago have\nbeen caught up. \u2019Tis I, am wanting.\n\n\u2014Well! keep your eye fixed on the journey\u2019s end, and that happiness\nthere above, with confidence in his goodwill.\n\n\u2014Ah! there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed a\ncertain distance, but lose heart when they light on the obstacles of\nthe way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the mountain\u2019s\ntop, and thereafter live in Happiness:\u2014live a wonderful manner of life,\nseeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny\nants.\n\n\u2014What little fellows you make of us\u2014less than the pygmies\u2014down in the\ndust here. Well! we, \u2018the vulgar herd,\u2019 as we creep along, will not\nforget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above the\nclouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me,\nHermotimus!\u2014when do you expect to arrive there?\n\n\u2014Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, I shall be really on\nthe summit.\u2014A great while! you think. But then, again, the prize I\ncontend for is a great one.\n\n\u2014Perhaps! But as to those twenty years\u2014that you will live so long. Has\nthe master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as a\nphilosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere\nchance\u2014toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere the\nlast step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, with\nyour hope still unfulfilled.\n\n\u2014Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive but for\na day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom.\n\n\u2014How?\u2014Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours?\n\n\u2014Yes! one blessed moment were enough!\n\n\u2014But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is to\nbe had up there, at all\u2014the happiness that is to make all this worth\nwhile?\n\n\u2014I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty he knows, being now\nfar above all others.\n\n\u2014And what was it he told you about it? Is it riches, or glory, or some\nindescribable pleasure?\n\n\u2014Hush! my friend! All those are nothing in comparison of the life\nthere.\n\n\u2014What, then, shall those who come to the end of this discipline\u2014what\nexcellent thing shall they receive, if not these?\n\n\u2014Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sure\nand certain knowledge of all things\u2014how they are. Riches and glory and\npleasure\u2014whatsoever belongs to the body\u2014they have cast from them:\nstripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as Hercules, consumed in\nthe fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he had of his\nearthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure and\nundefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even so\ndo they, detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of a\ntrue philosophy, ascend to the highest degree of happiness.\n\n\u2014Strange! And do they never come down again from the heights to help\nthose whom they left below? Must they, when they be once come thither,\nthere remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize?\n\n\u2014More than that! They whose initiation is entire are subject no longer\nto anger, fear, desire, regret. Nay! They scarcely feel at all.\n\n\u2014Well! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an old friend in what\nway you first started on your philosophic journey? For, if I might, I\nshould like to join company with you from this very day.\n\n\u2014If you be really willing, Lucian! you will learn in no long time your\nadvantage over all other people. They will seem but as children, so far\nabove them will be your thoughts.\n\n\u2014Well! Be you my guide! It is but fair. But tell me\u2014Do you allow\nlearners to contradict, if anything is said which they don\u2019t think\nright?\n\n\u2014No, indeed! Still, if you wish, oppose your questions. In that way you\nwill learn more easily.\n\n\u2014Let me know, then\u2014Is there one only way which leads to a true\nphilosophy\u2014your own way\u2014the way of the Stoics: or is it true, as I have\nheard, that there are many ways of approaching it?\n\n\u2014Yes! Many ways! There are the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, and those\nwho call themselves after Plato: there are the enthusiasts for\nDiogenes, and Antisthenes, and the followers of Pythagoras, besides\nothers.\n\n\u2014It was true, then. But again, is what they say the same or different?\n\n\u2014Very different.\n\n\u2014Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the same, from all of\nthem. Answer me then\u2014In what, or in whom, did you confide when you\nfirst betook yourself to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open to\nyou, passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there alone\nlay the way of truth? What token had you? Forget, please, all you are\nto-day\u2014half-way, or more, on the philosophic journey: answer me as you\nwould have done then, a mere outsider as I am now.\n\n\u2014Willingly! It was there the great majority went! \u2019Twas by that I\njudged it to be the better way.\n\n\u2014A majority how much greater than the Epicureans, the Platonists, the\nPeripatetics? You, doubtless, counted them respectively, as with the\nvotes in a scrutiny.\n\n\u2014No! But this was not my only motive. I heard it said by every one that\nthe Epicureans were soft and voluptuous, the Peripatetics avaricious\nand quarrelsome, and Plato\u2019s followers puffed up with pride. But of the\nStoics, not a few pronounced that they were true men, that they knew\neverything, that theirs was the royal road, the one road, to wealth, to\nwisdom, to all that can be desired.\n\n\u2014Of course those who said this were not themselves Stoics: you would\nnot have believed them\u2014still less their opponents. They were the\nvulgar, therefore.\n\n\u2014True! But you must know that I did not trust to others exclusively. I\ntrusted also to myself\u2014to what I saw. I saw the Stoics going through\nthe world after a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess, always\ncollected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce \u2018golden.\u2019\n\n\u2014You are trying an experiment on me. You would fain see how far you can\nmislead me as to your real ground. The kind of probation you describe\nis applicable, indeed, to works of art, which are rightly judged by\ntheir appearance to the eye. There is something in the comely form, the\ngraceful drapery, which tells surely of the hand of Pheidias or\nAlcamenes. But if philosophy is to be judged by outward appearances,\nwhat would become of the blind man, for instance, unable to observe the\nattire and gait of your friends the Stoics?\n\n\u2014It was not of the blind I was thinking.\n\n\u2014Yet there must needs be some common criterion in a matter so important\nto all. Put the blind, if you will, beyond the privileges of\nphilosophy; though they perhaps need that inward vision more than all\nothers. But can those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted as you\nwill, collect a single fact of mind from a man\u2019s attire, from anything\noutward?\u2014Understand me! You attached yourself to these men\u2014did you\nnot?\u2014because of a certain love you had for the mind in them, the\nthoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to be improved\nthereby?\n\n\u2014Assuredly!\n\n\u2014How, then, did you find it possible, by the sort of signs you just now\nspoke of, to distinguish the true philosopher from the false? Matters\nof that kind are not wont so to reveal themselves. They are but hidden\nmysteries, hardly to be guessed at through the words and acts which may\nin some sort be conformable to them. You, however, it would seem, can\nlook straight into the heart in men\u2019s bosoms, and acquaint yourself\nwith what really passes there.\n\n\u2014You are making sport of me, Lucian! In truth, it was with God\u2019s help I\nmade my choice, and I don\u2019t repent it.\n\n\u2014And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from perishing in that\n\u2018vulgar herd.\u2019\n\n\u2014Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you.\n\n\u2014You are mistaken, my friend! But since you deliberately conceal the\nthing, grudging me, as I suppose, that true philosophy which would make\nme equal to you, I will try, if it may be, to find out for myself the\nexact criterion in these matters\u2014how to make a perfectly safe choice.\nAnd, do you listen.\n\n\u2014I will; there may be something worth knowing in what you will say.\n\n\u2014Well!\u2014only don\u2019t laugh if I seem a little fumbling in my efforts. The\nfault is yours, in refusing to share your lights with me. Let\nPhilosophy, then, be like a city\u2014a city whose citizens within it are a\nhappy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come thence,\nas we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little less\nthan gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be\nseen in their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly; the\nthings which beyond everything else cause men to contend against each\nother, having no place upon them. Gold and silver, pleasure, vainglory,\nthey have long since banished, as being unprofitable to the\ncommonwealth; and their life is an unbroken calm, in liberty, equality,\nan equal happiness.\n\n\u2014And is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a city\nsuch as that, and take no account of the length and difficulty of the\nway thither, so only they may one day become its freemen?\n\n\u2014It might well be the business of life:\u2014leaving all else, forgetting\none\u2019s native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands,\nof parents or children, if one had them\u2014only bidding them follow the\nsame road; and if they would not or could not, shaking them off,\nleaving one\u2019s very garment in their hands if they took hold on us, to\nstart off straightway for that happy place! For there is no fear, I\nsuppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I remember,\nindeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there,\noffering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in the\nnumber of the citizens. I was but fifteen\u2014certainly very foolish: and\nit may be that I was then actually within the suburbs, or at the very\ngates, of the city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things,\nthat all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among them were\nbarbarians and slaves, poor men\u2014aye! and cripples\u2014all indeed who truly\ndesired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions of enrolment\nwere\u2014not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble ancestry\u2014things not named\namong them\u2014but intelligence, and the desire for moral beauty, and\nearnest labour. The last comer, thus qualified, was made equal to the\nrest: master and slave, patrician, plebeian, were words they had not\u2014in\nthat blissful place. And believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful\nplace, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago\nhave journeyed thither. But, as you say, it is far off: and one must\nneeds find out for oneself the road to it, and the best possible guide.\nAnd I find a multitude of guides, who press on me their services, and\nprotest, all alike, that they have themselves come thence. Only, the\nroads they propose are many, and towards adverse quarters. And one of\nthem is steep and stony, and through the beating sun; and the other is\nthrough green meadows, and under grateful shade, and by many a fountain\nof water. But howsoever the road may be, at each one of them stands a\ncredible guide; he puts out his hand and would have you come his way.\nAll other ways are wrong, all other guides false. Hence my\ndifficulty!\u2014The number and variety of the ways! For you know, There is\nbut one road that leads to Corinth.\n\n\u2014Well! If you go the whole round, you will find no better guides than\nthose. If you wish to get to Corinth, you will follow the traces of\nZeno and Chrysippus. It is impossible otherwise.\n\n\u2014Yes! The old, familiar language! Were one of Plato\u2019s fellow-pilgrims\nhere, or a follower of Epicurus\u2014or fifty others\u2014each would tell me that\nI should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore\ncredit all alike, which would be absurd; or, what is far safer,\ndistrust all alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now,\nthat, being as I am, ignorant which of all philosophers is really in\npossession of truth, I choose your sect, relying on yourself\u2014my friend,\nindeed, yet still acquainted only with the way of the Stoics; and that\nthen some divine power brought Plato, and Aristotle, and Pythagoras,\nand the others, back to life again. Well! They would come round about\nme, and put me on my trial for my presumption, and say:\u2014\u2018In whom was it\nyou confided when you preferred Zeno and Chrysippus to me?\u2014and\nme?\u2014masters of far more venerable age than those, who are but of\nyesterday; and though you have never held any discussion with us, nor\nmade trial of our doctrine? It is not thus that the law would have\njudges do\u2014listen to one party and refuse to let the other speak for\nhimself. If judges act thus, there may be an appeal to another\ntribunal.\u2019 What should I answer? Would it be enough to say:\u2014\u2018I trusted\nmy friend Hermotimus?\u2019\u2014\u2018We know not Hermotimus, nor he us,\u2019 they would\ntell me; adding, with a smile, \u2018your friend thinks he may believe all\nour adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in malice. Yet if he\nwere umpire in the games, and if he happened to see one of our\nwrestlers, by way of a preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an\nantagonist of mere empty air, he would not thereupon pronounce him a\nvictor. Well! don\u2019t let your friend Hermotimus suppose, in like manner,\nthat his teachers have really prevailed over us in those battles of\ntheirs, fought with our mere shadows. That, again, were to be like\nchildren, lightly overthrowing their own card-castles; or like\nboy-archers, who cry out when they hit the target of straw. The Persian\nand Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, can pierce a bird on the\nwing.\u2019\n\n\u2014Let us leave Plato and the others at rest. It is not for me to contend\nagainst them. Let us rather search out together if the truth of\nPhilosophy be as I say. Why summon the athletes, and archers from\nPersia?\n\n\u2014Yes! let them go, if you think them in the way. And now do you speak!\nYou really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver.\n\n\u2014Well then, Lucian! to me it seems quite possible for one who has\nlearned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those a\nknowledge of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into all the\nvarious tenets of the others. Look at the question in this way. If one\ntold you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for you to go\nthe whole round of the arithmeticians, to see whether any one of them\nwill say that twice two make five, or seven? Would you not see at once\nthat the man tells the truth?\n\n\u2014At once.\n\n\u2014Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the\nStoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere to\nthem, and seek after no others; assured that four could never be five,\neven if fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so?\n\n\u2014You are beside the point, Hermotimus! You are likening open questions\nto principles universally received. Have you ever met any one who said\nthat twice two make five, or seven?\n\n\u2014No! only a madman would say that.\n\n\u2014And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an Epicurean who\nwere agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and the final\ncause, of things? Never! Then your parallel is false. We are inquiring\nto which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you seize on it by\nanticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, alleging, what is by no\nmeans clear, that it is they for whom twice two make four. But the\nEpicureans, or the Platonists, might say that it is they, in truth, who\nmake two and two equal four, while you make them five or seven. Is it\nnot so, when you think virtue the only good, and the Epicureans\npleasure; when you hold all things to be material, while the Platonists\nadmit something immaterial? As I said, you resolve offhand, in favour\nof the Stoics, the very point which needs a critical decision. If it is\nclear beforehand that the Stoics alone make two and two equal four,\nthen the others must hold their peace. But so long as that is the very\npoint of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, or be well-assured\nthat we shall seem but partial in our judgment.\n\n\u2014I think, Lucian! that you do not altogether understand my meaning. To\nmake it clear, then, let us suppose that two men had entered a temple,\nof Aesculapius,\u2014say! or Bacchus: and that afterwards one of the sacred\nvessels is found to be missing. And the two men must be searched to see\nwhich of them has hidden it under his garment. For it is certainly in\nthe possession of one or the other of them. Well! if it be found on the\nfirst there will be no need to search the second; if it is not found on\nthe first, then the other must have it; and again, there will be no\nneed to search him.\n\n\u2014Yes! So let it be.\n\n\u2014And we too, Lucian! if we have found the holy vessel in possession of\nthe Stoics, shall no longer have need to search other philosophers,\nhaving attained that we were seeking. Why trouble ourselves further?\n\n\u2014No need, if something had indeed been found, and you knew it to be\nthat lost thing: if, at the least, you could recognise the sacred\nobject when you saw it. But truly, as the matter now stands, not two\npersons only have entered the temple, one or the other of whom must\nneeds have taken the golden cup, but a whole crowd of persons. And\nthen, it is not clear what the lost object really is\u2014cup, or flagon, or\ndiadem; for one of the priests avers this, another that; they are not\neven in agreement as to its material: some will have it to be of brass,\nothers of silver, or gold. It thus becomes necessary to search the\ngarments of all persons who have entered the temple, if the lost vessel\nis to be recovered. And if you find a golden cup on the first of them,\nit will still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments of the\nothers; for it is not certain that this cup really belonged to the\ntemple. Might there not be many such golden vessels?\u2014No! we must go on\nto every one of them, placing all that we find in the midst together,\nand then make our guess which of all those things may fairly be\nsupposed to be the property of the god. For, again, this circumstance\nadds greatly to our difficulty, that without exception every one\nsearched is found to have something upon him\u2014cup, or flagon, or diadem,\nof brass, of silver, of gold: and still, all the while, it is not\nascertained which of all these is the sacred thing. And you must still\nhesitate to pronounce any one of them guilty of the sacrilege\u2014those\nobjects may be their own lawful property: one cause of all this\nobscurity being, as I think, that there was no inscription on the lost\ncup, if cup it was. Had the name of the god, or even that of the donor,\nbeen upon it, at least we should have had less trouble, and having\ndetected the inscription, should have ceased to trouble any one else by\nour search.\n\n\u2014I have nothing to reply to that.\n\n\u2014Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to find who it is has\nthe sacred vessel, or who will be our best guide to Corinth, we must\nneeds proceed to every one and examine him with the utmost care,\nstripping off his garment and considering him closely. Scarcely, even\nso, shall we come at the truth. And if we are to have a credible\nadviser regarding this question of philosophy\u2014which of all philosophies\none ought to follow\u2014he alone who is acquainted with the dicta of every\none of them can be such a guide: all others must be inadequate. I would\ngive no credence to them if they lacked information as to one only. If\nsomebody introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest of all\nmen, we should not believe that, unless we knew that he had seen all\nthe people in the world. Fair he might be; but, fairest of all\u2014none\ncould know, unless he had seen all. And we too desire, not a fair one,\nbut the fairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think we have\nfailed. It is no casual beauty that will content us; what we are\nseeking after is that supreme beauty which must of necessity be unique.\n\n\u2014What then is one to do, if the matter be really thus? Perhaps you know\nbetter than I. All I see is that very few of us would have time to\nexamine all the various sects of philosophy in turn, even if we began\nin early life. I know not how it is; but though you seem to me to speak\nreasonably, yet (I must confess it) you have distressed me not a little\nby this exact exposition of yours. I was unlucky in coming out to-day,\nand in my falling in with you, who have thrown me into utter perplexity\nby your proof that the discovery of truth is impossible, just as I\nseemed to be on the point of attaining my hope.\n\n\u2014Blame your parents, my child, not me! Or rather, blame mother Nature\nherself, for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of making us\nas long-lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you from premise\nto conclusion.\n\n\u2014Nay! you are a mocker! I know not wherefore, but you have a grudge\nagainst philosophy; and it is your entertainment to make a jest of her\nlovers.\n\n\u2014Ah! Hermotimus! what the Truth may be, you philosophers may be able to\ntell better than I. But so much at least I know of her, that she is one\nby no means pleasant to those who hear her speak: in the matter of\npleasantness, she is far surpassed by Falsehood: and Falsehood has the\npleasanter countenance. She, nevertheless, being conscious of no alloy\nwithin, discourses with boldness to all men, who therefore have little\nlove for her. See how angry you are now because I have stated the truth\nabout certain things of which we are both alike enamoured\u2014that they are\nhard to come by. It is as if you had fallen in love with a statue and\nhoped to win its favour, thinking it a human creature; and I,\nunderstanding it to be but an image of brass or stone, had shown you,\nas a friend, that your love was impossible, and thereupon you had\nconceived that I bore you some ill-will.\n\n\u2014But still, does it not follow from what you said, that we must\nrenounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness?\n\n\u2014When did you hear me say that? I did but assert that if we are to seek\nafter philosophy, whereas there are many ways professing to lead\nthereto, we must with much exactness distinguish them.\n\n\u2014Well, Lucian! that we must go to all the schools in turn, and test\nwhat they say, if we are to choose the right one, is perhaps\nreasonable; but surely ridiculous, unless we are to live as many years\nas the Phoenix, to be so lengthy in the trial of each; as if it were\nnot possible to learn the whole by the part! They say that Pheidias,\nwhen he was shown one of the talons of a lion, computed the stature and\nage of the animal it belonged to, modelling a complete lion upon the\nstandard of a single part of it. You too would recognise a human hand\nwere the rest of the body concealed. Even so with the schools of\nphilosophy:\u2014the leading doctrines of each might be learned in an\nafternoon. That over-exactness of yours, which required so long a time,\nis by no means necessary for making the better choice.\n\n\u2014You are forcible, Hermotimus! with this theory of The Whole by the\nPart. Yet, methinks, I heard you but now propound the contrary. But\ntell me; would Pheidias when he saw the lion\u2019s talon have known that it\nwas a lion\u2019s, if he had never seen the animal? Surely, the cause of his\nrecognising the part was his knowledge of the whole. There is a way of\nchoosing one\u2019s philosophy even less troublesome than yours. Put the\nnames of all the philosophers into an urn. Then call a little child,\nand let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall follow all the\nrest of your days.\n\n\u2014Nay! be serious with me. Tell me; did you ever buy wine?\n\n\u2014Surely.\n\n\u2014And did you first go the whole round of the wine-merchants, tasting\nand comparing their wines?\n\n\u2014By no means.\n\n\u2014No! You were contented to order the first good wine you found at your\nprice. By tasting a little you were ascertained of the quality of the\nwhole cask. How if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn, and\nsaid, \u2018I wish to buy a cotyl\u00e9 of wine. Let me drink out the whole cask.\nThen I shall be able to tell which is best, and where I ought to buy.\u2019\nYet this is what you would do with the philosophies. Why drain the cask\nwhen you might taste, and see?\n\n\u2014How slippery you are; how you escape from one\u2019s fingers! Still, you\nhave given me an advantage, and are in your own trap.\n\n\u2014How so?\n\n\u2014Thus! You take a common object known to every one, and make wine the\nfigure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself, and\nabout which all men are at variance, because it is an unseen and\ndifficult thing. I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike\nunless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware for\nmoney, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water or\nworse, or giving short measure. However, let us consider your parallel.\nThe wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind throughout. But have the\nphilosophers\u2014has your own master even\u2014but one and the same thing only\nto tell you, every day and all days, on a subject so manifold?\nOtherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting of one part? The\nwhole is not the same\u2014Ah! and it may be that God has hidden the good\nwine of philosophy at the bottom of the cask. You must drain it to the\nend if you are to find those drops of divine sweetness you seem so much\nto thirst for! Yourself, after drinking so deeply, are still but at the\nbeginning, as you said. But is not philosophy rather like this? Keep\nthe figure of the merchant and the cask: but let it be filled, not with\nwine, but with every sort of grain. You come to buy. The merchant hands\nyou a little of the wheat which lies at the top. Could you tell by\nlooking at that, whether the chick-peas were clean, the lentils tender,\nthe beans full? And then, whereas in selecting our wine we risk only\nour money; in selecting our philosophy we risk ourselves, as you told\nme\u2014might ourselves sink into the dregs of \u2018the vulgar herd.\u2019 Moreover,\nwhile you may not drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting,\nWisdom grows no less by the depth of your drinking. Nay! if you take of\nher, she is increased thereby.\n\nAnd then I have another similitude to propose, as regards this tasting\nof philosophy. Don\u2019t think I blaspheme her if I say that it may be with\nher as with some deadly poison, hemlock or aconite. These too, though\nthey cause death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minute portion. You\nwould suppose that the tiniest particle must be sufficient.\n\n\u2014Be it as you will, Lucian! One must live a hundred years: one must\nsustain all this labour; otherwise philosophy is unattainable.\n\n\u2014Not so! Though there were nothing strange in that, if it be true, as\nyou said at first, that Life is short and art is long. But now you take\nit hard that we are not to see you this very day, before the sun goes\ndown, a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, a Plato.\n\n\u2014You overtake me, Lucian! and drive me into a corner; in jealousy of\nheart, I believe, because I have made some progress in doctrine whereas\nyou have neglected yourself.\n\n\u2014Well! Don\u2019t attend to me! Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic: and do\nyou go forward on this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordance\nwith the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be\nassured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged. Reason still\nsays, that without criticism, without a clear, exact, unbiassed\nintelligence to try them, all those theories\u2014all things\u2014will have been\nseen but in vain. \u2018To that end,\u2019 she tells us, \u2018much time is necessary,\nmany delays of judgment, a cautious gait; repeated inspection.\u2019 And we\nare not to regard the outward appearance, or the reputation of wisdom,\nin any of the speakers; but like the judges of Areopagus, who try their\ncauses in the darkness of the night, look only to what they say.\n\n\u2014Philosophy, then, is impossible, or possible only in another life!\n\n\u2014Hermotimus! I grieve to tell you that all this even, may be in truth\ninsufficient. After all, we may deceive ourselves in the belief that we\nhave found something:\u2014like the fishermen! Again and again they let down\nthe net. At last they feel something heavy, and with vast labour draw\nup, not a load of fish, but only a pot full of sand, or a great stone.\n\n\u2014I don\u2019t understand what you mean by the net. It is plain that you have\ncaught me in it.\n\n\u2014Try to get out! You can swim as well as another. We may go to all\nphilosophers in turn and make trial of them. Still, I, for my part,\nhold it by no means certain that any one of them really possesses what\nwe seek. The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found.\nYou have twenty beans in your hand, and you bid ten persons guess how\nmany: one says five, another fifteen; it is possible that one of them\nmay tell the true number; but it is not impossible that all may be\nwrong. So it is with the philosophers. All alike are in search of\nHappiness\u2014what kind of thing it is. One says one thing, one another: it\nis pleasure; it is virtue;\u2014what not? And Happiness may indeed be one of\nthose things. But it is possible also that it may be still something\nelse, different and distinct from them all.\n\n\u2014What is this?\u2014There is something, I know not how, very sad and\ndisheartening in what you say. We seem to have come round in a circle\nto the spot whence we started, and to our first incertitude. Ah!\nLucian, what have you done to me? You have proved my priceless pearl to\nbe but ashes, and all my past labour to have been in vain.\n\n\u2014Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person who has thus\nfailed of the good thing he hoped for. All philosophers, so to speak,\nare but fighting about the \u2018ass\u2019s shadow.\u2019 To me you seem like one who\nshould weep, and reproach fortune because he is not able to climb up\ninto heaven, or go down into the sea by Sicily and come up at Cyprus,\nor sail on wings in one day from Greece to India. And the true cause of\nhis trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a\ndream, or his own fancy has put together; without previous thought\nwhether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compass\nof human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As you\ndreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and woke\nyou up from sleep, a little roughly: and then you are angry with\nReason, your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shake\noff sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, don\u2019t be\nangry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer you to pass\nyour life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but still only a dream\u2014because\nI wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the proper\nbusiness of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. What\nyour soul was full of just now is not very different from those Gorgons\nand Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and the painters construct\nfor us, fancy-free:\u2014things which never were, and never will be, though\nmany believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them, just\nbecause they are so strange and odd.\n\nAnd you too, methinks, having heard from some such maker of marvels of\na certain woman of a fairness beyond nature\u2014beyond the Graces, beyond\nVenus Urania herself\u2014asked not if he spoke truth, and whether this\nwoman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love with\nher; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what\nmore than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that\npassion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you about\nthat fair woman, from the very moment when you first believed that what\nhe said was true, brought forward all the rest in consequent order.\nUpon her alone your eyes were fixed; by her he led you along, when once\nyou had given him a hold upon you\u2014led you along the straight road, as\nhe said, to the beloved one. All was easy after that. None of you asked\nagain whether it was the true way; following one after another, like\nsheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd. He moved you\nhither and thither with his finger, as easily as water spilt on a\ntable!\n\nMy friend! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die of\nhunger! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it with\nall his might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful and\nnecessary; but it remained water only, none the less.\u201d\n\nJust there the conversation broke off suddenly, and the disputants\nparted. The horses were come for Lucian. The boy went on his way, and\nMarius onward, to visit a friend whose abode lay further. As he\nreturned to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural to a\ncity of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of the\nearly day. He could almost have fancied Canidia there, picking her way\namong the rickety lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb; for\nthese tombs were not all equally well cared for (Post mortem nescio!)\nand it had been one of the pieties of Aurelius to frame a severe law to\nprevent the defacing of such monuments. To Marius there seemed to be\nsome new meaning in that terror of isolation, of being left alone in\nthese places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so full. A\nblood-red sunset was dying angrily, and its wild glare upon the shadowy\nobjects around helped to combine the associations of this famous way,\nits deeply graven marks of immemorial travel, together with the earnest\nquestions of the morning as to the true way of that other sort of\ntravelling, around an image, almost ghastly in the traces of its great\nsorrows\u2014bearing along for ever, on bleeding feet, the instrument of its\npunishment\u2014which was all Marius could recall distinctly of a certain\nChristian legend he had heard. The legend told of an encounter at this\nvery spot, of two wayfarers on the Appian Way, as also upon some very\ndimly discerned mental journey, altogether different from himself and\nhis late companions\u2014an encounter between Love, literally fainting by\nthe road, and Love \u201ctravelling in the greatness of his strength,\u201d Love\nitself, suddenly appearing to sustain that other. A strange contrast to\nanything actually presented in that morning\u2019s conversation, it seemed\nnevertheless to echo its very words\u2014\u201cDo they never come down again,\u201d he\nheard once more the well-modulated voice: \u201cDo they never come down\nagain from the heights, to help those whom they left here below?\u201d\u2014\u201cAnd\nwe too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we find\nhim, we shall think we have failed.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV.\nSUNT LACRIMAE RERUM+\n\n\nIt was become a habit with Marius\u2014one of his modernisms\u2014developed by\nhis assistance at the Emperor\u2019s \u201cconversations with himself,\u201d to keep a\nregister of the movements of his own private thoughts and humours; not\ncontinuously indeed, yet sometimes for lengthy intervals, during which\nit was no idle self-indulgence, but a necessity of his intellectual\nlife, to \u201cconfess himself,\u201d with an intimacy, seemingly rare among the\nancients; ancient writers, at all events, having been jealous, for the\nmost part, of affording us so much as a glimpse of that interior self,\nwhich in many cases would have actually doubled the interest of their\nobjective informations.\n\n\u201cIf a particular tutelary or genius,\u201d writes Marius,\u2014\u201caccording to old\nbelief, walks through life beside each one of us, mine is very\ncertainly a capricious creature. He fills one with wayward,\nunaccountable, yet quite irresistible humours, and seems always to be\nin collusion with some outward circumstance, often trivial enough in\nitself\u2014the condition of the weather, forsooth!\u2014the people one meets by\nchance\u2014the things one happens to overhear them say, veritable enodioi\nsymboloi,+ or omens by the wayside, as the old Greeks fancied\u2014to push\non the unreasonable prepossessions of the moment into weighty motives.\nIt was doubtless a quite explicable, physical fatigue that presented me\nto myself, on awaking this morning, so lack-lustre and trite. But I\nmust needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning\nhopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the\nvery capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not\nimpossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, and transform it into\neffective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through\nthe routine-work which is so large a part of life. \u201cThen, how if\nappetite, be it for real or ideal, should itself fail one after awhile?\nAh, yes! is it of cold always that men die; and on some of us it creeps\nvery gradually. In truth, I can remember just such a lack-lustre\ncondition of feeling once or twice before. But I note, that it was\naccompanied then by an odd indifference, as the thought of them\noccurred to me, in regard to the sufferings of others\u2014a kind of\ncallousness, so unusual with me, as at once to mark the humour it\naccompanied as a palpably morbid one that could not last. Were those\nsufferings, great or little, I asked myself then, of more real\nconsequence to them than mine to me, as I remind myself that \u2018nothing\nthat will end is really long\u2019\u2014long enough to be thought of importance?\nBut to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the pity I conceive for myself,\ndisposed me strongly to a tenderness for others. For a moment the whole\nworld seemed to present itself as a hospital of sick persons; many of\nthem sick in mind; all of whom it would be a brutality not to humour,\nnot to indulge.\n\n\u201cWhy, when I went out to walk off my wayward fancies, did I confront\nthe very sort of incident (my unfortunate genius had surely beckoned it\nfrom afar to vex me) likely to irritate them further? A party of men\nwere coming down the street. They were leading a fine race-horse; a\nhandsome beast, but badly hurt somewhere, in the circus, and useless.\nThey were taking him to slaughter; and I think the animal knew it: he\ncast such looks, as if of mad appeal, to those who passed him, as he\nwent among the strangers to whom his former owner had committed him, to\ndie, in his beauty and pride, for just that one mischance or fault;\nalthough the morning air was still so animating, and pleasant to snuff.\nI could have fancied a human soul in the creature, swelling against its\nluck. And I had come across the incident just when it would figure to\nme as the very symbol of our poor humanity, in its capacities for pain,\nits wretched accidents, and those imperfect sympathies, which can never\nquite identify us with one another; the very power of utterance and\nappeal to others seeming to fail us, in proportion as our sorrows come\nhome to ourselves, are really our own. We are constructed for\nsuffering! What proofs of it does but one day afford, if we care to\nnote them, as we go\u2014a whole long chaplet of sorrowful mysteries! Sunt\nlacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.+\n\n\u201cMen\u2019s fortunes touch us! The little children of one of those\ninstitutions for the support of orphans, now become fashionable among\nus by way of memorial of eminent persons deceased, are going, in long\nfile, along the street, on their way to a holiday in the country. They\nhalt, and count themselves with an air of triumph, to show that they\nare all there. Their gay chatter has disturbed a little group of\npeasants; a young woman and her husband, who have brought the old\nmother, now past work and witless, to place her in a house provided for\nsuch afflicted people. They are fairly affectionate, but anxious how\nthe thing they have to do may go\u2014hope only she may permit them to leave\nher there behind quietly. And the poor old soul is excited by the noise\nmade by the children, and partly aware of what is going to happen with\nher. She too begins to count\u2014one, two, three, five\u2014on her trembling\nfingers, misshapen by a life of toil.\n\n\u2018Yes! yes! and twice five make ten\u2019\u2014they say, to pacify her. It is her\nlast appeal to be taken home again; her proof that all is not yet up\nwith her; that she is, at all events, still as capable as those joyous\nchildren.\n\n\u201cAt the baths, a party of labourers are at work upon one of the great\nbrick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust. A frail young child has\nbrought food for one of them, and sits apart, waiting till his father\ncomes\u2014watching the labour, but with a sorrowful distaste for the din\nand dirt. He is regarding wistfully his own place in the world, there\nbefore him. His mind, as he watches, is grown up for a moment; and he\nforesees, as it were, in that moment, all the long tale of days, of\nearly awakings, of his own coming life of drudgery at work like this.\n\n\u201cA man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has already\nbegun\u2014the only child\u2014whose presence beside him sweetened the father\u2019s\ntoil a little. The boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work,\nyet, with an effort, he rides boldly on his father\u2019s shoulders. It will\nbe the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long as possible,\nthough with that miserably shattered body.\u2014\u2018Ah! with us still, and\nfeeling our care beside him!\u2019\u2014and yet surely not without a\nheartbreaking sigh of relief, alike from him and them, when the end\ncomes.\n\n\u201cOn the alert for incidents like these, yet of necessity passing them\nby on the other side, I find it hard to get rid of a sense that I, for\none, have failed in love. I could yield to the humour till I seemed to\nhave had my share in those great public cruelties, the shocking legal\ncrimes which are on record, like that cold-blooded slaughter, according\nto law, of the four hundred slaves in the reign of Nero, because one of\ntheir number was thought to have murdered his master. The reproach of\nthat, together with the kind of facile apologies those who had no share\nin the deed may have made for it, as they went about quietly on their\nown affairs that day, seems to come very close to me, as I think upon\nit. And to how many of those now actually around me, whose life is a\nsore one, must I be indifferent, if I ever become aware of their\nsoreness at all? To some, perhaps, the necessary conditions of my own\nlife may cause me to be opposed, in a kind of natural conflict,\nregarding those interests which actually determine the happiness of\ntheirs. I would that a stronger love might arise in my heart!\n\n\u201cYet there is plenty of charity in the world. My patron, the Stoic\nemperor, has made it even fashionable. To celebrate one of his brief\nreturns to Rome lately from the war, over and above a largess of gold\npieces to all who would, the public debts were forgiven. He made a nice\nshow of it: for once, the Romans entertained themselves with a\ngood-natured spectacle, and the whole town came to see the great\nbonfire in the Forum, into which all bonds and evidence of debt were\nthrown on delivery, by the emperor himself; many private creditors\nfollowing his example. That was done well enough! But still the feeling\nreturns to me, that no charity of ours can get at a certain natural\nunkindness which I find in things themselves.\n\n\u201cWhen I first came to Rome, eager to observe its religion, especially\nits antiquities of religious usage, I assisted at the most curious,\nperhaps, of them all, the most distinctly marked with that immobility\nwhich is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony took place\nat a singular spot some miles distant from the city, among the low\nhills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond the Aurelian Gate. There, in a\nlittle wood of venerable trees, piously allowed their own way, age\nafter age\u2014ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, one over\nthe other, and all caught, in that early May-time, under a riotous\ntangle of wild clematis\u2014was to be found a magnificent sanctuary, in\nwhich the members of the Arval College assembled themselves on certain\ndays. The axe never touched those trees\u2014Nay! it was forbidden to\nintroduce any iron thing whatsoever within the precincts; not only\nbecause the deities of these quiet places hate to be disturbed by the\nharsh noise of metal, but also in memory of that better age\u2014the lost\nGolden Age\u2014the homely age of the potters, of which the central act of\nthe festival was a commemoration.\n\n\u201cThe preliminary ceremonies were long and complicated, but of a\ncharacter familiar enough. Peculiar to the time and place was the\nsolemn exposition, after lavation of hands, processions backwards and\nforwards, and certain changes of vestments, of the identical earthen\nvessels\u2014veritable relics of the old religion of Numa!\u2014the vessels from\nwhich the holy Numa himself had eaten and drunk, set forth above a kind\nof altar, amid a cloud of flowers and incense, and many lights, for the\nveneration of the credulous or the faithful.\n\n\u201cThey were, in fact, cups or vases of burnt clay, rude in form: and the\nreligious veneration thus offered to them expressed men\u2019s desire to\ngive honour to a simpler age, before iron had found place in human\nlife: the persuasion that that age was worth remembering: a hope that\nit might come again.\n\n\u201cThat a Numa, and his age of gold, would return, has been the hope or\nthe dream of some, in every period. Yet if he did come back, or any\nequivalent of his presence, he could but weaken, and by no means smite\nthrough, that root of evil, certainly of sorrow, of outraged human\nsense, in things, which one must carefully distinguish from all\npreventible accidents. Death, and the little perpetual daily dyings,\nwhich have something of its sting, he must necessarily leave untouched.\nAnd, methinks, that were all the rest of man\u2019s life framed entirely to\nhis liking, he would straightway begin to sadden himself, over the\nfate\u2014say, of the flowers! For there is, there has come to be since Numa\nlived perhaps, a capacity for sorrow in his heart, which grows with all\nthe growth, alike of the individual and of the race, in intellectual\ndelicacy and power, and which will find its aliment.\n\n\u201cOf that sort of golden age, indeed, one discerns even now a trace,\nhere and there. Often have I maintained that, in this generous southern\ncountry at least, Epicureanism is the special philosophy of the poor.\nHow little I myself really need, when people leave me alone, with the\nintellectual powers at work serenely. The drops of falling water, a few\nwild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tufts even of\nhalf-dead leaves, changing colour in the quiet of a room that has but\nlight and shadow in it; these, for a susceptible mind, might well do\nduty for all the glory of Augustus. I notice sometimes what I conceive\nto be the precise character of the fondness of the roughest\nworking-people for their young children, a fine appreciation, not only\nof their serviceable affection, but of their visible graces: and\nindeed, in this country, the children are almost always worth looking\nat. I see daily, in fine weather, a child like a delicate nosegay,\nrunning to meet the rudest of brick- makers as he comes from work. She\nis not at all afraid to hang upon his rough hand: and through her, he\nreaches out to, he makes his own, something from that strange region,\nso distant from him yet so real, of the world\u2019s refinement. What is of\nfiner soul, of finer stuff in things, and demands delicate touching\u2014to\nhim the delicacy of the little child represents that: it initiates him\ninto that. There, surely, is a touch of the secular gold, of a\nperpetual age of gold. But then again, think for a moment, with what a\nhard humour at the nature of things, his struggle for bare life will go\non, if the child should happen to die. I observed to-day, under one of\nthe archways of the baths, two children at play, a little seriously\u2014a\nfair girl and her crippled younger brother. Two toy chairs and a little\ntable, and sprigs of fir set upright in the sand for a garden! They\nplayed at housekeeping. Well! the girl thinks her life a perfectly good\nthing in the service of this crippled brother. But she will have a\njealous lover in time: and the boy, though his face is not altogether\nunpleasant, is after all a hopeless cripple.\n\n\u201cFor there is a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he has\ncome to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs of\ncircumstance which are in a measure removable\u2014some inexplicable\nshortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself\u2014death, and\nold age as it must needs be, and that watching for their approach,\nwhich makes every stage of life like a dying over and over again.\nAlmost all death is painful, and in every thing that comes to an end a\ntouch of death, and therefore of wretched coldness struck home to one,\nof remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given\nfaultless men and women, given a perfect state of society which should\nhave no need to practise on men\u2019s susceptibilities for its own selfish\nends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack for its own\ninterest or amusement, there would still be this evil in the world, of\na certain necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just in proportion to\nthe moral, or nervous perfection men have attained to. And what we need\nin the world, over against that, is a certain permanent and general\npower of compassion\u2014humanity\u2019s standing force of self-pity\u2014as an\nelementary ingredient of our social atmosphere, if we are to live in it\nat all. I wonder, sometimes, in what way man has cajoled himself into\nthe bearing of his burden thus far, seeing how every step in the\ncapacity of apprehension his labour has won for him, from age to age,\nmust needs increase his dejection. It is as if the increase of\nknowledge were but an increasing revelation of the radical hopelessness\nof his position: and I would that there were one even as I, behind this\nvain show of things!\n\n\u201cAt all events, the actual conditions of our life being as they are,\nand the capacity for suffering so large a principle in things\u2014since the\nonly principle, perhaps, to which we may always safely trust is a ready\nsympathy with the pain one actually sees\u2014it follows that the practical\nand effective difference between men will lie in their power of insight\ninto those conditions, their power of sympathy. The future will be with\nthose who have most of it; while for the present, as I persuade myself,\nthose who have much of it, have something to hold by, even in the\ndissolution of a world, or in that dissolution of self, which is, for\nevery one, no less than the dissolution of the world it represents for\nhim. Nearly all of us, I suppose, have had our moments, in which any\neffective sympathy for us on the part of others has seemed impossible;\nin which our pain has seemed a stupid outrage upon us, like some\noverwhelming physical violence, from which we could take refuge, at\nbest, only in some mere general sense of goodwill\u2014somewhere in the\nworld perhaps. And then, to one\u2019s surprise, the discovery of that\ngoodwill, if it were only in a not unfriendly animal, may seem to have\nexplained, to have actually justified to us, the fact of our pain.\nThere have been occasions, certainly, when I have felt that if others\ncared for me as I cared for them, it would be, not so much a\nconsolation, as an equivalent, for what one has lost or suffered: a\nrealised profit on the summing up of one\u2019s accounts: a touching of that\nabsolute ground amid all the changes of phenomena, such as our\nphilosophers have of late confessed themselves quite unable to\ndiscover. In the mere clinging of human creatures to each other, nay!\nin one\u2019s own solitary self-pity, amid the effects even of what might\nappear irredeemable loss, I seem to touch the eternal. Something in\nthat pitiful contact, something new and true, fact or apprehension of\nfact, is educed, which, on a review of all the perplexities of life,\nsatisfies our moral sense, and removes that appearance of unkindness in\nthe soul of things themselves, and assures us that not everything has\nbeen in vain.\n\n\u201cAnd I know not how, but in the thought thus suggested, I seem to take\nup, and re-knit myself to, a well-remembered hour, when by some\ngracious accident\u2014it was on a journey\u2014all things about me fell into a\nmore perfect harmony than is their wont. Everything seemed to be, for a\nmoment, after all, almost for the best. Through the train of my\nthoughts, one against another, it was as if I became aware of the\ndominant power of another person in controversy, wrestling with me. I\nseem to be come round to the point at which I left off then. The\nantagonist has closed with me again. A protest comes, out of the very\ndepths of man\u2019s radically hopeless condition in the world, with the\nenergy of one of those suffering yet prevailing deities, of which old\npoetry tells. Dared one hope that there is a heart, even as ours, in\nthat divine \u2018Assistant\u2019 of one\u2019s thoughts\u2014a heart even as mine, behind\nthis vain show of things!\u201d\n\nNOTES\n\n\n172. Virgil, Aeneid Book 1, line 462. \u201cThere are the tears of\nthings...\u201d See also page 175 of this chapter, where the same text is\nquoted in full.\n\n\n173. +Transliteration: enodioi symboloi. Pater\u2019s Definition: \u201comens by\nthe wayside.\u201d\n\n\n175. +Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. Virgil, Aeneid\nBook 1, line 462. Translation: \u201cHere also there be tears for what men\nbear, and mortal creatures feel each other\u2019s sorrow,\u201d from Vergil,\nAeneid, Theodore C. Williams. trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI.\nTHE MARTYRS\n\n\n\u201cAh! voil\u00e0 les \u00e2mes qu\u2019il falloit \u00e0 la mienne!\u201d\nRousseau.\n\n\nThe charm of its poetry, a poetry of the affections, wonderfully fresh\nin the midst of a threadbare world, would have led Marius, if nothing\nelse had done so, again and again, to Cecilia\u2019s house. He found a range\nof intellectual pleasures, altogether new to him, in the sympathy of\nthat pure and elevated soul. Elevation of soul, generosity,\nhumanity\u2014little by little it came to seem to him as if these existed\nnowhere else. The sentiment of maternity, above all, as it might be\nunderstood there,\u2014its claims, with the claims of all natural feeling\neverywhere, down to the sheep bleating on the hills, nay! even to the\nmother-wolf, in her hungry cave\u2014seemed to have been vindicated, to have\nbeen enforced anew, by the sanction of some divine pattern thereof. He\nsaw its legitimate place in the world given at last to the bare\ncapacity for suffering in any creature, however feeble or apparently\nuseless. In this chivalry, seeming to leave the world\u2019s heroism a mere\nproperty of the stage, in this so scrupulous fidelity to what could not\nhelp itself, could scarcely claim not to be forgotten, what a contrast\nto the hard contempt of one\u2019s own or other\u2019s pain, of death, of glory\neven, in those discourses of Aurelius!\n\nBut if Marius thought at times that some long-cherished desires were\nnow about to blossom for him, in the sort of home he had sometimes\npictured to himself, the very charm of which would lie in its contrast\nto any random affections: that in this woman, to whom children\ninstinctively clung, he might find such a sister, at least, as he had\nalways longed for; there were also circumstances which reminded him\nthat a certain rule forbidding second marriages, was among these people\nstill in force; ominous incidents, moreover, warning a susceptible\nconscience not to mix together the spirit and the flesh, nor make the\nmatter of a heavenly banquet serve for earthly meat and drink.\n\nOne day he found Cecilia occupied with the burial of one of the\nchildren of her household. It was from the tiny brow of such a child,\nas he now heard, that the new light had first shone forth upon\nthem\u2014through the light of mere physical life, glowing there again, when\nthe child was dead, or supposed to be dead. The aged servant of Christ\nhad arrived in the midst of their noisy grief; and mounting to the\nlittle chamber where it lay, had returned, not long afterwards, with\nthe child stirring in his arms as he descended the stair rapidly;\nbursting open the closely-wound folds of the shroud and scattering the\nfuneral flowers from them, as the soul kindled once more through its\nlimbs.\n\nOld Roman common-sense had taught people to occupy their thoughts as\nlittle as might be with children who died young. Here, to-day, however,\nin this curious house, all thoughts were tenderly bent on the little\nwaxen figure, yet with a kind of exultation and joy, notwithstanding\nthe loud weeping of the mother. The other children, its late\ncompanions, broke with it, suddenly, into the place where the deep\nblack bed lay open to receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores, the\ngrave-diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, and chanted\nthat old psalm of theirs\u2014Laudate pueri dominum! Dead children,\nchildren\u2019s graves\u2014Marius had been always half aware of an old\nsuperstitious fancy in his mind concerning them; as if in coming near\nthem he came near the failure of some lately-born hope or purpose of\nhis own. And now, perusing intently the expression with which Cecilia\nassisted, directed, returned afterwards to her house, he felt that he\ntoo had had to-day his funeral of a little child. But it had always\nbeen his policy, through all his pursuit of \u201cexperience,\u201d to take\nflight in time from any too disturbing passion, from any sort of\naffection likely to quicken his pulses beyond the point at which the\nquiet work of life was practicable. Had he, after all, been taken\nunawares, so that it was no longer possible for him to fly? At least,\nduring the journey he took, by way of testing the existence of any\nchain about him, he found a certain disappointment at his heart,\ngreater than he could have anticipated; and as he passed over the crisp\nleaves, nipped off in multitudes by the first sudden cold of winter, he\nfelt that the mental atmosphere within himself was perceptibly colder.\n\nYet it was, finally, a quite successful resignation which he achieved,\non a review, after his manner, during that absence, of loss or gain.\nThe image of Cecilia, it would seem, was already become for him like\nsome matter of poetry, or of another man\u2019s story, or a picture on the\nwall. And on his return to Rome there had been a rumour in that\nsingular company, of things which spoke certainly not of any merely\ntranquil loving: hinted rather that he had come across a world, the\nlightest contact with which might make appropriate to himself also the\nprecept that \u201cThey which have wives be as they that have none.\u201d\n\nThis was brought home to him, when, in early spring, he ventured once\nmore to listen to the sweet singing of the Eucharist. It breathed more\nthan ever the spirit of a wonderful hope\u2014of hopes more daring than\npoor, labouring humanity had ever seriously entertained before, though\nit was plain that a great calamity was befallen. Amid stifled sobbing,\neven as the pathetic words of the psalter relieved the tension of their\nhearts, the people around him still wore upon their faces their\nhabitual gleam of joy, of placid satisfaction. They were still under\nthe influence of an immense gratitude in thinking, even amid their\npresent distress, of the hour of a great deliverance. As he followed\nagain that mystical dialogue, he felt also again, like a mighty spirit\nabout him, the potency, the half-realised presence, of a great\nmultitude, as if thronging along those awful passages, to hear the\nsentence of its release from prison; a company which represented\nnothing less than\u2014orbis terrarum\u2014the whole company of mankind. And the\nspecial note of the day expressed that relief\u2014a sound new to him, drawn\ndeep from some old Hebrew source, as he conjectured, Alleluia! repeated\nover and over again, Alleluia! Alleluia! at every pause and movement of\nthe long Easter ceremonies.\n\nAnd then, in its place, by way of sacred lection, although in shocking\ncontrast with the peaceful dignity of all around, came the Epistle of\nthe churches of Lyons and Vienne, to \u201ctheir sister,\u201d the church of\nRome. For the \u201cPeace\u201d of the church had been broken\u2014broken, as Marius\ncould not but acknowledge, on the responsibility of the emperor\nAurelius himself, following tamely, and as a matter of course, the\ntraces of his predecessors, gratuitously enlisting, against the good as\nwell as the evil of that great pagan world, the strange new heroism of\nwhich this singular message was full. The greatness of it certainly\nlifted away all merely private regret, inclining one, at last, actually\nto draw sword for the oppressed, as if in some new order of knighthood\u2014\n\n\u201cThe pains which our brethren have endured we have no power fully to\ntell, for the enemy came upon us with his whole strength. But the grace\nof God fought for us, set free the weak, and made ready those who, like\npillars, were able to bear the weight. These, coming now into close\nstrife with the foe, bore every kind of pang and shame. At the time of\nthe fair which is held here with a great crowd, the governor led forth\nthe Martyrs as a show. Holding what was thought great but little, and\nthat the pains of to-day are not deserving to be measured against the\nglory that shall be made known, these worthy wrestlers went joyfully on\ntheir way; their delight and the sweet favour of God mingling in their\nfaces, so that their bonds seemed but a goodly array, or like the\ngolden bracelets of a bride. Filled with the fragrance of Christ, to\nsome they seemed to have been touched with earthly perfumes.\n\n\u201cVettius Epagathus, though he was very young, because he would not\nendure to see unjust judgment given against us, vented his anger, and\nsought to be heard for the brethren, for he was a youth of high place.\nWhereupon the governor asked him whether he also were a Christian. He\nconfessed in a clear voice, and was added to the number of the Martyrs.\nBut he had the Paraclete within him; as, in truth, he showed by the\nfulness of his love; glorying in the defence of his brethren, and to\ngive his life for theirs.\n\n\u201cThen was fulfilled the saying of the Lord that the day should come,\nWhen he that slayeth you will think that he doeth God service. Most\nmadly did the mob, the governor and the soldiers, rage against the\nhandmaiden Blandina, in whom Christ showed that what seems mean among\nmen is of price with Him. For whilst we all, and her earthly mistress,\nwho was herself one of the contending Martyrs, were fearful lest\nthrough the weakness of the flesh she should be unable to profess the\nfaith, Blandina was filled with such power that her tormentors,\nfollowing upon each other from morning until night, owned that they\nwere overcome, and had no more that they could do to her; admiring that\nshe still breathed after her whole body was torn asunder.\n\n\u201cBut this blessed one, in the very midst of her \u2018witness,\u2019 renewed her\nstrength; and to repeat, I am Christ\u2019s! was to her rest, refreshment,\nand relief from pain. As for Alexander, he neither uttered a groan nor\nany sound at all, but in his heart talked with God. Sanctus, the\ndeacon, also, having borne beyond all measure pains devised by them,\nhoping that they would get something from him, did not so much as tell\nhis name; but to all questions answered only, I am Christ\u2019s! For this\nhe confessed instead of his name, his race, and everything beside.\nWhence also a strife in torturing him arose between the governor and\nthose tormentors, so that when they had nothing else they could do they\nset red-hot plates of brass to the most tender parts of his body. But\nhe stood firm in his profession, cooled and fortified by that stream of\nliving water which flows from Christ. His corpse, a single wound,\nhaving wholly lost the form of man, was the measure of his pain. But\nChrist, paining in him, set forth an ensample to the rest\u2014that there is\nnothing fearful, nothing painful, where the love of the Father\novercomes. And as all those cruelties were made null through the\npatience of the Martyrs, they bethought them of other things; among\nwhich was their imprisonment in a dark and most sorrowful place, where\nmany were privily strangled. But destitute of man\u2019s aid, they were\nfilled with power from the Lord, both in body and mind, and\nstrengthened their brethren. Also, much joy was in our virgin mother,\nthe Church; for, by means of these, such as were fallen away retraced\ntheir steps\u2014were again conceived, were filled again with lively heat,\nand hastened to make the profession of their faith.\n\n\u201cThe holy bishop Pothinus, who was now past ninety years old and weak\nin body, yet in his heat of soul and longing for martyrdom, roused what\nstrength he had, and was also cruelly dragged to judgment, and gave\nwitness. Thereupon he suffered many stripes, all thinking it would be a\nwickedness if they fell short in cruelty towards him, for that thus\ntheir own gods would be avenged. Hardly drawing breath, he was thrown\ninto prison, and after two days there died.\n\n\u201cAfter these things their martyrdom was parted into divers manners.\nPlaiting as it were one crown of many colours and every sort of\nflowers, they offered it to God. Maturus, therefore, Sanctus and\nBlandina, were led to the wild beasts. And Maturus and Sanctus passed\nthrough all the pains of the amphitheatre, as if they had suffered\nnothing before: or rather, as having in many trials overcome, and now\ncontending for the prize itself, were at last dismissed.\n\n\u201cBut Blandina was bound and hung upon a stake, and set forth as food\nfor the assault of the wild beasts. And as she thus seemed to be hung\nupon the Cross, by her fiery prayers she imparted much alacrity to\nthose contending Witnesses. For as they looked upon her with the eye of\nflesh, through her, they saw Him that was crucified. But as none of the\nbeasts would then touch her, she was taken down from the Cross, and\nsent back to prison for another day: that, though weak and mean, yet\nclothed with the mighty wrestler, Christ Jesus, she might by many\nconquests give heart to her brethren.\n\n\u201cOn the last day, therefore, of the shows, she was brought forth again,\ntogether with Ponticus, a lad of about fifteen years old. They were\nbrought in day by day to behold the pains of the rest. And when they\nwavered not, the mob was full of rage; pitying neither the youth of the\nlad, nor the sex of the maiden. Hence, they drave them through the\nwhole round of pain. And Ponticus, taking heart from Blandina, having\nborne well the whole of those torments, gave up his life. Last of all,\nthe blessed Blandina herself, as a mother that had given life to her\nchildren, and sent them like conquerors to the great King, hastened to\nthem, with joy at the end, as to a marriage-feast; the enemy himself\nconfessing that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and great as\nhers.\n\n\u201cNor even so was their anger appeased; some among them seeking for us\npains, if it might be, yet greater; that the saying might be fulfilled,\nHe that is unjust, let him be unjust still. And their rage against the\nMartyrs took a new form, insomuch that we were in great sorrow for lack\nof freedom to entrust their bodies to the earth.\n\n\u201cNeither did the night-time, nor the offer of money, avail us for this\nmatter; but they set watch with much carefulness, as though it were a\ngreat gain to hinder their burial. Therefore, after the bodies had been\ndisplayed to view for many days, they were at last burned to ashes, and\ncast into the river Rhone, which flows by this place, that not a\nvestige of them might be left upon the earth. For they said, Now shall\nwe see whether they will rise again, and whether their God can save\nthem out of our hands.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII.\nTHE TRIUMPH OF MARCUS AURELIUS\n\n\nNot many months after the date of that epistle, Marius, then expecting\nto leave Rome for a long time, and in fact about to leave it for ever,\nstood to witness the triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius, almost at the\nexact spot from which he had watched the emperor\u2019s solemn return to the\ncapital on his own first coming thither. His triumph was now a \u201cfull\u201d\none\u2014Justus Triumphus justified, by far more than the due amount of\nbloodshed in those Northern wars, at length, it might seem, happily at\nan end. Among the captives, amid the laughter of the crowds at his\nblowsy upper garment, his trousered legs and conical wolf-skin cap,\nwalked our own ancestor, representative of subject Germany, under a\nfigure very familiar in later Roman sculpture; and, though certainly\nwith none of the grace of the Dying Gaul, yet with plenty of uncouth\npathos in his misshapen features, and the pale, servile, yet angry\neyes. His children, white-skinned and golden-haired \u201cas angels,\u201d\ntrudged beside him. His brothers, of the animal world, the ibex, the\nwild-cat, and the reindeer, stalking and trumpeting grandly, found\ntheir due place in the procession; and among the spoil, set forth on a\nportable frame that it might be distinctly seen (no mere model, but the\nvery house he had lived in), a wattled cottage, in all the simplicity\nof its snug contrivances against the cold, and well-calculated to give\na moment\u2019s delight to his new, sophisticated masters.\n\nAndrea Mantegna, working at the end of the fifteenth century, for a\nsociety full of antiquarian fervour at the sight of the earthy relics\nof the old Roman people, day by day returning to light out of the\nclay\u2014childish still, moreover, and with no more suspicion of pasteboard\nthan the old Romans themselves, in its unabashed love of open-air\npageantries, has invested this, the greatest, and alas! the most\ncharacteristic, of the splendours of imperial Rome, with a reality\nlivelier than any description. The homely sentiments for which he has\nfound place in his learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than the\ngreat public incidents of the show, there depicted. And then, with all\nthat vivid realism, how refined, how dignified, how select in type, is\nthis reflection of the old Roman world!\u2014now especially, in its\ntime-mellowed red and gold, for the modern visitor to the old English\npalace.\n\nIt was under no such selected types that the great procession presented\nitself to Marius; though, in effect, he found something there\nprophetic, so to speak, and evocative of ghosts, as susceptible minds\nwill do, upon a repetition after long interval of some notable\nincident, which may yet perhaps have no direct concern for themselves.\nIn truth, he had been so closely bent of late on certain very personal\ninterests that the broad current of the world\u2019s doings seemed to have\nwithdrawn into the distance, but now, as he witnessed this procession,\nto return once more into evidence for him. The world, certainly, had\nbeen holding on its old way, and was all its old self, as it thus\npassed by dramatically, accentuating, in this favourite spectacle, its\nmode of viewing things. And even apart from the contrast of a very\ndifferent scene, he would have found it, just now, a somewhat vulgar\nspectacle. The temples, wide open, with their ropes of roses flapping\nin the wind against the rich, reflecting marble, their startling\ndraperies and heavy cloud of incense, were but the centres of a great\nbanquet spread through all the gaudily coloured streets of Rome, for\nwhich the carnivorous appetite of those who thronged them in the glare\nof the mid-day sun was frankly enough asserted. At best, they were but\ncalling their gods to share with them the cooked, sacrificial, and\nother meats, reeking to the sky. The child, who was concerned for the\nsorrows of one of those Northern captives as he passed by, and\nexplained to his comrade\u2014\u201cThere\u2019s feeling in that hand, you know!\u201d\nbenumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain, seemed, in a moment,\nto transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel. Yes! these\nRomans were a coarse, a vulgar people; and their vulgarities of soul in\nfull evidence here. And Aurelius himself seemed to have undergone the\nworld\u2019s coinage, and fallen to the level of his reward, in a mediocrity\nno longer golden.\n\nYet if, as he passed by, almost filling the quaint old circular chariot\nwith his magnificent golden-flowered attire, he presented himself to\nMarius, chiefly as one who had made the great mistake; to the multitude\nhe came as a more than magnanimous conqueror. That he had \u201cforgiven\u201d\nthe innocent wife and children of the dashing and almost successful\nrebel Avidius Cassius, now no more, was a recent circumstance still in\nmemory. As the children went past\u2014not among those who, ere the emperor\nascended the steps of the Capitol, would be detached from the great\nprogress for execution, happy rather, and radiant, as adopted members\nof the imperial family\u2014the crowd actually enjoyed an exhibition of the\nmoral order, such as might become perhaps the fashion. And it was in\nconsideration of some possible touch of a heroism herein that might\nreally have cost him something, that Marius resolved to seek the\nemperor once more, with an appeal for common-sense, for reason and\njustice.\n\nHe had set out at last to revisit his old home; and knowing that\nAurelius was then in retreat at a favourite villa, which lay almost on\nhis way thither, determined there to present himself. Although the\ngreat plain was dying steadily, a new race of wild birds establishing\nitself there, as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and the\nidle contadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay and death,\nreplacing the lusty Roman labourer, never had that poetic region\nbetween Rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunless\nday of early autumn, under which all that fell within the immense\nhorizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear, penitential blue.\nStimulating to the fancy as was that range of low hills to the\nnorthwards, already troubled with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yet\na want of quiet in their outline, the record of wild fracture there, of\nsudden upheaval and depression, marked them as but the ruins of nature;\nwhile at every little descent and ascent of the road might be noted\ntraces of the abandoned work of man. From time to time, the way was\nstill redolent of the floral relics of summer, daphne and\nmyrtle-blossom, sheltered in the little hollows and ravines. At last,\namid rocks here and there piercing the soil, as those descents became\nsteeper, and the main line of the Apennines, now visible, gave a higher\naccent to the scene, he espied over the plateau, almost like one of\nthose broken hills, cutting the horizon towards the sea, the old brown\nvilla itself, rich in memories of one after another of the family of\nthe Antonines. As he approached it, such reminiscences crowded upon\nhim, above all of the life there of the aged Antoninus Pius, in its\nwonderful mansuetude and calm. Death had overtaken him here at the\nprecise moment when the tribune of the watch had received from his lips\nthe word Aequanimitas! as the watchword of the night. To see their\nemperor living there like one of his simplest subjects, his hands red\nat vintage-time with the juice of the grapes, hunting, teaching his\nchildren, starting betimes, with all who cared to join him, for long\ndays of antiquarian research in the country around:\u2014this, and the like\nof this, had seemed to mean the peace of mankind.\n\nUpon that had come\u2014like a stain! it seemed to Marius just then\u2014the more\nintimate life of Faustina, the life of Faustina at home. Surely, that\nmarvellous but malign beauty must still haunt those rooms, like an\nunquiet, dead goddess, who might have perhaps, after all, something\nreassuring to tell surviving mortals about her ambiguous self. When,\ntwo years since, the news had reached Rome that those eyes, always so\npersistently turned to vanity, had suddenly closed for ever, a strong\ndesire to pray had come over Marius, as he followed in fancy on its\nwild way the soul of one he had spoken with now and again, and whose\npresence in it for a time the world of art could so ill have spared.\nCertainly, the honours freely accorded to embalm her memory were poetic\nenough\u2014the rich temple left among those wild villagers at the spot, now\nit was hoped sacred for ever, where she had breathed her last; the\ngolden image, in her old place at the amphitheatre; the altar at which\nthe newly married might make their sacrifice; above all, the great\nfoundation for orphan girls, to be called after her name.\n\nThe latter, precisely, was the cause why Marius failed in fact to see\nAurelius again, and make the chivalrous effort at enlightenment he had\nproposed to himself. Entering the villa, he learned from an usher, at\nthe door of the long gallery, famous still for its grand prospect in\nthe memory of many a visitor, and then leading to the imperial\napartments, that the emperor was already in audience: Marius must wait\nhis turn\u2014he knew not how long it might be. An odd audience it seemed;\nfor at that moment, through the closed door, came shouts of laughter,\nthe laughter of a great crowd of children\u2014the \u201cFaustinian Children\u201d\nthemselves, as he afterwards learned\u2014happy and at their ease, in the\nimperial presence. Uncertain, then, of the time for which so pleasant a\nreception might last, so pleasant that he would hardly have wished to\nshorten it, Marius finally determined to proceed, as it was necessary\nthat he should accomplish the first stage of his journey on this day.\nThe thing was not to be\u2014Vale! anima infelicissima!\u2014He might at least\ncarry away that sound of the laughing orphan children, as a not\nunamiable last impression of kings and their houses.\n\nThe place he was now about to visit, especially as the resting-place of\nhis dead, had never been forgotten. Only, the first eager period of his\nlife in Rome had slipped on rapidly; and, almost on a sudden, that old\ntime had come to seem very long ago. An almost burdensome solemnity had\ngrown about his memory of the place, so that to revisit it seemed a\nthing that needed preparation: it was what he could not have done\nhastily. He half feared to lessen, or disturb, its value for himself.\nAnd then, as he travelled leisurely towards it, and so far with quite\ntranquil mind, interested also in many another place by the way, he\ndiscovered a shorter road to the end of his journey, and found himself\nindeed approaching the spot that was to him like no other. Dreaming now\nonly of the dead before him, he journeyed on rapidly through the night;\nthe thought of them increasing on him, in the darkness. It was as if\nthey had been waiting for him there through all those years, and felt\nhis footsteps approaching now, and understood his devotion, quite\ngratefully, in that lowliness of theirs, in spite of its tardy\nfulfilment. As morning came, his late tranquillity of mind had given\nway to a grief which surprised him by its freshness. He was moved more\nthan he could have thought possible by so distant a sorrow.\n\u201cTo-day!\u201d\u2014they seemed to be saying as the hard dawn broke,\u2014\u201cTo-day, he\nwill come!\u201d At last, amid all his distractions, they were become the\nmain purpose of what he was then doing. The world around it, when he\nactually reached the place later in the day, was in a mood very\ndifferent from his:\u2014so work-a-day, it seemed, on that fine afternoon,\nand the villages he passed through so silent; the inhabitants being,\nfor the most part, at their labour in the country. Then, at length,\nabove the tiled outbuildings, were the walls of the old villa itself,\nwith the tower for the pigeons; and, not among cypresses, but\nhalf-hidden by aged poplar-trees, their leaves like golden fruit, the\nbirds floating around it, the conical roof of the tomb itself. In the\npresence of an old servant who remembered him, the great seals were\nbroken, the rusty key turned at last in the lock, the door was forced\nout among the weeds grown thickly about it, and Marius was actually in\nthe place which had been so often in his thoughts.\n\nHe was struck, not however without a touch of remorse thereupon,\nchiefly by an odd air of neglect, the neglect of a place allowed to\nremain as when it was last used, and left in a hurry, till long years\nhad covered all alike with thick dust \u2014the faded flowers, the burnt-out\nlamps, the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who had had\nsomething to do there. A heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen and\nchipped open one of the oldest of the mortuary urns, many hundreds in\nnumber ranged around the walls. It was not properly an urn, but a\nminute coffin of stone, and the fracture had revealed a piteous\nspectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within; the bones of a\nchild, as he understood, which might have died, in ripe age, three\ntimes over, since it slipped away from among his great-grandfathers, so\nfar up in the line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up in\nhim feelings vivid enough, bringing him intimately within the scope of\ndead people\u2019s grievances. He noticed, side by side with the urn of his\nmother, that of a boy of about his own age\u2014one of the serving-boys of\nthe household\u2014who had descended hither, from the lightsome world of\nchildhood, almost at the same time with her. It seemed as if this boy\nof his own age had taken filial place beside her there, in his stead.\nThat hard feeling, again, which had always lingered in his mind with\nthe thought of the father he had scarcely known, melted wholly away, as\nhe read the precise number of his years, and reflected suddenly\u2014He was\nof my own present age; no hard old man, but with interests, as he\nlooked round him on the world for the last time, even as mine to-day!\n\nAnd with that came a blinding rush of kindness, as if two alienated\nfriends had come to understand each other at last. There was weakness\nin all this; as there is in all care for dead persons, to which\nnevertheless people will always yield in proportion as they really care\nfor one another. With a vain yearning, as he stood there, still to be\nable to do something for them, he reflected that such doing must be,\nafter all, in the nature of things, mainly for himself. His own epitaph\nmight be that old one eskhatos tou idiou genous+ \u2014He was the last of\nhis race! Of those who might come hither after himself probably no one\nwould ever again come quite as he had done to-day; and it was under the\ninfluence of this thought that he determined to bury all that, deep\nbelow the surface, to be remembered only by him, and in a way which\nwould claim no sentiment from the indifferent. That took many days\u2014was\nlike a renewal of lengthy old burial rites\u2014as he himself watched the\nwork, early and late; coming on the last day very early, and\nanticipating, by stealth, the last touches, while the workmen were\nabsent; one young lad only, finally smoothing down the earthy bed,\ngreatly surprised at the seriousness with which Marius flung in his\nflowers, one by one, to mingle with the dark mould.\n\nNOTES\n\n\n207. +Transliteration: eskhatos tou idiou genous. Translation: \u201c[he\nwas] the last of his race.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII.\nANIMA NATURALITER CHRISTIANA\n\n\nThose eight days at his old home, so mournfully occupied, had been for\nMarius in some sort a forcible disruption from the world and the roots\nof his life in it. He had been carried out of himself as never before;\nand when the time was over, it was as if the claim over him of the\nearth below had been vindicated, over against the interests of that\nliving world around. Dead, yet sentient and caressing hands seemed to\nreach out of the ground and to be clinging about him. Looking back\nsometimes now, from about the midway of life\u2014the age, as he conceived,\nat which one begins to redescend one\u2019s life\u2014though antedating it a\nlittle, in his sad humour, he would note, almost with surprise, the\nunbroken placidity of the contemplation in which it had been passed.\nHis own temper, his early theoretic scheme of things, would have pushed\nhim on to movement and adventure. Actually, as circumstances had\ndetermined, all its movement had been inward; movement of observation\nonly, or even of pure meditation; in part, perhaps, because throughout\nit had been something of a meditatio mortis, ever facing towards the\nact of final detachment. Death, however, as he reflected, must be for\nevery one nothing less than the fifth or last act of a drama, and, as\nsuch, was likely to have something of the stirring character of a\nd\u00e9nouement. And, in fact, it was in form tragic enough that his end not\nlong afterwards came to him.\n\nIn the midst of the extreme weariness and depression which had followed\nthose last days, Cornelius, then, as it happened, on a journey and\ntravelling near the place, finding traces of him, had become his guest\nat White-nights. It was just then that Marius felt, as he had never\ndone before, the value to himself, the overpowering charm, of his\nfriendship. \u201cMore than brother!\u201d\u2014he felt\u2014like a son also!\u201d contrasting\nthe fatigue of soul which made himself in effect an older man, with the\nirrepressible youth of his companion. For it was still the marvellous\nhopefulness of Cornelius, his seeming prerogative over the future, that\ndetermined, and kept alive, all other sentiment concerning him. A new\nhope had sprung up in the world of which he, Cornelius, was a\ndepositary, which he was to bear onward in it. Identifying himself with\nCornelius in so dear a friendship, through him, Marius seemed to touch,\nto ally himself to, actually to become a possessor of the coming world;\neven as happy parents reach out, and take possession of it, in and\nthrough the survival of their children. For in these days their\nintimacy had grown very close, as they moved hither and thither,\nleisurely, among the country-places thereabout, Cornelius being on his\nway back to Rome, till they came one evening to a little town (Marius\nremembered that he had been there on his first journey to Rome) which\nhad even then its church and legend\u2014the legend and holy relics of the\nmartyr Hyacinthus, a young Roman soldier, whose blood had stained the\nsoil of this place in the reign of the emperor Trajan.\n\nThe thought of that so recent death, haunted Marius through the night,\nas if with audible crying and sighs above the restless wind, which came\nand went around their lodging. But towards dawn he slept heavily; and\nawaking in broad daylight, and finding Cornelius absent, set forth to\nseek him. The plague was still in the place\u2014had indeed just broken out\nafresh; with an outbreak also of cruel superstition among its wild and\nmiserable inhabitants. Surely, the old gods were wroth at the presence\nof this new enemy among them! And it was no ordinary morning into which\nMarius stepped forth. There was a menace in the dark masses of hill,\nand motionless wood, against the gray, although apparently unclouded\nsky. Under this sunless heaven the earth itself seemed to fret and fume\nwith a heat of its own, in spite of the strong night-wind. And now the\nwind had fallen.\n\nMarius felt that he breathed some strange heavy fluid, denser than any\ncommon air. He could have fancied that the world had sunken in the\nnight, far below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of its\nown atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly less terrified\nand overwrought by the haunting sickness about them than their pagan\nneighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr; and even as\nMarius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, on a sudden the\nhills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, around the whole compass of\nthe horizon. For a moment Marius supposed himself attacked with some\nsudden sickness of brain, till the fall of a great mass of building\nconvinced him that not himself but the earth under his feet was giddy.\nA few moments later the little marketplace was alive with the rush of\nthe distracted inhabitants from their tottering houses; and as they\nwaited anxiously for the second shock of earthquake, a long-smouldering\nsuspicion leapt precipitately into well-defined purpose, and the whole\nbody of people was carried forward towards the band of worshippers\nbelow. An hour later, in the wild tumult which followed, the earth had\nbeen stained afresh with the blood of the martyrs Felix and\nFaustinus\u2014Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra!\u2014and their brethren,\ntogether with Cornelius and Marius, thus, as it had happened, taken\namong them, were prisoners, reserved for the action of the law. Marius\nand his friend, with certain others, exercising the privilege of their\nrank, made claim to be tried in Rome, or at least in the chief town of\nthe district; where, indeed, in the troublous days that had now begun,\na legal process had been already instituted. Under the care of a\nmilitary guard the captives were removed on the same day, one stage of\ntheir journey; sleeping, for security, during the night, side by side\nwith their keepers, in the rooms of a shepherd\u2019s deserted house by the\nwayside.\n\nIt was surmised that one of the prisoners was not a Christian: the\nguards were forward to make the utmost pecuniary profit of this\ncircumstance, and in the night, Marius, taking advantage of the loose\ncharge kept over them, and by means partly of a large bribe, had\ncontrived that Cornelius, as the really innocent person, should be\ndismissed in safety on his way, to procure, as Marius explained, the\nproper means of defence for himself, when the time of trial came.\n\nAnd in the morning Cornelius in fact set forth alone, from their\nmiserable place of detention. Marius believed that Cornelius was to be\nthe husband of Cecilia; and that, perhaps strangely, had but added to\nthe desire to get him away safely.\u2014We wait for the great crisis which\nis to try what is in us: we can hardly bear the pressure of our hearts,\nas we think of it: the lonely wrestler, or victim, which imagination\nforeshadows to us, can hardly be one\u2019s self; it seems an outrage of our\ndestiny that we should be led along so gently and imperceptibly, to so\nterrible a leaping-place in the dark, for more perhaps than life or\ndeath. At last, the great act, the critical moment itself comes,\neasily, almost unconsciously. Another motion of the clock, and our\nfatal line\u2014the \u201cgreat climacteric point\u201d\u2014has been passed, which changes\nourselves or our lives. In one quarter of an hour, under a sudden,\nuncontrollable impulse, hardly weighing what he did, almost as a matter\nof course and as lightly as one hires a bed for one\u2019s night\u2019s rest on a\njourney, Marius had taken upon himself all the heavy risk of the\nposition in which Cornelius had then been\u2014the long and wearisome delays\nof judgment, which were possible; the danger and wretchedness of a long\njourney in this manner; possibly the danger of death. He had delivered\nhis brother, after the manner he had sometimes vaguely anticipated as a\nkind of distinction in his destiny; though indeed always with wistful\ncalculation as to what it might cost him: and in the first moment after\nthe thing was actually done, he felt only satisfaction at his courage,\nat the discovery of his possession of \u201cnerve.\u201d\n\nYet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic martyr\u2014had indeed no right\nto be; and when he had seen Cornelius depart, on his blithe and hopeful\nway, as he believed, to become the husband of Cecilia; actually, as it\nhad happened, without a word of farewell, supposing Marius was almost\nimmediately afterwards to follow (Marius indeed having avoided the\nmoment of leave-taking with its possible call for an explanation of the\ncircumstances), the reaction came. He could only guess, of course, at\nwhat might really happen. So far, he had but taken upon himself, in the\nstead of Cornelius, a certain amount of personal risk; though he hardly\nsupposed himself to be facing the danger of death. Still, especially\nfor one such as he, with all the sensibilities of which his whole\nmanner of life had been but a promotion, the situation of a person\nunder trial on a criminal charge was actually full of distress. To him,\nin truth, a death such as the recent death of those saintly brothers,\nseemed no glorious end. In his case, at least, the Martyrdom, as it was\ncalled\u2014the overpowering act of testimony that Heaven had come down\namong men\u2014would be but a common execution: from the drops of his blood\nthere would spring no miraculous, poetic flowers; no eternal aroma\nwould indicate the place of his burial; no plenary grace, overflowing\nfor ever upon those who might stand around it. Had there been one to\nlisten just then, there would have come, from the very depth of his\ndesolation, an eloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men\u2019s fates,\non the singular accidents of life and death.\n\nThe guards, now safely in possession of whatever money and other\nvaluables the prisoners had had on them, pressed them forward, over the\nrough mountain paths, altogether careless of their sufferings. The\ngreat autumn rains were falling. At night the soldiers lighted a fire;\nbut it was impossible to keep warm. From time to time they stopped to\nroast portions of the meat they carried with them, making their\ncaptives sit round the fire, and pressing it upon them. But weariness\nand depression of spirits had deprived Marius of appetite, even if the\nfood had been more attractive, and for some days he partook of nothing\nbut bad bread and water. All through the dark mornings they dragged\nover boggy plains, up and down hills, wet through sometimes with the\nheavy rain. Even in those deplorable circumstances, he could but notice\nthe wild, dark beauty of those regions\u2014the stormy sunrise, and placid\nspaces of evening. One of the keepers, a very young soldier, won him at\ntimes, by his simple kindness, to talk a little, with wonder at the\nlad\u2019s half-conscious, poetic delight in the adventures of the journey.\nAt times, the whole company would lie down for rest at the roadside,\nhardly sheltered from the storm; and in the deep fatigue of his spirit,\nhis old longing for inopportune sleep overpowered him.\u2014Sleep anywhere,\nand under any conditions, seemed just then a thing one might well\nexchange the remnants of one\u2019s life for.\n\nIt must have been about the fifth night, as he afterwards conjectured,\nthat the soldiers, believing him likely to die, had finally left him\nunable to proceed further, under the care of some country people, who\nto the extent of their power certainly treated him kindly in his\nsickness. He awoke to consciousness after a severe attack of fever,\nlying alone on a rough bed, in a kind of hut. It seemed a remote,\nmysterious place, as he looked around in the silence; but so\nfresh\u2014lying, in fact, in a high pasture-land among the mountains\u2014that\nhe felt he should recover, if he might but just lie there in quiet long\nenough. Even during those nights of delirium he had felt the scent of\nthe new-mown hay pleasantly, with a dim sense for a moment that he was\nlying safe in his old home. The sunlight lay clear beyond the open\ndoor; and the sounds of the cattle reached him softly from the green\nplaces around. Recalling confusedly the torturing hurry of his late\njourneys, he dreaded, as his consciousness of the whole situation\nreturned, the coming of the guards. But the place remained in absolute\nstillness. He was, in fact, at liberty, but for his own disabled\ncondition. And it was certainly a genuine clinging to life that he felt\njust then, at the very bottom of his mind. So it had been, obscurely,\neven through all the wild fancies of his delirium, from the moment\nwhich followed his decision against himself, in favour of Cornelius.\n\nThe occupants of the place were to be heard presently, coming and going\nabout him on their business: and it was as if the approach of death\nbrought out in all their force the merely human sentiments. There is\nthat in death which certainly makes indifferent persons anxious to\nforget the dead: to put them\u2014those aliens\u2014away out of their thoughts\naltogether, as soon as may be. Conversely, in the deep isolation of\nspirit which was now creeping upon Marius, the faces of these people,\ncasually visible, took a strange hold on his affections; the link of\ngeneral brotherhood, the feeling of human kinship, asserting itself\nmost strongly when it was about to be severed for ever. At nights he\nwould find this face or that impressed deeply on his fancy; and, in a\ntroubled sort of manner, his mind would follow them onwards, on the\nways of their simple, humdrum, everyday life, with a peculiar yearning\nto share it with them, envying the calm, earthy cheerfulness of all\ntheir days to be, still under the sun, though so indifferent, of\ncourse, to him!\u2014as if these rude people had been suddenly lifted into\nsome height of earthly good-fortune, which must needs isolate them from\nhimself.\n\nTristem neminen fecit+\u2014he repeated to himself; his old prayer shaping\nitself now almost as his epitaph. Yes! so much the very hardest judge\nmust concede to him. And the sense of satisfaction which that thought\nleft with him disposed him to a conscious effort of recollection, while\nhe lay there, unable now even to raise his head, as he discovered on\nattempting to reach a pitcher of water which stood near. Revelation,\nvision, the discovery of a vision, the seeing of a perfect humanity, in\na perfect world\u2014through all his alternations of mind, by some dominant\ninstinct, determined by the original necessities of his own nature and\ncharacter, he had always set that above the having, or even the doing,\nof anything. For, such vision, if received with due attitude on his\npart, was, in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a\npleasant offering or sacrifice to whatever gods there might be,\nobservant of him. And how goodly had the vision been!\u2014one long\nunfolding of beauty and energy in things, upon the closing of which he\nmight gratefully utter his \u201cVixi!\u201d+ Even then, just ere his eyes were\nto be shut for ever, the things they had seen seemed a veritable\npossession in hand; the persons, the places, above all, the touching\nimage of Jesus, apprehended dimly through the expressive faces, the\ncrying of the children, in that mysterious drama, with a sudden sense\nof peace and satisfaction now, which he could not explain to himself.\nSurely, he had prospered in life! And again, as of old, the sense of\ngratitude seemed to bring with it the sense also of a living person at\nhis side.\n\nFor still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a\nsense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, to use\nlife, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far as might\nbe, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself\u2014a kind of music,\nall-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out on the air.\nYet now, aware still in that suffering body of such vivid powers of\nmind and sense, as he anticipated from time to time how his sickness,\npractically without aid as he must be in this rude place, was likely to\nend, and that the moment of taking final account was drawing very near,\na consciousness of waste would come, with half-angry tears of\nself-pity, in his great weakness\u2014a blind, outraged, angry feeling of\nwasted power, such as he might have experienced himself standing by the\ndeathbed of another, in condition like his own.\n\nAnd yet it was the fact, again, that the vision of men and things,\nactually revealed to him on his way through the world, had developed,\nwith a wonderful largeness, the faculties to which it addressed itself,\nhis general capacity of vision; and in that too was a success, in the\nview of certain, very definite, well-considered, undeniable\npossibilities. Throughout that elaborate and lifelong education of his\nreceptive powers, he had ever kept in view the purpose of preparing\nhimself towards possible further revelation some day\u2014towards some\nampler vision, which should take up into itself and explain this\nworld\u2019s delightful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, till\nthen but half-understood, might be taken up into the text of a lost\nepic, recovered at last. At this moment, his unclouded receptivity of\nsoul, grown so steadily through all those years, from experience to\nexperience, was at its height; the house ready for the possible guest;\nthe tablet of the mind white and smooth, for whatsoever divine fingers\nmight choose to write there. And was not this precisely the condition,\nthe attitude of mind, to which something higher than he, yet akin to\nhim, would be likely to reveal itself; to which that influence he had\nfelt now and again like a friendly hand upon his shoulder, amid the\nactual obscurities of the world, would be likely to make a further\nexplanation? Surely, the aim of a true philosophy must lie, not in\nfutile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to the\ncircumstances in which he chances to find himself, but in the\nmaintenance of a kind of candid discontent, in the face of the very\nhighest achievement; the unclouded and receptive soul quitting the\nworld finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered the\nworld still unimpaired, and going on its blind way at last with the\nconsciousness of some profound enigma in things, as but a pledge of\nsomething further to come. Marius seemed to understand how one might\nlook back upon life here, and its excellent visions, as but the portion\nof a race-course left behind him by a runner still swift of foot: for a\nmoment he experienced a singular curiosity, almost an ardent desire to\nenter upon a future, the possibilities of which seemed so large.\n\nAnd just then, again amid the memory of certain touching actual words\nand images, came the thought of the great hope, that hope against hope,\nwhich, as he conceived, had arisen\u2014Lux sedentibus in tenebris+\u2014upon the\naged world; the hope Cornelius had seemed to bear away upon him in his\nstrength, with a buoyancy which had caused Marius to feel, not so much\nthat by a caprice of destiny, he had been left to die in his place, as\nthat Cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him also from death.\nThere had been a permanent protest established in the world, a plea, a\nperpetual after-thought, which humanity henceforth would ever possess\nin reserve, against any wholly mechanical and disheartening theory of\nitself and its conditions. That was a thought which relieved for him\nthe iron outline of the horizon about him, touching it as if with soft\nlight from beyond; filling the shadowy, hollow places to which he was\non his way with the warmth of definite affections; confirming also\ncertain considerations by which he seemed to link himself to the\ngenerations to come in the world he was leaving. Yes! through the\nsurvival of their children, happy parents are able to think calmly, and\nwith a very practical affection, of a world in which they are to have\nno direct share; planting with a cheerful good-humour, the acorns they\ncarry about with them, that their grand-children may be shaded from the\nsun by the broad oak-trees of the future. That is nature\u2019s way of\neasing death to us. It was thus too, surprised, delighted, that Marius,\nunder the power of that new hope among men, could think of the\ngenerations to come after him. Without it, dim in truth as it was, he\ncould hardly have dared to ponder the world which limited all he really\nknew, as it would be when he should have departed from it. A strange\nlonesomeness, like physical darkness, seemed to settle upon the thought\nof it; as if its business hereafter must be, as far as he was\nconcerned, carried on in some inhabited, but distant and alien, star.\nContrariwise, with the sense of that hope warm about him, he seemed to\nanticipate some kindly care for himself; never to fail even on earth, a\ncare for his very body\u2014that dear sister and companion of his soul,\noutworn, suffering, and in the very article of death, as it was now.\n\nFor the weariness came back tenfold; and he had finally to abstain from\nthoughts like these, as from what caused physical pain. And then, as\nbefore in the wretched, sleepless nights of those forced marches, he\nwould try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like a child\nthinking over the toys it loves, one after another, that it may fall\nasleep thus, and forget all about them the sooner, on all the persons\nhe had loved in life\u2014on his love for them, dead or living, grateful for\nhis love or not, rather than on theirs for him\u2014letting their images\npass away again, or rest with him, as they would. In the bare sense of\nhaving loved he seemed to find, even amid this foundering of the ship,\nthat on which his soul might \u201cassuredly rest and depend.\u201d One after\nanother, he suffered those faces and voices to come and go, as in some\nmechanical exercise, as he might have repeated all the verses he knew\nby heart, or like the telling of beads one by one, with many a sleepy\nnod between-whiles.\n\nFor there remained also, for the old earthy creature still within him,\nthat great blessedness of physical slumber. To sleep, to lose one\u2019s\nself in sleep\u2014that, as he had always recognised, was a good thing. And\nit was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuring\nvoices of the people who had kept and tended him so carefully through\nhis sickness, now kneeling around his bed: and what he heard confirmed,\nin the then perfect clearness of his soul, the inevitable suggestion of\nhis own bodily feelings. He had often dreamt he was condemned to die,\nthat the hour, with wild thoughts of escape, was arrived; and waking,\nwith the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had been full\nof gratitude for his place there, alive still, in the land of the\nliving. He read surely, now, in the manner, the doings, of these\npeople, some of whom were passing out through the doorway, where the\nheavy sunlight in very deed lay, that his last morning was come, and\nturned to think once more of the beloved. Often had he fancied of old\nthat not to die on a dark or rainy day might itself have a little\nalleviating grace or favour about it. The people around his bed were\npraying fervently\u2014Abi! Abi! Anima Christiana!+ In the moments of his\nextreme helplessness their mystic bread had been placed, had descended\nlike a snow-flake from the sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers had\napplied to hands and feet, to all those old passage-ways of the senses,\nthrough which the world had come and gone for him, now so dim and\nobstructed, a medicinable oil. It was the same people who, in the gray,\naustere evening of that day, took up his remains, and buried them\nsecretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, holding his\ndeath, according to their generous view in this matter, to have been of\nthe nature of martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the church had always said,\na kind of sacrament with plenary grace.\n\n1881-1884.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n217. +\u201cHe made no one unhappy.\u201d\n\n218. +\u201cI have lived!\u201d\n\n221. +From the Latin Vulgate Bible, Matthew 4:16: \u201cpopulus qui sedebat\nin tenebris lucem vidit magnam et sedentibus in regione et umbra mortis\nlux orta est eis.\u201d King James Bible translation: \u201cThe people which sat\nin darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and\nshadow of death light is sprung up.\u201d\n\n224. \u201cDepart! Depart! Christian Soul!\u201d The thought is from the Catholic\nprayer for the departing.","title":"Marius the Epicurean \u2014 Volume 2","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":51602}