MARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME TWO

WALTER HORATIO PATER

London: 1910. (The Library Edition. )

NOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:

Notes: The 1910 Library Edition employs footnotes, a style inconvenientin an electronic edition. I have therefore placed an asteriskimmediately after each of Pater's footnotes and a + sign after my ownnotes, and have listed each chapter's notes at that chapter's end. 

Pagination and Paragraphing: To avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, Ihave transferred original pagination to brackets. A bracketed numeralsuch as [22] indicates that the material immediately following thenumber marks the beginning of the relevant page. I have preservedparagraph structure except for first-line indentation. 

Hyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-textdoes not require line-end or page-end hyphenation. 

Greek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliteratedPater's Greek quotations. If there is a need for the original Greek, it can be viewed at my site, http://www. Ajdrake. Com/etexts, aVictorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Paterand many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions. 

MARIUS THE EPICUREAN, VOLUME TWO

WALTER PATER

 Cheimerinos oneiros, hote mêkistai hai vyktes. +

 +"A winter's dream, when nights are longest. " Lucian, The Dream, Vol. 3. 

 CONTENTS

 PART THE THIRD

 15. Stoicism at Court: 3-13 16. Second Thoughts: 14-28 17. Beata Urbs: 29-40 18. "The Ceremony of the Dart": 41-56 19. The Will as Vision: 57-72

 PART THE FOURTH

 20. Two Curious Houses--1. Guests: 75-91 21. Two Curious Houses--2. The Church in Cecilia's House: 92-108 22. "The Minor Peace of the Church": 109-127 23. Divine Service: 128-140 24. A Conversation Not Imaginary: 141-171 25. Sunt Lacrimae Rerum: 172-185 26. The Martyrs: 186-196 27. The Triumph of Marcus Aurelius: 197-207 28. Anima Naturaliter Christiana: 208-224

PART THE THIRD

CHAPTER XV: STOICISM AT COURT

[3] THE very finest flower of the same company--Aurelius with thegilded fasces borne before him, a crowd of exquisites, the empressFaustina herself, and all the elegant blue-stockings of the day, whomaintained, people said, their private "sophists" to whisper philosophyinto their ears winsomely as they performed the duties of thetoilet--was assembled again a few months later, in a different placeand for a very different purpose. The temple of Peace, a "modernising"foundation of Hadrian, enlarged by a library and lecture-rooms, hadgrown into an institution like something between a college and aliterary club; and here Cornelius Fronto was to pronounce a discourseon the Nature of Morals. There were some, indeed, who had desired theemperor Aurelius himself to declare his whole mind on this matter. Rhetoric was become almost a function of the state: philosophy was uponthe throne; and had from time to time, by [4] request, delivered anofficial utterance with well-nigh divine authority. And it was as thedelegate of this authority, under the full sanction of the philosophicemperor--emperor and pontiff, that the aged Fronto purposed to-day toexpound some parts of the Stoic doctrine, with the view of recommendingmorals to that refined but perhaps prejudiced company, as being, ineffect, one mode of comeliness in things--as it were music, or a kindof artistic order, in life. And he did this earnestly, with an outlayof all his science of mind, and that eloquence of which he was known tobe a master. For Stoicism was no longer a rude and unkempt thing. Received at court, it had largely decorated itself: it was grownpersuasive and insinuating, and sought not only to convince men'sintelligence but to allure their souls. Associated with the beautifulold age of the great rhetorician, and his winning voice, it was almostEpicurean. And the old man was at his best on the occasion; the laston which he ever appeared in this way. To-day was his own birthday. Early in the morning the imperial letter of congratulation had reachedhim; and all the pleasant animation it had caused was in his face, whenassisted by his daughter Gratia he took his place on the ivory chair, as president of the Athenaeum of Rome, wearing with a wonderful gracethe philosophic pall, --in reality neither more nor less than the loosewoollen cloak of the common soldier, but fastened [5] on his rightshoulder with a magnificent clasp, the emperor's birthday gift. 

It was an age, as abundant evidence shows, whose delight in rhetoricwas but one result of a general susceptibility--an age not merelytaking pleasure in words, but experiencing a great moral power in them. Fronto's quaintly fashionable audience would have wept, and alsoassisted with their purses, had his present purpose been, as sometimeshappened, the recommendation of an object of charity. As it was, arranging themselves at their ease among the images and flowers, theseamateurs of exquisite language, with their tablets open for carefulrecord of felicitous word or phrase, were ready to give themselveswholly to the intellectual treat prepared for them, applauding, blowingloud kisses through the air sometimes, at the speaker's triumphant exitfrom one of his long, skilfully modulated sentences; while the youngerof them meant to imitate everything about him, down to the inflectionsof his voice and the very folds of his mantle. Certainly there wasrhetoric enough:--a wealth of imagery; illustrations from painting, music, mythology, the experiences of love; a management, by whichsubtle, unexpected meaning was brought out of familiar terms, likeflies from morsels of amber, to use Fronto's own figure. But with allits richness, the higher claim of his style was rightly understood tolie in gravity and self-command, and an especial care for the [6]purities of a vocabulary which rejected every expression unsanctionedby the authority of approved ancient models. 

And it happened with Marius, as it will sometimes happen, that thisgeneral discourse to a general audience had the effect of an utteranceadroitly designed for him. His conscience still vibrating painfullyunder the shock of that scene in the amphitheatre, and full of theethical charm of Cornelius, he was questioning himself with muchimpatience as to the possibility of an adjustment between his ownelaborately thought-out intellectual scheme and the "old morality. " Inthat intellectual scheme indeed the old morality had so far beenallowed no place, as seeming to demand from him the admission ofcertain first principles such as might misdirect or retard him in hisefforts towards a complete, many-sided existence; or distort therevelations of the experience of life; or curtail his natural libertyof heart and mind. But now (his imagination being occupied for themoment with the noble and resolute air, the gallantry, so to call it, which composed the outward mien and presentment of his strange friend'sinflexible ethics) he felt already some nascent suspicion of hisphilosophic programme, in regard, precisely, to the question of goodtaste. There was the taint of a graceless "antinomianism" perceptiblein it, a dissidence, a revolt against accustomed modes, the actualimpression of which on other [7] men might rebound upon himself in someloss of that personal pride to which it was part of his theory of lifeto allow so much. And it was exactly a moral situation such as thisthat Fronto appeared to be contemplating. He seemed to have before hismind the case of one--Cyrenaic or Epicurean, as the courtier tends tobe, by habit and instinct, if not on principle--who yet experiences, actually, a strong tendency to moral assents, and a desire, with aslittle logical inconsistency as may be, to find a place for duty andrighteousness in his house of thought. 

And the Stoic professor found the key to this problem in the purelyaesthetic beauty of the old morality, as an element in things, fascinating to the imagination, to good taste in its most highlydeveloped form, through association--a system or order, as a matter offact, in possession, not only of the larger world, but of the rareminority of élite intelligences; from which, therefore, least of allwould the sort of Epicurean he had in view endure to become, so tospeak, an outlaw. He supposed his hearer to be, with all sincerity, insearch after some principle of conduct (and it was here that he seemedto Marius to be speaking straight to him) which might give unity ofmotive to an actual rectitude, a cleanness and probity of life, determined partly by natural affection, partly by enlightenedself-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the merefear of penalties; no element of which, [8] however, was distinctivelymoral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, nocommon ground with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even likethe philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices; actuallysatisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering toall their dues--one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless, in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. Howtenderly--more tenderly than many stricter souls--he might yieldhimself to kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in passingjudgment on others! what an exquisite conscience of other men'ssusceptibilities! He knows for how much the manner, because the heartitself, counts, in doing a kindness. He goes beyond most people in hiscare for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively, that to be butsentient is to possess rights. He conceives a hundred duties, thoughhe may not call them by that name, of the existence of which purelyduteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind of pride in doingmore than they, in a way of his own. Sometimes, he may think thatthose men of line and rule do not really understand their own business. How narrow, inflexible, unintelligent! what poor guardians (he mayreason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, are some supposedcareful walkers according to its letter and form. And yet all thewhile he admits, as such, no moral world at all: no [9] theoreticequivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life. 

But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined bynatural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is aremnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstainsfrom doing, not so much through his own free election, as from adeference, an "assent, " entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom--tothe actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure tobreak away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement withthem on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. Yes! therewere the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a failurein good taste. An assent, such as this, to the preferences of others, might seem to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it coulddetermine the least considerable element in a moral life. Yet here, according to Cornelius Fronto, was in truth the revealing example, albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principlerequired. There was one great idea associated with which thatdetermination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest, the fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action; a principleunder which one might subsume men's most strenuous efforts afterrighteousness. And he proceeded to expound the idea of Humanity--of auniversal commonwealth of mind, which [10] becomes explicit, and as ifincarnate, in a select communion of just men made perfect. 

Ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin+--the world is as it were a commonwealth, a city: and there are observances, customs, usages, actually current init, things our friends and companions will expect of us, as thecondition of our living there with them at all, as really their peersor fellow-citizens. Those observances were, indeed, the creation of avisible or invisible aristocracy in it, whose actual manners, whosepreferences from of old, become now a weighty tradition as to the wayin which things should or should not be done, are like a music, towhich the intercourse of life proceeds--such a music as no one who hadonce caught its harmonies would willingly jar. In this way, thebecoming, as in Greek--to prepon: or ta êthê+ mores, manners, as bothGreeks and Romans said, would indeed be a comprehensive term for duty. Righteousness would be, in the words of "Caesar" himself, of thephilosophic Aurelius, but a "following of the reasonable will of theoldest, the most venerable, of cities, of polities--of the royal, thelaw-giving element, therein--forasmuch as we are citizens also in thatsupreme city on high, of which all other cities beside are but assingle habitations. " But as the old man spoke with animation of thissupreme city, this invisible society, whose conscience was becomeexplicit in its inner circle of inspired souls, of whose [11] commonspirit, the trusted leaders of human conscience had been but themouthpiece, of whose successive personal preferences in the conduct oflife, the "old morality" was the sum, --Marius felt that his ownthoughts were passing beyond the actual intention of the speaker; notin the direction of any clearer theoretic or abstract definition ofthat ideal commonwealth, but rather as if in search of its visiblelocality and abiding-place, the walls and towers of which, so to speak, he might really trace and tell, according to his own old, natural habitof mind. It would be the fabric, the outward fabric, of a systemreaching, certainly, far beyond the great city around him, even ifconceived in all the machinery of its visible and invisible influencesat their grandest--as Augustus or Trajan might have conceived ofthem--however well the visible Rome might pass for a figure of thatnew, unseen, Rome on high. At moments, Marius even asked himself withsurprise, whether it might be some vast secret society the speaker hadin view:--that august community, to be an outlaw from which, to beforeign to the manners of which, was a loss so much greater than to beexcluded, into the ends of the earth, from the sovereign Romancommonwealth. Humanity, a universal order, the great polity, itsaristocracy of elect spirits, the mastery of their example over theirsuccessors--these were the ideas, stimulating enough in their way, [12]by association with which the Stoic professor had attempted to elevate, to unite under a single principle, men's moral efforts, himself liftedup with so genuine an enthusiasm. But where might Marius search forall this, as more than an intellectual abstraction? Where were thoseelect souls in whom the claim of Humanity became so amiable, winning, persuasive--whose footsteps through the world were so beautiful in theactual order he saw--whose faces averted from him, would be more thanhe could bear? Where was that comely order, to which as a great fact ofexperience he must give its due; to which, as to all other beautiful"phenomena" in life, he must, for his own peace, adjust himself?

Rome did well to be serious. The discourse ended somewhat abruptly, asthe noise of a great crowd in motion was heard below the walls;whereupon, the audience, following the humour of the younger element init, poured into the colonnade, from the steps of which the famousprocession, or transvectio, of the military knights was to be seenpassing over the Forum, from their trysting-place at the temple ofMars, to the temple of the Dioscuri. The ceremony took place thisyear, not on the day accustomed--anniversary of the victory of LakeRegillus, with its pair of celestial assistants--and amid the heat androses of a Roman July, but, by [13] anticipation, some months earlier, the almond-trees along the way being still in leafless flower. Throughthat light trellis-work, Marius watched the riders, arrayed in alltheir gleaming ornaments, and wearing wreaths of olive around theirhelmets, the faces below which, what with battle and the plague, werealmost all youthful. It was a flowery scene enough, but had to-day itsfulness of war-like meaning; the return of the army to the North, wherethe enemy was again upon the move, being now imminent. Cornelius hadridden along in his place, and, on the dismissal of the company, passedbelow the steps where Marius stood, with that new song he had heardonce before floating from his lips. 

NOTES

10. +Transliteration: Ho kosmos hôsanei polis estin. Translation: "Theworld is like a city. "

10. +Transliteration: to prepon . .. Ta êthê. Translation: "That whichis seemly . .. Mores. "

CHAPTER XVI: SECOND THOUGHTS

[14] AND Marius, for his part, was grave enough. The discourse ofCornelius Fronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon, had set him on a review--on a review of the isolatingnarrowness, in particular, of his own theoretic scheme. Long after thevery latest roses were faded, when "the town" had departed to countryvillas, or the baths, or the war, he remained behind in Rome; anxiousto try the lastingness of his own Epicurean rose-garden; setting towork over again, and deliberately passing from point to point of hisold argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions. That ageand our own have much in common--many difficulties and hopes. Let thereader pardon me if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius tohis modern representatives--from Rome, to Paris or London. 

What really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathiesthat determine [15] practice? It had been a theory, avowedly, of lossand gain (so to call it) of an economy. If, therefore, it missedsomething in the commerce of life, which some other theory of practicewas able to include, if it made a needless sacrifice, then it must be, in a manner, inconsistent with itself, and lack theoretic completeness. Did it make such a sacrifice? What did it lose, or cause one to lose?

And we may note, as Marius could hardly have done, that Cyrenaicism isever the characteristic philosophy of youth, ardent, but narrow in itssurvey--sincere, but apt to become one-sided, or even fanatical. It isone of those subjective and partial ideals, based on vivid, becauselimited, apprehension of the truth of one aspect of experience (in thiscase, of the beauty of the world and the brevity of man's life there)which it may be said to be the special vocation of the young toexpress. In the school of Cyrene, in that comparatively fresh Greekworld, we see this philosophy where it is least blasé, as we say; inits most pleasant, its blithest and yet perhaps its wisest form, youthfully bright in the youth of European thought. But it grows youngagain for a while in almost every youthful soul. It is spoken ofsometimes as the appropriate utterance of jaded men; but in them it canhardly be sincere, or, by the nature of the case, an enthusiasm. "Walkin the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes, " is, indeed, most often, [16] according to the supposition of the book fromwhich I quote it, the counsel of the young, who feel that the sunshineis pleasant along their veins, and wintry weather, though in a generalsense foreseen, a long way off. The youthful enthusiasm or fanaticism, the self-abandonment to one favourite mode of thought or taste, whichoccurs, quite naturally, at the outset of every really vigorousintellectual career, finds its special opportunity in a theory such asthat so carefully put together by Marius, just because it seems to callon one to make the sacrifice, accompanied by a vivid sensation of powerand will, of what others value--sacrifice of some conviction, ordoctrine, or supposed first principle--for the sake of that clear-eyedintellectual consistency, which is like spotless bodily cleanliness, orscrupulous personal honour, and has itself for the mind of the youthfulstudent, when he first comes to appreciate it, the fascination of anideal. 

The Cyrenaic doctrine, then, realised as a motive of strenuousness orenthusiasm, is not so properly the utterance of the "jaded Epicurean, "as of the strong young man in all the freshness of thought and feeling, fascinated by the notion of raising his life to the level of a daringtheory, while, in the first genial heat of existence, the beauty of thephysical world strikes potently upon his wide-open, unwearied senses. He discovers a great new poem every spring, with a hundred delightfulthings he too has felt, but [16] which have never been expressed, or atleast never so truly, before. The workshops of the artists, who canselect and set before us what is really most distinguished in visiblelife, are open to him. He thinks that the old Platonic, or the newBaconian philosophy, has been better explained than by the authorsthemselves, or with some striking original development, this verymonth. In the quiet heat of early summer, on the dusty gold morning, the music comes, louder at intervals, above the hum of voices from someneighbouring church, among the flowering trees, valued now, perhaps, only for the poetically rapt faces among priests or worshippers, or themere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith andrighteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feelshimself to be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days tothe contemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religiousservice. Afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts awaithim! At that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choiceor exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasmsomething like this. Life in modern London even, in the heavy glow ofsummer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth tobuild its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and enjoyment of anexperience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow ofsummer itself, by the [18] thought of its brevity, giving him somethingof a gambler's zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act ordiligently appreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments whichare to pass away so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his elaboratelydeveloped self-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fiercegrasp upon the things he values at all, he has, beyond all others, aninward need of something permanent in its character, to hold by: ofwhich circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with thebrilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure, it is, in truth, but darknesshe is, "encountering, like a bride. " But the inevitable falling of thecurtain is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is notoften that he really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weightabove, the narrow world and its company, within. When the thought ofit does occur to him, he may say to himself:--Well! and the rude monk, for instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dimworld beyond it, really acquiesces in that "fifth act, " amid all theconsoling ministries around him, as little as I should at this moment;though I may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however wellacted, I may already have had quite enough of it, and find a truewell-being in eternal sleep. 

And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with thefunction of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or [19]less the special philosophy, or "prophecy, " of the young, when theideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of thereceptive, if not of the reflective, powers--precisely in thiscircumstance, if we rightly consider it, lies the duly prescribedcorrective of that philosophy. For it is by its exclusiveness, and bynegation rather than positively, that such theories fail to satisfy uspermanently; and what they really need for their correction, is thecomplementary influence of some greater system, in which they may findtheir due place. That Sturm und Drang of the spirit, as it has beencalled, that ardent and special apprehension of half-truths, in theenthusiastic, and as it were "prophetic" advocacy of which, devotion totruth, in the case of the young--apprehending but one point at a timein the great circumference--most usually embodies itself, is levelleddown, safely enough, afterwards, as in history so in the individual, bythe weakness and mere weariness, as well as by the maturer wisdom, ofour nature. And though truth indeed, resides, as has been said, "inthe whole"--in harmonisings and adjustments like this--yet thosespecial apprehensions may still owe their full value, in this sense of"the whole, " to that earlier, one-sided but ardent pre-occupation withthem. 

Cynicism and Cyrenaicism:--they are the earlier Greek forms of RomanStoicism and Epicureanism, and in that world of old Greek [20] thought, we may notice with some surprise that, in a little while, the noblerform of Cyrenaicism--Cyrenaicism cured of its faults--met the noblerform of Cynicism half-way. Starting from opposed points, they merged, each in its most refined form, in a single ideal of temperance ormoderation. Something of the same kind may be noticed regarding somelater phases of Cyrenaic theory. If it starts with considerationsopposed to the religious temper, which the religious temper holds it aduty to repress, it is like it, nevertheless, and very unlike any lowerdevelopment of temper, in its stress and earnestness, its seriousapplication to the pursuit of a very unworldly type of perfection. Thesaint, and the Cyrenaic lover of beauty, it may be thought, would atleast understand each other better than either would understand themere man of the world. Carry their respective positions a pointfurther, shift the terms a little, and they might actually touch. 

Perhaps all theories of practice tend, as they rise to their best, asunderstood by their worthiest representatives, to identification witheach other. For the variety of men's possible reflections on theirexperience, as of that experience itself, is not really so great as itseems; and as the highest and most disinterested ethical formulae, filtering down into men's everyday existence, reach the same poor levelof vulgar egotism, so, we may fairly suppose that all the highestspirits, from [21] whatever contrasted points they have started, wouldyet be found to entertain, in the moral consciousness realised bythemselves, much the same kind of mental company; to hold, far morethan might be thought probable, at first sight, the same personal typesof character, and even the same artistic and literary types, in esteemor aversion; to convey, all of them alike, the same savour ofunworldliness. And Cyrenaicism or Epicureanism too, new or old, may benoticed, in proportion to the completeness of its development, toapproach, as to the nobler form of Cynicism, so also to the more noblydeveloped phases of the old, or traditional morality. In the gravityof its conception of life, in its pursuit after nothing less than aperfection, in its apprehension of the value of time--the passion andthe seriousness which are like a consecration--la passion et le sérieuxqui consacrent--it may be conceived, as regards its main drift, to benot so much opposed to the old morality, as an exaggeration of onespecial motive in it. 

Some cramping, narrowing, costly preference of one part of his ownnature, and of the nature of things, to another, Marius seemed to havedetected in himself, meantime, --in himself, as also in those oldmasters of the Cyrenaic philosophy. If they did realise themonochronos hêdonê+ as it was called--the pleasure of the "IdealNow"--if certain moments of their lives were high-pitched, passionatelycoloured, intent with sensation, [22] and a kind of knowledge which, inits vivid clearness, was like sensation--if, now and then, theyapprehended the world in its fulness, and had a vision, almost"beatific, " of ideal personalities in life and art, yet these momentswere a very costly matter: they paid a great price for them, in thesacrifice of a thousand possible sympathies, of things only to beenjoyed through sympathy, from which they detached themselves, inintellectual pride, in loyalty to a mere theory that would take nothingfor granted, and assent to no approximate or hypothetical truths. Intheir unfriendly, repellent attitude towards the Greek religion, andthe old Greek morality, surely, they had been but faulty economists. The Greek religion was then alive: then, still more than in its laterday of dissolution, the higher view of it was possible, even for thephilosopher. Its story made little or no demand for a reasoned orformal acceptance. A religion, which had grown through and throughman's life, with so much natural strength; had meant so much for somany generations; which expressed so much of their hopes, in forms sofamiliar and so winning; linked by associations so manifold to man ashe had been and was--a religion like this, one would think, might havehad its uses, even for a philosophic sceptic. Yet those beautifulgods, with the whole round of their poetic worship, the school ofCyrene definitely renounced. 

[23] The old Greek morality, again, with all its imperfections, wascertainly a comely thing. --Yes! a harmony, a music, in men's ways, onemight well hesitate to jar. The merely aesthetic sense might have hada legitimate satisfaction in the spectacle of that fair order of choicemanners, in those attractive conventions, enveloping, so gracefully, the whole of life, insuring some sweetness, some security at leastagainst offence, in the intercourse of the world. Beyond an obviousutility, it could claim, indeed but custom--use-and-wont, as wesay--for its sanction. But then, one of the advantages of that libertyof spirit among the Cyrenaics (in which, through theory, they hadbecome dead to theory, so that all theory, as such, was reallyindifferent to them, and indeed nothing valuable but in its tangibleministration to life) was precisely this, that it gave them free playin using as their ministers or servants, things which, to theuninitiated, must be masters or nothing. Yet, how little the followersof Aristippus made of that whole comely system of manners or morals, then actually in possession of life, is shown by the bold practicalconsequence, which one of them maintained (with a hard, self-opinionated adherence to his peculiar theory of values) in the notvery amiable paradox that friendship and patriotism were things onecould do without; while another--Death's-advocate, as he wascalled--helped so many to self-destruction, by his [24] pessimisticeloquence on the evils of life, that his lecture-room was closed. Thatthis was in the range of their consequences--that this was a possible, if remote, deduction from the premisses of the discreet Aristippus--wassurely an inconsistency in a thinker who professed above all things aneconomy of the moments of life. And yet those old Cyrenaics felt theirway, as if in the dark, we may be sure, like other men in the ordinarytransactions of life, beyond the narrow limits they drew of clear andabsolutely legitimate knowledge, admitting what was not of immediatesensation, and drawing upon that "fantastic" future which might nevercome. A little more of such "walking by faith, " a little more of suchnot unreasonable "assent, " and they might have profited by a hundredservices to their culture, from Greek religion and Greek morality, asthey actually were. The spectacle of their fierce, exclusive, tenacious hold on their own narrow apprehension, makes one think of apicture with no relief, no soft shadows nor breadth of space, or of adrama without proportionate repose. 

Yet it was of perfection that Marius (to return to him again from hismasters, his intellectual heirs) had been really thinking all the time:a narrow perfection it might be objected, the perfection of but onepart of his nature--his capacities of feeling, of exquisite physicalimpressions, of an imaginative sympathy--but still, a true perfectionof those capacities, wrought out [25] to their utmost degree, admirableenough in its way. He too is an economist: he hopes, by that "insight"of which the old Cyrenaics made so much, by skilful apprehension of theconditions of spiritual success as they really are, the specialcircumstances of the occasion with which he has to deal, the specialfelicities of his own nature, to make the most, in no mean or vulgarsense, of the few years of life; few, indeed, for the attainment ofanything like general perfection! With the brevity of that sum ofyears his mind is exceptionally impressed; and this purpose makes himno frivolous dilettante, but graver than other men: his scheme is notthat of a trifler, but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a very real one, to those old words--Let us work while it is day!He has a strong apprehension, also, of the beauty of the visible thingsaround him; their fading, momentary, graces and attractions. Hisnatural susceptibility in this direction, enlarged by experience, seemsto demand of him an almost exclusive pre-occupation with the aspects ofthings; with their aesthetic character, as it is called--theirrevelations to the eye and the imagination: not so much because thoseaspects of them yield him the largest amount of enjoyment, as becauseto be occupied, in this way, with the aesthetic or imaginative side ofthings, is to be in real contact with those elements of his own nature, and of theirs, which, for him at [26] least, are matter of the mostreal kind of apprehension. As other men are concentrated upon truthsof number, for instance, or on business, or it may be on the pleasuresof appetite, so he is wholly bent on living in that full stream ofrefined sensation. And in the prosecution of this love of beauty, heclaims an entire personal liberty, liberty of heart and mind, liberty, above all, from what may seem conventional answers to first questions. 

But, without him there is a venerable system of sentiment and idea, widely extended in time and place, in a kind of impregnable possessionof human life--a system, which, like some other great products of theconjoint efforts of human mind through many generations, is rich in theworld's experience; so that, in attaching oneself to it, one lets in agreat tide of that experience, and makes, as it were with a singlestep, a great experience of one's own, and with great consequentincrease to one's sense of colour, variety, and relief, in thespectacle of men and things. The mere sense that one belongs to asystem--an imperial system or organisation--has, in itself, theexpanding power of a great experience; as some have felt who have beenadmitted from narrower sects into the communion of the catholic church;or as the old Roman citizen felt. It is, we might fancy, what thecoming into possession of a very widely spoken language might be, witha great literature, which is also [27] the speech of the people we haveto live among. 

A wonderful order, actually in possession of human life!--growninextricably through and through it; penetrating into its laws, itsvery language, its mere habits of decorum, in a thousand half-consciousways; yet still felt to be, in part, an unfulfilled ideal; and, assuch, awakening hope, and an aim, identical with the one onlyconsistent aspiration of mankind! In the apprehension of that, justthen, Marius seemed to have joined company once more with his own oldself; to have overtaken on the road the pilgrim who had come to Rome, with absolute sincerity, on the search for perfection. It defined notso much a change of practice, as of sympathy--a new departure, anexpansion, of sympathy. It involved, certainly, some curtailment ofhis liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, theenactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have electedso, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here togive one, so to term it, an "indulgence. " But then, under thesupposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worthplucking again. The authority they exercised was like that of classictaste--an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty ofthe scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which everyobservance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found, [28] the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonablesignificance and a natural history. 

And Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistakenin his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to thewell-considered economy of life which he had brought with him toRome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if hedid not make that concession, if he did but remain just there. 

NOTES

21. +Transliteration: monochronos hêdonê. Pater's definition "thepleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now. " The definition isfitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, "single orunitary time. "

CHAPTER XVII: BEATA URBS

"Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see. "

[29] THE enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of themighty invading hosts of the fifth century. Illusively repressed justnow, those confused movements along the northern boundary of the Empirewere destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which, powerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress for atime the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of Christwas to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beautyof the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistakentradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem attimes, for eventual reconciliation thereto. Meantime Italy had armeditself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for theAlps. 

Whatever misgiving the Roman people may [30] have felt as to theleadership of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though withsome temporary regret for the loss of what had been, after all, apopular figure on the world's stage. Travelling fraternally in thesame litter with Aurelius, Lucius Verus was struck with sudden andmysterious disease, and died as he hastened back to Rome. His deathawoke a swarm of sinister rumours, to settle on Lucilla, jealous, itwas said, of Fabia her sister, perhaps of Faustina--on Faustinaherself, who had accompanied the imperial progress, and was anxious nowto hide a crime of her own--even on the elder brother, who, beforehandwith the treasonable designs of his colleague, should have helped himat supper to a favourite morsel, cut with a knife poisoned ingeniouslyon one side only. Aurelius, certainly, with sincere distress, his longirritations, so dutifully concealed or repressed, turning now into asingle feeling of regret for the human creature, carried the remainsback to Rome, and demanded of the Senate a public funeral, with adecree for the apotheôsis, or canonisation, of the dead. 

For three days the body lay in state in the Forum, enclosed in an opencoffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of ivory and gold, in the centre of asort of temporary chapel, representing the temple of his patronessVenus Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it, while choirs ofselect voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns ormonologues from the great tragedians. 

[31] At the head of the couch were displayed the various personaldecorations which had belonged to Verus in life. Like all the rest ofRome, Marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcelydisguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, at night-fall, along one of the streets below the palace, to someamorous appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, hewas taken by surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by the piteous change there; even the skill of Galen having been notwholly successful in the process of embalming. It was as if a brotherof his own were lying low before him, with that meek and helplessexpression it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely. 

Meantime, in the centre of the Campus Martius, within the grove ofpoplars which enclosed the space where the body of Augustus had beenburnt, the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of variousaromatic woods, was built up in many stages, separated from each otherby a light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carvedand tapestried images. Upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structurelay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incensebrought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for thewanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by a waxeneffigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. [32] At lastthe Centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in hand, to ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wildexcitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames thedecorations they had received for acts of valour under the deademperor's command. 

It had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the lastmoment, through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle--not avery noble or youthful specimen of its kind--was caused to take flightamid the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishingremains; a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette, subsequently making official declaration before the Senate, that theimperial "genius" had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire. And Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by"acclamation, " muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low, rhythmical chant, decreed Caelum--the privilege of divine rank to thedeparted. 

The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowedLucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine;and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in thecentral mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour ofits statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty;after the due accomplishment of which Aurelius was at [33] liberty toretire for a time into the privacy o his beloved apartments of thePalatine. And hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned asecond time, to receive from the imperial hands the great pile ofManuscripts it would be his business to revise and arrange. 

One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as heclimbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against thesunless sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a longsubterranean gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperialapartments, and in our own day, amid the ruin of all around it, assmooth and fresh as if the carpets were but just removed from its floorafter the return of the emperor from the shows. It was here, on suchan occasion, that the emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty-nine, hadcome by his end, the assassins gliding along it as he lingered a fewmoments longer to watch the movements of a party of noble youths attheir exercise in the courtyard below. As Marius waited, a secondtime, in that little red room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious to look once more upon its painted walls--the very placewhither the assassins were said to have turned for refuge after themurder--he could all but see the figure, which in its surrounding lightand darkness seemed to him the most melancholy in the entire history ofRome. He called to mind the greatness of that popularity and early[34] promise--the stupefying height of irresponsible power, from which, after all, only men's viler side had been clearly visible--theoverthrow of reason--the seemingly irredeemable memory; and still, above all, the beautiful head in which the noble lines of the race ofAugustus were united to, he knew not what expression of sensibilityand fineness, not theirs, and for the like of which one must passonward to the Antonines. Popular hatred had been careful to destroyits semblance wherever it was to be found; but one bust, in darkbronze-like basalt of a wonderful perfection of finish, preserved inthe museum of the Capitol, may have seemed to some visitors thereperhaps the finest extant relic of Roman art. Had the very seal ofempire upon those sombre brows, reflected from his mirror, suggestedhis insane attempt upon the liberties, the dignity of men?--"Ohumanity!" he seems to ask, "what hast thou done to me that I should sodespise thee?"--And might not this be indeed the true meaning ofkingship, if the world would have one man to reign over it? The likeof this: or, some incredible, surely never to be realised, height ofdisinterestedness, in a king who should be the servant of all, quite atthe other extreme of the practical dilemma involved in such a position. Not till some while after his death had the body been decently interredby the piety of the sisters he had driven into exile. Fraternity [35]of feeling had been no invariable feature in the incidents of Romanstory. One long Vicus Sceleratus, from its first dim foundation infraternal quarrel on the morrow of a common deliverance sotouching--had not almost every step in it some gloomy memory ofunnatural violence? Romans did well to fancy the traitress Tarpeiastill "green in earth, " crowned, enthroned, at the roots of theCapitoline rock. If in truth the religion of Rome was everywhere init, like that perfume of the funeral incense still upon the air, soalso was the memory of crime prompted by a hypocritical cruelty, downto the erring, or not erring, Vesta calmly buried alive there, onlyeighty years ago, under Domitian. 

It was with a sense of relief that Marius found himself in the presenceof Aurelius, whose gesture of friendly intelligence, as he entered, raised a smile at the gloomy train of his own thoughts just then, although since his first visit to the palace a great change had passedover it. The clear daylight found its way now into empty rooms. Toraise funds for the war, Aurelius, his luxurious brother being no more, had determined to sell by auction the accumulated treasures of theimperial household. The works of art, the dainty furniture, had beenremoved, and were now "on view" in the Forum, to be the delight ordismay, for many weeks to come, of the [36] large public of those whowere curious in these things. In such wise had Aurelius come to thecondition of philosophic detachment he had affected as a boy, hardlypersuaded to wear warm clothing, or to sleep in more luxurious mannerthan on the bare floor. But, in his empty house, the man of mind, whohad always made so much of the pleasures of philosophic contemplation, felt freer in thought than ever. He had been reading, with lessself-reproach than usual, in the Republic of Plato, those passageswhich describe the life of the philosopher-kings--like that of hiredservants in their own house--who, possessed of the "gold undefiled" ofintellectual vision, forgo so cheerfully all other riches. It was oneof his happy days: one of those rare days, when, almost with none ofthe effort, otherwise so constant with him, his thoughts came rich andfull, and converged in a mental view, as exhilarating to him as theprospect of some wide expanse of landscape to another man's bodily eye. He seemed to lie readier than was his wont to the imaginative influenceof the philosophic reason--to its suggestions of a possible opencountry, commencing just where all actual experience leaves off, butwhich experience, one's own and not another's, may one day occupy. Infact, he was seeking strength for himself, in his own way, before hestarted for that ambiguous earthly warfare [37] which was to occupy theremainder of his life. "Ever remember this, " he writes, "that a happylife depends, not on many things--en oligistois keitai. "+ And to-day, committing himself with a steady effort of volition to the mere silenceof the great empty apartments, he might be said to have escaped, according to Plato's promise to those who live closely with philosophy, from the evils of the world. 

In his "conversations with himself" Marcus Aurelius speaks often ofthat City on high, of which all other cities are but singlehabitations. From him in fact Cornelius Fronto, in his late discourse, had borrowed the expression; and he certainly meant by it more than thewhole commonwealth of Rome, in any idealisation of it, however sublime. Incorporate somehow with the actual city whose goodly stones were lyingbeneath his gaze, it was also implicate in that reasonable constitutionof nature, by devout contemplation of which it is possible for man toassociate himself to the consciousness of God. In that New Rome he hadtaken up his rest for awhile on this day, deliberately feeding histhoughts on the better air of it, as another might have gone for mentalrenewal to a favourite villa. 

"Men seek retirement in country-houses, " he writes, "on the sea-coast, on the mountains; and you have yourself as much fondness for suchplaces as another. But there is little proof of culture therein; sincethe privilege is yours of [38] retiring into yourself whensoever youplease, --into that little farm of one's own mind, where a silence soprofound may be enjoyed. " That it could make these retreats, was aplain consequence of the kingly prerogative of the mind, its dominionover circumstance, its inherent liberty. --"It is in thy power to thinkas thou wilt: The essence of things is in thy thoughts about them: Allis opinion, conception: No man can be hindered by another: What isoutside thy circle of thought is nothing at all to it; hold to this, and you are safe: One thing is needful--to live close to the divinegenius within thee, and minister thereto worthily. " And the firstpoint in this true ministry, this culture, was to maintain one's soulin a condition of indifference and calm. How continually had publicclaims, the claims of other persons, with their rough angularities ofcharacter, broken in upon him, the shepherd of the flock. But afterall he had at least this privilege he could not part with, of thinkingas he would; and it was well, now and then, by a conscious effort ofwill, to indulge it for a while, under systematic direction. The dutyof thus making discreet, systematic use of the power of imaginativevision for purposes of spiritual culture, "since the soul takes colourfrom its fantasies, " is a point he has frequently insisted on. 

The influence of these seasonable meditations--a symbol, or sacrament, because an intensified [39] condition, of the soul's own ordinary andnatural life--would remain upon it, perhaps for many days. There wereexperiences he could not forget, intuitions beyond price, he had comeby in this way, which were almost like the breaking of a physical lightupon his mind; as the great Augustus was said to have seen a mysteriousphysical splendour, yonder, upon the summit of the Capitol, where thealtar of the Sibyl now stood. With a prayer, therefore, for inwardquiet, for conformity to the divine reason, he read some selectpassages of Plato, which bear upon the harmony of the reason, in allits forms, with itself--"Could there be Cosmos, that wonderful, reasonable order, in him, and nothing but disorder in the worldwithout?" It was from this question he had passed on to the vision ofa reasonable, a divine, order, not in nature, but in the condition ofhuman affairs--that unseen Celestial City, Uranopolis, Callipolis, UrbsBeata--in which, a consciousness of the divine will being everywhererealised, there would be, among other felicitous differences from thislower visible world, no more quite hopeless death, of men, or children, or of their affections. He had tried to-day, as never before, to makethe most of this vision of a New Rome, to realise it as distinctly ashe could, --and, as it were, find his way along its streets, ere he wentdown into a world so irksomely different, to make his practical efforttowards it, with a soul full of [40] compassion for men as they were. However distinct the mental image might have been to him, with thedescent of but one flight of steps into the market-place below, it musthave retreated again, as if at touch of some malign magic wand, beyondthe utmost verge of the horizon. But it had been actually, in hisclearest vision of it, a confused place, with but a recognisable entry, a tower or fountain, here or there, and haunted by strange faces, whosenovel expression he, the great physiognomist, could by no means read. Plato, indeed, had been able to articulate, to see, at least inthought, his ideal city. But just because Aurelius had passed beyondPlato, in the scope of the gracious charities he pre-supposed there, hehad been unable really to track his way about it. Ah! after all, according to Plato himself, all vision was but reminiscence, and this, his heart's desire, no place his soul could ever have visited in anyregion of the old world's achievements. He had but divined, by a kindof generosity of spirit, the void place, which another experience thanhis must fill. 

Yet Marius noted the wonderful expression of peace, of quiet pleasure, on the countenance of Aurelius, as he received from him the rolls offine clear manuscript, fancying the thoughts of the emperor occupied atthe moment with the famous prospect towards the Alban hills, from thoselofty windows. 

NOTES

37. +Transliteration: en oligistois keitai. Definition "it lies inthe fewest [things]. "

CHAPTER XVIII: "THE CEREMONY OF THE DART"

[41] THE ideas of Stoicism, so precious to Marcus Aurelius, ideas oflarge generalisation, have sometimes induced, in those over whoseintellects they have had real power, a coldness of heart. It was thedistinction of Aurelius that he was able to harmonise them with thekindness, one might almost say the amenities, of a humourist, as alsowith the popular religion and its many gods. Those vasty conceptionsof the later Greek philosophy had in them, in truth, the germ of a sortof austerely opinionative "natural theology, " and how often has thatled to religious dryness--a hard contempt of everything in religion, which touches the senses, or charms the fancy, or really concerns theaffections. Aurelius had made his own the secret of passing, naturally, and with no violence to his thought, to and fro, between therichly coloured and romantic religion of those old gods who had stillbeen human beings, and a very abstract speculation upon the impassive, [42] universal soul--that circle whose centre is everywhere, thecircumference nowhere--of which a series of purely logical necessitieshad evolved the formula. As in many another instance, thosetraditional pieties of the place and the hour had been derived by himfrom his mother:--para tês mêtros to theosebes. + Purified, as all suchreligion of concrete time and place needs to be, by frequentconfronting with the ideal of godhead as revealed to that innatereligious sense in the possession of which Aurelius differed from thepeople around him, it was the ground of many a sociability with theirsimpler souls, and for himself, certainly, a consolation, whenever thewings of his own soul flagged in the trying atmosphere of purelyintellectual vision. A host of companions, guides, helpers, about himfrom of old time, "the very court and company of heaven, " objects forhim of personal reverence and affection--the supposed presence of theancient popular gods determined the character of much of his dailylife, and might prove the last stay of human nature at its weakest. "In every time and place, " he had said, "it rests with thyself to usethe event of the hour religiously: at all seasons worship the gods. "And when he said "Worship the gods!" he did it, as strenuously aseverything else. 

Yet here again, how often must he have experienced disillusion, or evensome revolt of [43] feeling, at that contact with coarser natures towhich his religious conclusions exposed him. At the beginning of theyear one hundred and seventy-three public anxiety was as great as ever;and as before it brought people's superstition into unreserved play. For seven days the images of the old gods, and some of the graver newones, lay solemnly exposed in the open air, arrayed in all theirornaments, each in his separate resting-place, amid lights and burningincense, while the crowd, following the imperial example, daily visitedthem, with offerings of flowers to this or that particular divinity, according to the devotion of each. 

 But supplementing these older official observances, the very wildestgods had their share of worship, --strange creatures with strangesecrets startled abroad into open daylight. The delirious sort ofreligion of which Marius was a spectator in the streets of Rome, duringthe seven days of the Lectisternium, reminded him now and again of anobservation of Apuleius: it was "as if the presence of the gods did notdo men good, but disordered or weakened them. " Some jaded women offashion, especially, found in certain oriental devotions, at oncerelief for their religiously tearful souls and an opportunity forpersonal display; preferring this or that "mystery, " chiefly becausethe attire required in it was suitable to their peculiar manner ofbeauty. And one morning Marius [44] encountered an extraordinarycrimson object, borne in a litter through an excited crowd--the famouscourtesan Benedicta, still fresh from the bath of blood, to which shehad submitted herself, sitting below the scaffold where the victimsprovided for that purpose were slaughtered by the priests. Even on thelast day of the solemnity, when the emperor himself performed one ofthe oldest ceremonies of the Roman religion, this fantastic piety hadasserted itself. There were victims enough certainly, brought from thechoice pastures of the Sabine mountains, and conducted around the citythey were to die for, in almost continuous procession, covered withflowers and well-nigh worried to death before the time by the crowds ofpeople superstitiously pressing to touch them. But certainold-fashioned Romans, in these exceptional circumstances, demandedsomething more than this, in the way of a human sacrifice after theancient pattern; as when, not so long since, some Greeks or Gauls hadbeen buried alive in the Forum. At least, human blood should be shed;and it was through a wild multitude of fanatics, cutting their fleshwith knives and whips and licking up ardently the crimson stream, thatthe emperor repaired to the temple of Bellona, and in solemn symbolicact cast the bloodstained spear, or "dart, " carefully preserved there, towards the enemy's country-- [45] towards that unknown world of Germanhomes, still warm, as some believed under the faint northern twilight, with those innocent affections of which Romans had lost the sense. Andthis at least was clear, amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong oneither side, that the ruin of those homes was involved in what Aureliuswas then preparing for, with, --Yes! the gods be thanked for thatachievement of an invigorating philosophy!--almost with a light heart. 

 For, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for whichMarcus Aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came totest the power of a long-studied theory of practice; and it was thedevelopment of this theory--a theôria, literally--a view, an intuition, of the most important facts, and still more important possibilities, concerning man in the world, that Marius now discovered, almost as ifby accident, below the dry surface of the manuscripts entrusted to him. The great purple rolls contained, first of all, statistics, a generalhistorical account of the writer's own time, and an exact diary; allalike, though in three different degrees of nearness to the writer'sown personal experience, laborious, formal, self-suppressing. This wasfor the instruction of the public; and part of it has, perhaps, foundits way into the Augustan Histories. But it was for the especialguidance of his son Commodus that he had permitted himself to breakout, here [46] and there, into reflections upon what was passing, intoconversations with the reader. And then, as though he were put off hisguard in this way, there had escaped into the heavy matter-of-fact, ofwhich the main portion was composed, morsels of his conversation withhimself. It was the romance of a soul (to be traced only in hints, wayside notes, quotations from older masters), as it were in lifelong, and often baffled search after some vanished or elusive golden fleece, or Hesperidean fruit-trees, or some mysterious light of doctrine, everretreating before him. A man, he had seemed to Marius from the first, of two lives, as we say. Of what nature, he had sometimes wondered, onthe day, for instance, when he had interrupted the emperor's musings inthe empty palace, might be that placid inward guest or inhabitant, whofrom amid the pre-occupations of the man of practical affairs lookedout, as if surprised, at the things and faces around. Here, then, under the tame surface of what was meant for a life of business, Mariusdiscovered, welcoming a brother, the spontaneous self-revelation of asoul as delicate as his own, --a soul for which conversation with itselfwas a necessity of existence. Marius, indeed, had always suspectedthat the sense of such necessity was a peculiarity of his. But here, certainly, was another, in this respect like himself; and again heseemed to detect the advent of some [47] new or changed spirit into theworld, mystic, inward, hardly to be satisfied with that wholly externaland objective habit of life, which had been sufficient for the oldclassic soul. His purely literary curiosity was greatly stimulated bythis example of a book of self-portraiture. It was in fact the positionof the modern essayist, --creature of efforts rather than ofachievements, in the matter of apprehending truth, but at leastconscious of lights by the way, which he must needs record, acknowledge. What seemed to underlie that position was the desire tomake the most of every experience that might come, outwardly or fromwithin: to perpetuate, to display, what was so fleeting, in a kind ofinstinctive, pathetic protest against the imperial writer's owntheory--that theory of the "perpetual flux" of all things--to Mariushimself, so plausible from of old. 

 There was, besides, a special moral or doctrinal significance in themaking of such conversation with one's self at all. The Logos, thereasonable spark, in man, is common to him with the gods--koinos autôpros tous theous+--cum diis communis. That might seem but the truismof a certain school of philosophy; but in Aurelius was clearly anoriginal and lively apprehension. There could be no inwardconversation with one's self such as this, unless there were indeedsome one else, aware of our actual thoughts and feelings, pleased ordispleased at [48] one's disposition of one's self. Cornelius Frontotoo could enounce that theory of the reasonable community between menand God, in many different ways. But then, he was a cheerful man, andAurelius a singularly sad one; and what to Fronto was but a doctrine, or a motive of mere rhetoric, was to the other a consolation. He walksand talks, for a spiritual refreshment lacking which he would faint bythe way, with what to the learned professor is but matter ofphilosophic eloquence. 

In performing his public religious functions Marcus Aurelius had everseemed like one who took part in some great process, a great thingreally done, with more than the actually visible assistants about him. Here, in these manuscripts, in a hundred marginal flowers of thought orlanguage, in happy new phrases of his own like the impromptus of anactual conversation, in quotations from other older masters of theinward life, taking new significance from the chances of suchintercourse, was the record of his communion with that eternal reason, which was also his own proper self, with the divine companion, whosetabernacle was in the intelligence of men--the journal of his dailycommerce with that. 

Chance: or Providence! Chance: or Wisdom, one with nature and man, reaching from end to end, through all time and all existence, orderlydisposing all things, according to [49] fixed periods, as he describesit, in terms very like certain well-known words of the book ofWisdom:--those are the "fenced opposites" of the speculative dilemma, the tragic embarras, of which Aurelius cannot too often remind himselfas the summary of man's situation in the world. If there be, however, a provident soul like this "behind the veil, " truly, even to him, evenin the most intimate of those conversations, it has never yet spokenwith any quite irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet one'schoice in that speculative dilemma, as he has found it, is on the wholea matter of will. --"'Tis in thy power, " here too, again, "to think asthou wilt. " For his part he has asserted his will, and has the courageof his opinion. "To the better of two things, if thou findest that, turn with thy whole heart: eat and drink ever of the best before thee. ""Wisdom, " says that other disciple of the Sapiential philosophy, "hathmingled Her wine, she hath also prepared Herself a table. " Tou aristouapolaue:+ "Partake ever of Her best!" And what Marius, peeping nowvery closely upon the intimacies of that singular mind, found a thingactually pathetic and affecting, was the manner of the writer's bearingas in the presence of this supposed guest; so elusive, so jealous ofany palpable manifestation of himself, so taxing to one's faith, neverallowing one to lean frankly upon him and feel wholly at rest. Only, he [50] would do his part, at least, in maintaining the constantfitness, the sweetness and quiet, of the guest-chamber. Seeming to varywith the intellectual fortune of the hour, from the plainest account ofexperience, to a sheer fantasy, only "believed because it wasimpossible, " that one hope was, at all events, sufficient to make men'scommon pleasures and their common ambition, above all their commonestvices, seem very petty indeed, too petty to know of. It bred in him akind of magnificence of character, in the old Greek sense of the term;a temper incompatible with any merely plausible advocacy of hisconvictions, or merely superficial thoughts about anything whatever, ortalk about other people, or speculation as to what was passing in theirso visibly little souls, or much talking of any kind, however clever orgraceful. A soul thus disposed had "already entered into the betterlife":--was indeed in some sort "a priest, a minister of the gods. "Hence his constant "recollection"; a close watching of his soul, of akind almost unique in the ancient world. --Before all things examineinto thyself: strive to be at home with thyself!--Marius, a sympatheticwitness of all this, might almost seem to have had a foresight ofmonasticism itself in the prophetic future. With this mystic companionhe had gone a step onward out of the merely objective pagan existence. Here was already a master in that craft of self-direction, which wasabout to [51] play so large a part in the forming of human mind, underthe sanction of the Christian church. 

Yet it was in truth a somewhat melancholy service, a service on whichone must needs move about, solemn, serious, depressed, with the hushedfootsteps of those who move about the house where a dead body is lying. Such was the impression which occurred to Marius again and again as heread, with a growing sense of some profound dissidence from his author. By certain quite traceable links of association he was reminded, inspite of the moral beauty of the philosophic emperor's ideas, how hehad sat, essentially unconcerned, at the public shows. For, actually, his contemplations had made him of a sad heart, inducing in him thatmelancholy--Tristitia--which even the monastic moralists have held tobe of the nature of deadly sin, akin to the sin of Desidia orInactivity. Resignation, a sombre resignation, a sad heart, patientbearing of the burden of a sad heart:--Yes! this belonged doubtless tothe situation of an honest thinker upon the world. Only, in this casethere seemed to be too much of a complacent acquiescence in the worldas it is. And there could be no true Théodicé in that; no realaccommodation of the world as it is, to the divine pattern of theLogos, the eternal reason, over against it. It amounted to a toleranceof evil. 

 The soul of good, though it moveth upon a way thou canst but little understand, yet prospereth on the journey:

 [52] If thou sufferest nothing contrary to nature, there can be nought of evil with thee therein. 

 If thou hast done aught in harmony with that reason in which men are communicant with the gods, there also can be nothing of evil with thee--nothing to be afraid of:

 Whatever is, is right; as from the hand of one dispensing to every man according to his desert:

 If reason fulfil its part in things, what more dost thou require?

 Dost thou take it ill that thy stature is but of four cubits?

 That which happeneth to each of us is for the profit of the whole. 

 The profit of the whole, --that was sufficient!+

--Links, in a train of thought really generous! of which, nevertheless, the forced and yet facile optimism, refusing to see evil anywhere, might lack, after all, the secret of genuine cheerfulness. It left intruth a weight upon the spirits; and with that weight unlifted, therecould be no real justification of the ways of Heaven to man. "Letthine air be cheerful, " he had said; and, with an effort, did himselfat times attain to that serenity of aspect, which surely ought toaccompany, as their outward flower and favour, hopeful assumptions likethose. Still, what in Aurelius was but a passing expression, was withCornelius (Marius could but note the contrast) nature, and a veritablephysiognomy. With Cornelius, in fact, it was nothing less than the joywhich Dante apprehended in the blessed spirits of the perfect, theoutward semblance of which, like a reflex of physical light upon humanfaces from "the land which is very far off, " we may trace from Giottoonward to its consummation in the work of Raphael--the serenity, the[53] durable cheerfulness, of those who have been indeed delivered fromdeath, and of which the utmost degree of that famed "blitheness "of theGreeks had been but a transitory gleam, as in careless and whollysuperficial youth. And yet, in Cornelius, it was certainly united withthe bold recognition of evil as a fact in the world; real as an achingin the head or heart, which one instinctively desires to have cured; anenemy with whom no terms could be made, visible, hatefully visible, ina thousand forms--the apparent waste of men's gifts in an early, oreven in a late grave; the death, as such, of men, and even of animals;the disease and pain of the body. 

And there was another point of dissidence between Aurelius and hisreader. --The philosophic emperor was a despiser of the body. Since itis "the peculiar privilege of reason to move within herself, and to beproof against corporeal impressions, suffering neither sensation norpassion to break in upon her, " it follows that the true interest of thespirit must ever be to treat the body--Well! as a corpse attachedthereto, rather than as a living companion--nay, actually to promoteits dissolution. In counterpoise to the inhumanity of this, presentingitself to the young reader as nothing less than a sin against nature, the very person of Cornelius was nothing less than a sanction of thatreverent delight Marius had always had in the visible body of man. Such delight indeed had been but [54] a natural consequence of thesensuous or materialistic character of the philosophy of his choice. Now to Cornelius the body of man was unmistakeably, as a later seerterms it, the one true temple in the world; or rather itself the properobject of worship, of a sacred service, in which the very finest goldmight have its seemliness and due symbolic use:--Ah! and of whatawe-stricken pity also, in its dejection, in the perishing gray bonesof a poor man's grave!

Some flaw of vision, thought Marius, must be involved in thephilosopher's contempt for it--some diseased point of thought, or moraldulness, leading logically to what seemed to him the strangest of allthe emperor's inhumanities, the temper of the suicide; for which therewas just then, indeed, a sort of mania in the world. "'Tis part of thebusiness of life, " he read, "to lose it handsomely. " On due occasion, "one might give life the slip. " The moral or mental powers might failone; and then it were a fair question, precisely, whether the time fortaking leave was not come:--"Thou canst leave this prison when thouwilt. Go forth boldly!" Just there, in the bare capacity to entertainsuch question at all, there was what Marius, with a soul which mustalways leap up in loyal gratitude for mere physical sunshine, touchinghim as it touched the flies in the air, could not away with. There, surely, was a sign of some crookedness in the natural power ofapprehension. It was the [55] attitude, the melancholy intellectualattitude, of one who might be greatly mistaken in things--who mightmake the greatest of mistakes. 

A heart that could forget itself in the misfortune, or even in theweakness of others:--of this Marius had certainly found the trace, as aconfidant of the emperor's conversations with himself, in spite ofthose jarring inhumanities, of that pretension to a stoicalindifference, and the many difficulties of his manner of writing. Hefound it again not long afterwards, in still stronger evidence, in thisway. As he read one morning early, there slipped from the rolls ofmanuscript a sealed letter with the emperor's superscription, whichmight well be of importance, and he felt bound to deliver it at once inperson; Aurelius being then absent from Rome in one of his favouriteretreats, at Praeneste, taking a few days of quiet with his youngchildren, before his departure for the war. A whole day passed asMarius crossed the Campagna on horseback, pleased by the random autumnlights bringing out in the distance the sheep at pasture, the shepherdsin their picturesque dress, the golden elms, tower and villa; and itwas after dark that he mounted the steep street of the little hill-townto the imperial residence. He was struck by an odd mixture ofstillness and excitement about the place. Lights burned at thewindows. It seemed that numerous visitors were within, for thecourtyard was crowded with litters and horses [56] in waiting. For themoment, indeed, all larger cares, even the cares of war, of late soheavy a pressure, had been forgotten in what was passing with thelittle Annius Verus; who for his part had forgotten his toys, lying allday across the knees of his mother, as a mere child's ear-ache grewrapidly to alarming sickness with great and manifest agony, onlysuspended a little, from time to time, when from very weariness hepassed into a few moments of unconsciousness. The country surgeoncalled in, had removed the imposthume with the knife. There had been agreat effort to bear this operation, for the terrified child, hardlypersuaded to submit himself, when his pain was at its worst, and evenmore for the parents. At length, amid a company of pupils pressing inwith him, as the custom was, to watch the proceedings in the sick-room, the eminent Galen had arrived, only to pronounce the thing done visiblyuseless, the patient falling now into longer intervals of delirium. And thus, thrust on one side by the crowd of departing visitors, Mariuswas forced into the privacy of a grief, the desolate face of which wentdeep into his memory, as he saw the emperor carry the child away--quiteconscious at last, but with a touching expression upon it of weaknessand defeat--pressed close to his bosom, as if he yearned just then forone thing only, to be united, to be absolutely one with it, in itsobscure distress. 

NOTES

42. +Transliteration: para tês mêtros to theosebes. Translation:"rites deriving from [his] mother. "

47. +Transliteration: koinos autô pros tous theous. Translation:"common to him together with the gods. "

49. +Transliteration: Tou aristou apolaue. Translation: "[Always] takethe best. "

52. +Not indented in the original. 

CHAPTER XIX: THE WILL AS VISION

 Paratum cor meum deus! paratum cor meum!

[57] THE emperor demanded a senatorial decree for the erection ofimages in memory of the dead prince; that a golden one should becarried, together with the other images, in the great procession of theCircus, and the addition of the child's name to the Hymn of the SalianPriests: and so, stifling private grief, without further delay setforth for the war. 

True kingship, as Plato, the old master of Aurelius, had understood it, was essentially of the nature of a service. If so be, you can discovera mode of life more desirable than the being a king, for those whoshall be kings; then, the true Ideal of the State will become apossibility; but not otherwise. And if the life of Beatific Vision beindeed possible, if philosophy really "concludes in an ecstasy, "affording full fruition to the entire nature of man; then, for certainelect souls at least, a mode of life will have been [58] discoveredmore desirable than to be a king. By love or fear you might inducesuch persons to forgo their privilege; to take upon them thedistasteful task of governing other men, or even of leading them tovictory in battle. But, by the very conditions of its tenure, theirdominion would be wholly a ministry to others: they would have takenupon them-"the form of a servant": they would be reigning for thewell-being of others rather than their own. The true king, therighteous king, would be Saint Lewis, exiling himself from the betterland and its perfected company--so real a thing to him, definite andreal as the pictured scenes of his psalter--to take part in or toarbitrate men's quarrels, about the transitory appearances of things. In a lower degree (lower, in proportion as the highest Platonic dreamis lower than any Christian vision) the true king would be MarcusAurelius, drawn from the meditation of books, to be the ruler of theRoman people in peace, and still more, in war. 

To Aurelius, certainly, the philosophic mood, the visions, however dim, which this mood brought with it, were sufficiently pleasant to him, together with the endearments of his home, to make public rule nothingless than a sacrifice of himself according to Plato's requirement, nowconsummated in his setting forth for the campaign on the Danube. Thatit was such a sacrifice was to Marius visible fact, as he saw him [59]ceremoniously lifted into the saddle amid all the pageantry of animperial departure, yet with the air less of a sanguine andself-reliant leader than of one in some way or other already defeated. Through the fortune of the subsequent years, passing and repassing soinexplicably from side to side, the rumour of which reached him amidhis own quiet studies, Marius seemed always to see that central figure, with its habitually dejected hue grown now to an expression of positivesuffering, all the stranger from its contrast with the magnificentarmour worn by the emperor on this occasion, as it had been worn by hispredecessor Hadrian. 

 Totus et argento contextus et auro:

clothed in its gold and silver, dainty as that old divinely constructedarmour of which Homer tells, but without its miraculouslightsomeness--he looked out baffled, labouring, moribund; a merecomfortless shadow taking part in some shadowy reproduction of thelabours of Hercules, through those northern, mist-laden confines of thecivilised world. It was as if the familiar soul which had been sofriendly disposed towards him were actually departed to Hades; and whenhe read the Conversations afterwards, though his judgment of themunderwent no material change, it was nevertheless with the allowance wemake for the dead. The memory of that suffering image, while itcertainly strengthened his adhesion [60] to what he could accept at allin the philosophy of Aurelius, added a strange pathos to what must seemthe writer's mistakes. What, after all, had been the meaning of thatincident, observed as so fortunate an omen long since, when the prince, then a little child much younger than was usual, had stood in ceremonyamong the priests of Mars and flung his crown of flowers with the restat the sacred image reclining on the Pulvinar? The other crowns lodgedthemselves here or there; when, Lo! the crown thrown by Aurelius, theyoungest of them all, alighted upon the very brows of the god, as ifplaced there by a careful hand! He was still young, also, when on theday of his adoption by Antoninus Pius he saw himself in a dream, withas it were shoulders of ivory, like the images of the gods, and foundthem more capable than shoulders of flesh. Yet he was now well-nighfifty years of age, setting out with two-thirds of life behind him, upon a labour which would fill the remainder of it with anxiouscares--a labour for which he had perhaps no capacity, and certainly notaste. 

That ancient suit of armour was almost the only object Aurelius nowpossessed from all those much cherished articles of vertu collected bythe Caesars, making the imperial residence like a magnificent museum. Not men alone were needed for the war, so that it became necessary, tothe great disgust alike of timid persons and of [61] the lovers ofsport, to arm the gladiators, but money also was lacking. Accordingly, at the sole motion of Aurelius himself, unwilling that the publicburden should be further increased, especially on the part of the poor, the whole of the imperial ornaments and furniture, a sumptuouscollection of gems formed by Hadrian, with many works of the mostfamous painters and sculptors, even the precious ornaments of theemperor's chapel or Lararium, and the wardrobe of the empress Faustina, who seems to have borne the loss without a murmur, were exposed forpublic auction. "These treasures, " said Aurelius, "like all else thatI possess, belong by right to the Senate and People. " Was it not acharacteristic of the true kings in Plato that they had in their housesnothing they could call their own? Connoisseurs had a keen delight inthe mere reading of the Praetor's list of the property for sale. Fortwo months the learned in these matters were daily occupied in theappraising of the embroidered hangings, the choice articles of personaluse selected for preservation by each succeeding age, the greatoutlandish pearls from Hadrian's favourite cabinet, the marvellousplate lying safe behind the pretty iron wicker-work of the shops in thegoldsmiths' quarter. Meantime ordinary persons might have an interestin the inspection of objects which had been as daily companions topeople so far above and remote from them--things so fine also [62] inworkmanship and material as to seem, with their antique and delicateair, a worthy survival of the grand bygone eras, like select thoughtsor utterances embodying the very spirit of the vanished past. The townbecame more pensive than ever over old fashions. 

The welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great warbeing now over, all Rome seemed to settle down into a singular quiet, likely to last long, as though bent only on watching from afar thelanguid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself. Marius tookadvantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study than of old, only now and then going out to one of his favourite spots on the Sabineor Alban hills for a quiet even greater than that of Rome in thecountry air. On one of these occasions, as if by favour of aninvisible power withdrawing some unknown cause of dejection from aroundhim, he enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-possession--thepossession of his own best and happiest self. After some gloomythoughts over-night, he awoke under the full tide of the rising sun, himself full, in his entire refreshment, of that almost religiousappreciation of sleep, the graciousness of its influence on men'sspirits, which had made the old Greeks conceive of it as a god. It waslike one of those old joyful wakings of childhood, now becoming rarerand rarer with him, and looked back upon with much regret as a measureof advancing age. In fact, [63] the last bequest of this serene sleephad been a dream, in which, as once before, he overheard those he lovedbest pronouncing his name very pleasantly, as they passed through therich light and shadow of a summer morning, along the pavement of acity--Ah! fairer far than Rome! In a moment, as he arose, a certainoppression of late setting very heavily upon him was lifted away, asthough by some physical motion in the air. 

That flawless serenity, better than the most pleasurable excitement, yet so easily ruffled by chance collision even with the things andpersons he had come to value as the greatest treasure in life, was tobe wholly his to-day, he thought, as he rode towards Tibur, under theearly sunshine; the marble of its villas glistening all the way beforehim on the hillside. And why could he not hold such serenity of spiritever at command? he asked, expert as he was at last become in the artof setting the house of his thoughts in order. "'Tis in thy power tothink as thou wilt:" he repeated to himself: it was the mostserviceable of all the lessons enforced on him by those imperialconversations. --"'Tis in thy power to think as thou wilt. " And werethe cheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which he had there readso much, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of aneternal friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical andmaterial order, but only just behind it, [64] ready perhaps even now tobreak through:--were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on some deliberate act of volition on his part? Were theydoctrines one might take for granted, generously take for granted, andled on by them, at first as but well-defined objects of hope, come atlast into the region of a corresponding certitude of the intellect?"It is the truth I seek, " he had read, "the truth, by which no one, "gray and depressing though it might seem, "was ever really injured. "And yet, on the other hand, the imperial wayfarer, he had been able togo along with so far on his intellectual pilgrimage, let fall manythings concerning the practicability of a methodical and self-forcedassent to certain principles or presuppositions "one could not dowithout. " Were there, as the expression "one could not do without"seemed to hint, beliefs, without which life itself must be almostimpossible, principles which had their sufficient ground of evidence inthat very fact? Experience certainly taught that, as regarding thesensible world he could attend or not, almost at will, to this or thatcolour, this or that train of sounds, in the whole tumultuous concourseof colour and sound, so it was also, for the well-trained intelligence, in regard to that hum of voices which besiege the inward no less thanthe outward ear. Might it be not otherwise with those various andcompeting hypotheses, the permissible hypotheses, which, [65] in thatopen field for hypothesis--one's own actual ignorance of the origin andtendency of our being--present themselves so importunately, some ofthem with so emphatic a reiteration, through all the mental changes ofsuccessive ages? Might the will itself be an organ of knowledge, ofvision?

On this day truly no mysterious light, no irresistibly leading handfrom afar reached him; only the peculiarly tranquil influence of itsfirst hour increased steadily upon him, in a manner with which, as heconceived, the aspects of the place he was then visiting had somethingto do. The air there, air supposed to possess the singular property ofrestoring the whiteness of ivory, was pure and thin. An even veil oflawn-like white cloud had now drawn over the sky; and under its broad, shadowless light every hue and tone of time came out upon the yellowold temples, the elegant pillared circle of the shrine of the patronalSibyl, the houses seemingly of a piece with the ancient fundamentalrock. Some half-conscious motive of poetic grace would appear to havedetermined their grouping; in part resisting, partly going along withthe natural wildness and harshness of the place, its floods andprecipices. An air of immense age possessed, above all, the vegetationaround--a world of evergreen trees--the olives especially, older thanhow many generations of men's lives! fretted and twisted by thecombining forces of [66] life and death, into every conceivable capriceof form. In the windless weather all seemed to be listening to theroar of the immemorial waterfall, plunging down so unassociably amongthese human habitations, and with a motion so unchanging from age toage as to count, even in this time-worn place, as an image ofunalterable rest. Yet the clear sky all but broke to let through theray which was silently quickening everything in the late Februaryafternoon, and the unseen violet refined itself through the air. Itwas as if the spirit of life in nature were but withholding any tooprecipitate revelation of itself, in its slow, wise, maturing work. 

Through some accident to the trappings of his horse at the inn where herested, Marius had an unexpected delay. He sat down in anolive-garden, and, all around him and within still turning to reverie, the course of his own life hitherto seemed to withdraw itself into someother world, disparted from this spectacular point where he was nowplaced to survey it, like that distant road below, along which he hadtravelled this morning across the Campagna. Through a dreamy land hecould see himself moving, as if in another life, and like anotherperson, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, passing from point topoint, weeping, delighted, escaping from various dangers. Thatprospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of lively gratitude: itwas as if he must look round for some one [67] else to share his joywith: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his own relief. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in this way orthat, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one or anotherlong span of it, the chief delight of the journey. And was it only theresultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused through hismemory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had notbeen--besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitude hehad which in spite of ardent friendship perhaps loved best of allthings--some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his sidethroughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient ofhis peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his gratefulrecognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he wasthere at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for himaltogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it? In hisdeepest apparent solitude there had been rich entertainment. It was asif there were not one only, but two wayfarers, side by side, visiblethere across the plain, as he indulged his fancy. A bird came and sangamong the wattled hedge-roses: an animal feeding crept nearer: thechild who kept it was gazing quietly: and the scene and the hours stillconspiring, he passed from that mere fantasy of a self not himself, beside him in his coming and [68] going, to those divinations of aliving and companionable spirit at work in all things, of which he hadbecome aware from time to time in his old philosophic readings--inPlato and others, last but not least, in Aurelius. Through onereflection upon another, he passed from such instinctive divinations, to the thoughts which give them logical consistency, formulating atlast, as the necessary exponent of our own and the world's life, thatreasonable Ideal to which the Old Testament gives the name of Creator, which for the philosophers of Greece is the Eternal Reason, and in theNew Testament the Father of Men--even as one builds up from act andword and expression of the friend actually visible at one's side, anideal of the spirit within him. 

In this peculiar and privileged hour, his bodily frame, as he couldrecognise, although just then, in the whole sum of its capacities, soentirely possessed by him--Nay! actually his very self--was yetdetermined by a far-reaching system of material forces external to it, a thousand combining currents from earth and sky. Its seemingly activepowers of apprehension were, in fact, but susceptibilities toinfluence. The perfection of its capacity might be said to depend onits passive surrender, as of a leaf on the wind, to the motions of thegreat stream of physical energy without it. And might not theintellectual frame also, still [69] more intimately himself as in truthit was, after the analogy of the bodily life, be a moment only, animpulse or series of impulses, a single process, in an intellectual orspiritual system external to it, diffused through all time andplace--that great stream of spiritual energy, of which his ownimperfect thoughts, yesterday or to-day, would be but the remote, andtherefore imperfect pulsations? It was the hypothesis (boldest, thoughin reality the most conceivable of all hypotheses) which had dawned onthe contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old Greekthought, alike:--the "World of Ideas, " existent only because, and in sofar as, they are known, as Plato conceived; the "creative, incorruptible, informing mind, " supposed by Aristotle, so sober-minded, yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. Mightnot this entire material world, the very scene around him, theimmemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the fallingwater, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation of, that oneindefectible mind, wherein he too became conscious, for an hour, a day, for so many years? Upon what other hypothesis could he so wellunderstand the persistency of all these things for his own intermittentconsciousness of them, for the intermittent consciousness of so manygenerations, fleeting away one after another? It was easier toconceive of the material fabric of things as [70] but an element in aworld of thought--as a thought in a mind, than of mind as an element, or accident, or passing condition in a world of matter, because mindwas really nearer to himself: it was an explanation of what was lessknown by what was known better. The purely material world, that close, impassable prison-wall, seemed just then the unreal thing, to beactually dissolving away all around him: and he felt a quiet hope, aquiet joy dawning faintly, in the dawning of this doctrine upon him asa really credible opinion. It was like the break of day over some vastprospect with the "new city, " as it were some celestial New Rome, inthe midst of it. That divine companion figured no longer as but anoccasional wayfarer beside him; but rather as the unfailing"assistant, " without whose inspiration and concurrence he could notbreathe or see, instrumenting his bodily senses, rounding, supportinghis imperfect thoughts. How often had the thought of their brevityspoiled for him the most natural pleasures of life, confusing even hispresent sense of them by the suggestion of disease, of death, of acoming end, in everything! How had he longed, sometimes, that therewere indeed one to whose boundless power of memory he could commit hisown most fortunate moments, his admiration, his love, Ay! the verysorrows of which he could not bear quite to lose the sense:--one strongto retain them even though [71] he forgot, in whose more vigorousconsciousness they might subsist for ever, beyond that mere quickeningof capacity which was all that remained of them in himself! "Oh! thatthey might live before Thee"--To-day at least, in the peculiarclearness of one privileged hour, he seemed to have apprehended that inwhich the experiences he valued most might find, one by one, anabiding-place. And again, the resultant sense of companionship, of aperson beside him, evoked the faculty of conscience--of conscience, asof old and when he had been at his best, in the form, not of fear, norof self-reproach even, but of a certain lively gratitude. 

Himself--his sensations and ideas--never fell again precisely intofocus as on that day, yet he was the richer by its experience. But foronce only to have come under the power of that peculiar mood, to havefelt the train of reflections which belong to it really forcible andconclusive, to have been led by them to a conclusion, to haveapprehended the Great Ideal, so palpably that it defined personalgratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amid theshadows of the world, left this one particular hour a marked point inlife never to be forgotten. It gave him a definitely ascertainedmeasure of his moral or intellectual need, of the demand his soul mustmake upon the powers, whatsoever they might be, which [72] had broughthim, as he was, into the world at all. And again, would he be faithfulto himself, to his own habits of mind, his leading suppositions, if hedid but remain just there? Must not all that remained of life be but asearch for the equivalent of that Ideal, among so-called actualthings--a gathering together of every trace or token of it, which hisactual experience might present?

PART THE FOURTH

CHAPTER XX: TWO CURIOUS HOUSES

I. GUESTS

 "Your old men shall dream dreams. "+

[75] A NATURE like that of Marius, composed, in about equal parts, ofinstincts almost physical, and of slowly accumulated intellectualjudgments, was perhaps even less susceptible than other men'scharacters of essential change. And yet the experience of thatfortunate hour, seeming to gather into one central act of vision allthe deeper impressions his mind had ever received, did not leave himquite as he had been. For his mental view, at least, it changedmeasurably the world about him, of which he was still indeed a curiousspectator, but which looked further off, was weaker in its hold, and, in a sense, less real to him than ever. It was as if he viewed itthrough a diminishing glass. And the permanency of this change hecould note, some years later, when it [76] happened that he was a guestat a feast, in which the various exciting elements of Roman life, itsphysical and intellectual accomplishments, its frivolity andfar-fetched elegances, its strange, mystic essays after the unseen, were elaborately combined. The great Apuleius, the literary ideal ofhis boyhood, had arrived in Rome, --was now visiting Tusculum, at thehouse of their common friend, a certain aristocratic poet who lovedevery sort of superiorities; and Marius was favoured with an invitationto a supper given in his honour. 

It was with a feeling of half-humorous concession to his own earlyboyish hero-worship, yet with some sense of superiority in himself, seeing his old curiosity grown now almost to indifference when on thepoint of satisfaction at last, and upon a juster estimate of itsobject, that he mounted to the little town on the hillside, thefoot-ways of which were so many flights of easy-going steps gatheredround a single great house under shadow of the "haunted" ruins ofCicero's villa on the wooded heights. He found a touch of weirdness inthe circumstance that in so romantic a place he had been bidden to meetthe writer who was come to seem almost like one of the personages inhis own fiction. As he turned now and then to gaze at the eveningscene through the tall narrow openings of the street, up which thecattle were going home slowly from the [77] pastures below, the Albanmountains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses, seemed close at hand--a screen of vaporous dun purple against thesetting sun--with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundarylines which indicate volcanic formation. The coolness of the littlebrown market-place, for profit of which even the working-people, inlong file through the olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for thenight, was grateful, after the heats of Rome. Those wild countryfigures, clad in every kind of fantastic patchwork, stained by wind andweather fortunately enough for the eye, under that significant lightinclined him to poetry. And it was a very delicate poetry of its kindthat seemed to enfold him, as passing into the poet's house he pausedfor a moment to glance back towards the heights above; whereupon, thenumerous cascades of the precipitous garden of the villa, framed in thedoorway of the hall, fell into a harmless picture, in its place amongthe pictures within, and scarcely more real than they--alandscape-piece, in which the power of water (plunging into what unseendepths!) done to the life, was pleasant, and without its naturalterrors. 

At the further end of this bland apartment, fragrant with the rarewoods of the old inlaid panelling, the falling of aromatic oil from theready-lighted lamps, the iris-root clinging to the dresses of theguests, as with odours from the [78] altars of the gods, thesupper-table was spread, in all the daintiness characteristic of theagreeable petit-maître, who entertained. He was already most carefullydressed, but, like Martial's Stella, perhaps consciously, meant tochange his attire once and again during the banquet; in the lastinstance, for an ancient vesture (object of much rivalry among theyoung men of fashion, at that great sale of the imperial wardrobes) atoga, of altogether lost hue and texture. He wore it with a gracewhich became the leader of a thrilling movement then on foot for therestoration of that disused garment, in which, laying aside thecustomary evening dress, all the visitors were requested to appear, setting off the delicate sinuosities and well-disposed "golden ways" ofits folds, with harmoniously tinted flowers. The opulent sunset, blending pleasantly with artificial light, fell across the quietancestral effigies of old consular dignitaries, along the wide floorstrewn with sawdust of sandal-wood, and lost itself in the heap of coolcoronals, lying ready for the foreheads of the guests on a sideboard ofold citron. The crystal vessels darkened with old wine, the hues ofthe early autumn fruit--mulberries, pomegranates, and grapes that hadlong been hanging under careful protection upon the vines, were almostas much a feast for the eye, as the dusky fires of the raretwelve-petalled roses. A favourite animal, white as snow, brought byone of the visitors, purred its way [79] gracefully among thewine-cups, coaxed onward from place to place by those at table, as theyreclined easily on their cushions of German eider-down, spread over thelong-legged, carved couches. 

A highly refined modification of the acroama--a musical performanceduring supper for the diversion of the guests--was presently heardhovering round the place, soothingly, and so unobtrusively that thecompany could not guess, and did not like to ask, whether or not it hadbeen designed by their entertainer. They inclined on the whole tothink it some wonderful peasant-music peculiar to that wildneighbourhood, turning, as it did now and then, to a solitaryreed-note, like a bird's, while it wandered into the distance. Itwandered quite away at last, as darkness with a bolder lamplight cameon, and made way for another sort of entertainment. An odd, rapid, phantasmal glitter, advancing from the garden by torchlight, defineditself, as it came nearer, into a dance of young men in armour. Arrivedat length in a portico, open to the supper-chamber, they contrived thattheir mechanical march-movement should fall out into a kind of highlyexpressive dramatic action; and with the utmost possible emphasis ofdumb motion, their long swords weaving a silvery network in the air, they danced the Death of Paris. The young Commodus, already an adeptin these matters, who had condescended to [80] welcome the eminentApuleius at the banquet, had mysteriously dropped from his place totake his share in the performance; and at its conclusion reappeared, still wearing the dainty accoutrements of Paris, including abreastplate, composed entirely of overlapping tigers' claws, skilfullygilt. The youthful prince had lately assumed the dress of manhood, onthe return of the emperor for a brief visit from the North; putting uphis hair, in imitation of Nero, in a golden box dedicated to CapitolineJupiter. His likeness to Aurelius, his father, was become, inconsequence, more striking than ever; and he had one source of genuineinterest in the great literary guest of the occasion, in that thelatter was the fortunate possessor of a monopoly for the exhibition ofwild beasts and gladiatorial shows in the province of Carthage, wherehe resided. 

Still, after all complaisance to the perhaps somewhat crude tastes ofthe emperor's son, it was felt that with a guest like Apuleius whomthey had come prepared to entertain as veritable connoisseurs, theconversation should be learned and superior, and the host at lastdeftly led his company round to literature, by the way of bindings. Elegant rolls of manuscript from his fine library of ancient Greekbooks passed from hand to hand about the table. It was a sign for thevisitors themselves to draw their own choicest literary curiositiesfrom their bags, as their contribution to the banquet; and one of them, a [81] famous reader, choosing his lucky moment, delivered in tenorvoice the piece which follows, with a preliminary query as to whetherit could indeed be the composition of Lucian of Samosata, + understoodto be the great mocker of that day:--

"What sound was that, Socrates?" asked Chaerephon. "It came from thebeach under the cliff yonder, and seemed a long way off. --And howmelodious it was! Was it a bird, I wonder. I thought all sea-birdswere songless. "

"Aye! a sea-bird, " answered Socrates, "a bird called the Halcyon, andhas a note full of plaining and tears. There is an old story peopletell of it. It was a mortal woman once, daughter of Aeolus, god of thewinds. Ceyx, the son of the morning-star, wedded her in her earlymaidenhood. The son was not less fair than the father; and when itcame to pass that he died, the crying of the girl as she lamented hissweet usage, was, Just that! And some while after, as Heaven willed, she was changed into a bird. Floating now on bird's wings over the seashe seeks her lost Ceyx there; since she was not able to find him afterlong wandering over the land. "

"That then is the Halcyon--the kingfisher, " said Chaerephon. "I neverheard a bird like it before. It has truly a plaintive note. What kindof a bird is it, Socrates?"

"Not a large bird, though she has received [82] large honour from thegods on account of her singular conjugal affection. For whensoever shemakes her nest, a law of nature brings round what is called Halcyon'sweather, --days distinguishable among all others for their serenity, though they come sometimes amid the storms of winter--days like to-day!See how transparent is the sky above us, and how motionless thesea!--like a smooth mirror. "

True! A Halcyon day, indeed! and yesterday was the same. But tell me, Socrates, what is one to think of those stories which have been toldfrom the beginning, of birds changed into mortals and mortals intobirds? To me nothing seems more incredible. "

"Dear Chaerephon, " said Socrates, "methinks we are but half-blindjudges of the impossible and the possible. We try the question by thestandard of our human faculty, which avails neither for true knowledge, nor for faith, nor vision. Therefore many things seem to us impossiblewhich are really easy, many things unattainable which are within ourreach; partly through inexperience, partly through the childishness ofour minds. For in truth, every man, even the oldest of us, is like alittle child, so brief and babyish are the years of our life incomparison of eternity. Then, how can we, who comprehend not thefaculties of gods and of the heavenly host, tell whether aught of thatkind be possible or no?--What a tempest you saw [83] three days ago!One trembles but to think of the lightning, the thunderclaps, theviolence of the wind! You might have thought the whole world was goingto ruin. And then, after a little, came this wonderful serenity ofweather, which has continued till to-day. Which do you think thegreater and more difficult thing to do: to exchange the disorder ofthat irresistible whirlwind to a clarity like this, and becalm thewhole world again, or to refashion the form of a woman into that of abird? We can teach even little children to do something of thatsort, --to take wax or clay, and mould out of the same material manykinds of form, one after another, without difficulty. And it may bethat to the Deity, whose power is too vast for comparison with ours, all processes of that kind are manageable and easy. How much wider isthe whole circle of heaven than thyself?--Wider than thou canst express. 

"Among ourselves also, how vast the difference we may observe in men'sdegrees of power! To you and me, and many another like us, many thingsare impossible which are quite easy to others. For those who areunmusical, to play on the flute; to read or write, for those who havenot yet learned; is no easier than to make birds of women, or women ofbirds. From the dumb and lifeless egg Nature moulds her swarms ofwinged creatures, aided, as some will have it, by a divine and secret[84] art in the wide air around us. She takes from the honeycomb alittle memberless live thing; she brings it wings and feet, brightensand beautifies it with quaint variety of colour:--and Lo! the bee inher wisdom, making honey worthy of the gods. 

"It follows, that we mortals, being altogether of little account, ablewholly to discern no great matter, sometimes not even a little one, forthe most part at a loss regarding what happens even with ourselves, mayhardly speak with security as to what may be the powers of the immortalgods concerning Kingfisher, or Nightingale. Yet the glory of thymythus, as my fathers bequeathed it to me, O tearful songstress! thatwill I too hand on to my children, and tell it often to my wives, Xanthippe and Myrto:--the story of thy pious love to Ceyx, and of thymelodious hymns; and, above all, of the honour thou hast with the gods!"

The reader's well-turned periods seemed to stimulate, almostuncontrollably, the eloquent stirrings of the eminent man of lettersthen present. The impulse to speak masterfully was visible, before therecital was well over, in the moving lines about his mouth, by no meansdesigned, as detractors were wont to say, simply to display the beautyof his teeth. One of the company, expert in his humours, made ready totranscribe what he would say, the sort of [85] things of which acollection was then forming, the "Florida" or Flowers, so to call them, he was apt to let fall by the way--no impromptu ventures at random; butrather elaborate, carved ivories of speech, drawn, at length, out ofthe rich treasure-house of a memory stored with such, and as with afine savour of old musk about them. Certainly in this case, as Mariusthought, it was worth while to hear a charming writer speak. Discussing, quite in our modern way, the peculiarities of thosesuburban views, especially the sea-views, of which he was a professedlover, he was also every inch a priest of Aesculapius, patronal god ofCarthage. There was a piquancy in his rococo, very African, and as itwere perfumed personality, though he was now well-nigh sixty years old, a mixture there of that sort of Platonic spiritualism which can speakof the soul of man as but a sojourner m the prison of the body--ablending of that with such a relish for merely bodily graces as availedto set the fashion in matters of dress, deportment, accent, and thelike, nay! with something also which reminded Marius of the vein ofcoarseness he had found in the "Golden Book. " All this made the totalimpression he conveyed a very uncommon one. Marius did not wonder, ashe watched him speaking, that people freely attributed to him many ofthe marvellous adventures he had recounted in that famous romance, [86]over and above the wildest version of his own actual story--hisextraordinary marriage, his religious initiations, his acts of madgenerosity, his trial as a sorcerer. 

But a sign came from the imperial prince that it was time for thecompany to separate. He was entertaining his immediate neighbours atthe table with a trick from the streets; tossing his olives in rapidsuccession into the air, and catching them, as they fell, between hislips. His dexterity in this performance made the mirth around himnoisy, disturbing the sleep of the furry visitor: the learned partybroke up; and Marius withdrew, glad to escape into the open air. Thecourtesans in their large wigs of false blond hair, were lurking forthe guests, with groups of curious idlers. A great conflagration wasvisible in the distance. Was it in Rome; or in one of the villages ofthe country? Pausing for a few minutes on the terrace to watch it, Marius was for the first time able to converse intimately withApuleius; and in this moment of confidence the "illuminist, " himselfwith locks so carefully arranged, and seemingly so full ofaffectations, almost like one of those light women there, dropped aveil as it were, and appeared, though still permitting the play of acertain element of theatrical interest in his bizarre tenets, to beready to explain and defend his position reasonably. For a moment hisfantastic foppishness and his pretensions to ideal [87] vision seemedto fall into some intelligible congruity with each other. In truth, itwas the Platonic Idealism, as he conceived it, which for him literallyanimated, and gave him so lively an interest in, this world of thepurely outward aspects of men and things. --Did material things, suchthings as they had had around them all that evening, really needapology for being there, to interest one, at all? Were not all visibleobjects--the whole material world indeed, according to the consistenttestimony of philosophy in many forms--"full of souls"? embarrassedperhaps, partly imprisoned, but still eloquent souls? Certainly, thecontemplative philosophy of Plato, with its figurative imagery andapologue, its manifold aesthetic colouring, its measured eloquence, itsmusic for the outward ear, had been, like Plato's old master himself, atwo-sided or two-coloured thing. Apuleius was a Platonist: only, forhim, the Ideas of Plato were no creatures of logical abstraction, butin very truth informing souls, in every type and variety of sensiblethings. Those noises in the house all supper-time, sounding throughthe tables and along the walls:--were they only startings in the oldrafters, at the impact of the music and laughter; or ratherimportunities of the secondary selves, the true unseen selves, of thepersons, nay! of the very things around, essaying to break throughtheir frivolous, merely transitory surfaces, to remind one of abidingessentials beyond them, [88] which might have their say, their judgmentto give, by and by, when the shifting of the meats and drinks at life'stable would be over? And was not this the true significance of thePlatonic doctrine?--a hierarchy of divine beings, associatingthemselves with particular things and places, for the purpose ofmediating between God and man--man, who does but need due attention onhis part to become aware of his celestial company, filling the airabout him, thick as motes in the sunbeam, for the glance of sympatheticintelligence he casts through it. 

"Two kinds there are, of animated beings, " he exclaimed: "Gods, entirely differing from men in the infinite distance of their abode, since one part of them only is seen by our blunted vision--thosemysterious stars!--in the eternity of their existence, in theperfection of their nature, infected by no contact with ourselves: andmen, dwelling on the earth, with frivolous and anxious minds, withinfirm and mortal members, with variable fortunes; labouring in vain;taken altogether and in their whole species perhaps, eternal; but, severally, quitting the scene in irresistible succession. 

"What then? Has nature connected itself together by no bond, alloweditself to be thus crippled, and split into the divine and humanelements? And you will say to me: If so it be, that man is thusentirely exiled from the immortal gods, that all communication isdenied [89] him, that not one of them occasionally visits us, as ashepherd his sheep--to whom shall I address my prayers? Whom, shall Iinvoke as the helper of the unfortunate, the protector of the good?

"Well! there are certain divine powers of a middle nature, through whomour aspirations are conveyed to the gods, and theirs to us. Passingbetween the inhabitants of earth and heaven, they carry from one to theother prayers and bounties, supplication and assistance, being a kindof interpreters. This interval of the air is full of them! Throughthem, all revelations, miracles, magic processes, are effected. For, specially appointed members of this order have their special provinces, with a ministry according to the disposition of each. They go to andfro without fixed habitation: or dwell in men's houses"--

Just then a companion's hand laid in the darkness on the shoulder ofthe speaker carried him away, and the discourse broke off suddenly. Itssingular intimations, however, were sufficient to throw back on thisstrange evening, in all its detail--the dance, the readings, thedistant fire--a kind of allegoric expression: gave it the character ofone of those famous Platonic figures or apologues which had then beenin fact under discussion. When Marius recalled its circumstances heseemed to hear once more that voice of genuine conviction, pleading, from amidst a [90] scene at best of elegant frivolity, for so boldlymystical a view of man and his position in the world. For a moment, but only for a moment, as he listened, the trees had seemed, as of old, to be growing "close against the sky. " Yes! the reception of theory, ofhypothesis, of beliefs, did depend a great deal on temperament. Theywere, so to speak, mere equivalents of temperament. A celestialladder, a ladder from heaven to earth: that was the assumption whichthe experience of Apuleius had suggested to him: it was what, indifferent forms, certain persons in every age had instinctivelysupposed: they would be glad to find their supposition accredited bythe authority of a grave philosophy. Marius, however, yearning not lessthan they, in that hard world of Rome, and below its unpeopled sky, forthe trace of some celestial wing across it, must still object that theyassumed the thing with too much facility, too much of self-complacency. And his second thought was, that to indulge but for an hour fantasies, fantastic visions of that sort, only left the actual world more lonelythan ever. For him certainly, and for his solace, the little godshipfor whom the rude countryman, an unconscious Platonist, trimmed histwinkling lamp, would never slip from the bark of these immemorialolive-trees. --No! not even in the wildest moonlight. For himself, itwas clear, he must still hold by what his eyes really saw. Only, hehad to concede also, that [91] the very boldness of such theory borewitness, at least, to a variety of human disposition and a consequentvariety of mental view, which might--who can tell?--be correspondentto, be defined by and define, varieties of facts, of truths, just"behind the veil, " regarding the world all alike had actually beforethem as their original premiss or starting-point; a world, wider, perhaps, in its possibilities than all possible fancies concerning it. 

NOTES

75. Joel 2. 28. 

81. +Halcyone. 

CHAPTER XXI: TWO CURIOUS HOUSES

II. THE CHURCH IN CECILIA'S HOUSE

 "Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. "

[92] CORNELIUS had certain friends in or near Rome, whose household, toMarius, as he pondered now and again what might be the determininginfluences of that peculiar character, presented itself as possibly itsmain secret--the hidden source from which the beauty and strength of anature, so persistently fresh in the midst of a somewhat jaded world, might be derived. But Marius had never yet seen these friends; and itwas almost by accident that the veil of reserve was at last lifted, and, with strange contrast to his visit to the poet's villa atTusculum, he entered another curious house. 

"The house in which she lives, " says that mystical German writer quotedonce before, "is for the orderly soul, which does not live on [93]blindly before her, but is ever, out of her passing experiences, building and adorning the parts of a many-roomed abode for herself, only an expansion of the body; as the body, according to the philosophyof Swedenborg, + is but a process, an expansion, of the soul. For suchan orderly soul, as life proceeds, all sorts of delicate affinitiesestablish themselves, between herself and the doors and passage-ways, the lights and shadows, of her outward dwelling-place, until she mayseem incorporate with it--until at last, in the entire expressivenessof what is outward, there is for her, to speak properly, betweenoutward and inward, no longer any distinction at all; and the lightwhich creeps at a particular hour on a particular picture or space uponthe wall, the scent of flowers in the air at a particular window, become to her, not so much apprehended objects, as themselves powers ofapprehension and door-ways to things beyond--the germ or rudiment ofcertain new faculties, by which she, dimly yet surely, apprehends amatter lying beyond her actually attained capacities of spirit andsense. "

So it must needs be in a world which is itself, we may think, togetherwith that bodily "tent" or "tabernacle, " only one of many vestures forthe clothing of the pilgrim soul, to be left by her, surely, as if onthe wayside, worn-out one by one, as it was from her, indeed, theyborrowed what momentary value or significance they had. 

[94] The two friends were returning to Rome from a visit to acountry-house, where again a mixed company of guests had beenassembled; Marius, for his part, a little weary of gossip, and thosesparks of ill-tempered rivalry, which would seem sometimes to be theonly sort of fire the intercourse of people in general society canstrike out of them. A mere reaction upon this, as they started in theclear morning, made their companionship, at least for one of them, hardly less tranquillising than the solitude he so much valued. Something in the south-west wind, combining with their own intention, favoured increasingly, as the hours wore on, a serenity like thatMarius had felt once before in journeying over the great plain towardsTibur--a serenity that was to-day brotherly amity also, and seemed todraw into its own charmed circle whatever was then present to eye orear, while they talked or were silent together, and all pettyirritations, and the like, shrank out of existence, or kept certainlybeyond its limits. The natural fatigue of the long journey overcamethem quite suddenly at last, when they were still about two milesdistant from Rome. The seemingly endless line of tombs and cypresseshad been visible for hours against the sky towards the west; and it wasjust where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into the Appian, thatCornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall--the outer wall ofsome villa courtyard, it might be supposed-- [95] as if at liberty toenter, and rest there awhile. He held the door open for his companionto enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted the latch, which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrinking from a possibleintrusion: "Would you like to see it?" Was he willing to look uponthat, the seeing of which might define--yes! define the criticalturning-point in his days?

The little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, intothe court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt naturalhollows, which give its character to the country in this place; thehouse itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness ofwhich surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed frompassengers along the road. All around, in those well-orderedprecincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste--ataste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition ofthe material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of theremains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, bothas regards colour and form, so delicate as to seem really derivativefrom some finer intelligence in these matters than lay within theresources of the ancient world. It was the old way of trueRenaissance--being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divineway with the body of man, perhaps with his soul--conceiving the neworganism by no sudden and [96] abrupt creation, but rather by theaction of a new principle upon elements, all of which had in truthalready lived and died many times. The fragments of olderarchitecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the preciouscorner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by suchjuxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of gravethought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, aesthetically, veryseductive. Lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading theirseed-bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air, abovethe ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset. And fromthe first they could hear singing, the singing of children mainly, itwould seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its effect, as tobring suddenly to the recollection of Marius, Flavian's early essaystowards a new world of poetic sound. It was the expression notaltogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of happiness--theblithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon whom someall-subduing experience had wrought heroically, and who stillremembered, on this bland afternoon, the hour of a great deliverance. 

His old native susceptibility to the spirit, the special sympathies, ofplaces, --above all, to any hieratic or religious significance theymight have, --was at its liveliest, as Marius, still encompassed by thatpeculiar singing, and still amid the evidences of a grave discretionall around him, passed into the house. That intelligent seriousness[97] about life, the absence of which had ever seemed to remove thosewho lacked it into some strange species wholly alien from himself, accumulating all the lessons of his experience since those first daysat White-nights, was as it were translated here, as if in designedcongruity with his favourite precepts of the power of physical vision, into an actual picture. If the true value of souls is in proportion towhat they can admire, Marius was just then an acceptable soul. As hepassed through the various chambers, great and small, one dominantthought increased upon him, the thought of chaste women and theirchildren--of all the various affections of family life under its mostnatural conditions, yet developed, as if in devout imitation of somesublime new type of it, into large controlling passions. There reignedthroughout, an order and purity, an orderly disposition, as if by wayof making ready for some gracious spousals. The place itself was likea bride adorned for her husband; and its singular cheerfulness, theabundant light everywhere, the sense of peaceful industry, of which hereceived a deep impression though without precisely reckoning whereinit resided, as he moved on rapidly, were in forcible contrast just atfirst to the place to which he was next conducted by Cornelius stillwith a sort of eager, hurried, half-troubled reluctance, and as if heforbore the explanation which might well be looked for by his companion. 

[98] An old flower-garden in the rear of the house, set here and therewith a venerable olive-tree--a picture in pensive shade and fieryblossom, as transparent, under that afternoon light, as the oldminiature-painters' work on the walls of the chambers within--wasbounded towards the west by a low, grass-grown hill. A narrow openingcut in its steep side, like a solid blackness there, admitted Mariusand his gleaming leader into a hollow cavern or crypt, neither more norless in fact than the family burial-place of the Cecilii, to whom thisresidence belonged, brought thus, after an arrangement then becomingnot unusual, into immediate connexion with the abode of the living, inbold assertion of that instinct of family life, which the sanction ofthe Holy Family was, hereafter, more and more to reinforce. Here, intruth, was the centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of thesanctity, of the entire scene. That "any person may, at his ownelection, constitute the place which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of his dead into it":--had been a maxim of old Romanlaw, which it was reserved for the early Christian societies, like thatestablished here by the piety of a wealthy Roman matron, to realise inall its consequences. Yet this was certainly unlike any cemeteryMarius had ever before seen; most obviously in this, that these peoplehad returned to the older fashion of disposing of [99] their dead byburial instead of burning. Originally a family sepulchre, it wasgrowing to a vast necropolis, a whole township of the deceased, bymeans of some free expansion of the family interest beyond its amplestnatural limits. That air of venerable beauty which characterised thehouse and its precincts above, was maintained also here. It wascertainly with a great outlay of labour that these long, apparentlyendless, yet elaborately designed galleries, were increasing sorapidly, with their layers of beds or berths, one above another, cut, on either side the path-way, in the porous tufa, through which all themoisture filters downwards, leaving the parts above dry and wholesome. All alike were carefully closed, and with all the delicate costlinessat command; some with simple tiles of baked clay, many with slabs ofmarble, enriched by fair inscriptions: marble taken, in some cases, from older pagan tombs--the inscription sometimes a palimpsest, the newepitaph being woven into the faded letters of an earlier one. 

As in an ordinary Roman cemetery, an abundance of utensils for theworship or commemoration of the departed was disposed around--incense, lights, flowers, their flame or their freshness being relieved to theutmost by contrast with the coal-like blackness of the soil itself, avolcanic sandstone, cinder of burnt-out fires. Would they ever kindleagain?--possess, transform, the place?--Turning to an [100] ashenpallor where, at regular intervals, an air-hole or luminare let in ahard beam of clear but sunless light, with the heavy sleepers, row uponrow within, leaving a passage so narrow that only one visitor at a timecould move along, cheek to cheek with them, the high walls seemed toshut one in into the great company of the dead. Only the long straightpathway lay before him; opening, however, here and there, into a smallchamber, around a broad, table-like coffin or "altar-tomb, " adornedeven more profusely than the rest as if for some anniversaryobservance. Clearly, these people, concurring in this with the specialsympathies of Marius himself, had adopted the practice of burial fromsome peculiar feeling of hope they entertained concerning the body; afeeling which, in no irreverent curiosity, he would fain havepenetrated. The complete and irreparable disappearance of the dead inthe funeral fire, so crushing to the spirits, as he for one had foundit, had long since induced in him a preference for that other mode ofsettlement to the last sleep, as having something about it morehome-like and hopeful, at least in outward seeming. But whence thestrange confidence that these "handfuls of white dust" would hereafterrecompose themselves once more into exulting human creatures? By whatheavenly alchemy, what reviving dew from above, such as was certainlynever again to reach the dead violets?-- [101] Januarius, Agapetus, Felicitas; Martyrs! refresh, I pray you, the soul of Cecil, ofCornelius! said an inscription, one of many, scratched, like a passingsigh, when it was still fresh in the mortar that had closed up theprison-door. All critical estimate of this bold hope, as sincereapparently as it was audacious in its claim, being set aside, here atleast, carried further than ever before, was that pious, systematiccommemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal to forgetor finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius as thecentral exponent or symbol of all natural duty. 

 The stern soul of the excellent Jonathan Edwards, applying thefaulty theology of John Calvin, afforded him, we know, the vision ofinfants not a span long, on the floor of hell. Every visitor to theCatacombs must have observed, in a very different theologicalconnexion, the numerous children's graves there--beds of infants, but aspan long indeed, lowly "prisoners of hope, " on these sacred floors. It was with great curiosity, certainly, that Marius considered them, decked in some instances with the favourite toys of their tinyoccupants--toy-soldiers, little chariot-wheels, the entireparaphernalia of a baby-house; and when he saw afterwards the livingchildren, who sang and were busy above--sang their psalm Laudate PueriDominum!--their very faces caught for him a sort of quaint unrealityfrom the memory [102] of those others, the children of the Catacombs, but a little way below them. 

Here and there, mingling with the record of merely natural decease, andsometimes even at these children's graves, were the signs of violentdeath or "martyrdom, "--proofs that some "had loved not their lives untothe death"--in the little red phial of blood, the palm-branch, the redflowers for their heavenly "birthday. " About one sepulchre inparticular, distinguished in this way, and devoutly arrayed for what, by a bold paradox, was thus treated as, natalitia--a birthday, thepeculiar arrangements of the whole place visibly centered. And it waswith a singular novelty of feeling, like the dawning of a fresh orderof experiences upon him, that, standing beside those mournful relics, snatched in haste from the common place of execution not many yearsbefore, Marius became, as by some gleam of foresight, aware of thewhole force of evidence for a certain strange, new hope, defining inits turn some new and weighty motive of action, which lay in deaths sotragic for the "Christian superstition. " Something of them he hadheard indeed already. They had seemed to him but one savagery themore, savagery self-provoked, in a cruel and stupid world. 

And yet these poignant memorials seemed also to draw him onwardsto-day, as if towards an image of some still more pathetic suffering, [103] in the remote background. Yes! the interest, the expression, ofthe entire neighbourhood was instinct with it, as with the savour ofsome priceless incense. Penetrating the whole atmosphere, touchingeverything around with its peculiar sentiment, it seemed to make allthis visible mortality, death's very self--Ah! lovelier than any fableof old mythology had ever thought to render it, in the utmost limits offantasy; and this, in simple candour of feeling about a supposed fact. Peace! Pax tecum!--the word, the thought--was put forth everywhere, with images of hope, snatched sometimes from that jaded pagan worldwhich had really afforded men so little of it from first to last; thevarious consoling images it had thrown off, of succour, ofregeneration, of escape from the grave--Hercules wrestling with Deathfor possession of Alcestis, Orpheus taming the wild beasts, theShepherd with his sheep, the Shepherd carrying the sick lamb upon hisshoulders. Yet these imageries after all, it must be confessed, formedbut a slight contribution to the dominant effect of tranquil hopethere--a kind of heroic cheerfulness and grateful expansion of heart, as with the sense, again, of some real deliverance, which seemed todeepen the longer one lingered through these strange and awfulpassages. A figure, partly pagan in character, yet most frequentlyrepeated of all these visible parables--the figure of one just [104]escaped from the sea, still clinging as for life to the shore insurprised joy, together with the inscription beneath it, seemed best toexpress the prevailing sentiment of the place. And it was just as hehad puzzled out this inscription--

 I went down to the bottom of the mountains. The earth with her bars was about me for ever: Yet hast Thou brought up my life from corruption!

--that with no feeling of suddenness or change Marius found himselfemerging again, like a later mystic traveller through similar darkplaces "quieted by hope, " into the daylight. 

They were still within the precincts of the house, still in possessionof that wonderful singing, although almost in the open country, with agreat view of the Campagna before them, and the hills beyond. Theorchard or meadow, through which their path lay, was already gray withtwilight, though the western sky, where the greater stars were visible, was still afloat in crimson splendour. The colour of all earthlythings seemed repressed by the contrast, yet with a sense of greatrichness lingering in their shadows. At that moment the voice of thesingers, a "voice of joy and health, " concentrated itself with solemnantistrophic movement, into an evening, or "candle" hymn. 

 "Hail! Heavenly Light, from his pure glory poured, Who is the Almighty Father, heavenly, blest:-- Worthiest art Thou, at all times to be sung With undefiled tongue. "--

[105] It was like the evening itself made audible, its hopes and fears, with the stars shining in the midst of it. Half above, half below thelevel white mist, dividing the light from the darkness, came now themistress of this place, the wealthy Roman matron, left early a widow afew years before, by Cecilius "Confessor and Saint. " With a certainantique severity in the gathering of the long mantle, and with coif orveil folded decorously below the chin, "gray within gray, " to the mindof Marius her temperate beauty brought reminiscences of the serious andvirile character of the best female statuary of Greece. Quite foreign, however, to any Greek statuary was the expression of pathetic care, with which she carried a little child at rest in her arms. Another, ayear or two older, walked beside, the fingers of one hand within hergirdle. She paused for a moment with a greeting for Cornelius. 

That visionary scene was the close, the fitting close, of theafternoon's strange experiences. A few minutes later, passing forwardon his way along the public road, he could have fancied it a dream. The house of Cecilia grouped itself beside that other curious house hehad lately visited at Tusculum. And what a contrast was presented bythe former, in its suggestions of hopeful industry, of immaculatecleanness, of responsive affection!--all alike determined by thattransporting discovery of some fact, or series [106] of facts, in whichthe old puzzle of life had found its solution. In truth, one of hismost characteristic and constant traits had ever been a certain longingfor escape--for some sudden, relieving interchange, across the veryspaces of life, it might be, along which he had lingered mostpleasantly--for a lifting, from time to time, of the actual horizon. It was like the necessity under which the painter finds himself, to seta window or open doorway in the background of his picture; or like asick man's longing for northern coolness, and the whisperingwillow-trees, amid the breathless evergreen forests of the south. Tosome such effect had this visit occurred to him, and through so slightan accident. Rome and Roman life, just then, were come to seem likesome stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed, as if by malignenchantment, out of the generations of living trees, yet with roots ina deep, down-trodden soil of poignant human susceptibilities. In themidst of its suffocation, that old longing for escape had beensatisfied by this vision of the church in Cecilia's house, as neverbefore. It was still, indeed, according to the unchangeable law of histemperament, to the eye, to the visual faculty of mind, that thoseexperiences appealed--the peaceful light and shade, the boys whose veryfaces seemed to sing, the virginal beauty of the mother and herchildren. But, in his case, what was thus visible constituted a moral[107] or spiritual influence, of a somewhat exigent and controllingcharacter, added anew to life, a new element therein, with which, consistently with his own chosen maxim, he must make terms. 

The thirst for every kind of experience, encouraged by a philosophywhich taught that nothing was intrinsically great or small, good orevil, had ever been at strife in him with a hieratic refinement, inwhich the boy-priest survived, prompting always the selection of whatwas perfect of its kind, with subsequent loyal adherence of his soulthereto. This had carried him along in a continuous communion withideals, certainly realised in part, either in the conditions of his ownbeing, or in the actual company about him, above all, in Cornelius. Surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the firsttime to-day--in this strange family, like "a garden enclosed"--was thefulfilment of all the preferences, the judgments, of thathalf-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection sooften amid the perplexities of life. Here, it might be, was, if notthe cure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows--of thatconstitutional sorrowfulness, not peculiar to himself perhaps, butwhich had made his life certainly like one long "disease of thespirit. " Merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in themere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching [108] flesh. Onthe other hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might beawakened--new and untried responsibilities--a demand for something fromhim in return. Might this new vision, like the malignant beauty ofpagan Medusa, be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything butitself? At least he suspected that, after the beholding of it, hecould never again be altogether as he had been before. 

NOTES

93. +Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish mystic writer, 1688-1772. Return. 

CHAPTER XXII: "THE MINOR PEACE OF THE CHURCH"

[109] FAITHFUL to the spirit of his early Epicurean philosophy and theimpulse to surrender himself, in perfectly liberal inquiry about it, toanything that, as a matter of fact, attracted or impressed himstrongly, Marius informed himself with much pains concerning the churchin Cecilia's house; inclining at first to explain the peculiarities ofthat place by the establishment there of the schola or common hall ofone of those burial-guilds, which then covered so much of theunofficial, and, as it might be called, subterranean enterprise ofRoman society. 

And what he found, thus looking, literally, for the dead among theliving, was the vision of a natural, a scrupulously natural, love, transforming, by some new gift of insight into the truth of humanrelationships, and under the urgency of some new motive by him so farunfathomable, all the conditions of life. He saw, in all its primitivefreshness and amid the lively facts of its actual coming into theworld, as a reality of [110] experience, that regenerate type ofhumanity, which, centuries later, Giotto and his successors, down tothe best and purest days of the young Raphael, working under conditionsvery friendly to the imagination, were to conceive as an artisticideal. He felt there, felt amid the stirring of some wonderful newhope within himself, the genius, the unique power of Christianity; inexercise then, as it has been exercised ever since, in spite of manyhindrances, and under the most inopportune circumstances. Chastity, --as he seemed to understand--the chastity of men and women, amid all the conditions, and with the results, proper to such chastity, is the most beautiful thing in the world and the truest conservation ofthat creative energy by which men and women were first brought into it. The nature of the family, for which the better genius of old Romeitself had sincerely cared, of the family and its appropriateaffections--all that love of one's kindred by which obviously one doestriumph in some degree over death--had never been so felt before. Here, surely! in its genial warmth, its jealous exclusion of all thatwas opposed to it, to its own immaculate naturalness, in the hedge setaround the sacred thing on every side, this development of the familydid but carry forward, and give effect to, the purposes, the kindness, of nature itself, friendly to man. As if by way of a due recognitionof some immeasurable divine condescension manifest in a [111] certainhistoric fact, its influence was felt more especially at those pointswhich demanded some sacrifice of one's self, for the weak, for theaged, for little children, and even for the dead. And then, for itsconstant outward token, its significant manner or index, it issued in acertain debonair grace, and a certain mystic attractiveness, acourtesy, which made Marius doubt whether that famed Greek"blitheness, " or gaiety, or grace, in the handling of life, had been, after all, an unrivalled success. Contrasting with the incurableinsipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher Roman life, ofwhat was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil, the new creation he now looked on--as it were a picture beyond thecraft of any master of old pagan beauty--had indeed all the appropriatefreshness of a "bride adorned for her husband. " Things new and oldseemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house, the brainfull of science, the heart rich with various sentiment, possessingwithal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart. 

"You would hardly believe, " writes Pliny, --to his own wife!--"what alonging for you possesses me. Habit--that we have not been used to beapart--adds herein to the primary force of affection. It is this keepsme awake at night fancying I see you beside me. That is why my feettake me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when I waswont to [112] visit you there. That is why I turn from the door of theempty chamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover. "--

There, is a real idyll from that family life, the protection of whichhad been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the Romans, still surviving among them; as it survived also in Aurelius, hisdisposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attainedsweetness of his interior life. What Marius had been permitted to seewas a realisation of such life higher still: and with--Yes! with a moreeffective sanction and motive than it had ever possessed before, inthat fact, or series of facts, to be ascertained by those who would. 

The central glory of the reign of the Antonines was that society hadattained in it, though very imperfectly, and for the most part bycumbrous effort of law, many of those ends to which Christianity wentstraight, with the sufficiency, the success, of a direct andappropriate instinct. Pagan Rome, too, had its touchingcharity-sermons on occasions of great public distress; itscharity-children in long file, in memory of the elder empress Faustina;its prototype, under patronage of Aesculapius, of the modern hospitalfor the sick on the island of Saint Bartholomew. But what pagancharity was doing tardily, and as if with the painful calculation ofold age, the church was doing, almost without thinking about it, withall the liberal [113] enterprise of youth, because it was her verybeing thus to do. "You fail to realise your own good intentions, " sheseems to say, to pagan virtue, pagan kindness. She identified herselfwith those intentions and advanced them with an unparalleled freedomand largeness. The gentle Seneca would have reverent burial providedeven for the dead body of a criminal. Yet when a certain womancollected for interment the insulted remains of Nero, the pagan worldsurmised that she must be a Christian: only a Christian would have beenlikely to conceive so chivalrous a devotion towards mere wretchedness. "We refuse to be witnesses even of a homicide commanded by the law, "boasts the dainty conscience of a Christian apologist, "we take no partin your cruel sports nor in the spectacles of the amphitheatre, and wehold that to witness a murder is the same thing as to commit one. " Andthere was another duty almost forgotten, the sense of which Rousseaubrought back to the degenerate society of a later age. In animpassioned discourse the sophist Favorinus counsels mothers to suckletheir own infants; and there are Roman epitaphs erected to mothers, which gratefully record this proof of natural affection as a thing thenunusual. In this matter too, what a sanction, what a provocative tonatural duty, lay in that image discovered to Augustus by the TiburtineSibyl, amid the aurora of a new age, the image of the Divine Mother andthe [114] Child, just then rising upon the world like the dawn!

Christian belief, again, had presented itself as a great inspirer ofchastity. Chastity, in turn, realised in the whole scope of itsconditions, fortified that rehabilitation of peaceful labour, after themind, the pattern, of the workman of Galilee, which was another of thenatural instincts of the catholic church, as being indeed thelong-desired initiator of a religion of cheerfulness, as a true loverof the industry--so to term it--the labour, the creation, of God. 

And this severe yet genial assertion of the ideal of woman, of thefamily, of industry, of man's work in life, so close to the truth ofnature, was also, in that charmed hour of the minor "Peace of thechurch, " realised as an influence tending to beauty, to the adornmentof life and the world. The sword in the world, the right eye pluckedout, the right hand cut off, the spirit of reproach which those imagesexpress, and of which monasticism is the fulfilment, reflect one sideonly of the nature of the divine missionary of the New Testament. Opposed to, yet blent with, this ascetic or militant character, is thefunction of the Good Shepherd, serene, blithe and debonair, beyond thegentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; of a king under whom the beatificvision is realised of a reign of peace--peace of heart--among men. Such aspect of the divine character of Christ, rightly understood, [115] is indeed the final consummation of that bold and brillianthopefulness in man's nature, which had sustained him so far through hisimmense labours, his immense sorrows, and of which pagan gaiety in thehandling of life, is but a minor achievement. Sometimes one, sometimesthe other, of those two contrasted aspects of its Founder, have, indifferent ages and under the urgency of different human needs, been atwork also in the Christian Church. Certainly, in that brief "Peace ofthe church" under the Antonines, the spirit of a pastoral security andhappiness seems to have been largely expanded. There, in the earlychurch of Rome, was to be seen, and on sufficiently reasonable grounds, that satisfaction and serenity on a dispassionate survey of the factsof life, which all hearts had desired, though for the most part invain, contrasting itself for Marius, in particular, very forcibly, withthe imperial philosopher's so heavy burden of unrelieved melancholy. It was Christianity in its humanity, or even its humanism, in itsgenerous hopes for man, its common sense and alacrity of cheerfulservice, its sympathy with all creatures, its appreciation of beautyand daylight. 

"The angel of righteousness, " says the Shepherd of Hermas, the mostcharacteristic religious book of that age, its Pilgrim's Progress--"theangel of righteousness is modest and delicate and meek and quiet. Takefrom thyself grief, for (as Hamlet will one day discover) 'tis thesister [116] of doubt and ill-temper. Grief is more evil than anyother spirit of evil, and is most dreadful to the servants of God, andbeyond all spirits destroyeth man. For, as when good news is come toone in grief, straightway he forgetteth his former grief, and no longerattendeth to anything except the good news which he hath heard, so doye, also! having received a renewal of your soul through the beholdingof these good things. Put on therefore gladness that hath alwaysfavour before God, and is acceptable unto Him, and delight thyself init; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, andthinketh good thoughts, despising grief. "--Such were the commonplacesof this new people, among whom so much of what Marius had valued mostin the old world seemed to be under renewal and further promotion. Some transforming spirit was at work to harmonise contrasts, to deepenexpression--a spirit which, in its dealing with the elements of ancientlife, was guided by a wonderful tact of selection, exclusion, juxtaposition, begetting thereby a unique effect of freshness, a graveyet wholesome beauty, because the world of sense, the whole outwardworld was understood to set forth the veritable unction and royalty ofa certain priesthood and kingship of the soul within, among theprerogatives of which was a delightful sense of freedom. 

The reader may think perhaps, that Marius, who, Epicurean as he was, had his visionary [117] aptitudes, by an inversion of one of Plato'speculiarities with which he was of course familiar, must havedescended, by foresight, upon a later age than his own, and anticipatedChristian poetry and art as they came to be under the influence ofSaint Francis of Assisi. But if he dreamed on one of those nights ofthe beautiful house of Cecilia, its lights and flowers, of Ceciliaherself moving among the lilies, with an enhanced grace as happenssometimes in healthy dreams, it was indeed hardly an anticipation. Hehad lighted, by one of the peculiar intellectual good-fortunes of hislife, upon a period when, even more than in the days of austere ascêsiswhich had preceded and were to follow it, the church was true for amoment, truer perhaps than she would ever be again, to that element ofprofound serenity in the soul of her Founder, which reflected theeternal goodwill of God to man, "in whom, " according to the oldestversion of the angelic message, "He is well-pleased. "

For what Christianity did many centuries afterwards in the way ofinforming an art, a poetry, of graver and higher beauty, we may think, than that of Greek art and poetry at their best, was in truthconformable to the original tendency of its genius. The genuinecapacity of the catholic church in this direction, discoverable fromthe first in the New Testament, was also really at work, in thatearlier "Peace, " under [118] the Antonines--the minor "Peace of thechurch, " as we might call it, in distinction from the final "Peace ofthe church, " commonly so called, under Constantine. Saint Francis, with his following in the sphere of poetry and of the arts--the voiceof Dante, the hand of Giotto--giving visible feature and colour, and apalpable place among men, to the regenerate race, did but re-establisha continuity, only suspended in part by those troublous interveningcenturies--the "dark ages, " properly thus named--with the graciousspirit of the primitive church, as manifested in that first earlyspringtide of her success. The greater "Peace" of Constantine, on theother hand, in many ways, does but establish the exclusiveness, thepuritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period between Aurelius andthe first Christian emperor, characterised a church undermisunderstanding or oppression, driven back, in a world of tastelesscontroversy, inwards upon herself. 

Already, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, the time was gone by when menbecame Christians under some sudden and overpowering impression, andwith all the disturbing results of such a crisis. At this period thelarger number, perhaps, had been born Christians, had been ever withpeaceful hearts in their "Father's house. " That earlier belief in thespeedy coming of judgment and of the end of the world, with theconsequences it so naturally involved in the temper [119] of men'sminds, was dying out. Every day the contrast between the church andthe world was becoming less pronounced. And now also, as the churchrested awhile from opposition, that rapid self-development outward fromwithin, proper to times of peace, was in progress. Antoninus Pius, itmight seem, more truly even than Marcus Aurelius himself, was of thatgroup of pagan saints for whom Dante, like Augustine, has provided inhis scheme of the house with many mansions. A sincere old Roman pietyhad urged his fortunately constituted nature to no mistakes, nooffences against humanity. And of his entire freedom from guile onereward had been this singular happiness, that under his rule there wasno shedding of Christian blood. To him belonged that half-humorousplacidity of soul, of a kind illustrated later very effectively byMontaigne, which, starting with an instinct of mere fairness towardshuman nature and the world, seems at last actually to qualify itspossessor to be almost the friend of the people of Christ. Amiable, inits own nature, and full of a reasonable gaiety, Christianity has oftenhad its advantage of characters such as that. The geniality ofAntoninus Pius, like the geniality of the earth itself, had permittedthe church, as being in truth no alien from that old mother earth, toexpand and thrive for a season as by natural process. And that charmedperiod under the Antonines, extending to the later years of the [120]reign of Aurelius (beautiful, brief, chapter of ecclesiasticalhistory!), contains, as one of its motives of interest, the earliestdevelopment of Christian ritual under the presidence of the church ofRome. 

Again as in one of those mystical, quaint visions of the Shepherd ofHermas, "the aged woman was become by degrees more and more youthful. And in the third vision she was quite young, and radiant with beauty:only her hair was that of an aged woman. And at the last she wasjoyous, and seated upon a throne--seated upon a throne, because herposition is a strong one. " The subterranean worship of the churchbelonged properly to those years of her early history in which it wasillegal for her to worship at all. But, hiding herself for awhile asconflict grew violent, she resumed, when there was felt to be no morethan ordinary risk, her natural freedom. And the kind of outwardprosperity she was enjoying in those moments of her first "Peace, " hermodes of worship now blossoming freely above-ground, was re-inforced bythe decision at this point of a crisis in her internal history. 

In the history of the church, as throughout the moral history ofmankind, there are two distinct ideals, either of which it is possibleto maintain--two conceptions, under one or the other of which we mayrepresent to ourselves men's efforts towards a betterlife--corresponding to those two contrasted aspects, noted above, as[121] discernible in the picture afforded by the New Testament itselfof the character of Christ. The ideal of asceticism represents moraleffort as essentially a sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of humannature to another, that it may live the more completely in whatsurvives of it; while the ideal of culture represents it as aharmonious development of all the parts of human nature, in justproportion to each other. It was to the latter order of ideas that thechurch, and especially the church of Rome in the age of the Antonines, freely lent herself. In that earlier "Peace" she had set up forherself the ideal of spiritual development, under the guidance of aninstinct by which, in those serene moments, she was absolutely true tothe peaceful soul of her Founder. "Goodwill to men, " she said, "inwhom God Himself is well-pleased!" For a little while, at least, therewas no forced opposition between the soul and the body, the world andthe spirit, and the grace of graciousness itself was pre-eminently withthe people of Christ. Tact, good sense, ever the note of a trueorthodoxy, the merciful compromises of the church, indicative of herimperial vocation in regard to all the varieties of human kind, with auniversality of which the old Roman pastorship she was superseding isbut a prototype, was already become conspicuous, in spite of adiscredited, irritating, vindictive society, all around her. 

Against that divine urbanity and moderation [122] the old error ofMontanus we read of dimly, was a fanatical revolt--sour, falselyanti-mundane, ever with an air of ascetic affectation, and a bigoteddistaste in particular for all the peculiar graces of womanhood. By itthe desire to please was understood to come of the author of evil. Inthis interval of quietness, it was perhaps inevitable, by the law ofreaction, that some such extravagances of the religious temper shouldarise. But again the church of Rome, now becoming every day more andmore completely the capital of the Christian world, checked the nascentMontanism, or puritanism of the moment, vindicating for all Christianpeople a cheerful liberty of heart, against many a narrow group ofsectaries, all alike, in their different ways, accusers of the genialcreation of God. With her full, fresh faith in the Evangele--in averitable regeneration of the earth and the body, in the dignity ofman's entire personal being--for a season, at least, at that criticalperiod in the development of Christianity, she was for reason, forcommon sense, for fairness to human nature, and generally for what maybe called the naturalness of Christianity. --As also for its comelyorder: she would be "brought to her king in raiment of needlework. " Itwas by the bishops of Rome, diligently transforming themselves, in thetrue catholic sense, into universal pastors, that the path of what wemust call humanism was thus defined. 

[123] And then, in this hour of expansion, as if now at last thecatholic church might venture to show her outward lineaments as theyreally were, worship--"the beauty of holiness, " nay! the elegance ofsanctity--was developed, with a bold and confident gladness, the likeof which has hardly been the ideal of worship in any later age. Thetables in fact were turned: the prize of a cheerful temper on a candidsurvey of life was no longer with the pagan world. The aesthetic charmof the catholic church, her evocative power over all that is eloquentand expressive in the better mind of man, her outward comeliness, herdignifying convictions about human nature:--all this, as abundantlyrealised centuries later by Dante and Giotto, by the great medievalchurch-builders, by the great ritualists like Saint Gregory, and themasters of sacred music in the middle age--we may see already, in dimanticipation, in those charmed moments towards the end of the secondcentury. Dissipated or turned aside, partly through the fatal mistakeof Marcus Aurelius himself, for a brief space of time we may discernthat influence clearly predominant there. What might seem harsh asdogma was already justifying itself as worship; according to the soundrule: Lex orandi, lex credendi--Our Creeds are but the brief abstractof our prayer and song. 

The wonderful liturgical spirit of the church, her wholly unparalleledgenius for worship, [124] being thus awake, she was rapidlyre-organising both pagan and Jewish elements of ritual, for theexpanding therein of her own new heart of devotion. Like theinstitutions of monasticism, like the Gothic style of architecture, theritual system of the church, as we see it in historic retrospect, ranksas one of the great, conjoint, and (so to term them) necessary, products of human mind. Destined for ages to come, to direct with sodeep a fascination men's religious instincts, it was then alreadyrecognisable as a new and precious fact in the sum of things. What hasbeen on the whole the method of the church, as "a power of sweetnessand patience, " in dealing with matters like pagan art, pagan literaturewas even then manifest; and has the character of the moderation, thedivine moderation of Christ himself. It was only among the ignorant, indeed, only in the "villages, " that Christianity, even in conscioustriumph over paganism, was really betrayed into iconoclasm. In thefinal "Peace" of the Church under Constantine, while there was plentyof destructive fanaticism in the country, the revolution wasaccomplished in the larger towns, in a manner more orderly anddiscreet--in the Roman manner. The faithful were bent less on thedestruction of the old pagan temples than on their conversion to a newand higher use; and, with much beautiful furniture ready to hand, theybecame Christian sanctuaries. 

[125] Already, in accordance with such maturer wisdom, the church ofthe "Minor Peace" had adopted many of the graces of pagan feeling andpagan custom; as being indeed a living creature, taking up, transforming, accommodating still more closely to the human heart whatof right belonged to it. In this way an obscure synagogue was expandedinto the catholic church. Gathering, from a richer and more variedfield of sound than had remained for him, those old Roman harmonies, some notes of which Gregory the Great, centuries later, and aftergenerations of interrupted development, formed into the Gregorianmusic, she was already, as we have heard, the house of song--of awonderful new music and poesy. As if in anticipation of the sixteenthcentury, the church was becoming "humanistic, " in an earlier, andunimpeachable Renaissance. Singing there had been in abundance fromthe first; though often it dared only be "of the heart. " And it burstforth, when it might, into the beginnings of a true ecclesiasticalmusic; the Jewish psalter, inherited from the synagogue, turning now, gradually, from Greek into Latin--broken Latin, into Italian, as theritual use of the rich, fresh, expressive vernacular superseded theearlier authorised language of the Church. Through certain survivingremnants of Greek in the later Latin liturgies, we may still discern ahighly interesting intermediate phase of ritual development, when theGreek [126] and the Latin were in combination; the poor, surely!--thepoor and the children of that liberal Roman church--responding alreadyin their own "vulgar tongue, " to an office said in the original, liturgical Greek. That hymn sung in the early morning, of which Plinyhad heard, was kindling into the service of the Mass. 

The Mass, indeed, would appear to have been said continuously from theApostolic age. Its details, as one by one they become visible in laterhistory, have already the character of what is ancient and venerable. "We are very old, and ye are young!" they seem to protest, to those whofail to understand them. Ritual, in fact, like all other elements ofreligion, must grow and cannot be made--grow by the same law ofdevelopment which prevails everywhere else, in the moral as in thephysical world. As regards this special phase of the religious life, however, such development seems to have been unusually rapid in thesubterranean age which preceded Constantine; and in the very first daysof the final triumph of the church the Mass emerges to general viewalready substantially complete. "Wisdom" was dealing, as with the dustof creeds and philosophies, so also with the dust of outworn religioususage, like the very spirit of life itself, organising soul and bodyout of the lime and clay of the earth. In a generous eclecticism, within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential powerwithin her, [127] she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in othermatters so in ritual, one thing here, another there, from varioussources--Gnostic, Jewish, Pagan--to adorn and beautify the greatest actof worship the world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the churchcame to be--full of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, under the sanction of so many ages of humanexperience, to take exclusive possession of the religious consciousness. 

 TANTUM ERGO SACRAMENTUM VENEREMUR CERNUI: ET ANTIQUUM DOCUMENTUM NOVO CEDAT RITUI. 

CHAPTER XXIII: DIVINE SERVICE. 

 "Wisdom hath builded herself a house: she hath mingled her wine: she hath also prepared for herself a table. "

[128] THE more highly favoured ages of imaginative art presentinstances of the summing up of an entire world of complex associationsunder some single form, like the Zeus of Olympia, or the series offrescoes which commemorate The Acts of Saint Francis, at Assisi, orlike the play of Hamlet or Faust. It was not in an image, or series ofimages, yet still in a sort of dramatic action, and with the unity of asingle appeal to eye and ear, that Marius about this time found all hisnew impressions set forth, regarding what he had already recognised, intellectually, as for him at least the most beautiful thing in theworld. 

To understand the influence upon him of what follows the reader mustremember that it was an experience which came amid a deep sense ofvacuity in life. The fairest products of [129] the earth seemed to bedropping to pieces, as if in men's very hands, around him. How realwas their sorrow, and his! "His observation of life" had come to belike the constant telling of a sorrowful rosary, day after day; till, as if taking infection from the cloudy sorrow of the mind, the eyealso, the very senses, were grown faint and sick. And now it happenedas with the actual morning on which he found himself a spectator ofthis new thing. The long winter had been a season of unvaryingsullenness. At last, on this day he awoke with a sharp flash oflightning in the earliest twilight: in a little while the heavy rainhad filtered the air: the clear light was abroad; and, as though thespring had set in with a sudden leap in the heart of things, the wholescene around him lay like some untarnished picture beneath a sky ofdelicate blue. Under the spell of his late depression, Marius hadsuddenly determined to leave Rome for a while. But desiring first toadvertise Cornelius of his movements, and failing to find him in hislodgings, he had ventured, still early in the day, to seek him in theCecilian villa. Passing through its silent and empty court-yard heloitered for a moment, to admire. Under the clear but immature light ofwinter morning after a storm, all the details of form and colour in theold marbles were distinctly visible, and with a kind of severity orsadness--so it struck him--amid their beauty: [130] in them, and in allother details of the scene--the cypresses, the bunches of paledaffodils in the grass, the curves of the purple hills of Tusculum, with the drifts of virgin snow still lying in their hollows. 

The little open door, through which he passed from the court-yard, admitted him into what was plainly the vast Lararium, or domesticsanctuary, of the Cecilian family, transformed in many particulars, butstill richly decorated, and retaining much of its ancient furniture inmetal-work and costly stone. The peculiar half-light of dawn seemed tobe lingering beyond its hour upon the solemn marble walls; and here, though at that moment in absolute silence, a great company of peoplewas assembled. In that brief period of peace, during which the churchemerged for awhile from her jealously-guarded subterranean life, therigour of an earlier rule of exclusion had been relaxed. And so itcame to pass that, on this morning Marius saw for the first time thewonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidential powerover himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. 

There were noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, ofage, of personal type. The Roman ingenuus, with the white toga andgold ring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the wholecompany was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming[131] thus unexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silence so profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt fora moment as if he had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that could scarcely be, for the people here collected might havefigured as the earliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from thevery face of which discontent had passed away. Corresponding to thevariety of human type there present, was the various expression ofevery form of human sorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment ofdesire, had wrought so pathetically on the features of these ranks ofaged men and women of humble condition? Those young men, bent down sodiscreetly on the details of their sacred service, had faced life andwere glad, by some science, or light of knowledge they had, to whichthere had certainly been no parallel in the older world. Was somecredible message from beyond "the flaming rampart of the world"--amessage of hope, regarding the place of men's souls and their interestin the sum of things--already moulding anew their very bodies, andlooks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing andkindling flame at work in them, which seemed to make everything elseMarius had ever known look comparatively vulgar and mean. There werethe children, above all--troops of children--reminding him of thosepathetic children's graves, like cradles or garden- [132] beds, he hadnoticed in his first visit to these places; and they more thansatisfied the odd curiosity he had then conceived about them, wonderingin what quaintly expressive forms they might come forth into thedaylight, if awakened from sleep. Children of the Catacombs, some but"a span long, " with features not so much beautiful as heroic (thatworld of new, refining sentiment having set its seal even onchildhood), they retained certainly no stain or trace of anythingsubterranean this morning, in the alacrity of their worship--as readyas if they had been at play--stretching forth their hands, crying, chanting in a resonant voice, and with boldly upturned faces, ChristeEleison!

For the silence--silence, amid those lights of early morning to whichMarius had always been constitutionally impressible, as having in thema certain reproachful austerity--was broken suddenly by resoundingcries of Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! repeated alternately, againand again, until the bishop, rising from his chair, made sign that thisprayer should cease. But the voices burst out once more presently, inricher and more varied melody, though still of an antiphonal character;the men, the women and children, the deacons, the people, answering oneanother, somewhat after the manner of a Greek chorus. But again withwhat a novelty of poetic accent; what a genuine expansion of heart;what profound intimations for the [133] intellect, as the meaning ofthe words grew upon him! Cum grandi affectu et compunctionedicatur--says an ancient eucharistic order; and certainly, the mystictone of this praying and singing was one with the expression ofdeliverance, of grateful assurance and sincerity, upon the faces ofthose assembled. As if some searching correction, a regeneration ofthe body by the spirit, had begun, and was already gone a great way, the countenances of men, women, and children alike had a brightness onthem which he could fancy reflected upon himself--an amenity, a mysticamiability and unction, which found its way most readily of all to thehearts of children themselves. The religious poetry of those Hebrewpsalms--Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: Dixit Dominus Domino meo, sedea dextris meis--was certainly in marvellous accord with the lyricalinstinct of his own character. Those august hymns, he thought, mustthereafter ever remain by him as among the well-tested powers in thingsto soothe and fortify the soul. One could never grow tired of them!

In the old pagan worship there had been little to call theunderstanding into play. Here, on the other hand, the utterance, theeloquence, the music of worship conveyed, as Marius readily understood, a fact or series of facts, for intellectual reception. That becameevident, more especially, in those lessons, or sacred readings, which, like the singing, in broken [134] vernacular Latin, occurred at certainintervals, amid the silence of the assembly. There were readings, againwith bursts of chanted invocation between for fuller light on adifficult path, in which many a vagrant voice of human philosophy, haunting men's minds from of old, recurred with clearer accent than hadever belonged to it before, as if lifted, above its first intention, into the harmonies of some supreme system of knowledge or doctrine, atlength complete. And last of all came a narrative which, with athousand tender memories, every one appeared to know by heart, displaying, in all the vividness of a picture for the eye, the mournfulfigure of him towards whom this whole act of worship still consistentlyturned--a figure which seemed to have absorbed, like some rich tincturein his garment, all that was deep-felt and impassioned in theexperiences of the past. 

It was the anniversary of his birth as a little child they celebratedto-day. Astiterunt reges terrae: so the Gradual, the "Song ofDegrees, " proceeded, the young men on the steps of the altar respondingin deep, clear, antiphon or chorus--

 Astiterunt reges terrae-- Adversus sanctum puerum tuum, Jesum: Nunc, Domine, da servis tuis loqui verbum tuum-- Et signa fieri, per nomen sancti pueri Jesu. 

And the proper action of the rite itself, like a [135] half-opened bookto be read by the duly initiated mind took up those suggestions, andcarried them forward into the present, as having reference to a powerstill efficacious, still after some mystic sense even now in actionamong the people there assembled. The entire office, indeed, with itsinterchange of lessons, hymns, prayer, silence, was itself like asingle piece of highly composite, dramatic music; a "song of degrees, "rising steadily to a climax. Notwithstanding the absence of anycentral image visible to the eye, the entire ceremonial process, likethe place in which it was enacted, was weighty with symbolicsignificance, seemed to express a single leading motive. The mystery, if such in fact it was, centered indeed in the actions of one visibleperson, distinguished among the assistants, who stood ranged insemicircle around him, by the extreme fineness of his white vestments, and the pointed cap with the golden ornaments upon his head. 

Nor had Marius ever seen the pontifical character, as he conceivedit--sicut unguentum in capite, descendens in oram vestimenti--so fullyrealised, as in the expression, the manner and voice, of this novelpontiff, as he took his seat on the white chair placed for him by theyoung men, and received his long staff into his hand, or moved hishands--hands which seemed endowed in very deed with some mysteriouspower--at the Lavabo, or at the various benedictions, or [136] to blesscertain objects on the table before him, chanting in cadence of a gravesweetness the leading parts of the rite. What profound unction andmysticity! The solemn character of the singing was at its height whenhe opened his lips. Like some new sort of rhapsôdos, it was for themoment as if he alone possessed the words of the office, and theyflowed anew from some permanent source of inspiration within him. Thetable or altar at which he presided, below a canopy on delicate spiralcolumns, was in fact the tomb of a youthful "witness, " of the family ofthe Cecilii, who had shed his blood not many years before, and whoserelics were still in this place. It was for his sake the bishop puthis lips so often to the surface before him; the regretful memory ofthat death entwining itself, though not without certain notes oftriumph, as a matter of special inward significance, throughout aservice, which was, before all else, from first to last, acommemoration of the dead. 

A sacrifice also, --a sacrifice, it might seem, like the most primitive, the most natural and enduringly significant of old pagan sacrifices, ofthe simplest fruits of the earth. And in connexion with thiscircumstance again, as in the actual stones of the building so in therite itself, what Marius observed was not so much new matter as a newspirit, moulding, informing, with a new intention, many observances not[137] witnessed for the first time to-day. Men and women came to thealtar successively, in perfect order, and deposited below thelattice-work of pierced white marble, their baskets of wheat andgrapes, incense, oil for the sanctuary lamps; bread and wineespecially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculanvineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful andanimating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, now in some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch or see, inthe midst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things, and in strong contrast to the wise emperor's renunciant and impassiveattitude towards them. Certain portions of that bread and wine weretaken into the bishop's hands; and thereafter, with an increasingmysticity and effusion the rite proceeded. Still in a strain ofinspired supplication, the antiphonal singing developed, from thispoint, into a kind of dialogue between the chief minister and the wholeassisting company--

 SURSUM CORDA! HABEMUS AD DOMINUM. GRATIAS AGAMUS DOMINO DEO NOSTRO!--

It might have been thought the business, the duty or service of youngmen more particularly, as they stood there in long ranks, and in severeand simple vesture of the purest white--a service in which they wouldseem to be flying [138] for refuge, as with their precious, theirtreacherous and critical youth in their hands, to one--Yes! one likethemselves, who yet claimed their worship, a worship, above all, in theway of Aurelius, in the way of imitation. Adoramus te Christe, quia percrucem tuam redemisti mundum!--they cry together. So deep is theemotion that at moments it seems to Marius as if some there presentapprehend that prayer prevails, that the very object of this patheticcrying himself draws near. From the first there had been the sense, anincreasing assurance, of one coming:--actually with them now, accordingto the oft-repeated affirmation or petition, Dominus vobiscum! Some atleast were quite sure of it; and the confidence of this remnant firedthe hearts, and gave meaning to the bold, ecstatic worship, of all therest about them. 

Prompted especially by the suggestions of that mysterious old Jewishpsalmody, so new to him--lesson and hymn--and catching therewith aportion of the enthusiasm of those beside him, Marius could discerndimly, behind the solemn recitation which now followed, at once anarrative and a prayer, the most touching image truly that had evercome within the scope of his mental or physical gaze. It was the imageof a young man giving up voluntarily, one by one, for the greatest ofends, the greatest gifts; actually parting with himself, above all, with the serenity, the divine serenity, of his [139] own soul; yet fromthe midst of his desolation crying out upon the greatness of hissuccess, as if foreseeing this very worship. * As centre of thesupposed facts which for these people were become so constraining amotive of hopefulness, of activity, that image seemed to display itselfwith an overwhelming claim on human gratitude. What Saint Lewis ofFrance discerned, and found so irresistibly touching, across thedimness of many centuries, as a painful thing done for love of him byone he had never seen, was to them almost as a thing of yesterday; andtheir hearts were whole with it. It had the force, among theirinterests, of an almost recent event in the career of one whom theirfathers' fathers might have known. From memories so sublime, yet soclose at hand, had the narrative descended in which these acts ofworship centered; though again the names of some more recently deadwere mingled in it. And it seemed as if the very dead were aware; tobe stirring beneath the slabs of the sepulchres which lay so near, thatthey might associate themselves to this enthusiasm--to this exaltedworship of Jesus. 

One by one, at last, the faithful approach to receive from the chiefminister morsels of the great, white, wheaten cake, he had taken intohis hands--Perducat vos ad vitam aeternam! he prays, half-silently, asthey depart again, after [140] discreet embraces. The Eucharist ofthose early days was, even more entirely than at any later or happiertime, an act of thanksgiving; and while the remnants of the feast areborne away for the reception of the sick, the sustained gladness of therite reaches its highest point in the singing of a hymn: a hymn likethe spontaneous product of two opposed militant companies, contendingaccordantly together, heightening, accumulating, their witness, provoking one another's worship, in a kind of sacred rivalry. 

Ite! Missa est!--cried the young deacons: and Marius departed fromthat strange scene along with the rest. What was it?--Was it this madethe way of Cornelius so pleasant through the world? As for Mariushimself, --the natural soul of worship in him had at last been satisfiedas never before. He felt, as he left that place, that he musthereafter experience often a longing memory, a kind of thirst, for allthis, over again. And it seemed moreover to define what he mustrequire of the powers, whatsoever they might be, that had brought himinto the world at all, to make him not unhappy in it. 

NOTES

139. *Psalm xxii. 22-31. 

CHAPTER XXIV: A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY

[141] IN cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny--studiahilaritate proveniunt. It was still the habit of Marius, encouraged byhis experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best ofstimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit whenhe might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night. "The morning for creation, " he would say; "the afternoon for theperfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception--the receptionof matter from without one, of other men's words and thoughts--matterfor our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain, brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers. " To leave home earlyin the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to doon the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer Lucian, whom hehad been bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with thelearned guest, having offered to be his guide [142] to the lecture-roomof a well-known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoicphilosophy, a teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth ofRome. On reaching the place, however, they found the doors closed, with a slip of writing attached, which proclaimed "a holiday"; and themorning being a fine one, they walked further, along the Appian Way. Mortality, with which the Queen of Ways--in reality the favouritecemetery of Rome--was so closely crowded, in every imaginable form ofsepulchre, from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument out ofwhich the Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem, on amorning like this, to be "smiling through tears. " The flower-stallsjust beyond the city gates presented to view an array of posies andgarlands, fresh enough for a wedding. At one and another of themgroups of persons, gravely clad, were making their bargains beforestarting for some perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a diesrosationis, this being the time of roses, at the grave of a deceasedrelation. Here and there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to the gaiety of the hour. 

The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolledalong. In one, reminding them of the poet's--Si lacrimae prosunt, visis te ostende videri!--a woman prayed that her lost husband mightvisit her dreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an imploringcry, still [143] to be sought after by the living. "While I live, "such was the promise of a lover to his dead mistress, "you will receivethis homage: after my death, --who can tell?"--post mortem nescio. "Ifghosts, my sons, do feel anything after death, my sorrow will belessened by your frequent coming to me here!" "This is a privilegedtomb; to my family and descendants has been conceded the right ofvisiting this place as often as they please. " "This is an eternalhabitation; here lie I; here I shall lie for ever. " "Reader! if youdoubt that the soul survives, make your oblation and a prayer for me;and you shall understand!"

The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by thosepathetic suggestions. It was long ago that after visiting the banks ofthe Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters ofPhaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for allarranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference towhat might lie beyond its "flaming barriers. " And at the age of sixtyhe had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far fromunamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failedhim. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of finearistocratic manners, with "a rampart, " through which he himself neverbroke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay, animated, content with his old age [144] as it was, the aged studentstill took a lively interest in studious youth. --Could Marius informhim of any such, now known to him in Rome? What did the young menlearn, just then? and how?

In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one youngstudent, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucianhimself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen comingalong briskly--a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of thesane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn offeature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, forfine glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he pausedsuddenly, and with a modest blush on recognising his companion, whostraightway took with the youth, so prettily enthusiastic, the freedomof an old friend. 

In a few moments the three were seated together, immediately above thefragrant borders of a rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of theexhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside, from whichthey could overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Campagna, andenjoy the air. Fancying that the lad's plainly written enthusiasm hadinduced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual withhim, Marius listened to the conversation which follows. --

"Ah! Hermotimus! Hurrying to lecture! [145] --if I may judge by yourpace, and that volume in your hand. You were thinking hard as you camealong, moving your lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech youwere pondering, some knotty question, some viewy doctrine--not to beidle for a moment, to be making progress in philosophy, even on yourway to the schools. To-day, however, you need go no further. We reada notice at the schools that there would be no lecture. Staytherefore, and talk awhile with us. 

--With pleasure, Lucian. --Yes! I was ruminating yesterday'sconference. One must not lose a moment. Life is short and art islong! And it was of the art of medicine, that was first said--a thingso much easier than divine philosophy, to which one can hardly attainin a lifetime, unless one be ever wakeful, ever on the watch. And herethe hazard is no little one:--By the attainment of a true philosophy toattain happiness; or, having missed both, to perish, as one of thevulgar herd. 

--The prize is a great one, Hermotimus! and you must needs be near it, after these months of toil, and with that scholarly pallor of yours. Unless, indeed, you have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in thedark. 

--How could that be, Lucian? Happiness, as Hesiod says, abides veryfar hence; and the way to it is long and steep and rough. I see myselfstill at the beginning of my journey; still [146] but at the mountain'sfoot. I am trying with all my might to get forward. What I need is ahand, stretched out to help me. 

--And is not the master sufficient for that? Could he not, like Zeusin Homer, let down to you, from that high place, a golden cord, to drawyou up thither, to himself and to that Happiness, to which he ascendedso long ago?

--The very point, Lucian! Had it depended on him I should long agohave been caught up. 'Tis I, am wanting. 

--Well! keep your eye fixed on the journey's end, and that happinessthere above, with confidence in his goodwill. 

--Ah! there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed acertain distance, but lose heart when they light on the obstacles ofthe way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the mountain'stop, and thereafter live in Happiness:--live a wonderful manner oflife, seeing all other people from that great height no bigger thantiny ants. 

--What little fellows you make of us--less than the pygmies--down inthe dust here. Well! we, 'the vulgar herd, ' as we creep along, willnot forget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above theclouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me, Hermotimus!--when do you expect to arrive there?

--Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, [147] perhaps, I shall bereally on the summit. --A great while! you think. But then, again, theprize I contend for is a great one. 

--Perhaps! But as to those twenty years--that you will live so long. Has the master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as aphilosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a merechance--toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere thelast step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, withyour hope still unfulfilled. 

--Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive butfor a day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom. 

--How?--Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours?

--Yes! one blessed moment were enough!

--But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is tobe had up there, at all--the happiness that is to make all this worthwhile?

--I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty he knows, beingnow far above all others. 

--And what was it he told you about it? Is it riches, or glory, orsome indescribable pleasure?

--Hush! my friend! All those are nothing in comparison of the lifethere. 

--What, then, shall those who come to the [148] end of thisdiscipline--what excellent thing shall they receive, if not these?

--Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sureand certain knowledge of all things--how they are. Riches and gloryand pleasure--whatsoever belongs to the body--they have cast from them:stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as Hercules, consumed inthe fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he had of hisearthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure andundefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even sodo they, detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of atrue philosophy, ascend to the highest degree of happiness. 

--Strange! And do they never come down again from the heights to helpthose whom they left below? Must they, when they be once come thither, there remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize?

--More than that! They whose initiation is entire are subject nolonger to anger, fear, desire, regret. Nay! They scarcely feel at all. 

--Well! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an old friend in whatway you first started on your philosophic journey? For, if I might, Ishould like to join company with you from this very day. 

--If you be really willing, Lucian! you will learn in no long time youradvantage over all [149] other people. They will seem but as children, so far above them will be your thoughts. 

--Well! Be you my guide! It is but fair. But tell me--Do you allowlearners to contradict, if anything is said which they don't thinkright?

--No, indeed! Still, if you wish, oppose your questions. In that wayyou will learn more easily. 

--Let me know, then--Is there one only way which leads to a truephilosophy--your own way--the way of the Stoics: or is it true, as Ihave heard, that there are many ways of approaching it?

--Yes! Many ways! There are the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, andthose who call themselves after Plato: there are the enthusiasts forDiogenes, and Antisthenes, and the followers of Pythagoras, besidesothers. 

--It was true, then. But again, is what they say the same or different?

--Very different. 

--Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the same, from all ofthem. Answer me then--In what, or in whom, did you confide when youfirst betook yourself to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open toyou, passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there alonelay the way of truth? What token had you? Forget, please, all you areto-day--half-way, or more, on the philosophic journey: [150] answer meas you would have done then, a mere outsider as I am now. 

--Willingly! It was there the great majority went! 'Twas by that Ijudged it to be the better way. 

--A majority how much greater than the Epicureans, the Platonists, thePeripatetics? You, doubtless, counted them respectively, as with thevotes in a scrutiny. 

--No! But this was not my only motive. I heard it said by every onethat the Epicureans were soft and voluptuous, the Peripateticsavaricious and quarrelsome, and Plato's followers puffed up with pride. But of the Stoics, not a few pronounced that they were true men, thatthey knew everything, that theirs was the royal road, the one road, towealth, to wisdom, to all that can be desired. 

--Of course those who said this were not themselves Stoics: you wouldnot have believed them--still less their opponents. They were thevulgar, therefore. 

--True! But you must know that I did not trust to others exclusively. I trusted also to myself--to what I saw. I saw the Stoics goingthrough the world after a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess, always collected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce'golden. '

--You are trying an experiment on me. You would fain see how far youcan mislead [151] me as to your real ground. The kind of probation youdescribe is applicable, indeed, to works of art, which are rightlyjudged by their appearance to the eye. There is something in thecomely form, the graceful drapery, which tells surely of the hand ofPheidias or Alcamenes. But if philosophy is to be judged by outwardappearances, what would become of the blind man, for instance, unableto observe the attire and gait of your friends the Stoics?

--It was not of the blind I was thinking. 

--Yet there must needs be some common criterion in a matter soimportant to all. Put the blind, if you will, beyond the privileges ofphilosophy; though they perhaps need that inward vision more than allothers. But can those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted asyou will, collect a single fact of mind from a man's attire, fromanything outward?--Understand me! You attached yourself to thesemen--did you not?--because of a certain love you had for the mind inthem, the thoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to beimproved thereby?

--Assuredly!

--How, then, did you find it possible, by the sort of signs you justnow spoke of, to distinguish the true philosopher from the false?Matters of that kind are not wont so to reveal themselves. They arebut hidden mysteries, hardly to be guessed at through the words andacts which [152] may in some sort be conformable to them. You, however, it would seem, can look straight into the heart in men'sbosoms, and acquaint yourself with what really passes there. 

--You are making sport of me, Lucian! In truth, it was with God's helpI made my choice, and I don't repent it. 

--And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from perishing in that'vulgar herd. '

--Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you. 

--You are mistaken, my friend! But since you deliberately conceal thething, grudging me, as I suppose, that true philosophy which would makeme equal to you, I will try, if it may be, to find out for myself theexact criterion in these matters--how to make a perfectly safe choice. And, do you listen. 

--I will; there may be something worth knowing in what you will say. 

--Well!--only don't laugh if I seem a little fumbling in my efforts. The fault is yours, in refusing to share your lights with me. LetPhilosophy, then, be like a city--a city whose citizens within it are ahappy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come thence, as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little lessthan gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to beseen in their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly;the things which beyond [153] everything else cause men to contendagainst each other, having no place upon them. Gold and silver, pleasure, vainglory, they have long since banished, as beingunprofitable to the commonwealth; and their life is an unbroken calm, in liberty, equality, an equal happiness. 

--And is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a citysuch as that, and take no account of the length and difficulty of theway thither, so only they may one day become its freemen?

--It might well be the business of life:--leaving all else, forgettingone's native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands, of parents or children, if one had them--only bidding them follow thesame road; and if they would not or could not, shaking them off, leaving one's very garment in their hands if they took hold on us, tostart off straightway for that happy place! For there is no fear, Isuppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I remember, indeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there, offering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in thenumber of the citizens. I was but fifteen--certainly very foolish: andit may be that I was then actually within the suburbs, or at the verygates, of the city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things, that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among them werebarbarians and slaves, poor [154] men--aye! and cripples--all indeedwho truly desired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions ofenrolment were--not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor nobleancestry--things not named among them--but intelligence, and the desirefor moral beauty, and earnest labour. The last comer, thus qualified, was made equal to the rest: master and slave, patrician, plebeian, werewords they had not--in that blissful place. And believe me, if thatblissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill visible to all theworld, I should long ago have journeyed thither. But, as you say, itis far off: and one must needs find out for oneself the road to it, andthe best possible guide. And I find a multitude of guides, who presson me their services, and protest, all alike, that they have themselvescome thence. Only, the roads they propose are many, and towardsadverse quarters. And one of them is steep and stony, and through thebeating sun; and the other is through green meadows, and under gratefulshade, and by many a fountain of water. But howsoever the road may be, at each one of them stands a credible guide; he puts out his hand andwould have you come his way. All other ways are wrong, all otherguides false. Hence my difficulty!--The number and variety of theways! For you know, There is but one road that leads to Corinth. 

--Well! If you go the whole round, you [155] will find no betterguides than those. If you wish to get to Corinth, you will follow thetraces of Zeno and Chrysippus. It is impossible otherwise. 

--Yes! The old, familiar language! Were one of Plato'sfellow-pilgrims here, or a follower of Epicurus--or fifty others--eachwould tell me that I should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore credit all alike, which would be absurd; or, what isfar safer, distrust all alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now, that, being as I am, ignorant which of all philosophers isreally in possession of truth, I choose your sect, relying onyourself--my friend, indeed, yet still acquainted only with the way ofthe Stoics; and that then some divine power brought Plato, andAristotle, and Pythagoras, and the others, back to life again. Well!They would come round about me, and put me on my trial for mypresumption, and say:--'In whom was it you confided when you preferredZeno and Chrysippus to me?--and me?--masters of far more venerable agethan those, who are but of yesterday; and though you have never heldany discussion with us, nor made trial of our doctrine? It is not thusthat the law would have judges do--listen to one party and refuse tolet the other speak for himself. If judges act thus, there may be anappeal to another tribunal. ' What should I answer? Would it [156] beenough to say:--'I trusted my friend Hermotimus?'--'We know notHermotimus, nor he us, ' they would tell me; adding, with a smile, 'yourfriend thinks he may believe all our adversaries say of us whether inignorance or in malice. Yet if he were umpire in the games, and if hehappened to see one of our wrestlers, by way of a preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an antagonist of mere empty air, he would not thereuponpronounce him a victor. Well! don't let your friend Hermotimussuppose, in like manner, that his teachers have really prevailed overus in those battles of theirs, fought with our mere shadows. That, again, were to be like children, lightly overthrowing their owncard-castles; or like boy-archers, who cry out when they hit the targetof straw. The Persian and Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, canpierce a bird on the wing. '

--Let us leave Plato and the others at rest. It is not for me tocontend against them. Let us rather search out together if the truthof Philosophy be as I say. Why summon the athletes, and archers fromPersia?

--Yes! let them go, if you think them in the way. And now do youspeak! You really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver. 

--Well then, Lucian! to me it seems quite possible for one who haslearned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those aknowledge [157] of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into allthe various tenets of the others. Look at the question in this way. Ifone told you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for you togo the whole round of the arithmeticians, to see whether any one ofthem will say that twice two make five, or seven? Would you not see atonce that the man tells the truth?

--At once. 

--Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in withthe Stoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere tothem, and seek after no others; assured that four could never be five, even if fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so?

--You are beside the point, Hermotimus! You are likening openquestions to principles universally received. Have you ever met anyone who said that twice two make five, or seven?

--No! only a madman would say that. 

--And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an Epicureanwho were agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and thefinal cause, of things? Never! Then your parallel is false. We areinquiring to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and youseize on it by anticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, alleging, what is by no means clear, that it is they for whom twice two makefour. But the Epicureans, or the Platonists, [158] might say that itis they, in truth, who make two and two equal four, while you make themfive or seven. Is it not so, when you think virtue the only good, andthe Epicureans pleasure; when you hold all things to be material, whilethe Platonists admit something immaterial? As I said, you resolveoffhand, in favour of the Stoics, the very point which needs a criticaldecision. If it is clear beforehand that the Stoics alone make two andtwo equal four, then the others must hold their peace. But so long asthat is the very point of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, orbe well-assured that we shall seem but partial in our judgment. 

--I think, Lucian! that you do not altogether understand my meaning. Tomake it clear, then, let us suppose that two men had entered a temple, of Aesculapius, --say! or Bacchus: and that afterwards one of the sacredvessels is found to be missing. And the two men must be searched tosee which of them has hidden it under his garment. For it is certainlyin the possession of one or the other of them. Well! if it be found onthe first there will be no need to search the second; if it is notfound on the first, then the other must have it; and again, there willbe no need to search him. 

--Yes! So let it be. 

--And we too, Lucian! if we have found the holy vessel in possession ofthe Stoics, shall no longer have need to search other philosophers, [159] having attained that we were seeking. Why trouble ourselvesfurther?

--No need, if something had indeed been found, and you knew it to bethat lost thing: if, at the least, you could recognise the sacredobject when you saw it. But truly, as the matter now stands, not twopersons only have entered the temple, one or the other of whom mustneeds have taken the golden cup, but a whole crowd of persons. Andthen, it is not clear what the lost object really is--cup, or flagon, or diadem; for one of the priests avers this, another that; they arenot even in agreement as to its material: some will have it to be ofbrass, others of silver, or gold. It thus becomes necessary to searchthe garments of all persons who have entered the temple, if the lostvessel is to be recovered. And if you find a golden cup on the firstof them, it will still be necessary to proceed in searching thegarments of the others; for it is not certain that this cup reallybelonged to the temple. Might there not be many such goldenvessels?--No! we must go on to every one of them, placing all that wefind in the midst together, and then make our guess which of all thosethings may fairly be supposed to be the property of the god. For, again, this circumstance adds greatly to our difficulty, that withoutexception every one searched is found to have something upon him--cup, or flagon, or diadem, of brass, of silver, [160] of gold: and still, all the while, it is not ascertained which of all these is the sacredthing. And you must still hesitate to pronounce any one of them guiltyof the sacrilege--those objects may be their own lawful property: onecause of all this obscurity being, as I think, that there was noinscription on the lost cup, if cup it was. Had the name of the god, or even that of the donor, been upon it, at least we should have hadless trouble, and having detected the inscription, should have ceasedto trouble any one else by our search. 

--I have nothing to reply to that. 

--Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to find who it is hasthe sacred vessel, or who will be our best guide to Corinth, we mustneeds proceed to every one and examine him with the utmost care, stripping off his garment and considering him closely. Scarcely, evenso, shall we come at the truth. And if we are to have a credibleadviser regarding this question of philosophy--which of allphilosophies one ought to follow--he alone who is acquainted with thedicta of every one of them can be such a guide: all others must beinadequate. I would give no credence to them if they lackedinformation as to one only. If somebody introduced a fair person andtold us he was the fairest of all men, we should not believe that, unless we knew that he had seen all the people in the world. Fair hemight be; but, fairest of all--none could [161] know, unless he hadseen all. And we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think we have failed. It is no casualbeauty that will content us; what we are seeking after is that supremebeauty which must of necessity be unique. 

--What then is one to do, if the matter be really thus? Perhaps youknow better than I. All I see is that very few of us would have timeto examine all the various sects of philosophy in turn, even if webegan in early life. I know not how it is; but though you seem to meto speak reasonably, yet (I must confess it) you have distressed me nota little by this exact exposition of yours. I was unlucky in comingout to-day, and in my falling in with you, who have thrown me intoutter perplexity by your proof that the discovery of truth isimpossible, just as I seemed to be on the point of attaining my hope. 

--Blame your parents, my child, not me! Or rather, blame mother Natureherself, for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of making usas long-lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you frompremise to conclusion. 

--Nay! you are a mocker! I know not wherefore, but you have a grudgeagainst philosophy; and it is your entertainment to make a jest of herlovers. 

--Ah! Hermotimus! what the Truth may [162] be, you philosophers may beable to tell better than I. But so much at least I know of her, thatshe is one by no means pleasant to those who hear her speak: in thematter of pleasantness, she is far surpassed by Falsehood: andFalsehood has the pleasanter countenance. She, nevertheless, beingconscious of no alloy within, discourses with boldness to all men, whotherefore have little love for her. See how angry you are now becauseI have stated the truth about certain things of which we are both alikeenamoured--that they are hard to come by. It is as if you had fallenin love with a statue and hoped to win its favour, thinking it a humancreature; and I, understanding it to be but an image of brass or stone, had shown you, as a friend, that your love was impossible, andthereupon you had conceived that I bore you some ill-will. 

--But still, does it not follow from what you said, that we mustrenounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness?

--When did you hear me say that? I did but assert that if we are toseek after philosophy, whereas there are many ways professing to leadthereto, we must with much exactness distinguish them. 

--Well, Lucian! that we must go to all the schools in turn, and testwhat they say, if we are to choose the right one, is perhapsreasonable; but surely ridiculous, unless we are to live as [163] manyyears as the Phoenix, to be so lengthy in the trial of each; as if itwere not possible to learn the whole by the part! They say thatPheidias, when he was shown one of the talons of a lion, computed thestature and age of the animal it belonged to, modelling a complete lionupon the standard of a single part of it. You too would recognise ahuman hand were the rest of the body concealed. Even so with theschools of philosophy:--the leading doctrines of each might be learnedin an afternoon. That over-exactness of yours, which required so longa time, is by no means necessary for making the better choice. 

--You are forcible, Hermotimus! with this theory of The Whole by thePart. Yet, methinks, I heard you but now propound the contrary. Buttell me; would Pheidias when he saw the lion's talon have known that itwas a lion's, if he had never seen the animal? Surely, the cause ofhis recognising the part was his knowledge of the whole. There is away of choosing one's philosophy even less troublesome than yours. Putthe names of all the philosophers into an urn. Then call a littlechild, and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall followall the rest of your days. 

--Nay! be serious with me. Tell me; did you ever buy wine?

--Surely. 

--And did you first go the whole round of [164] the wine-merchants, tasting and comparing their wines?

--By no means. 

--No! You were contented to order the first good wine you found atyour price. By tasting a little you were ascertained of the quality ofthe whole cask. How if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn, and said, 'I wish to buy a cotylé of wine. Let me drink out the wholecask. Then I shall be able to tell which is best, and where I ought tobuy. ' Yet this is what you would do with the philosophies. Why drainthe cask when you might taste, and see?

--How slippery you are; how you escape from one's fingers! Still, youhave given me an advantage, and are in your own trap. 

--How so?

--Thus! You take a common object known to every one, and make wine thefigure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself, andabout which all men are at variance, because it is an unseen anddifficult thing. I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alikeunless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware formoney, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water orworse, or giving short measure. However, let us consider yourparallel. The wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind throughout. But have the philosophers--has your own [165] master even--but one andthe same thing only to tell you, every day and all days, on a subjectso manifold? Otherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting ofone part? The whole is not the same--Ah! and it may be that God hashidden the good wine of philosophy at the bottom of the cask. You mustdrain it to the end if you are to find those drops of divine sweetnessyou seem so much to thirst for! Yourself, after drinking so deeply, are still but at the beginning, as you said. But is not philosophyrather like this? Keep the figure of the merchant and the cask: butlet it be filled, not with wine, but with every sort of grain. Youcome to buy. The merchant hands you a little of the wheat which liesat the top. Could you tell by looking at that, whether the chick-peaswere clean, the lentils tender, the beans full? And then, whereas inselecting our wine we risk only our money; in selecting our philosophywe risk ourselves, as you told me--might ourselves sink into the dregsof 'the vulgar herd. ' Moreover, while you may not drain the whole caskof wine by way of tasting, Wisdom grows no less by the depth of yourdrinking. Nay! if you take of her, she is increased thereby. 

And then I have another similitude to propose, as regards this tastingof philosophy. Don't think I blaspheme her if I say that it may bewith her as with some deadly poison, [166] hemlock or aconite. Thesetoo, though they cause death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minuteportion. You would suppose that the tiniest particle must besufficient. 

--Be it as you will, Lucian! One must live a hundred years: one mustsustain all this labour; otherwise philosophy is unattainable. 

--Not so! Though there were nothing strange in that, if it be true, asyou said at first, that Life is short and art is long. But now youtake it hard that we are not to see you this very day, before the sungoes down, a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, a Plato. 

--You overtake me, Lucian! and drive me into a corner; in jealousy ofheart, I believe, because I have made some progress in doctrine whereasyou have neglected yourself. 

--Well! Don't attend to me! Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic: and doyou go forward on this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordancewith the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be assured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged. Reason stillsays, that without criticism, without a clear, exact, unbiassedintelligence to try them, all those theories--all things--will havebeen seen but in vain. 'To that end, ' she tells us, 'much time isnecessary, many delays of judgment, a cautious gait; repeatedinspection. ' And we are not to regard the outward appearance, or thereputation of wisdom, in any of the [167] speakers; but like the judgesof Areopagus, who try their causes in the darkness of the night, lookonly to what they say. 

--Philosophy, then, is impossible, or possible only in another life!

--Hermotimus! I grieve to tell you that all this even, may be in truthinsufficient. After all, we may deceive ourselves in the belief thatwe have found something:--like the fishermen! Again and again they letdown the net. At last they feel something heavy, and with vast labourdraw up, not a load of fish, but only a pot full of sand, or a greatstone. 

--I don't understand what you mean by the net. It is plain that youhave caught me in it. 

--Try to get out! You can swim as well as another. We may go to allphilosophers in turn and make trial of them. Still, I, for my part, hold it by no mean certain that any one of them really possesses whatwe seek. The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found. You have twenty beans in your hand, and you bid ten persons guess howmany: one says five, another fifteen; it is possible that one of themmay tell the true number; but it is not impossible that all may bewrong. So it is with the philosophers. All alike are in search ofHappiness--what kind of thing it is. One says one thing, one another:it is pleasure; it is virtue;--what not? And Happiness may indeed beone of those things. But it is possible [168] also that it may bestill something else, different and distinct from them all. 

--What is this?--There is something, I know not how, very sad anddisheartening in what you say. We seem to have come round in a circleto the spot whence we started, and to our first incertitude. Ah!Lucian, what have you done to me? You have proved my priceless pearlto be but ashes, and all my past labour to have been in vain. 

--Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person who has thusfailed of the good thing he hoped for. All philosophers, so to speak, are but fighting about the 'ass's shadow. ' To me you seem like one whoshould weep, and reproach fortune because he is not able to climb upinto heaven, or go down into the sea by Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or sail on wings in one day from Greece to India. And the true causeof his trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in adream, or his own fancy has put together; without previous thoughtwhether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compassof human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As youdreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and wokeyou up from sleep, a little roughly: and then you are angry withReason, your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shakeoff sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, [169] don'tbe angry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer you to passyour life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but still only a dream--becauseI wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the properbusiness of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. Whatyour soul was full of just now is not very different from those Gorgonsand Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and the painters constructfor us, fancy-free:--things which never were, and never will be, thoughmany believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them, justbecause they are so strange and odd. 

And you too, methinks, having heard from some such maker of marvels ofa certain woman of a fairness beyond nature--beyond the Graces, beyondVenus Urania herself--asked not if he spoke truth, and whether thiswoman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love withher; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And whatmore than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into thatpassion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you aboutthat fair woman, from the very moment when you first believed that whathe said was true, brought forward all the rest in consequent order. Upon her alone your eyes were fixed; by her he led you along, when onceyou had given him a hold upon you--led you along the straight road, ashe said, to the beloved one. All was easy after that. [170] None ofyou asked again whether it was the true way; following one afteranother, like sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd. He moved you hither and thither with his finger, as easily as waterspilt on a table!

My friend! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die ofhunger! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it withall his might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful andnecessary; but it remained water only, none the less. "

Just there the conversation broke off suddenly, and the disputantsparted. The horses were come for Lucian. The boy went on his way, andMarius onward, to visit a friend whose abode lay further. As hereturned to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural to acity of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of theearly day. He could almost have fancied Canidia there, picking her wayamong the rickety lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb; forthese tombs were not all equally well cared for (Post mortem nescio!)and it had been one of the pieties of Aurelius to frame a severe law toprevent the defacing of such monuments. To Marius there seemed to besome new meaning in that terror of isolation, of being left alone inthese places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so full. Ablood-red sunset was dying angrily, and its wild glare upon the shadowyobjects around helped to combine [171] the associations of this famousway, its deeply graven marks of immemorial travel, together with theearnest questions of the morning as to the true way of that other sortof travelling, around an image, almost ghastly in the traces of itsgreat sorrows--bearing along for ever, on bleeding feet, the instrumentof its punishment--which was all Marius could recall distinctly of acertain Christian legend he had heard. The legend told of an encounterat this very spot, of two wayfarers on the Appian Way, as also uponsome very dimly discerned mental journey, altogether different fromhimself and his late companions--an encounter between Love, literallyfainting by the road, and Love "travelling in the greatness of hisstrength, " Love itself, suddenly appearing to sustain that other. Astrange contrast to anything actually presented in that morning'sconversation, it seemed nevertheless to echo its very words--"Do theynever come down again, " he heard once more the well-modulated voice:"Do they never come down again from the heights, to help those whomthey left here below?"--"And we too desire, not a fair one, but thefairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think we have failed. "

CHAPTER XXV: SUNT LACRIMAE RERUM+

[172] It was become a habit with Marius--one of hismodernisms--developed by his assistance at the Emperor's "conversationswith himself, " to keep a register of the movements of his own privatethoughts and humours; not continuously indeed, yet sometimes forlengthy intervals, during which it was no idle self-indulgence, but anecessity of his intellectual life, to "confess himself, " with anintimacy, seemingly rare among the ancients; ancient writers, at allevents, having been jealous, for the most part, of affording us so muchas a glimpse of that interior self, which in many cases would haveactually doubled the interest of their objective informations. 

"If a particular tutelary or genius, " writes Marius, --"according to oldbelief, walks through life beside each one of us, mine is verycertainly a capricious creature. He fills one with wayward, unaccountable, yet quite irresistible humours, [173] and seems alwaysto be in collusion with some outward circumstance, often trivial enoughin itself--the condition of the weather, forsooth!--the people onemeets by chance--the things one happens to overhear them say, veritableenodioi symboloi, + or omens by the wayside, as the old Greeksfancied--to push on the unreasonable prepossessions of the moment intoweighty motives. It was doubtless a quite explicable, physical fatiguethat presented me to myself, on awaking this morning, so lack-lustreand trite. But I must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with myaccustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, ofa decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginativestimulus, some not impossible ideal such as may shape vague hope, andtransform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine-work which is so large a part oflife. "Then, how if appetite, be it for real or ideal, should itselffail one after awhile? Ah, yes! is it of cold always that men die; andon some of us it creeps very gradually. In truth, I can remember justsuch a lack-lustre condition of feeling once or twice before. But Inote, that it was accompanied then by an odd indifference, as thethought of them occurred to me, in regard to the sufferings ofothers--a kind of callousness, so unusual with me, as at once to markthe humour it accompanied as a palpably morbid one [174] that could notlast. Were those sufferings, great or little, I asked myself then, ofmore real consequence to them than mine to me, as I remind myself that'nothing that will end is really long'--long enough to be thought ofimportance? But to-day, my own sense of fatigue, the pity I conceivefor myself, disposed me strongly to a tenderness for others. For amoment the whole world seemed to present itself as a hospital of sickpersons; many of them sick in mind; all of whom it would be a brutalitynot to humour, not to indulge. 

"Why, when I went out to walk off my wayward fancies, did I confrontthe very sort of incident (my unfortunate genius had surely beckoned itfrom afar to vex me) likely to irritate them further? A party of menwere coming down the street. They were leading a fine race-horse; ahandsome beast, but badly hurt somewhere, in the circus, and useless. They were taking him to slaughter; and I think the animal knew it: hecast such looks, as if of mad appeal, to those who passed him, as hewent among the strangers to whom his former owner had committed him, todie, in his beauty and pride, for just that one mischance or fault;although the morning air was still so animating, and pleasant to snuff. I could have fancied a human soul in the creature, swelling against itsluck. And I had come across the incident just when it would figure tome as the very symbol [175] of our poor humanity, in its capacities forpain, its wretched accidents, and those imperfect sympathies, which cannever quite identify us with one another; the very power of utteranceand appeal to others seeming to fail us, in proportion as our sorrowscome home to ourselves, are really our own. We are constructed forsuffering! What proofs of it does but one day afford, if we care tonote them, as we go--a whole long chaplet of sorrowful mysteries! Suntlacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. +

"Men's fortunes touch us! The little children of one of thoseinstitutions for the support of orphans, now become fashionable amongus by way of memorial of eminent persons deceased, are going, in longfile, along the street, on their way to a holiday in the country. Theyhalt, and count themselves with an air of triumph, to show that theyare all there. Their gay chatter has disturbed a little group ofpeasants; a young woman and her husband, who have brought the oldmother, now past work and witless, to place her in a house provided forsuch afflicted people. They are fairly affectionate, but anxious howthe thing they have to do may go--hope only she may permit them toleave her there behind quietly. And the poor old soul is excited bythe noise made by the children, and partly aware of what is going tohappen with her. She too begins to count--one, two, three, five--onher trembling fingers, misshapen by a life of toil. 

[176] 'Yes! yes! and twice five make ten'--they say, to pacify her. Itis her last appeal to be taken home again; her proof that all is notyet up with her; that she is, at all events, still as capable as thosejoyous children. 

"At the baths, a party of labourers are at work upon one of the greatbrick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust. A frail young child hasbrought food for one of them, and sits apart, waiting till his fathercomes--watching the labour, but with a sorrowful distaste for the dinand dirt. He is regarding wistfully his own place in the world, therebefore him. His mind, as he watches, is grown up for a moment; and heforesees, as it were, in that moment, all the long tale of days, ofearly awakings, of his own coming life of drudgery at work like this. 

"A man comes along carrying a boy whose rough work has alreadybegun--the only child--whose presence beside him sweetened the father'stoil a little. The boy has been badly injured by a fall of brick-work, yet, with an effort, he rides boldly on his father's shoulders. Itwill be the way of natural affection to keep him alive as long aspossible, though with that miserably shattered body. --'Ah! with usstill, and feeling our care beside him!'--and yet surely not without aheartbreaking sigh of relief, alike from him and them, when the endcomes. 

"On the alert for incidents like these, yet of necessity passing themby on the other side, I find [177] it hard to get rid of a sense thatI, for one, have failed in love. I could yield to the humour till Iseemed to have had my share in those great public cruelties, theshocking legal crimes which are on record, like that cold-bloodedslaughter, according to law, of the four hundred slaves in the reign ofNero, because one of their number was thought to have murdered hismaster. The reproach of that, together with the kind of facileapologies those who had no share in the deed may have made for it, asthey went about quietly on their own affairs that day, seems to comevery close to me, as I think upon it. And to how many of those nowactually around me, whose life is a sore one, must I be indifferent, ifI ever become aware of their soreness at all? To some, perhaps, thenecessary conditions of my own life may cause me to be opposed, in akind of natural conflict, regarding those interests which actuallydetermine the happiness of theirs. I would that a stronger love mightarise in my heart!

"Yet there is plenty of charity in the world. My patron, the Stoicemperor, has made it even fashionable. To celebrate one of his briefreturns to Rome lately from the war, over and above a largess of goldpieces to all who would, the public debts were forgiven. He made a niceshow of it: for once, the Romans entertained themselves with agood-natured spectacle, and the whole town came to see the greatbonfire [178] in the Forum, into which all bonds and evidence of debtwere thrown on delivery, by the emperor himself; many private creditorsfollowing his example. That was done well enough! But still thefeeling returns to me, that no charity of ours can get at a certainnatural unkindness which I find in things themselves. 

"When I first came to Rome, eager to observe its religion, especiallyits antiquities of religious usage, I assisted at the most curious, perhaps, of them all, the most distinctly marked with that immobilitywhich is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion. The ceremony tookplace at a singular spot some miles distant from the city, among thelow hills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond the Aurelian Gate. There, in a little wood of venerable trees, piously allowed their own way, ageafter age--ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, one overthe other, and all caught, in that early May-time, under a riotoustangle of wild clematis--was to be found a magnificent sanctuary, inwhich the members of the Arval College assembled themselves on certaindays. The axe never touched those trees--Nay! it was forbidden tointroduce any iron thing whatsoever within the precincts; not onlybecause the deities of these quiet places hate to be disturbed by theharsh noise of metal, but also in memory of that better age--the lostGolden Age--the homely age of the potters, of [179] which the centralact of the festival was a commemoration. 

"The preliminary ceremonies were long and complicated, but of acharacter familiar enough. Peculiar to the time and place was thesolemn exposition, after lavation of hands, processions backwards andforwards, and certain changes of vestments, of the identical earthenvessels--veritable relics of the old religion of Numa!--the vesselsfrom which the holy Numa himself had eaten and drunk, set forth above akind of altar, amid a cloud of flowers and incense, and many lights, for the veneration of the credulous or the faithful. 

"They were, in fact, cups or vases of burnt clay, rude in form: and thereligious veneration thus offered to them expressed men's desire togive honour to a simpler age, before iron had found place in humanlife: the persuasion that that age was worth remembering: a hope thatit might come again. 

"That a Numa, and his age of gold, would return, has been the hope orthe dream of some, in every period. Yet if he did come back, or anyequivalent of his presence, he could but weaken, and by no means smitethrough, that root of evil, certainly of sorrow, of outraged humansense, in things, which one must carefully distinguish from allpreventible accidents. Death, and the little perpetual daily dyings, which have something of its sting, he must [180] necessarily leaveuntouched. And, methinks, that were all the rest of man's life framedentirely to his liking, he would straightway begin to sadden himself, over the fate--say, of the flowers! For there is, there has come to besince Numa lived perhaps, a capacity for sorrow in his heart, whichgrows with all the growth, alike of the individual and of the race, inintellectual delicacy and power, and which will find its aliment. 

"Of that sort of golden age, indeed, one discerns even now a trace, here and there. Often have I maintained that, in this generoussouthern country at least, Epicureanism is the special philosophy ofthe poor. How little I myself really need, when people leave me alone, with the intellectual powers at work serenely. The drops of fallingwater, a few wild flowers with their priceless fragrance, a few tuftseven of half-dead leaves, changing colour in the quiet of a room thathas but light and shadow in it; these, for a susceptible mind, mightwell do duty for all the glory of Augustus. I notice sometimes what Iconceive to be the precise character of the fondness of the roughestworking-people for their young children, a fine appreciation, not onlyof their serviceable affection, but of their visible graces: andindeed, in this country, the children are almost always worth lookingat. I see daily, in fine weather, a child like a delicate nosegay, running to meet the rudest of brick- [181] makers as he comes fromwork. She is not at all afraid to hang upon his rough hand: andthrough her, he reaches out to, he makes his own, something from thatstrange region, so distant from him yet so real, of the world'srefinement. What is of finer soul, of finer stuff in things, anddemands delicate touching--to him the delicacy of the little childrepresents that: it initiates him into that. There, surely, is a touchof the secular gold, of a perpetual age of gold. But then again, thinkfor a moment, with what a hard humour at the nature of things, hisstruggle for bare life will go on, if the child should happen to die. I observed to-day, under one of the archways of the baths, two childrenat play, a little seriously--a fair girl and her crippled youngerbrother. Two toy chairs and a little table, and sprigs of fir setupright in the sand for a garden! They played at housekeeping. Well!the girl thinks her life a perfectly good thing in the service of thiscrippled brother. But she will have a jealous lover in time: and theboy, though his face is not altogether unpleasant, is after all ahopeless cripple. 

"For there is a certain grief in things as they are, in man as he hascome to be, as he certainly is, over and above those griefs ofcircumstance which are in a measure removable--some inexplicableshortcoming, or misadventure, on the part of nature itself--death, andold age as it [182] must needs be, and that watching for theirapproach, which makes every stage of life like a dying over and overagain. Almost all death is painful, and in every thing that comes toan end a touch of death, and therefore of wretched coldness struck hometo one, of remorse, of loss and parting, of outraged attachments. Given faultless men and women, given a perfect state of society whichshould have no need to practise on men's susceptibilities for its ownselfish ends, adding one turn more to the wheel of the great rack forits own interest or amusement, there would still be this evil in theworld, of a certain necessary sorrow and desolation, felt, just inproportion to the moral, or nervous perfection men have attained to. And what we need in the world, over against that, is a certainpermanent and general power of compassion--humanity's standing force ofself-pity--as an elementary ingredient of our social atmosphere, if weare to live in it at all. I wonder, sometimes, in what way man hascajoled himself into the bearing of his burden thus far, seeing howevery step in the capacity of apprehension his labour has won for him, from age to age, must needs increase his dejection. It is as if theincrease of knowledge were but an increasing revelation of the radicalhopelessness of his position: and I would that there were one even asI, behind this vain show of things!

"At all events, the actual conditions of our [183] life being as theyare, and the capacity for suffering so large a principle inthings--since the only principle, perhaps, to which we may alwayssafely trust is a ready sympathy with the pain one actually sees--itfollows that the practical and effective difference between men willlie in their power of insight into those conditions, their power ofsympathy. The future will be with those who have most of it; while forthe present, as I persuade myself, those who have much of it, havesomething to hold by, even in the dissolution of a world, or in thatdissolution of self, which is, for every one, no less than thedissolution of the world it represents for him. Nearly all of us, Isuppose, have had our moments, in which any effective sympathy for uson the part of others has seemed impossible; in which our pain hasseemed a stupid outrage upon us, like some overwhelming physicalviolence, from which we could take refuge, at best, only in some meregeneral sense of goodwill--somewhere in the world perhaps. And then, to one's surprise, the discovery of that goodwill, if it were only in anot unfriendly animal, may seem to have explained, to have actuallyjustified to us, the fact of our pain. There have been occasions, certainly, when I have felt that if others cared for me as I cared forthem, it would be, not so much a consolation, as an equivalent, forwhat one has lost or suffered: a realised profit on the summing up[184] of one's accounts: a touching of that absolute ground amid allthe changes of phenomena, such as our philosophers have of lateconfessed themselves quite unable to discover. In the mere clinging ofhuman creatures to each other, nay! in one's own solitary self-pity, amid the effects even of what might appear irredeemable loss, I seem totouch the eternal. Something in that pitiful contact, something newand true, fact or apprehension of fact, is educed, which, on a reviewof all the perplexities of life, satisfies our moral sense, and removesthat appearance of unkindness in the soul of things themselves, andassures us that not everything has been in vain. 

"And I know not how, but in the thought thus suggested, I seem to takeup, and re-knit myself to, a well-remembered hour, when by somegracious accident--it was on a journey--all things about me fell into amore perfect harmony than is their wont. Everything seemed to be, fora moment, after all, almost for the best. Through the train of mythoughts, one against another, it was as if I became aware of thedominant power of another person in controversy, wrestling with me. Iseem to be come round to the point at which I left off then. Theantagonist has closed with me again. A protest comes, out of the verydepths of man's radically hopeless condition in the world, with theenergy of one of those suffering yet prevailing [185] deities, of whichold poetry tells. Dared one hope that there is a heart, even as ours, in that divine 'Assistant' of one's thoughts--a heart even as mine, behind this vain show of things!"

NOTES

172. Virgil, Aeneid Book 1, line 462. "There are the tears ofthings. .. " See also page 175 of this chapter, where the same text isquoted in full. 

173. +Transliteration: enodioi symboloi. Pater's Definition: "omens bythe wayside. "

175. +Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. Virgil, AeneidBook 1, line 462. Translation: "Here also there be tears for what menbear, and mortal creatures feel each other's sorrow, " from Vergil, Aeneid, Theodore C. Williams. Trans. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1910. 

CHAPTER XXVI: THE MARTYRS

 "Ah! voilà les âmes qu'il falloit à la mienne!" Rousseau. 

[186] THE charm of its poetry, a poetry of the affections, wonderfullyfresh in the midst of a threadbare world, would have led Marius, ifnothing else had done so, again and again, to Cecilia's house. Hefound a range of intellectual pleasures, altogether new to him, in thesympathy of that pure and elevated soul. Elevation of soul, generosity, humanity--little by little it came to seem to him as ifthese existed nowhere else. The sentiment of maternity, above all, asit might be understood there, --its claims, with the claims of allnatural feeling everywhere, down to the sheep bleating on the hills, nay! even to the mother-wolf, in her hungry cave--seemed to have beenvindicated, to have been enforced anew, by the sanction of some divinepattern thereof. He saw its legitimate place in the world given atlast to the bare capacity for [187] suffering in any creature, howeverfeeble or apparently useless. In this chivalry, seeming to leave theworld's heroism a mere property of the stage, in this so scrupulousfidelity to what could not help itself, could scarcely claim not to beforgotten, what a contrast to the hard contempt of one's own or other'spain, of death, of glory even, in those discourses of Aurelius!

But if Marius thought at times that some long-cherished desires werenow about to blossom for him, in the sort of home he had sometimespictured to himself, the very charm of which would lie in its contrastto any random affections: that in this woman, to whom childreninstinctively clung, he might find such a sister, at least, as he hadalways longed for; there were also circumstances which reminded himthat a certain rule forbidding second marriages, was among these peoplestill in force; ominous incidents, moreover, warning a susceptibleconscience not to mix together the spirit and the flesh, nor make thematter of a heavenly banquet serve for earthly meat and drink. 

One day he found Cecilia occupied with the burial of one of thechildren of her household. It was from the tiny brow of such a child, as he now heard, that the new light had first shone forth uponthem--through the light of mere physical life, glowing there again, when the child was dead, or supposed to be dead. The [188] agedservant of Christ had arrived in the midst of their noisy grief; andmounting to the little chamber where it lay, had returned, not longafterwards, with the child stirring in his arms as he descended thestair rapidly; bursting open the closely-wound folds of the shroud andscattering the funeral flowers from them, as the soul kindled once morethrough its limbs. 

Old Roman common-sense had taught people to occupy their thoughts aslittle as might be with children who died young. Here, to-day, however, in this curious house, all thoughts were tenderly bent on thelittle waxen figure, yet with a kind of exultation and joy, notwithstanding the loud weeping of the mother. The other children, its late companions, broke with it, suddenly, into the place where thedeep black bed lay open to receive it. Pushing away the grim fossores, the grave-diggers, they ranged themselves around it in order, andchanted that old psalm of theirs--Laudate pueri dominum! Dead children, children's graves--Marius had been always half aware of an oldsuperstitious fancy in his mind concerning them; as if in coming nearthem he came near the failure of some lately-born hope or purpose ofhis own. And now, perusing intently the expression with which Ceciliaassisted, directed, returned afterwards to her house, he felt that hetoo had had to-day his funeral of a little child. But it had alwaysbeen his policy, through all his pursuit [189] of "experience, " to takeflight in time from any too disturbing passion, from any sort ofaffection likely to quicken his pulses beyond the point at which thequiet work of life was practicable. Had he, after all, been takenunawares, so that it was no longer possible for him to fly? At least, during the journey he took, by way of testing the existence of anychain about him, he found a certain disappointment at his heart, greater than he could have anticipated; and as he passed over the crispleaves, nipped off in multitudes by the first sudden cold of winter, hefelt that the mental atmosphere within himself was perceptibly colder. 

Yet it was, finally, a quite successful resignation which he achieved, on a review, after his manner, during that absence, of loss or gain. The image of Cecilia, it would seem, was already become for him likesome matter of poetry, or of another man's story, or a picture on thewall. And on his return to Rome there had been a rumour in thatsingular company, of things which spoke certainly not of any merelytranquil loving: hinted rather that he had come across a world, thelightest contact with which might make appropriate to himself also theprecept that "They which have wives be as they that have none. "

This was brought home to him, when, in early spring, he ventured oncemore to listen to the sweet singing of the Eucharist. It breathed[190] more than ever the spirit of a wonderful hope--of hopes moredaring than poor, labouring humanity had ever seriously entertainedbefore, though it was plain that a great calamity was befallen. Amidstifled sobbing, even as the pathetic words of the psalter relieved thetension of their hearts, the people around him still wore upon theirfaces their habitual gleam of joy, of placid satisfaction. They werestill under the influence of an immense gratitude in thinking, evenamid their present distress, of the hour of a great deliverance. As hefollowed again that mystical dialogue, he felt also again, like amighty spirit about him, the potency, the half-realised presence, of agreat multitude, as if thronging along those awful passages, to hearthe sentence of its release from prison; a company which representednothing less than--orbis terrarum--the whole company of mankind. Andthe special note of the day expressed that relief--a sound new to him, drawn deep from some old Hebrew source, as he conjectured, Alleluia!repeated over and over again, Alleluia! Alleluia! at every pause andmovement of the long Easter ceremonies. 

And then, in its place, by way of sacred lection, although in shockingcontrast with the peaceful dignity of all around, came the Epistle ofthe churches of Lyons and Vienne, to "their sister, " the church ofRome. For the "Peace" of the church had been broken--broken, as [191]Marius could not but acknowledge, on the responsibility of the emperorAurelius himself, following tamely, and as a matter of course, thetraces of his predecessors, gratuitously enlisting, against the good aswell as the evil of that great pagan world, the strange new heroism ofwhich this singular message was full. The greatness of it certainlylifted away all merely private regret, inclining one, at last, actuallyto draw sword for the oppressed, as if in some new order of knighthood--

"The pains which our brethren have endured we have no power fully totell, for the enemy came upon us with his whole strength. But thegrace of God fought for us, set free the weak, and made ready thosewho, like pillars, were able to bear the weight. These, coming nowinto close strife with the foe, bore every kind of pang and shame. Atthe time of the fair which is held here with a great crowd, thegovernor led forth the Martyrs as a show. Holding what was thoughtgreat but little, and that the pains of to-day are not deserving to bemeasured against the glory that shall be made known, these worthywrestlers went joyfully on their way; their delight and the sweetfavour of God mingling in their faces, so that their bonds seemed but agoodly array, or like the golden bracelets of a bride. Filled with thefragrance of Christ, to some they seemed to have been touched withearthly perfumes. 

[192] "Vettius Epagathus, though he was very young, because he wouldnot endure to see unjust judgment given against us, vented his anger, and sought to be heard for the brethren, for he was a youth of highplace. Whereupon the governor asked him whether he also were aChristian. He confessed in a clear voice, and was added to the numberof the Martyrs. But he had the Paraclete within him; as, in truth, heshowed by the fulness of his love; glorying in the defence of hisbrethren, and to give his life for theirs. 

"Then was fulfilled the saying of the Lord that the day should come, When he that slayeth you will think that he doeth God service. Mostmadly did the mob, the governor and the soldiers, rage against thehandmaiden Blandina, in whom Christ showed that what seems mean amongmen is of price with Him. For whilst we all, and her earthly mistress, who was herself one of the contending Martyrs, were fearful lestthrough the weakness of the flesh she should be unable to profess thefaith, Blandina was filled with such power that her tormentors, following upon each other from morning until night, owned that theywere overcome, and had no more that they could do to her; admiring thatshe still breathed after her whole body was torn asunder. 

"But this blessed one, in the very midst of her 'witness, ' renewed herstrength; and to [193] repeat, I am Christ's! was to her rest, refreshment, and relief from pain. As for Alexander, he neitheruttered a groan nor any sound at all, but in his heart talked with God. Sanctus, the deacon, also, having borne beyond all measure painsdevised by them, hoping that they would get something from him, did notso much as tell his name; but to all questions answered only, I amChrist's! For this he confessed instead of his name, his race, andeverything beside. Whence also a strife in torturing him arose betweenthe governor and those tormentors, so that when they had nothing elsethey could do they set red-hot plates of brass to the most tender partsof his body. But he stood firm in his profession, cooled and fortifiedby that stream of living water which flows from Christ. His corpse, asingle wound, having wholly lost the form of man, was the measure ofhis pain. But Christ, paining in him, set forth an ensample to therest--that there is nothing fearful, nothing painful, where the love ofthe Father overcomes. And as all those cruelties were made nullthrough the patience of the Martyrs, they bethought them of otherthings; among which was their imprisonment in a dark and most sorrowfulplace, where many were privily strangled. But destitute of man's aid, they were filled with power from the Lord, both in body and mind, andstrengthened their brethren. Also, much joy was in our virgin mother, the [194] Church; for, by means of these, such as were fallen awayretraced their steps--were again conceived, were filled again withlively heat, and hastened to make the profession of their faith. 

"The holy bishop Pothinus, who was now past ninety years old and weakin body, yet in his heat of soul and longing for martyrdom, roused whatstrength he had, and was also cruelly dragged to judgment, and gavewitness. Thereupon he suffered many stripes, all thinking it would bea wickedness if they fell short in cruelty towards him, for that thustheir own gods would be avenged. Hardly drawing breath, he was throwninto prison, and after two days there died. 

"After these things their martyrdom was parted into divers manners. Plaiting as it were one crown of many colours and every sort offlowers, they offered it to God. Maturus, therefore, Sanctus andBlandina, were led to the wild beasts. And Maturus and Sanctus passedthrough all the pains of the amphitheatre, as if they had sufferednothing before: or rather, as having in many trials overcome, and nowcontending for the prize itself, were at last dismissed. 

"But Blandina was bound and hung upon a stake, and set forth as foodfor the assault of the wild beasts. And as she thus seemed to be hungupon the Cross, by her fiery prayers she imparted much alacrity tothose contending Witnesses. For as they looked upon her with the eyeof [195] flesh, through her, they saw Him that was crucified. But asnone of the beasts would then touch her, she was taken down from theCross, and sent back to prison for another day: that, though weak andmean, yet clothed with the mighty wrestler, Christ Jesus, she might bymany conquests give heart to her brethren. 

"On the last day, therefore, of the shows, she was brought forth again, together with Ponticus, a lad of about fifteen years old. They werebrought in day by day to behold the pains of the rest. And when theywavered not, the mob was full of rage; pitying neither the youth of thelad, nor the sex of the maiden. Hence, they drave them through thewhole round of pain. And Ponticus, taking heart from Blandina, havingborne well the whole of those torments, gave up his life. Last of all, the blessed Blandina herself, as a mother that had given life to herchildren, and sent them like conquerors to the great King, hastened tothem, with joy at the end, as to a marriage-feast; the enemy himselfconfessing that no woman had ever borne pain so manifold and great ashers. 

"Nor even so was their anger appeased; some among them seeking for uspains, if it might be, yet greater; that the saying might be fulfilled, He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. And their rage against theMartyrs took a new form, insomuch that we were in great sorrow for lackof freedom to entrust their bodies to the earth. 

[196] "Neither did the night-time, nor the offer of money, avail us forthis matter; but they set watch with much carefulness, as though itwere a great gain to hinder their burial. Therefore, after the bodieshad been displayed to view for many days, they were at last burned toashes, and cast into the river Rhone, which flows by this place, thatnot a vestige of them might be left upon the earth. For they said, Nowshall we see whether they will rise again, and whether their God cansave them out of our hands. "

CHAPTER XXVII: THE TRIUMPH OF MARCUS AURELIUS

[197] NOT many months after the date of that epistle, Marius, thenexpecting to leave Rome for a long time, and in fact about to leave itfor ever, stood to witness the triumphal entry of Marcus Aurelius, almost at the exact spot from which he had watched the emperor's solemnreturn to the capital on his own first coming thither. His triumph wasnow a "full" one--Justus Triumphus justified, by far more than the dueamount of bloodshed in those Northern wars, at length, it might seem, happily at an end. Among the captives, amid the laughter of the crowdsat his blowsy upper garment, his trousered legs and conical wolf-skincap, walked our own ancestor, representative of subject Germany, undera figure very familiar in later Roman sculpture; and, though certainlywith none of the grace of the Dying Gaul, yet with plenty of uncouthpathos in his misshapen features, and the pale, servile, yet angryeyes. His children, [198] white-skinned and golden-haired "as angels, "trudged beside him. His brothers, of the animal world, the ibex, thewild-cat, and the reindeer, stalking and trumpeting grandly, foundtheir due place in the procession; and among the spoil, set forth on aportable frame that it might be distinctly seen (no mere model, but thevery house he had lived in), a wattled cottage, in all the simplicityof its snug contrivances against the cold, and well-calculated to givea moment's delight to his new, sophisticated masters. 

Andrea Mantegna, working at the end of the fifteenth century, for asociety full of antiquarian fervour at the sight of the earthy relicsof the old Roman people, day by day returning to light out of theclay--childish still, moreover, and with no more suspicion ofpasteboard than the old Romans themselves, in its unabashed love ofopen-air pageantries, has invested this, the greatest, and alas! themost characteristic, of the splendours of imperial Rome, with a realitylivelier than any description. The homely sentiments for which he hasfound place in his learned paintings are hardly more lifelike than thegreat public incidents of the show, there depicted. And then, with allthat vivid realism, how refined, how dignified, how select in type, isthis reflection of the old Roman world!--now especially, in itstime-mellowed red and gold, for the modern visitor to the old Englishpalace. 

[199] It was under no such selected types that the great processionpresented itself to Marius; though, in effect, he found something thereprophetic, so to speak, and evocative of ghosts, as susceptible mindswill do, upon a repetition after long interval of some notableincident, which may yet perhaps have no direct concern for themselves. In truth, he had been so closely bent of late on certain very personalinterests that the broad current of the world's doings seemed to havewithdrawn into the distance, but now, as he witnessed this procession, to return once more into evidence for him. The world, certainly, hadbeen holding on its old way, and was all its old self, as it thuspassed by dramatically, accentuating, in this favourite spectacle, itsmode of viewing things. And even apart from the contrast of a verydifferent scene, he would have found it, just now, a somewhat vulgarspectacle. The temples, wide open, with their ropes of roses flappingin the wind against the rich, reflecting marble, their startlingdraperies and heavy cloud of incense, were but the centres of a greatbanquet spread through all the gaudily coloured streets of Rome, forwhich the carnivorous appetite of those who thronged them in the glareof the mid-day sun was frankly enough asserted. At best, they were butcalling their gods to share with them the cooked, sacrificial, andother meats, reeking to the sky. The child, who was concerned for thesorrows of one of [200] those Northern captives as he passed by, andexplained to his comrade--"There's feeling in that hand, you know!"benumbed and lifeless as it looked in the chain, seemed, in a moment, to transform the entire show into its own proper tinsel. Yes! theseRomans were a coarse, a vulgar people; and their vulgarities of soul infull evidence here. And Aurelius himself seemed to have undergone theworld's coinage, and fallen to the level of his reward, in a mediocrityno longer golden. 

Yet if, as he passed by, almost filling the quaint old circular chariotwith his magnificent golden-flowered attire, he presented himself toMarius, chiefly as one who had made the great mistake; to the multitudehe came as a more than magnanimous conqueror. That he had "forgiven"the innocent wife and children of the dashing and almost successfulrebel Avidius Cassius, now no more, was a recent circumstance still inmemory. As the children went past--not among those who, ere theemperor ascended the steps of the Capitol, would be detached from thegreat progress for execution, happy rather, and radiant, as adoptedmembers of the imperial family--the crowd actually enjoyed anexhibition of the moral order, such as might become perhaps thefashion. And it was in consideration of some possible touch of aheroism herein that might really have cost him something, that Mariusresolved to seek the emperor once more, [201] with an appeal forcommon-sense, for reason and justice. 

He had set out at last to revisit his old home; and knowing thatAurelius was then in retreat at a favourite villa, which lay almost onhis way thither, determined there to present himself. Although thegreat plain was dying steadily, a new race of wild birds establishingitself there, as he knew enough of their habits to understand, and theidle contadino, with his never-ending ditty of decay and death, replacing the lusty Roman labourer, never had that poetic regionbetween Rome and the sea more deeply impressed him than on this sunlessday of early autumn, under which all that fell within the immensehorizon was presented in one uniform tone of a clear, penitential blue. Stimulating to the fancy as was that range of low hills to thenorthwards, already troubled with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yeta want of quiet in their outline, the record of wild fracture there, ofsudden upheaval and depression, marked them as but the ruins of nature;while at every little descent and ascent of the road might be notedtraces of the abandoned work of man. From time to time, the way wasstill redolent of the floral relics of summer, daphne andmyrtle-blossom, sheltered in the little hollows and ravines. At last, amid rocks here and there piercing the soil, as those descents becamesteeper, and the main line of the Apennines, [202] now visible, gave ahigher accent to the scene, he espied over the plateau, almost like oneof those broken hills, cutting the horizon towards the sea, the oldbrown villa itself, rich in memories of one after another of the familyof the Antonines. As he approached it, such reminiscences crowded uponhim, above all of the life there of the aged Antoninus Pius, in itswonderful mansuetude and calm. Death had overtaken him here at theprecise moment when the tribune of the watch had received from his lipsthe word Aequanimitas! as the watchword of the night. To see theiremperor living there like one of his simplest subjects, his hands redat vintage-time with the juice of the grapes, hunting, teaching hischildren, starting betimes, with all who cared to join him, for longdays of antiquarian research in the country around:--this, and the likeof this, had seemed to mean the peace of mankind. 

Upon that had come--like a stain! it seemed to Marius just then--themore intimate life of Faustina, the life of Faustina at home. Surely, that marvellous but malign beauty must still haunt those rooms, like anunquiet, dead goddess, who might have perhaps, after all, somethingreassuring to tell surviving mortals about her ambiguous self. When, two years since, the news had reached Rome that those eyes, always sopersistently turned to vanity, had suddenly closed for ever, a strongdesire to pray had come [203] over Marius, as he followed in fancy onits wild way the soul of one he had spoken with now and again, andwhose presence in it for a time the world of art could so ill havespared. Certainly, the honours freely accorded to embalm her memorywere poetic enough--the rich temple left among those wild villagers atthe spot, now it was hoped sacred for ever, where she had breathed herlast; the golden image, in her old place at the amphitheatre; the altarat which the newly married might make their sacrifice; above all, thegreat foundation for orphan girls, to be called after her name. 

The latter, precisely, was the cause why Marius failed in fact to seeAurelius again, and make the chivalrous effort at enlightenment he hadproposed to himself. Entering the villa, he learned from an usher, atthe door of the long gallery, famous still for its grand prospect inthe memory of many a visitor, and then leading to the imperialapartments, that the emperor was already in audience: Marius must waithis turn--he knew not how long it might be. An odd audience it seemed;for at that moment, through the closed door, came shouts of laughter, the laughter of a great crowd of children--the "Faustinian Children"themselves, as he afterwards learned--happy and at their ease, in theimperial presence. Uncertain, then, of the time for which so pleasanta reception might last, so pleasant that he would hardly have wished to[204] shorten it, Marius finally determined to proceed, as it wasnecessary that he should accomplish the first stage of his journey onthis day. The thing was not to be--Vale! anima infelicissima!--Hemight at least carry away that sound of the laughing orphan children, as a not unamiable last impression of kings and their houses. 

The place he was now about to visit, especially as the resting-place ofhis dead, had never been forgotten. Only, the first eager period ofhis life in Rome had slipped on rapidly; and, almost on a sudden, thatold time had come to seem very long ago. An almost burdensomesolemnity had grown about his memory of the place, so that to revisitit seemed a thing that needed preparation: it was what he could nothave done hastily. He half feared to lessen, or disturb, its value forhimself. And then, as he travelled leisurely towards it, and so farwith quite tranquil mind, interested also in many another place by theway, he discovered a shorter road to the end of his journey, and foundhimself indeed approaching the spot that was to him like no other. Dreaming now only of the dead before him, he journeyed on rapidlythrough the night; the thought of them increasing on him, in thedarkness. It was as if they had been waiting for him there through allthose years, and felt his footsteps approaching now, and understood hisdevotion, quite gratefully, in that lowliness of theirs, in spite ofits tardy [205] fulfilment. As morning came, his late tranquillity ofmind had given way to a grief which surprised him by its freshness. Hewas moved more than he could have thought possible by so distant asorrow. "To-day!"--they seemed to be saying as the hard dawnbroke, --"To-day, he will come!" At last, amid all his distractions, they were become the main purpose of what he was then doing. The worldaround it, when he actually reached the place later in the day, was ina mood very different from his:--so work-a-day, it seemed, on that fineafternoon, and the villages he passed through so silent; theinhabitants being, for the most part, at their labour in the country. Then, at length, above the tiled outbuildings, were the walls of theold villa itself, with the tower for the pigeons; and, not amongcypresses, but half-hidden by aged poplar-trees, their leaves likegolden fruit, the birds floating around it, the conical roof of thetomb itself. In the presence of an old servant who remembered him, thegreat seals were broken, the rusty key turned at last in the lock, thedoor was forced out among the weeds grown thickly about it, and Mariuswas actually in the place which had been so often in his thoughts. 

He was struck, not however without a touch of remorse thereupon, chiefly by an odd air of neglect, the neglect of a place allowed toremain as when it was last used, and left in a hurry, till long yearshad covered all alike with thick dust [206] --the faded flowers, theburnt-out lamps, the tools and hardened mortar of the workmen who hadhad something to do there. A heavy fragment of woodwork had fallen andchipped open one of the oldest of the mortuary urns, many hundreds innumber ranged around the walls. It was not properly an urn, but aminute coffin of stone, and the fracture had revealed a piteousspectacle of the mouldering, unburned remains within; the bones of achild, as he understood, which might have died, in ripe age, threetimes over, since it slipped away from among his great-grandfathers, sofar up in the line. Yet the protruding baby hand seemed to stir up inhim feelings vivid enough, bringing him intimately within the scope ofdead people's grievances. He noticed, side by side with the urn of hismother, that of a boy of about his own age--one of the serving-boys ofthe household--who had descended hither, from the lightsome world ofchildhood, almost at the same time with her. It seemed as if this boyof his own age had taken filial place beside her there, in his stead. That hard feeling, again, which had always lingered in his mind withthe thought of the father he had scarcely known, melted wholly away, ashe read the precise number of his years, and reflected suddenly--He wasof my own present age; no hard old man, but with interests, as helooked round him on the world for the last time, even as mine to-day!

[207] And with that came a blinding rush of kindness, as if twoalienated friends had come to understand each other at last. There wasweakness in all this; as there is in all care for dead persons, towhich nevertheless people will always yield in proportion as theyreally care for one another. With a vain yearning, as he stood there, still to be able to do something for them, he reflected that such doingmust be, after all, in the nature of things, mainly for himself. Hisown epitaph might be that old one eskhatos tou idiou genous+ --He wasthe last of his race! Of those who might come hither after himselfprobably no one would ever again come quite as he had done to-day; andit was under the influence of this thought that he determined to buryall that, deep below the surface, to be remembered only by him, and ina way which would claim no sentiment from the indifferent. That tookmany days--was like a renewal of lengthy old burial rites--as hehimself watched the work, early and late; coming on the last day veryearly, and anticipating, by stealth, the last touches, while theworkmen were absent; one young lad only, finally smoothing down theearthy bed, greatly surprised at the seriousness with which Mariusflung in his flowers, one by one, to mingle with the dark mould. 

NOTES

207. +Transliteration: eskhatos tou idiou genous. Translation: "[hewas] the last of his race. "

CHAPTER XXVIII: ANIMA NATURALITER CHRISTIANA

[208] THOSE eight days at his old home, so mournfully occupied, hadbeen for Marius in some sort a forcible disruption from the world andthe roots of his life in it. He had been carried out of himself asnever before; and when the time was over, it was as if the claim overhim of the earth below had been vindicated, over against the interestsof that living world around. Dead, yet sentient and caressing handsseemed to reach out of the ground and to be clinging about him. Looking back sometimes now, from about the midway of life--the age, ashe conceived, at which one begins to redescend one's life--thoughantedating it a little, in his sad humour, he would note, almost withsurprise, the unbroken placidity of the contemplation in which it hadbeen passed. His own temper, his early theoretic scheme of things, would have pushed him on to movement and adventure. Actually, ascircumstances had determined, all its movement [209] had been inward;movement of observation only, or even of pure meditation; in part, perhaps, because throughout it had been something of a meditatiomortis, ever facing towards the act of final detachment. Death, however, as he reflected, must be for every one nothing less than thefifth or last act of a drama, and, as such, was likely to havesomething of the stirring character of a dénouement. And, in fact, itwas in form tragic enough that his end not long afterwards came to him. 

In the midst of the extreme weariness and depression which had followedthose last days, Cornelius, then, as it happened, on a journey andtravelling near the place, finding traces of him, had become his guestat White-nights. It was just then that Marius felt, as he had neverdone before, the value to himself, the overpowering charm, of hisfriendship. "More than brother!"--he felt--like a son also!"contrasting the fatigue of soul which made himself in effect an olderman, with the irrepressible youth of his companion. For it was stillthe marvellous hopefulness of Cornelius, his seeming prerogative overthe future, that determined, and kept alive, all other sentimentconcerning him. A new hope had sprung up in the world of which he, Cornelius, was a depositary, which he was to bear onward in it. Identifying himself with Cornelius in so dear a friendship, throughhim, Marius seemed to touch, to ally himself to, [210] actually tobecome a possessor of the coming world; even as happy parents reachout, and take possession of it, in and through the survival of theirchildren. For in these days their intimacy had grown very close, asthey moved hither and thither, leisurely, among the country-placesthereabout, Cornelius being on his way back to Rome, till they came oneevening to a little town (Marius remembered that he had been there onhis first journey to Rome) which had even then its church andlegend--the legend and holy relics of the martyr Hyacinthus, a youngRoman soldier, whose blood had stained the soil of this place in thereign of the emperor Trajan. 

The thought of that so recent death, haunted Marius through the night, as if with audible crying and sighs above the restless wind, which cameand went around their lodging. But towards dawn he slept heavily; andawaking in broad daylight, and finding Cornelius absent, set forth toseek him. The plague was still in the place--had indeed just brokenout afresh; with an outbreak also of cruel superstition among its wildand miserable inhabitants. Surely, the old gods were wroth at thepresence of this new enemy among them! And it was no ordinary morninginto which Marius stepped forth. There was a menace in the dark massesof hill, and motionless wood, against the gray, although apparentlyunclouded sky. Under this sunless [211] heaven the earth itself seemedto fret and fume with a heat of its own, in spite of the strongnight-wind. And now the wind had fallen. 

Marius felt that he breathed some strange heavy fluid, denser than anycommon air. He could have fancied that the world had sunken in thenight, far below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of itsown atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly lessterrified and overwrought by the haunting sickness about them thantheir pagan neighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr;and even as Marius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, on asudden the hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, around the wholecompass of the horizon. For a moment Marius supposed himself attackedwith some sudden sickness of brain, till the fall of a great mass ofbuilding convinced him that not himself but the earth under his feetwas giddy. A few moments later the little marketplace was alive withthe rush of the distracted inhabitants from their tottering houses; andas they waited anxiously for the second shock of earthquake, along-smouldering suspicion leapt precipitately into well-definedpurpose, and the whole body of people was carried forward towards theband of worshippers below. An hour later, in the wild tumult whichfollowed, the earth had been stained afresh with the blood of themartyrs Felix and Faustinus--Flores [212] apparuerunt in terranostra!--and their brethren, together with Cornelius and Marius, thus, as it had happened, taken among them, were prisoners, reserved for theaction of the law. Marius and his friend, with certain others, exercising the privilege of their rank, made claim to be tried in Rome, or at least in the chief town of the district; where, indeed, in thetroublous days that had now begun, a legal process had been alreadyinstituted. Under the care of a military guard the captives wereremoved on the same day, one stage of their journey; sleeping, forsecurity, during the night, side by side with their keepers, in therooms of a shepherd's deserted house by the wayside. 

It was surmised that one of the prisoners was not a Christian: theguards were forward to make the utmost pecuniary profit of thiscircumstance, and in the night, Marius, taking advantage of the loosecharge kept over them, and by means partly of a large bribe, hadcontrived that Cornelius, as the really innocent person, should bedismissed in safety on his way, to procure, as Marius explained, theproper means of defence for himself, when the time of trial came. 

And in the morning Cornelius in fact set forth alone, from theirmiserable place of detention. Marius believed that Cornelius was to bethe husband of Cecilia; and that, perhaps strangely, had but added tothe desire to get him away safely. --We wait for the great crisis which[213] is to try what is in us: we can hardly bear the pressure of ourhearts, as we think of it: the lonely wrestler, or victim, whichimagination foreshadows to us, can hardly be one's self; it seems anoutrage of our destiny that we should be led along so gently andimperceptibly, to so terrible a leaping-place in the dark, for moreperhaps than life or death. At last, the great act, the criticalmoment itself comes, easily, almost unconsciously. Another motion ofthe clock, and our fatal line--the "great climacteric point"--has beenpassed, which changes ourselves or our lives. In one quarter of anhour, under a sudden, uncontrollable impulse, hardly weighing what hedid, almost as a matter of course and as lightly as one hires a bed forone's night's rest on a journey, Marius had taken upon himself all theheavy risk of the position in which Cornelius had then been--the longand wearisome delays of judgment, which were possible; the danger andwretchedness of a long journey in this manner; possibly the danger ofdeath. He had delivered his brother, after the manner he had sometimesvaguely anticipated as a kind of distinction in his destiny; thoughindeed always with wistful calculation as to what it might cost him:and in the first moment after the thing was actually done, he felt onlysatisfaction at his courage, at the discovery of his possession of"nerve. "

Yet he was, as we know, no hero, no heroic [214] martyr--had indeed noright to be; and when he had seen Cornelius depart, on his blithe andhopeful way, as he believed, to become the husband of Cecilia;actually, as it had happened, without a word of farewell, supposingMarius was almost immediately afterwards to follow (Marius indeedhaving avoided the moment of leave-taking with its possible call for anexplanation of the circumstances), the reaction came. He could onlyguess, of course, at what might really happen. So far, he had buttaken upon himself, in the stead of Cornelius, a certain amount ofpersonal risk; though he hardly supposed himself to be facing thedanger of death. Still, especially for one such as he, with all thesensibilities of which his whole manner of life had been but apromotion, the situation of a person under trial on a criminal chargewas actually full of distress. To him, in truth, a death such as therecent death of those saintly brothers, seemed no glorious end. In hiscase, at least, the Martyrdom, as it was called--the overpowering actof testimony that Heaven had come down among men--would be but a commonexecution: from the drops of his blood there would spring nomiraculous, poetic flowers; no eternal aroma would indicate the placeof his burial; no plenary grace, overflowing for ever upon those whomight stand around it. Had there been one to listen just then, therewould have come, from the very depth of his desolation, [215] aneloquent utterance at last, on the irony of men's fates, on thesingular accidents of life and death. 

The guards, now safely in possession of whatever money and othervaluables the prisoners had had on them, pressed them forward, over therough mountain paths, altogether careless of their sufferings. Thegreat autumn rains were falling. At night the soldiers lighted a fire;but it was impossible to keep warm. From time to time they stopped toroast portions of the meat they carried with them, making theircaptives sit round the fire, and pressing it upon them. But wearinessand depression of spirits had deprived Marius of appetite, even if thefood had been more attractive, and for some days he partook of nothingbut bad bread and water. All through the dark mornings they draggedover boggy plains, up and down hills, wet through sometimes with theheavy rain. Even in those deplorable circumstances, he could butnotice the wild, dark beauty of those regions--the stormy sunrise, andplacid spaces of evening. One of the keepers, a very young soldier, won him at times, by his simple kindness, to talk a little, with wonderat the lad's half-conscious, poetic delight in the adventures of thejourney. At times, the whole company would lie down for rest at theroadside, hardly sheltered from the storm; and in the deep fatigue ofhis spirit, his old longing for inopportune sleep overpoweredhim. --Sleep anywhere, and under any conditions, [216] seemed just thena thing one might well exchange the remnants of one's life for. 

It must have been about the fifth night, as he afterwards conjectured, that the soldiers, believing him likely to die, had finally left himunable to proceed further, under the care of some country people, whoto the extent of their power certainly treated him kindly in hissickness. He awoke to consciousness after a severe attack of fever, lying alone on a rough bed, in a kind of hut. It seemed a remote, mysterious place, as he looked around in the silence; but sofresh--lying, in fact, in a high pasture-land among the mountains--thathe felt he should recover, if he might but just lie there in quiet longenough. Even during those nights of delirium he had felt the scent ofthe new-mown hay pleasantly, with a dim sense for a moment that he waslying safe in his old home. The sunlight lay clear beyond the opendoor; and the sounds of the cattle reached him softly from the greenplaces around. Recalling confusedly the torturing hurry of his latejourneys, he dreaded, as his consciousness of the whole situationreturned, the coming of the guards. But the place remained in absolutestillness. He was, in fact, at liberty, but for his own disabledcondition. And it was certainly a genuine clinging to life that hefelt just then, at the very bottom of his mind. So it had been, obscurely, even through all the wild fancies of his delirium, from themoment which followed [217] his decision against himself, in favour ofCornelius. 

The occupants of the place were to be heard presently, coming and goingabout him on their business: and it was as if the approach of deathbrought out in all their force the merely human sentiments. There isthat in death which certainly makes indifferent persons anxious toforget the dead: to put them--those aliens--away out of their thoughtsaltogether, as soon as may be. Conversely, in the deep isolation ofspirit which was now creeping upon Marius, the faces of these people, casually visible, took a strange hold on his affections; the link ofgeneral brotherhood, the feeling of human kinship, asserting itselfmost strongly when it was about to be severed for ever. At nights hewould find this face or that impressed deeply on his fancy; and, in atroubled sort of manner, his mind would follow them onwards, on theways of their simple, humdrum, everyday life, with a peculiar yearningto share it with them, envying the calm, earthy cheerfulness of alltheir days to be, still under the sun, though so indifferent, ofcourse, to him!--as if these rude people had been suddenly lifted intosome height of earthly good-fortune, which must needs isolate them fromhimself. 

Tristem neminen fecit+--he repeated to himself; his old prayer shapingitself now almost as his epitaph. Yes! so much the very hardest judge[218] must concede to him. And the sense of satisfaction which thatthought left with him disposed him to a conscious effort ofrecollection, while he lay there, unable now even to raise his head, ashe discovered on attempting to reach a pitcher of water which stoodnear. Revelation, vision, the discovery of a vision, the seeing of aperfect humanity, in a perfect world--through all his alternations ofmind, by some dominant instinct, determined by the original necessitiesof his own nature and character, he had always set that above thehaving, or even the doing, of anything. For, such vision, if receivedwith due attitude on his part, was, in reality, the being something, and as such was surely a pleasant offering or sacrifice to whatevergods there might be, observant of him. And how goodly had the visionbeen!--one long unfolding of beauty and energy in things, upon theclosing of which he might gratefully utter his "Vixi!"+ Even then, just ere his eyes were to be shut for ever, the things they had seenseemed a veritable possession in hand; the persons, the places, aboveall, the touching image of Jesus, apprehended dimly through theexpressive faces, the crying of the children, in that mysterious drama, with a sudden sense of peace and satisfaction now, which he could notexplain to himself. Surely, he had prospered in life! And again, as ofold, the sense of gratitude seemed to bring with it the sense also of aliving person at his side. 

[219] For still, in a shadowy world, his deeper wisdom had ever been, with a sense of economy, with a jealous estimate of gain and loss, touse life, not as the means to some problematic end, but, as far asmight be, from dying hour to dying hour, an end in itself--a kind ofmusic, all-sufficing to the duly trained ear, even as it died out onthe air. Yet now, aware still in that suffering body of such vividpowers of mind and sense, as he anticipated from time to time how hissickness, practically without aid as he must be in this rude place, waslikely to end, and that the moment of taking final account was drawingvery near, a consciousness of waste would come, with half-angry tearsof self-pity, in his great weakness--a blind, outraged, angry feelingof wasted power, such as he might have experienced himself standing bythe deathbed of another, in condition like his own. 

And yet it was the fact, again, that the vision of men and things, actually revealed to him on his way through the world, had developed, with a wonderful largeness, the faculties to which it addressed itself, his general capacity of vision; and in that too was a success, in theview of certain, very definite, well-considered, undeniablepossibilities. Throughout that elaborate and lifelong education of hisreceptive powers, he had ever kept in view the purpose of preparinghimself towards possible further revelation some day--towards someampler vision, which [220] should take up into itself and explain thisworld's delightful shows, as the scattered fragments of a poetry, tillthen but half-understood, might be taken up into the text of a lostepic, recovered at last. At this moment, his unclouded receptivity ofsoul, grown so steadily through all those years, from experience toexperience, was at its height; the house ready for the possible guest;the tablet of the mind white and smooth, for whatsoever divine fingersmight choose to write there. And was not this precisely the condition, the attitude of mind, to which something higher than he, yet akin tohim, would be likely to reveal itself; to which that influence he hadfelt now and again like a friendly hand upon his shoulder, amid theactual obscurities of the world, would be likely to make a furtherexplanation? Surely, the aim of a true philosophy must lie, not infutile efforts towards the complete accommodation of man to thecircumstances in which he chances to find himself, but in themaintenance of a kind of candid discontent, in the face of the veryhighest achievement; the unclouded and receptive soul quitting theworld finally, with the same fresh wonder with which it had entered theworld still unimpaired, and going on its blind way at last with theconsciousness of some profound enigma in things, as but a pledge ofsomething further to come. Marius seemed to understand how one mightlook back upon life here, and its [221] excellent visions, as but theportion of a race-course left behind him by a runner still swift offoot: for a moment he experienced a singular curiosity, almost anardent desire to enter upon a future, the possibilities of which seemedso large. 

And just then, again amid the memory of certain touching actual wordsand images, came the thought of the great hope, that hope against hope, which, as he conceived, had arisen--Lux sedentibus in tenebris+--uponthe aged world; the hope Cornelius had seemed to bear away upon him inhis strength, with a buoyancy which had caused Marius to feel, not somuch that by a caprice of destiny, he had been left to die in hisplace, as that Cornelius was gone on a mission to deliver him also fromdeath. There had been a permanent protest established in the world, aplea, a perpetual after-thought, which humanity henceforth would everpossess in reserve, against any wholly mechanical and dishearteningtheory of itself and its conditions. That was a thought which relievedfor him the iron outline of the horizon about him, touching it as ifwith soft light from beyond; filling the shadowy, hollow places towhich he was on his way with the warmth of definite affections;confirming also certain considerations by which he seemed to linkhimself to the generations to come in the world he was leaving. Yes!through the survival of their children, happy parents are able to [222]think calmly, and with a very practical affection, of a world in whichthey are to have no direct share; planting with a cheerful good-humour, the acorns they carry about with them, that their grand-children may beshaded from the sun by the broad oak-trees of the future. That isnature's way of easing death to us. It was thus too, surprised, delighted, that Marius, under the power of that new hope among men, could think of the generations to come after him. Without it, dim intruth as it was, he could hardly have dared to ponder the world whichlimited all he really knew, as it would be when he should have departedfrom it. A strange lonesomeness, like physical darkness, seemed tosettle upon the thought of it; as if its business hereafter must be, asfar as he was concerned, carried on in some inhabited, but distant andalien, star. Contrariwise, with the sense of that hope warm about him, he seemed to anticipate some kindly care for himself; never to faileven on earth, a care for his very body-that dear sister and companionof his soul, outworn, suffering, and in the very article of death, asit was now. 

For the weariness came back tenfold; and he had finally to abstain fromthoughts like these, as from what caused physical pain. And then, asbefore in the wretched, sleepless nights of those forced marches, hewould try to fix his mind, as it were impassively, and like a childthinking over the toys it loves, one after another, that it [223] mayfall asleep thus, and forget all about them the sooner, on all thepersons he had loved in life--on his love for them, dead or living, grateful for his love or not, rather than on theirs for him--lettingtheir images pass away again, or rest with him, as they would. In thebare sense of having loved he seemed to find, even amid this founderingof the ship, that on which his soul might "assuredly rest and depend. "One after another, he suffered those faces and voices to come and go, as in some mechanical exercise, as he might have repeated all theverses he knew by heart, or like the telling of beads one by one, withmany a sleepy nod between-whiles. 

For there remained also, for the old earthy creature still within him, that great blessedness of physical slumber. To sleep, to lose one'sself in sleep--that, as he had always recognised, was a good thing. Andit was after a space of deep sleep that he awoke amid the murmuringvoices of the people who had kept and tended him so carefully throughhis sickness, now kneeling around his bed: and what he heard confirmed, in the then perfect clearness of his soul, the inevitable suggestion ofhis own bodily feelings. He had often dreamt he was condemned to die, that the hour, with wild thoughts of escape, was arrived; and waking, with the sun all around him, in complete liberty of life, had been fullof gratitude for his place there, alive still, in the [224] land of theliving. He read surely, now, in the manner, the doings, of thesepeople, some of whom were passing out through the doorway, where theheavy sunlight in very deed lay, that his last morning was come, andturned to think once more of the beloved. Often had he fancied of oldthat not to die on a dark or rainy day might itself have a littlealleviating grace or favour about it. The people around his bed werepraying fervently--Abi! Abi! Anima Christiana!+ In the moments of hisextreme helplessness their mystic bread had been placed, had descendedlike a snow-flake from the sky, between his lips. Gentle fingers hadapplied to hands and feet, to all those old passage-ways of the senses, through which the world had come and gone for him, now so dim andobstructed, a medicinable oil. It was the same people who, in thegray, austere evening of that day, took up his remains, and buried themsecretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, holding hisdeath, according to their generous view in this matter, to have been ofthe nature of martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the church had always said, a kind of sacrament with plenary grace. 

1881-1884. 

THE END

NOTES

217. +"He made no one unhappy. "

218. +"I have lived!"

221. +From the Latin Vulgate Bible, Matthew 4:16: "populus qui sedebatin tenebris lucem vidit magnam et sedentibus in regione et umbra mortislux orta est eis. " King James Bible translation: "The people which satin darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region andshadow of death light is sprung up. "

224. "Depart! Depart! Christian Soul!" The thought is from theCatholic prayer for the departing.