O Thelymnia! our lives are truly at an end when it convenient for a covering. Euthymedes the we are beloved no longer. Existence may be con- philosopher made this discovery, to which pertinued, or rather may be renewed, yet the agonies haps others may lay equal claim. of death and the chilliness of the grave have been passed through; nor are there Elysian fields, nor the sports that delighted in former times, awaiting us, nor pleasant converse, nor walks with linked hands, nor intermitted songs, nor vengeful kisses for leaving them off abruptly, nor looks that shake us to assure us afterward, nor that bland inquietude, as gently tremulous as the expansion of buds into blossoms, which hurries us from repose to exercise and from exercise to repose." "O! I have been very near loving!" cried Thelymnia. "Where in the world can a philosopher have learned all this about it!" The beauty of Thelymnia, her blushes, first at the deceit, afterward at the encouragement she received in her replies, and lastly from some other things which we could not penetrate, highly gratified Critolaus. Soon however (for wine always brings back to us our last strong feeling) he thought again of Phoroneus, as young, as handsome, and once (is that the word?) as dear to her. He saddened at the myrtle on the head of his beloved; it threw shadows and gloom upon his soul; her smiles, her spirits, her wit, above all her nods of approbation, wounded him. He sighed when she covered her face with her hand; when she disclosed it he sighed again. Every glance of pleasure, every turn of surprise, every movement of her body, pained and oppressed him. He cursed in his heart whoever it was who had stuffed that portion of the couch; there was so little moss, thought he, between Thelymnia and Euthymedes. He might have seen Athos part them, and would have murmured still. The rest of us were in admiration at the facility and grace with which Thelymnia sustained her part, and observing less Critolaus than we did in the commencement, when he acknowledged and enjoyed our transports, indifferently and contentedly saw him rise from the table and go away, thinking his departure a preconcerted section of the stratagem. He retired, as he told us afterward, into a grot. So totally was his mind abstracted from the entertainment, he left the table athirst, covered as it was with fruit and wine, and abundant as ran beside us the clearest and sweetest and most refreshing rill. He related to me that, at the extremity of the cavern, he applied his parched tongue to the dripping rock, shunning the light of day, the voice of friendship, so violent was his desire of solitude and concealment, and he held his forehead and his palms against it when his lips had closed. We knew not and suspected not his feelings at the time, and rejoiced at the anticipation of the silly things a philosopher should have whispered, which Thelymnia in the morning of the festival had promised us to detail the next day. Love is apt to get entangled and to trip and stumble when he puts on the garb of Friendship: it is too long and loose for him to walk in, although he sometimes finds After the lesson he had been giving her, which amused her in the dictation, she stood composed and thoughtful, and then said hesitatingly, "But would it be quite proper? would there be nothing of insincerity and falsehood in it, my Critolaus?" He caught her up in his arms, and, as in his enthusiasm he had raised her head above his, he kissed her bosom. She reproved and pardoned him, making him first declare and protest he would never do the like again. "O soul of truth and delicacy!" cried he aloud; and Thelymnia, no doubt, trembled lest her lover should in a moment be forsworn; so imminent and inevitable seemed the repetition of his offence. But he observed on her eyelashes, what had arisen from his precipitation in our presence, A hesitating long suspended tear, Like that which hangs upon the vine fresh-pruned, Until the morning kisses it away. The Nymphs, who often drive men wild (they tell us) have led me astray: I must return with you to the grot. We gave every facility to the stratagem. One slipt away in one direction, another in another; but, at a certain distance, each was desirous of joining some comrade, and of laughing together; yet each reproved the laughter, even when far off, lest it should do harm, reserving it for the morrow. While they walked along, conversing, the words of Euthymedes fell on the ears of Thelymnia softly as cistus-petals, fluttering and panting for a moment in the air, fall on the thirsty sand. She, in a voice that makes the brain dizzy as it plunges into the breast, replied to him, "O Euthymedes! you must have lived your whole life-time in the hearts of women to know them so thoroughly. I never knew mine before you taught me.' " Euthymedes now was silent, being one of the few wise men whom love ever made wiser. But, in his silence and abstraction, he took especial care to press the softer part of her arm against his heart, that she might be sensible of its quick pulsation: and, as she rested her elbow within the curvature of his, the slenderest of her fingers solicited, first one, then another, of those beneath them, but timidly, briefly, inconclusively, and then clung around it pressingly for countenance and support. Panætius, you have seen the mountains on the left hand, eastward, when you are in Olympia, and perhaps the little stream that runs from the nearest of them into the Alpheus. Could you have seen them that evening! the moon never shone so calmly, so brightly, upon Latmos nor the torch of Love before her. And yet many of the stars were visible; the most beautiful were among them; and as Euthymedes taught The lymnia their names, their radiance seemed mor joyous, more effulgent, more beneficent. If you have ever walked forth into the wilds and oper ns upon such moonlight nights, cautious as lute. "I fancy, my sweet scholar! or shall I rather say (for you have been so oftener) my sweet teacher! they are not ivy-leaves: to me they appear to be periwinkles." 66 I will gather some and see," said Thelymnia. Periwinkles cover wide and deep hollows: of what are they incapable when the convolvulus is in league with them! She slipped from the arm of Euthymedes, and in an instant had disappeared. In an instant too he had followed. Panatius. These are mad pranks, and always end ill. Moonlights! cannot we see them quietly from the tops of our houses, or from the plain pavement? Must we give challenges to mastiffs, make appointments with wolves, run after asps, and languish for stonequarries? Unwary philosopher and simple girl! Were they found again? Polybius. Yea, by Castor! and most unwil lingly. Scipio. I do not wonder. When the bones are broken, without the consolation of some great service rendered in such misfortune, and when beauty must become deformity, I can well believe that they both would rather have perished. Polybius. Amaranth on the couch of Jove and Hebe was never softer than the bed they fell on. Critolaus had advanced to the opening of the cavern: he had heard the exclamation of Thelymnia as she was falling.. he forgave her . . he ran to her for her forgiveness.. he heard some low sounds. . he smote his heart, else it had fainted in him. . he stopped. Euthymedes was raising up Thelymnia, forgetwho was placed by the fountain-head," re-ful (as was too apparent) of himself. "Traitor!" he, "had no inclination to follow the shalnd slender stream, taking its course toward s and lanes, and dipt into and muddied by llowed and uncleanly hands. After dinner topics are usually introduced, when the obthat ought to inspire our juster sentiments one away. An indelicacy worse than Thracian! | purest gales of heaven, in the most perfect des, should alone lift up the aspiration of puls to the divinities all men worship." ensible creature!" sighed Thelymnia in her 1,"how rightly he does think!" ome, fairest of wanderers," whispered he and persuasively, "such will I call you, h the stars hear me, and though the gods a night like this pursue their loves upon ..the moon has no little pools filled with ght under the rock yonder; she deceives the depth of these hollows, like the limpid Beside, we are here among the pinks and roses: do they never prick your ankles with stems and thorns? Even their leaves at ate season are enough to hurt you." think they do," replied she, and thanked with a tender timid glance, for some fresh ity his arm or hand had given her in escaprom them. "O now we are quite out of all! How cool is the saxifrage! how cool vy-leaves !" exclaimed the fiery Critolaus, " thy blood shall pay for this. Impostor! whose lesson this very day was, that luxury is the worst of poisons." "Critolaus," answered he calmly, drawing his robe about him (for, falling in so rough a place, his vesture was a little disordered), "we will not talk of blood; but as for my lesson of to-day, I must defend it. In few words then, since I think we are none of us disposed for many, hemlock does not hurt goats, nor luxury philosophers." Thelymnia had risen more beautiful from her confusion; but her colour soon went away, and, if any slight trace of it were remaining on her cheeks, the modest moonlight and the severer stars would let none show itself. She looked as the statue of Pygmalion would have looked, had she been destined the hour after animation to return into her inanimate state. Offering no excuse, she was the worthier of pardon : but there is one hour in which pardon never entered the human breast, and that hour was this. Critolaus, who always had ridiculed the philosophers, now hated them from the bottom of his heart. Every sect was detestable to him, the Stoic, the Platonic, the Epicurean; all equally; but especially those hypocrites and impostors in each, who, under the cloak of philosophy, came forward with stately figures, prepossessing countenances, and bland discourse. Panatius. We do not desire to hear what such | on your head in the street, should make you cry, foolish men think of philosophers, true or false;" O Jupiter! what a curse is water!" but pray tell us how he acted on his own notable discovery; for I opine he was the unlikeliest of the three to grow quite calm on a sudden. Polybius. He went away; not without fierce glances at the stars, reproaches to the gods themselves, and serious and sad reflections upon destiny. Being however a pious man by constitution and education, he thought he had spoken of the omens unadvisedly, and found other interpretations for the stones we had thrown down with the ivy. “And ah!" said he sighing, "the bird's nest of last year too! I now know what that is!" Panatius. Polybius, I considered you too grave a man to report such idle stories. The manner is not yours: I rather think you have torn out a page or two from some love-feast (not generally known) of Plato. Polybius. Your judgment has for once deserted you, my friend. If Plato had been present, he might then indeed have described what he saw, and elegantly; but if he had feigned the story, the name that most interests us would not have ended with a vowel. Panatius. I am ready to propose almost such an exchange with you, Emilianus, as Diomedes' with Glaucus . . . my robe for yours. Scipio. Panatius, could it be done, you would wish it undone. The warfare you undertake is the more difficult: we have not enemies on both sides, as you have. Panatius. If you had seen' strait, you would have seen that the offer was, to exchange my philosophy for yours. You need less meditation. and employ more, than any man. Now if you have aught to say on luxury, let me hear it. Scipio. It would be idle to run into the parts of it, and to make a definition of that which wo agree on; but it is not so to remind you that we were talking of it in soldiers; for the pleasan tale of Thelymnia is enough to make us forge them, even while the trumpet is sounding. Be lieve me, my friend (or ask Polybius), a good genera will turn this formidable thing, luxury, to som account. He will take care that, like the strong vinegar the legionaries carry with them, it should be diluted, and thus be useful. Panatius. Then it is luxury no longer. Scipio. You convince me, Polybius. you. Polybius. My usual manner is without variety. I endeavour to collect as much sound sense and as many solid facts as I can, to distribute them as commodiously, and to keep them as clear of ornament. If anyone thought of me or my style in reading my history, I should condemn myself as a defeated man. Scipio. Polybius, you are by far the wisest that ever wrote history, though many wise have written it, and if your facts are sufficiently abundant, your work will be the most interesting and important. Polybius. Live then, Scipio! Polybius. I know what I can do and what I can not (the proudest words perhaps that ever man uttered), I say it plainly to you, my sincere and judicious monitor; but you must also let me say that, doubtful whether I could amuse our Emilianus in his present mood, I would borrow a tale, unaccustomed as I am to such, from the libraries of Miletus, or snatch it from the bosom of Elephantis. Scipio. Your friendship comes under various forms to me, my dear Polybius, but it is always warm and always welcome. Nothing can be kinder or more delicate in you, than to diversify as much as possible our conversation this day. Panatius would be more argumentative on luxury than I even Euthymedes (it appears) was unanswerable. riches, as to maintain a great army long togethe in sheer luxury? I am not speaking of cities tha have been sacked, but of the allied and friendly whose interests are to be observed, whose affectio to be conciliated and retained. Hannibal kne this, and minded it. Polybius. You might have also added to th interrogation, if you had thought proper, thos cities which have been sacked; for there plenty soon wasted, and not soon supplied again. Scipio. Let us look closer at the soldier's boar and see what is on it in the rich Capua. Is ple tiful and wholesome food luxury? or do soldie run into the market-place for a pheasant or d those on whom they are quartered pray and pre them to eat it? Suppose they went huntin quails, hares, partridges; would it render the less active? There are no wild boars in th neighbourhood, or we might expect from a boa hunt a visitation of the gout. Suppose the me drew their idea of pleasure from the school from the practices of Euthymedes. One vice corrected by another, where a higher princip does not act, and where a man does not exert t proudest dominion over the most turbulent states . . . himself. Hannibal, we may be sur never allowed his army to repose in utter inac vity; no, nor to remain a single day without exercise . . . a battle, a march, a foraging, a c veyance of wood or water, a survey of the ban of rivers, a fathoming of their depth, a certificati of their soundness or unsoundness at bottom Panatius. O the knave! such men bring re- measurement of the greater or less extent of the proaches upon philosophy. Scipio. I see no more reason why they should, than why a slattern who empties a certain vase fords, a review, or a castrametation. The plen of his camp at Capua (for you hardly can imagin Panatius, that the soldiers had in a military ser the freedom of the city, and took what they pleased without pay and without restriction) attached to him the various nations of which it was composed, and kept together the heterogeneous and discordant mass. It was time that he should think of this: for probably there was not a soldier left who had not lost in battle or by fatigue his dearest friend and comrade. Dry bread and hard blows are excellent things in themselves, and military requisites. . to those who converse on them over their cups, turning their heads for the approbation of others on whose bosom they recline, and yawning from sad disquietude at the degeneracy and effeminacy of the age. But there is finally a day when the cement of power begins to lose its strength and coherency, and when the fabric must be kept together by painting it anew, and by protecting it a little from that rigour of the seasons which at first compacted it. The story of Hannibal and his army wasting away in luxury, is common, general, universal: its absurdity is remarked by few, or rather by Bone. Polybius. The wisest of us are slow to disbelieve what we have learned early: yet this story has always been to me incredible. Scipio. Beside the reasons I have adduced, is it necessary to remind you that Campania is subject to diseases which incapacitate the soldier? Those of Hannibal were afflicted by them: few indeed perished; but they were debilitated by their malady, and while they were waiting for the achinery which (even if they had had the artiEcers among them) could not have been constructed in double the time requisite for importing it, the period of dismay at Rome, if ever it existed, Lad elapsed. The wonder is less that Hannibal did Lot take Rome, than that he was able to remain in Italy, not having taken it. Considering how be held together, how he disciplined, how he provisioned (the most difficult thing of all, in the face of such enemies) an army in great part, as one would imagine, so intractable and wasteful; what mmanders, what soldiers, what rivers, and what Lountains, opposed him; I think Polybius, you rill hardly admit to a parity or comparison with am, in the rare union of political and military rience, the most distinguished of your own ntrymen; not Philopomen, nor Philip of Macedon; if indeed you can hear me without Jager and indignation name a barbarian king with Greeks. Polybius. When kings are docile, and pay due rspect to those who are wiser and more virtuous than themselves, I would not point at them as ejects of scorn or contumely, even among the fre There is little danger that men educated as we have been should value them too highly, or that men educated as they have been should e-lipse the glory of Philopomen. People in a republic know that their power and existence must depend on the zeal and assiduity, the courage and Integrity, of those they employ in their first offices of state; kings on the contrary lay the foundations of their power on abject hearts and prostituted intellects, and fear and abominate those whom the breath of God hath raised higher than the breath of man. Hence, from being the dependents of their own slaves, both they and their slaves become at last the dependents of free nations, and alight from their cars to be tied by the neck to the cars of better men. Scipio. Deplorable condition! if their education had allowed any sense of honour to abide in them. But we must consider them as the tulips and anemones and other gaudy flowers, that shoot from the earth to be looked upon in idleness, and to be snapped by the stick or broken by the wind, without our interest, care, or notice. We can not thus calmly contemplate the utter subversion of a mighty capital; we can not thus indifferently stand over the strong agony of an expiring nation, after a gasp of years in a battle of ages, to win a world, or be for ever fallen. Panatius. You estimate, O Emilianus, the abilities of a general, not by the number of battles he has won, nor of enemies he hath slain or led captive, but by the combinations he hath formed, the blows of fortune he hath parried or avoided, the prejudices he hath removed, and the difficulties of every kind he hath overcome. In like manner we should consider kings. Educated still more barbarously than other barbarians, sucking their milk alternately from Vice and Folly, guided in their first steps by Duplicity and Flattery, whatever they do but decently is worthy of applause; whatever they do virtuously, of admiration. I would say it even to Caius Gracchus; I would tell him it even in the presence of his mother; unappalled by her majestic mien, her truly Roman sanctity, her brow that can not frown, but that reproves with pity; for I am not so hostile to royalty as other philosophers are perhaps because I have been willing to see less of it. Polybius. Eternal thanks to the Romans! who, whatever reason they may have had to treat the Greeks as enemies, to traverse and persecute such men as Lycortas my father, and as Philopomen my early friend, to consume our cities with fire, and to furrow our streets with torrents (as we have read lately) issuing from the remolten images of gods and heroes, have however so far respected the mother of Civilisation and of Law, as never to permit the cruel mockery of erecting Barbarism and Royalty on their vacant bases. Panatius. Our ancient institutions in part exist; we lost the rest when we lost the simplicity of our forefathers. Let it be our glory that we have resisted the most populous and wealthy nations, and that, having been conquered, we have been conquered by the most virtuous; that every one of our cities hath produced a greater number of illustrious men than all the remainder of the earth around us; that no man can anywhere enter his hall or portico, and see the countenances of his ancestors from their marble columels, without a commemorative and grateful sense of obligation to us; that neither his solemn feasts nor his cultivated fields walked together, O Scipio, by starlight, on the are silent on it; that not the lamp which shows shores of Surrentum and Baiæ, of Ischia and him the glad faces of his children, and prolongs Caprea, and hath it not occurred to thee that the his studies, and watches by his rest; that not the heavens themselves, both what we see of them ceremonies whereby he hopes to avert the ven- and what lieth above our vision, are peopled with geance of the gods, nor the tenderer ones whereon our heroes and heroines? The ocean, that roars are founded the affinities of domestic life, nor so heavily in the ears of other men, hath for us finally those which lead toward another; would its tuneful shells, its placid nymphs, and its benehave existed in his country, if Greece had not ficent ruler. The trees of the forest, the flowers, conveyed them. Bethink thee, Scipio, how little the plants, passed indiscriminately elsewhere, hath been done by any other nation, to promote the awaken and warm our affection; they mingle with moral dignity or enlarge the social pleasures of the objects of our worship; they breathe the spirit the human race. What parties ever met, in their of our ancestors; they lived in our form; they most populous cities, for the enjoyment of liberal spoke in our language; they suffered as our and speculative conversation? What Alcibiades, daughters may suffer; the deities revisit them elated with war and glory, turned his youthful with pity; and some (we think) dwell among mind from general admiration and from the them. cheers and caresses of coeval friends, to strengthen and purify it under the cold reproofs of the aged? What Aspasia led Philosophy to smile on Love, or taught Love to reverence Philosophy? These, as thou knowest, are not the safest guides for either sex to follow; yet in these were united the gravity and the graces of wisdom, never seen, never imagined, out of Athens. Scipio. Poetry! poetry! Panatius. Yes; I own it. The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilda burst forth with it. . . and it falls, Emilianus even from me. Scipio. It is from Greece I have received my friends, Panatius and Polybius. I would not offend thee by comparing the genius of the Roman people with ours: the offence Panatius. Say more, Emilianus! You hav is removable, and in part removed already, by thy indeed said it here already; but say it again a hand. The little of sound learning, the little of Rome: it is Greece who taught the Romans al pure wit, that hath appeared in Rome from her beyond the rudiments of war: it is Greece wh foundation, hath been concentrated under thy placed in your hand the sword that conquere roof one tile would cover it. Have we not | Carthage. |