Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

A FEW DAYS IN ATHENS;
BEING
THE TRANSLATION
OF
A GREEK MANUSCRIPT
DISCOVERED IN HERCULANEUM.

BY

FRANCES WRIGHT,

AUTHOR OF

“VIEWS OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS IN AMERICA.”

“——joining bliss to virtue, the glad ease

Of Epicurus, seldom understood.”

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY J. P. MENDUM.

1850.

TO

JEREMY BENTHAM,

AS A TESTIMONY

OF

HER ADMIRATION OF HIS ENLIGHTENED SENTIMENTS,

USEFUL LABORS,

AND ACTIVE PHILANTHROPY,

AND OF

HER GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,

THIS WORK

IS

RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY

INSCRIBED

BY

FRANCES WRIGHT.

London,

March 12th, 1822.

TO THE READER.

That I may not obtain credit for more learning than I possess, I beg to acknowledge the assistance I have received in my version of the curious relict of antiquity now offered to the public from the beautiful Italian MSS. of the erudite Professor of Greek in the university of *****. I hesitate to designate more clearly the illustrious Hellenist whose labors have brought to light this curious fragment. Since the establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals throughout the territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in consequence of the ordinance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and most Austrian majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,[^[1]] it has become necessary for the gownsmen of the classic peninsula to banish all profane learning from their lectures and their libraries, and to evince a holy abhorrence of the sciences and arts which they erst professed. The list of the class books now employed in the transalpine schools is exceedingly curious; I regret that I have mislaid the one lately supplied to me by an illustrious Italian exile. My memory recalls to me only that, in the school of rhetoric, the orations of Cicero are superseded by those of the Marquis of Londonderry, and the philippics of Demosthenes by those of M. de Peyronnet; that the professors of history have banished the decades of Livy for the Martyrs of Mons. de Chateaubriand; and that the students of Greek, in place of the Odes of Pindar, and the retreat of the ten thousand from Cunaxa, construe the hexameters of the English Laureate, and the advance of Louis the XVIII. upon Ghent. In this state of the Italian world of Letters, it is not surprising that the scholar, to whose perseverance, ingenuity, and learning, the public are indebted for the following fragment, should object to lay claim to the honor which is his due.

[1]. Je ne veux pas de savans dans mes etats, je veux de bons sujets, was the dictum of the Austrian Autocrat to an Italian Professor.

The original MS. fell into the hands of my erudite correspondent in the autumn of the year 1817. From that period until the commencement of last winter, all his leisure hours were devoted to the arduous task of unrolling the leaves, and decyphering the half defaced characters. The imperfect condition of the MS. soon obliged him to forego his first intention of transcribing the original Greek; he had recourse, therefore, to an Italian version, supplying the chasms, consisting sometimes of a word, sometimes of a line, and occasionally of a phrase, with a careful and laborious study of the context. While this version was printing at Florence, a MS. copy was transmitted to me in Paris, with a request that I would forthwith see it translated into the English and French languages. The former version I undertook myself, and can assure the reader that it possesses the merit of fidelity. The first erudite translator has not conceived it necessary to encumber the volume with marginal notes; nor have I found either the inclination or the ability to supply them. Those who should wish to refer to the allusions scattered through the old classics to the characters and systems here treated of, will find much assistance from the marginal authorities of the eloquent and ingenious Bayle.

I have only to add, that the present volume comprises little more than a third of the original MS.; it will be sufficient, however, to enable the public to form an estimate of the probable value of the whole.

A FEW DAYS IN ATHENS.

CHAPTER I.

“Oh! monstrous,” cried the young Theon, as he came from the portico of Zeno. “Ye Gods! and will ye suffer your names to be thus blasphemed? Why do ye not strike with thunder the actor and teacher of such enormities? What! will ye suffer our youth, and the youth of after ages, to be seduced by this shameless Gargettian? Shall the Stoic portico be forsaken for the garden of Epicurus? Minerva, shield thy city! Shut the ears of thy sons against the voice of this deceiver!”

Thus did Theon give vent to the indignation which the words of Timocrates had worked up within him. Timocrates had been a disciple of the new school; but, quarrelling with his master, had fled to the followers of Zeno; and to make the greater merit of his apostacy, and better to gain the hearts of his new friends, poured forth daily execrations on his former teacher, painting him and his disciples in the blackest colors of deformity; revealing, with a countenance distorted as with horror, and a voice hurried and suppressed as from the agonies of dreadful recollections, the secrets of those midnight orgies, where, in the midst of his pupils, the philosopher of Gargettium officiated as master of the accursed ceremonies of riot and impiety.

Full of these nocturnal horrors the young Theon traversed with hasty steps the streets of Athens, and, issuing from the city, without perceiving that he did so, took the road to the Piræus. The noise of the harbor roused him to recollection, and feeling it out of tune with his thoughts, he turned up the more peaceful banks of Cephisus, and, seating himself on the stump of a withered olive, his feet almost washed by the water, he fell back again into his reverie. How long he had sat he knew not, when the sound of gently approaching footsteps once more recalled him. He turned his head, and, after a start and gaze of astonishment, bent with veneration to the figure before him. It was of the middle size, and robed in white, pure as the vestments of the Pythia. The shape, the attitude, the foldings of the garment, were such as the chisel of Phidias would have given to the God of Elocution. The head accorded with the rest of the figure; it sat upon the shoulders with a grace that a painter would have paused to contemplate—elevated, yet somewhat inclining forward, as if habituated gently to seek and benevolently to yield attention. The face a poet would have gazed upon, and thought he beheld in it one of the images of his fancy embodied. The features were not cast for the statuary; they were noble but not regular. Wisdom beamed mildly from the eye, and candor was on the broad forehead: the mouth reposed in a soft, almost imperceptible smile, that did not curl the lips or disturb the cheeks, and was seen only in the serene and holy benignity that shone over the whole physiognomy: It was a gleam of sunshine sleeping on a lucid lake. The first lines of age were traced on the brow and round the chin, but so gently as to mellow rather than deepen expression: the hair indeed seemed prematurely touched by time, for it was of a pure silver, thrown back from the forehead, and fringing the throat behind with short curls. He received benignly the salutation of the youth, and gently with his hand returning it—“Let me not break your meditations; I would rather share than disturb them.” If the stranger’s appearance had enchanted Theon, his voice did now more so: never had a sound so sweet, so musical, struck upon his ear.

“Surely I behold and hear a divinity!” he cried, stepping backwards, and half stooping his knee with veneration.

“From the groves of the academy, I see,” said the sage, advancing and laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder.

Theon looked up with a modest blush, and encouraged by the sweet aspect of the sage, replied, “No; from the Stoic portico.”

“Ah! I had not thought Zeno could send forth such a dreamer. You are in a good school,” he continued, observing the youth confused by this remark, “a school of real virtue; and, if I read faces well, as I think I do, I see a pupil that will not disgrace its doctrines.”

Theon’s spirit returned; the stranger had that look, and voice, and manner, which instantly give security to the timid, and draw love from the feeling heart. “If you be man, you exert more than human influence over the souls of your fellows. I have seen you but one moment, and that moment has laid me at your feet.”

“Not quite so low, I hope,” returned the sage with a smile; “I had always rather be the companion than the master.”

“Either, both,” said the eager youth, and seizing the half-extended hand of the sage, pressed it respectfully to his lips.

“You are an enthusiast, I see. Beware, my young friend! such as you must be the best or the worst of men.”

“Then, had I you for a guide, I should be the best.”

“What! do you a stoic ask a guide?”

“I, a stoic! Oh! would I were! I yet stand but on the threshhold of the temple.”

“But standing there you have at least looked within and seen the glories, and will not that encourage you to advance? Who that hath seen virtue doth not love her, and pant after her possession?”

“True, true; I have seen virtue in her noblest form—Alas! so noble, that my eyes have been dazzled by the contemplation. I have looked upon Zeno with admiration and despair.”

“Learn rather to look with love. He who but admires virtue, yields her but half her due. She asks to be approached, to be embraced—not with fear, but with confidence—not with awe but with rapture.”

“Yet who can gaze on Zeno and ever hope to rival him?”

“You, my young friend: Why should you not? You have innocence; you have sensibility; you have enthusiasm; you have ambition—With what better promise could Zeno begin his career? Courage! courage! my son!” stopping, for they had insensibly walked towards the city during the dialogue, and laying his hand on Theon’s head, “We want but the will to be as great as Zeno.”

Theon had drawn his breath for a sigh, but his action and the look that accompanied it, changed the sigh to a smile. “You would make me vain.”

“No; but I would make you confident. Without confidence Homer had never written his Iliad—No; nor would Zeno now be worshipped in his portico.”

“Do you then think confidence would make all men Homers and Zenos?”

“Not all; but a good many. I believe thousands to have the seeds of excellence in them, who never discover the possession. But we were not speaking of poetry and philosophy, only of virtue—all men certainly cannot be poets or philosophers, but all men may be virtuous.”

“I believe,” returned the youth with a modest blush, “if I might walk with you each day on the borders of Cephisus, I should sometimes play truant at the portico.”

“Ye gods forbid (exclaimed the sage playfully) that I should steal a proselyte! From Zeno too? It might cost me dear.—What are you thinking of?” he resumed, after a pause.

“I was thinking,” replied Theon, “what a loss for man that you are not teacher in the gardens in place of the son of Neocles.”

“Do you know the son of Neocles?” asked the sage.

“The gods forbid that I should know him more than by report! No, venerable stranger; wrong me not so much as to think I have entered the gardens of Epicurus. It is not long that I have been in Athens, but I hope, if I should henceforth live my life here, I should never be seduced by the advocate of vice.”

“From my soul I hope the same. But you say you have not long been in Athens—You are come here to study philosophy.”

“Yes; my father was a scholar of Xenocrates; but when he sent me from Corinth, he bade me attend all the schools, and fix with that which should give me the highest views of virtue.”

“And you have found it to be that of Zeno.”

“I think I have: but I was one day nearly gained by a young Pythagorean, and have been often in danger of becoming one of the academy.”

“You need not say in danger: For though I think you choose well in standing mainly by Zeno, I would have you attend all the schools, and that with a willing ear. There is some risk in following one particular sect, even the most perfect, lest the mind become warped and the heart contracted. Yes, young man! it is possible that this should happen even in the portico. No sect without its prejudices and its predilections.”

“I believe you say true.”

“I know I say true,” returned the sage in a tone of playfulness he had more than once used; “I know I say true; and had I before needed evidence to confirm my opinion, this our present conversation would have afforded it.”

“How so?”

“Nay, were I to explain, you would not now credit me: No man can see his own prejudices; no, though a philosopher should point at them. But patience, patience! Time and opportunity shall right all things. Why, you did not think,” he resumed after a short pause, “you did not really think you were without prejudices? Eighteen, not more, if I may judge by complexion, and without prejudices! Why, I should hardly dare to assert I was myself without them, and I believe I have fought harder and somewhat longer against them than you can have done.”

“What would you have me do?” asked the youth, timidly.

“Have you do?—Why, I would have you do a very odd thing—No other than to take a turn or two in Epicurus’s garden.”

“Epicurus’s garden! Oh! Jupiter!”

“Very true, by Juno!”

“What! To hear the laws of virtue confounded and denied?—To hear vice exculpated, advocated, panegyrized?—Impiety and atheism professed and inculcated?—To witness the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery?—Ye gods, what horrors has Timocrates revealed!”

“Horrors, in truth, somewhat appalling, my young friend; but I should apprehend Timocrates to be a little mistaken. That the laws of virtue were ever confounded and denied, or vice advocated and panegyrized, by any professed teacher, I incline to doubt. And were I really to hear such things, I should simply conclude the speaker mad, or otherwise that he was amusing himself by shifting the meaning of words, and that by the term virtue he understood vice, and so by the contrary. As to the inculcating of impiety and atheism, this may be exaggerated or misunderstood. Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him. Upon the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery I can say nothing; I am too profoundly ignorant of these matters, either to exculpate or condemn them. Such things may be, and I never hear of them. All things are possible. Yes,” turning his benignant face full upon the youth, “even that Timocrates should lie.”

“This possibility had indeed not occurred to me.”

“No, my young friend; and shall I tell you why? Because he told you absurdities. Let an impostor keep to probability, and he will hardly impose. By dealing in the marvellous, he tickles the imagination, and carries away the judgment; and judgment once gone, what shall save even a wise man from folly?”

“I should truly rejoice, to find the Gargettian’s doctrine less monstrous than I have hitherto thought them. I say less monstrous, for you would not wish me to think them good.”

“I would wish you to think nothing good, or bad either, upon my decision. The first and the last thing I would say to man is, think for yourself! It is a bad sentence of the Pythagoreans, ‘The master said so.’ If the young disciple you mentioned should ever succeed in your conversion, believe in the metempsychosis for some other reason than that Pythagoras ‘taught it.’”

“But, if I may ask, do you think well of Epicurus?”

“I meant not to make an apology for Epicurus, only to give a caution against Timocrates—but see, we are in the city; and fortunately so, for it is pretty nigh dark. I have a party of young friends awaiting me, and, but that you may be apprehensive of nocturnal orgies, I would ask you to join us.”

“I shall not fear them where I have such a conductor,” replied the youth, laughing.

“I do not think it quite so impossible, however, as you seem to do,” said the sage, laughing in his turn, with much humor, and entering a house as he spoke; then throwing open with one arm a door, and with the other gently drawing the youth along with him, “I am Epicurus!”

CHAPTER II.

The astonished, the affrighted Theon started from the arm of the sage, and, staggering backwards, was saved, probably, from falling, by a statue that stood against the wall on one side of the door: he leaned against it, pale and almost fainting. He knew not what to do, scarcely what to feel, and was totally blind to all the objects around him. His conductor, who had possibly expected his confusion, did not turn to observe it, but advanced in such a manner as to cover him from the view of the company, and, still to give time for recollection, stood receiving and returning salutations.

“Well met, my sons! and I suppose you say well met, also. Are you starving, or am I to be starved? Have you ate up the supper, or only sat longing for it, cursing my delay?”

“The latter, only the latter,” cried a lively youth, hurrying to meet his master. Another and another advanced, and in a moment he was locked in a close circle.

“Mercy! mercy!” cried the philosopher, “drive me a step further and you will overturn a couple of statues.” Then, looking over his shoulder, “I have brought you, if he has not run away, a very pleasant young Corinthian, for whom, until he gain his own tongue, I shall demand reception.” He held out his hand with a look of bewitching encouragement, and the yet faltering Theon advanced. The mist had now passed from his eyes, and the singing from his ears, and both room and company stood revealed before him. Perhaps, had it not been for this motion, and still more this look of the sage, he had just now made a retreat instead of an advance. “In the hall of Epicurus—in that hall where Timocrates had beheld”—oh! horrid imagination! “And he a disciple of Zeno, the friend of Cleanthes—the son of a follower of Plato—had he crossed the threshhold of vice, the threshhold of the impious Gargettian!” Yes; he had certainly fled, but for that extended hand, and that bewitching smile. These however conquered. He advanced, and with an effort at composure, met the offered hand. The circle made way, and Epicurus presented “a friend.” “His name you must learn from himself, I am only acquainted with his heart, and that, on a knowledge of two hours, I pronounce myself in love with.”

“Then he shall be my brother,” cried the lively youth who had before spoken, and he ran to the embrace of Theon.

“When shall we use our own eyes, ears, and understandings?” said the sage, gently stroking his scholar’s head. “See! our new friend knows not how to meet your premature affection.”

“He waits,” returned the youth archly, “to receive the same commendation of me that I have of him. Let the master say he is in love with my heart, and he too will open his arms to a brother.”

“I hope he is not such a fool,” gaily replied the sage. Then with an accent more serious, but still sweeter, “I hope he will judge all things, and all people, with his own understanding, and not with that of Epicurus, or yet of a wiser man. When may I hope this of Sofron,” smiling and shaking his head, “can Sofron tell me?”

“No, indeed he cannot,” rejoined the scholar, smiling and shaking his head also, as in mimicry of his master.

“Go, go, you rogue! and show us to our supper: I more than half suspect you have devoured it.” He turned, and familiarly taking Theon by the shoulder, walked up the room, or rather gallery, and entered a spacious rotunda.

A lamp, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, lighted a table spread beneath it with a simple but elegant repast. Round the walls, in niches at equal distances, stood twelve statues, the work of the best masters; on either hand of these burned a lamp on a small tripod. Beside one of the lamps, a female figure was reclining on a couch, reading with earnest study from a book that lay upon her knee. Her head was so much bowed forward as to conceal her face, besides that it was shadowed by her hand, which, the elbow supported on an arm of the couch, was spread above her brows as a relief from the glare of the light. At her feet was seated a young girl, by whose side lay a small cithara, silent, and forgotten by its mistress. Crete might have lent those eyes their sparkling jet, but all the soul of tenderness that breathed from them was pure Ionian. The full and ruddy lips, half parted, showed two rows of pearls which Thetis might have envied. Still a vulgar eye would not have rested on the countenance: the features wanted the Doric harmony, and the complexion was tinged as by an Afric sun. Theon, however, saw not this, as his eyes fell on those of the girl, uplifted to the countenance of her studious companion. Never was a book read more earnestly than was that face by the fond and gentle eyes which seemed to worship as they gazed. The sound of approaching feet caught the ear of the maiden. She rose, blushed, half returned the salute of the master, and timidly drew back some paces. The student was still intent upon the scroll over which she hung, when the sage advanced towards her, and laying a finger on her shoulder, “What read you, my daughter?” She dropped her hand, and looked up in his face. What a countenance was then revealed! It was not the beauty of blooming, blushing youth, courting love and desire. It was the self-possessed dignity of ripened womanhood, and the noble majesty of mind, that asked respect and promised delight and instruction. The features were not those of Venus, but Minerva. The eye looked deep and steady from beneath two even brows, that sense, not years, had slightly knit in the centre of the forehead, which else was uniformly smooth and polished as marble. The nose was rather Roman than Grecian, yet perfectly regular, and though not masculine, would have been severe in expression, but for a mouth where all that was lovely and graceful habited. The chin was elegantly rounded, and turned in the Greek manner. The color of the cheeks was of the softest and palest rose, so pale, indeed, as scarcely to be discernible until deepened by emotion. It was so at this moment: startled by the address of the sage, a bright flush passed over her face. She rolled up the book, dropped it on the couch, and rose. Her stature was much above the female standard, but every limb and every motion was symmetry and harmony. “A treatise of Theophrastus;—eloquent, ingenious and chimerical. I have a fancy to answer it.” Her voice was full and deep, like the tones of a harp when its chords are struck by the hand of a master.

“No one could do it better,” replied the sage. “But I should have guessed the aged Peripatetic already silenced by the most acute, elegant, and subtle pen of Athens.” She bowed to the compliment.

“Is that then the famous Leontium?” muttered Theon. “Timocrates must be a liar.”

“I know not,” resumed Leontium, “that I should this evening have so frequently thought Theophrastus wrong, if he had not made me so continually feel that he thought himself right. Must I seek the cause of this in the writer’s or the reader’s vanity?”

“Perhaps,” said the master, smiling, “you will find that it lies in both.”

“I believe you have it,” returned Leontium. “Theophrastus, in betraying his self-love, hurt mine. He who is about to prove that his own way of thinking is right, must bear in mind that he is about also to prove that all other ways of thinking are wrong. And if this should make him slow to enter on the undertaking, it should make him yet more careful, when he does enter on it, to do it with becoming modesty. We are surely imperiously called upon to make a sacrifice of our own vanity, before we call upon others to make a sacrifice of theirs. But I would not particularize Theophrastus for sometimes forgetting this, as I have never known but one who always remembers it. Gentleness and modesty are qualities at once the most indispensable to a teacher, and the most rarely possessed by him. It was these that won the ears of the Athenian youth to Socrates, and it is these,” inclining to the Master, “that will secure them to Epicurus.”

“Could I accept your praise, my daughter, I should have no doubt of the truth of your prophecy. For, indeed, the mode of delivering a truth makes, for the most part, as much impression on the mind of the listener as the truth itself. It is as hard to receive the words of wisdom from the ungentle, as it is to love, or even to recognize virtue in the austere.” He drew near the table as he spoke. Often during supper were the eyes of Theon riveted on the face of this female disciple. Such grace! such majesty! More than all, such intellect! And this—this was the Leontium Timocrates had called a prostitute without shame or measure! And this was the Epicurus he had blasted with names too vile and horrible to repeat even in thought! And these—continuing his inward soliloquy as he looked round the board—these were the devoted victims of the vice of an impious master.

“You arrived most seasonably this evening,” cried Sofron, addressing the Philosopher; “most seasonably for the lungs of two of your scholars.”

“And for the ears of a third,” interrupted Leontium. “I was fairly driven into exile.”

“What was the subject?” asked Epicurus.

“Whether the vicious were more justly objects of indignation or of contempt: Metrodorus argued for the first, and I for the latter. Let the master decide.”

“He will give his opinion certainly; but that is not decision.”

“Well; and your opinion is that of——.”

“Neither.”

“Neither! I had no idea the question had more than two sides.”

“It has yet a third; and I hardly ever heard a question that had not. Had I regarded the vicious with indignation, I had never gained one to virtue. Had I viewed them with contempt, I had never sought to gain one.”

“How is it,” said Leontium, “that the scholars are so little familiar with the temper of their master? When did Epicurus look on the vicious with other than compassion?”

“True,” said Metrodorus. “I know not how I forgot this, when perhaps it is the only point which I have more than once, presumed to argue with him: and upon which I have persisted in retaining a different opinion.”

“Talk not of presumption, my son. Who has not a right to think for himself? Or who is he whose voice is infallible, and worthy to silence those of his fellow-men? And remember, that your remaining unconvinced by my arguments on one occasion, can only tend to make your conviction more flattering to me upon others. Yet, on the point in question, were I anxious to bring you over to my opinion, I know one, whose argument, better and more forcible than mine, will ere long most effectually do so.”

“Who mean you?”

“No other than old hoary Time,” said the Master, “who, as he leads us gently onwards in the path of life, demonstrates to us many truths that we never heard in the schools, and some that, hearing there, we found hard to receive. Our knowledge of human life must be acquired by our passage through it; the lessons of the sage are not sufficient to impart it. Our knowledge of men must be acquired by our own study of them; the report of others will never convince us. When you, my son, have seen more of life, and studied more men, you will find, or at least, I think you will find, that the judgment is not false which makes us lenient to the failings—yea! even to the crimes of our fellows. In youth, we act on the impulse of feeling, and we feel without pausing to judge. An action, vicious in itself, or that is so merely in our estimation, fills us with horror, and we turn from its agent without waiting to listen to the plea which his ignorance could make to our mercy. In our ripened years, supposing our judgment to have ripened also, when all the insidious temptations that misguided him, and all the disadvantages that he has labored under, perhaps from his birth, are apparent to us—it is then, and not till then, that our indignation at the crime is lost in our pity of the man.”

“I am the last,” said Metrodorus, a crimson blush spreading over his face, “who should object to my master his clemency towards the offending. But there are vices, different from those he saved me from, which, if not more unworthy, are perhaps more unpardonable, because committed with less temptation; and more revolting, as springing less from thoughtless ignorance than calculating depravity.”

“Are we not prone,” said the sage, “to extenuate our foibles, even while condemning them? And does it not flatter our self-love, to weigh our own vices against those of more erring neighbors?”

The scholar leaned forwards, and stooping his face towards the hand of his master, where it rested on the table, laid the deepening crimson of his cheek upon it. “I mean not to exculpate the early vices of Metrodorus. I love to consider them in all their enormity; for the more heinous the vices of his youth, the greater is the debt of gratitude his manhood has to repay to thee. But tell me,” he added, and lifted his eyes to the benignant face of the sage, “tell me, oh! my friend and guide! was the soul of Metrodorus, found base or deceitful; or has his heart proved false to gratitude and affection?”

“No, my son, no,” said Epicurus, his face beaming with goodness, and a tear glistening in his eye. “No! Vice never choked the warm feelings of thy heart, nor clouded the fair ingenuousness of thy soul. But, my son, a few years later, and who shall say what might have been? Trust me, none can drink of the cup of vice with impunity. But you will say, that there are qualities of so mean or so horrible a nature, as to place the man that is governed by them out of the pale of communion with the virtuous. Malice, cruelty, deceit, ingratitude—crimes such as these, should you think, draw down upon those convicted of them no feelings more mild than abhorrence, execration, and scorn. And yet, perhaps, these were not always natural to the heart they now sway. Fatal impressions, vicious example, operating on the plastic frame of childhood, may have perverted all the fair gifts of nature, may have distorted the tender plant from the seedling, and crushed all the blossoms of virtue in the germ. Say, shall we not compassionate the moral disease of our brother, and try our skill to restore him to health? But is the evil beyond cure? Is the mind strained into changeless deformity, and the heart corrupted in the core? Greater then, much greater, will be our compassion. For is not his wretchedness complete, when his errors are without hope of correction? Oh! my sons! the wicked may work mischief to others, but they never can inflict a pang such as they endure themselves. I am satisfied, that of all the miseries that tear the heart of man, none may compare with those it feels beneath the sway of baleful passions.”

“Oh!” cried Theon, turning with a timid blush towards Epicurus, “I have long owned the power of virtue, but surely till this night I never felt its persuasion.”

“I see you were not born for a stoic,” said the master smiling, “Why, my son, what made you fall in love with Zeno?”

“His virtues,” said the youth, proudly.

“His fine face, and fine talking,” returned the philosopher, with a tone of playful irony. “Nay! don’t be offended;” and stretched his hand to Theon’s shoulder, who reclined on the sofa next him. “I admire your master very much, and go to hear him very often.”

“Indeed!”

“Indeed? Yes, indeed. Is it so wonderful?”

“You were not there”—Theon stopped and looked down in confusion.

“To-day, you mean? Yes, I was; and heard a description of myself that might match in pleasantry with that in ‘The Clouds’[^[2]] of old Socrates. Pray don’t you find it very like?” He leaned over the side of the couch, and looked in Theon’s face.

[2]. Alluding to the comedy of Aristophanes, in which Socrates was indecently ridiculed.

“I—I—” The youth stammered and looked down.

“Think it is,” said the sage, as if concluding the sentence for him.

“No, think it is not; swear it is not;” burst forth the eager youth, and looked as he would have thrown himself at the philosopher’s feet. “Oh! why did you not stand forth and silence the liar?”

“Truly, my son, the liar was too pleasant to be angry with, and too absurd to be answered.”

“And yet he was believed?”

“Of course.”

“But why then not answer him?”

“And so I do. I answer him in my life. The only way in which a philosopher should ever answer a fool, or, as in this case, a knave.”

“I am really bewildered,” cried Theon, gazing in the philosopher’s, and then in Leontium’s countenance, and then throwing a glance round the circle. “I am really bewildered with astonishment and with shame,” he continued, casting down his eyes, “that I should have listened to that liar Timocrates! What a fool you must think me!”

“No more of a fool than Zeno,” said the sage, laughing. “What a philosopher listened to, I cannot much blame a scholar for believing.”

“Oh! that Zeno knew you!”

“And then he would certainly hate me.”

“You joke.”

“Quite serious. Don’t you know that who quarrels with your doctrine, must always quarrel with your practice? Nothing is so provoking as that a man should preach viciously and act virtuously.”

“But you do not preach viciously.”

“I hope not. But those will call it so, aye! and in honest heart think it so, who preach a different, it need not be a better, doctrine.”

“But Zeno mistakes your doctrine.”

“I have no doubt he expounds it wrong.”

“He mistakes it altogether. He believes that you own no other law—no other principle of action—than pleasure.”

“He believes right.”

“Right? Impossible! That you teach men to laugh at virtue, and to riot in luxury and vice.”

“There he believes wrong.”

Theon looked as he felt, curious and uncertain. He gazed first on the philosopher, and, when he did not proceed, timidly round the circle. Every face had a smile on it.

“The orgies are concluded,” said Epicurus, rising, and turning with affected gravity to the young Corinthian. “You have seen the horrors of the night; if they have left any curiosity for the mysteries of the day, seek our garden to-morrow at sunrise, and you shall be initiated.”

CHAPTER III.

The steeds of the sun had not mounted the horizon, when Theon took the road to the garden. He found the gate open. The path he entered on was broad and even, and shaded on either side by rows of cork, lime, oak, and other the finest trees of the forest: pursuing this for some way, he suddenly opened on a fair and varied lawn, through which the Illissus, now of the whitest silver in the pale twilight, stole with a gentle and noiseless course. Crossing the lawn, he struck into a close thicket: the orange, the laurel, and the myrtle, hung over his head, whose flowers, slowly opening to the breeze and light of morning, dropped dews and perfumes. A luxurious indolence crept over his soul; he breathed the airs, and felt the bliss of Elysium. With slow and measured steps he threaded the maze, till he entered suddenly on a small open plot of verdure in face of a beautiful temple. The place was three parts encircled with a wood of flowering shrubs, the rest was girded by the winding Illissus, over which the eye wandered to glades and softly swelling hills, whose bosoms now glowed beneath the dyes of Aurora. The building was small and circular; Doric, and of the marble of Paros: an open portico, supported by twenty pillars, ran round the edifice: the roof rose in a dome. The roseate tints of the east fell on the polished columns, like the blush of love on the cheek of Diana, when she stood before her Endymion.

Theon stopped: the scene was heavenly. Long had he gazed in silent and calm delight, when his eye was attracted by the waving of a garment on one side of the temple.—He advanced, and beheld a figure leaning against one of the pillars. The sun at that moment shot his first beam above the hills: it fell full upon the face of the son of Neocles: it was raised, and the eyes were fixed as in deep meditation. The features reposed in the calm of wisdom: the arms were folded, and the drapery fell in masses to the feet. Theon flew towards him then suddenly stopped, fearing to break upon his thoughts. At the sound, the sage turned his head, “Welcome, my son,” he said, advancing to meet him, “Welcome to the garden of pleasure, may you find it the abode of peace, of wisdom, and of virtue.”

Theon bowed his head upon the hand of the master. “Teach me, guide me, make me what you will—my soul is in your hand.”

“It is yet tender, yet pure,” said the Gargettian; “years shall strengthen it—Oh! let them not sully it! See that luminary! lovely and glorious in the dawn, he gathers strength and beauty to his meridian, and passes in peace and grandeur to his rest. So do thou, my son. Open your ears and your eyes; know, and choose what is good; enter the path of virtue, and thou shalt follow it, for thou shalt find it sweet. Thorns are not in it, nor is it difficult or steep: like the garden you have now entered, all there is pleasure and repose.”

“Ah!” cried Theon, “how different is virtue in your mouth and in Zeno’s.”

“The doctrine of Zeno,” replied the sage, “is sublime: many great men shall come from his school; an amiable world, from mine. Zeno hath his eye on man, I—mine on men: none but philosophers can be stoics; Epicureans all may be.”

“But,” asked Theon, “is there more than one virtue?”

“No, but men clothe her differently; some in clouds and thunders; some in smiles and pleasures. Doctors, my son, quarrel more about words than things, and more about the means than the end. In the Portico, in the Lycæum, in the Academy, in the school of Pythagoras, in the Tub of Diogenes, the teacher points you to virtue; in the Garden he points you to happiness. Now open your eyes, my son, and examine the two Deities.—Say, are they not the same? virtue, is it not happiness? and is not happiness, virtue?”

“Is this, then, the secret of your doctrine?”

“No other.”

“But—but—where then is the dispute? Truly, as you have said, in words not things.”

“Yes, in a great measure, yet not altogether: We are all the wooers of virtue, but we are wooers of a different character.”

“And may she not then favor one, more than another?”

“That is a question,” replied the Gargettian playfully, “that each will answer in his own favor. If you ask me,” he continued with one of his sweetest tones and smiles, “I shall say—that I feel myself virtuous, because my soul is at rest.”

“If this be your criterion, you should with the stoics deny that pain is an evil.”

“By no means: so much the contrary, I hold it the greatest of all evils, and the whole aim of my life, and of my philosophy, is to escape from it. To deny that pain is an evil is such another quibble as the Elean’s denial of motion: that must exist to man which exists to his senses; and as to existence or non-existence abstracted from them, though it may afford an idle argument for an idle hour, it can never enter as a truth, from which to draw conclusions, in the practical lessons of a master. To deny that pain is an evil, seems more absurd than to deny its existence, which has also been done, for its existence is only apparent from its effect upon our senses; how then shall we admit the existence, and deny the effect, which alone forces that admittance? But we will leave these matters to the dialecticians of the Portico. I feel myself virtuous because my soul is at rest: With evil passions I should be disturbed and uneasy; with uncontrolled appetites I should be disordered in body as well as mind,—for this reason, and for this reason only, I avoid both.”

“Only!”

“Only: virtue is pleasure; were it not so, I should not follow it.”

Theon was about to break forth in indignant astonishment: the Sage softly laid a hand upon his arm; and, with a smile and bend of the head demanding attention, proceeded: “The masters who would have us to follow virtue for her own sake, independent of any pleasure or advantage that we may find in the pursuit, are sublime visionaries, who build a theory without examining the ground on which they build it, who advance doctrines without examining principles. Why do I gaze on the Cupid of Praxiteles? because it is beautiful; because it gives me pleasurable sensations. If it gave me no pleasurable sensations, should I find it beautiful; should I gaze upon it; or would you call me wise if then I gave a drachma for its possession? What other means have we of judging of things than by the effect they produce upon our senses? Our senses then being the judges of all things, the aim of all men is to gratify their senses; in other words, their aim is pleasure or happiness: and if virtue were not found to conduce to this, men would do well to shun her, as they now do well to shun vice.”

“You own then no pleasure but virtue, and no misery but vice.”

“Not at all: I think virtue only the highest pleasure, and vice, or ungoverned passions and appetites, the worst misery. Other pleasures are requisite to form a state of perfect ease; which is happiness; and other miseries are capable of troubling, perhaps destroying, the peace of the most virtuous and the wisest man.”

“I begin to see more reason in your doctrine,” said the youth, looking up with a timid blush in the face of the Philosopher.

“And less monstrous depravity,” replied the Gargettian, laughing. “My young friend,” he continued more seriously, “learn henceforth to form your judgments upon knowledge, not report. Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave. But have you nothing to urge against me? You say you see more reason in my doctrine, which implies that you think me less wrong, but not right.”

“I am a young disputant,” answered Theon, “and very unfit to engage with such a master.”

“That does not follow; a bad logician may have a good understanding; and a young mind may be an acute one. If my argument have truth in it, less than a philosopher will see it; and if it have not, less than a logician may refute it.”

“I think I could urge some objections,” replied Theon; “but they are so confused and indistinct, I almost fear to bring them forth.”

“I dare say I could forestall the most of them,” said the Master. “But I had rather leave your mind to its own exercise. Think over the matter at leisure, and you shall start your questions some evening or morning among my scholars. Knowledge is better imparted in a dialogue than a lecture; and a dialogue is not the worse for having more than two interlocutors. So! our walk has well ended with our subject. Let us see what friends are here. There are surely voices.”

Their route had been circular, and had brought them again in front of the temple. “This is a favorite lodgment of mine,” said the Sage, ascending the noble flight of steps and entering the open door. The apartment, spacious, vaulted, and circular, occupied the whole of the building. The walls were adorned with fine copies of the best pieces of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, and some beautiful originals of Appelles. A statue, the only one in the apartment, was raised on a pedestal in the centre. It was a Venus Urania, by the hand of Lysippus, well chosen as the presiding deity in the gardens of virtuous pleasure. The ceiling, rising into a noble dome, represented the heavens—a ground of deep blue; the stars, sun, and planets in raised gold. But two living figures soon fixed the attention of Theon. In one he recognized Metrodorus, though he had not the evening before much observed his countenance. He stood at a painter’s easel. His figure was more graceful than dignified, his face more expressive than handsome. The eyes, dark, piercing and brilliant, were bent in a painter’s earnest gaze on his living study. The forehead was short, raised much at the temples and singularly over the brows. The hair of a dark glossy brown, short and curled. The cheeks at the moment deeply flushed with the eagerness and, perhaps, the impatience, of an artist. The mouth curled voluptuously, yet not without a mixture of satire; the chin curved upwards, slightly Grecian, assisted this expression. His study was Leontium. She stood, rather than leaned, against a pilaster of the wall; one arm supported on a slab of marble, an unrolled book half lying on the same, and half in her opened hand. The other arm, partly hid in the drapery, dropped loosely by her side. Her fine face turned a little over the left shoulder, to meet the eye of the painter. Not a muscle played; the lips seemed not to breathe: so calm, so pale, so motionless—she looked a statue; so noble, so severely beautiful—she looked the Minerva of Phidias.

“I cannot do it!” cried Metrodorus, flinging down his pencil. “I had need be Appelles, to take that face.” He pushed back his easel in disgust.

“What!” said Leontium, her fine features relaxing into a heavenly smile, “and is all my patience to go for nothing?”

“I am a blundering blind Bœotian! a savage Spartan!” continued the disappointed artist. “There!” and seizing a brush, was about to demolish his work.

“For your life!” cried Leontium; and starting forward, pulled aside his hand. “Oh! the mad ill-temper of a genius! Why, friend, if my face were half so fine as that, Juno would be jealous of it.”

“And who knows that she is not? A daub! a vile daub!” still muttered the impatient scholar, yet his face gradually relaxing its anger, as in spite of itself, till it turned to meet Leontium’s with a smile.

“And there stand the Master and the young Corinthian laughing at you,” said Leontium.

They approached. “Are you a judge?” asked Metrodorus of Theon.

“I am afraid not, though the confession will mar my compliments.”

“But I am,” said the Gargettian humorously: “And though I have all the inclination in the world, yet I cannot quarrel with the performance. Well outlined and finely colored. The attitude and air hit exactly. The features too—perhaps—the only possible perhaps my ill-nature can stumble on, perhaps the expression is too blooming, and less mental than that of the original.”

“Why there—there it is!” cried the scholar, his face resuming all its vexation. “The look of an idiot instead of a genius.”

“Not quite that either: only of a Hebe instead of a Juno. More like our Hedeia.”

“Like a monster!” muttered the angry artist.

“Oh! Hercules, oh! Hercules!” cried the sage. “What it is to rub a sore place! Better break a man’s leg than blow a feather on his razed shin. Had I (turning to Theon) told him he had drawn a humpbacked Thersites he would have blessed me, rather than for this pretty compliment of a blooming-faced Hebe.”

“I might as well have done one as the other: they were equally like the original.”

“I must bow to that compliment,” said Leontium, laying her hand on her breast, and inclining with affected gravity to the painter.

He tried in vain to resist the laugh; then looking to the master—“What would you have me turn it to?”

“As you object to a Hebe, to a philosopher by all means. Silver the head a little, it may be an admirable Epicurus.”

“Nay! don’t make the madman furious,” said Leontium, placing her hand on Metrodorus’s shoulder; then, addressing Theon, “Pray, young man, if you want to be a philosopher, never find an eye for painting, a finger for music, or a brain for poetry. Any one of these will keep a man from wisdom.”

“But not a woman, I suppose,” retorted Metrodorus, “as you have all three.”

“Ready at compliments this morning: but if you wanted a bow for this, you should have given it with a more gracious face. But come, my poor friend; we will try to put you in good humor—Nothing like a little flattery for this. Here, my young Corinthian! (walking to the other side of the room to a newly finished picture that stood against the wall, and beckoning Theon towards her) you may without skill perceive the beauty of this work, and the excellence of the likeness.”

It was indeed striking. “Admirable!” cried Theon after a long gaze of admiration, and then turning to compare it with the original.

“A little flattered, and more than a little, I fear,” said Epicurus with a smile, as he moved towards them.

“Flattered!” exclaimed Metrodorus; “a Parrhasius could not flatter such an original.”

“You see how my scholars spoil me,” said the Gargettian to Theon.

“But you think,” continued Metrodorus, “that I have done it common justice.”

“Much more than common:—It is your master’s self. The dignity of his figure, the grace of his attitude, the nobility of his features, the divine benignity of his expression.—Had we not the original to worship, we might worship your copy.”

They were interrupted by the entrance of a crowd of disciples, in the midst of whose salutations young Sofron rushed in, breathless with running and convulsed with laughter.

CHAPTER IV.

“Prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves!” cried the panting scholar. “Oh! Pollux! such a couple! The contrast might convulse a Scythian.”

“What is it? What is the matter?” cried a dozen voices.

“I’ll explain directly—Give me breath—and yet I must be quick, for they are close on my heels. Gryphus, the cynic—some of you must have seen him. Well, he’s coming side by side with young Lycaon.”

“Coming here!” said the master smiling. “What can have procured me the honor of such a visit?”

“Oh! your fame, of course.”

“I suspect you are making a fool of the old cynic,” said Epicurus.

“Nay, if he be a fool, he is one without my assistance: Lycaon and I were standing on the steps of the Prytaneum, disputing about something, I forget what, when by came Gryphus, and stopping short at bottom of the steps, ‘Are you disciples of Epicurus, of Gargettium?’ ‘We are,’ answered I, for Lycaon only stood staring in amazement. ‘You may show me the way to him then.’ ‘With all my heart,’ I again replying, Lycaon not yet finding his tongue. ‘We are, at present, for the Gardens, and shall hold it an honor to be conductors to so extraordinary a personage.’ I wanted to put him between us, but Lycaon seemed unambitious of his share in this distinction, for, stepping back, he slipped round to my other side. Oh! Jupiter! I shall never forget the contrast between my two companions. The rough, dirty, hairy cynic on my right hand, and the fine, smooth, delicate, pretty Aristippian on my left. We brought the whole street at our heels. Lycaon would have slunk away, but I held him tight by the sleeve. When we were fairly in the Gardens, I gave them the slip at a cross-path, and run on before to give timely notice, as you see. But, lo! Behold!”

The two figures now appeared at the door. The contrast was not much less singular than the scholar had represented; and there was a sort of faint prelude to a universal laugh, which, however, a timely look from the Master instantly quelled. Lycaon, from the lightness of his figure, and delicacy of his features and complexion, might have been mistaken for a female: his skin had the whiteness of the lily, and the blushing red of the rose: his lips the vermil of coral: his hair soft and flowing; in texture, silk; in color, gold: his dress was chosen with studied nicety, and disposed with studied elegance: the tunic of the whitest and finest linen, fastened at the shoulder with a beautiful onyx: the sash of exquisite embroidery, and the robe of the richest Tyrian, falling in luxuriant folds from the shoulders, and over the right arm, which gracefully sustained its length, for the greater convenience in walking: the sandals, purple, with buttons of gold. Gryphus, short, square, and muscular; his tunic of the coarsest and not the cleanest woollen, in some places worn threadbare, and with one open rent of considerable magnitude that proved the skin to be as well engrained as its covering; his girdle, a rope: his cloak, or rather rag, had the appearance of a sail taken from the wreck of an old trader: his feet bare, and thickly powdered with dust: of his face, little more might be distinguished than the nose; the lower part being obscured by a bushy and wide-spreading beard, and the upper, by a profusion of long, tangled and grisly hair. The wondering disciples opened a passage for this singular intruder, who, without looking to the right or the left, walked on, and stopped before Epicurus.

“I suppose you are the Master, by the needless trouble I see you take, in coming to meet me.”

“When Gryphus has possibly walked a mile to meet Epicurus, Epicurus may without much trouble walk a step to meet Gryphus.”

“In my walk of a mile,” returned the cynic, “there was no trouble: I took it for my own pleasure.”

“And my walk of a step I also took for mine.”

“Aye, the pleasure of ceremony!”

“I may hope, then, this your visit is from something more than ceremony—perhaps a feeling of real friendship, or as a mark of your good opinion.”

“I hate useless words,” returned the cynic, “and am not come here either to make any, or hearken to any. I have heard you much talked of lately. Our streets and our porticoes buzz eternally with your name, till now all wise men are weary of it. I come to tell you this, and to advise you to shut the gates of your gardens forthwith, and to cease the harangues of a master; since you only pass for a philosopher among fools, and for a fool among philosophers.”

“I thank you for your honest advice and information, friend; but as the object of a master is not to teach the wise, but only the unwise, do you not think I may still harangue among fools to some little purpose, though Gryphus, and all sages, will of course justly hold me in contempt?”

“And so that fools may be made wise, the wise are to be plagued with folly?”

“Nay, you would surely cease to think that folly which could make a fool wise.”

“A fool wise! And who but a fool would think that possible?”

“I grant it were difficult: but may it not also sometimes be difficult to discover who is a fool, and who not? Among my scholars there, some doubtless may be fools, and some possibly may not be fools.”

“No,” interrupted the cynic; “or they would not be your scholars.”

“Ah! I being a fool myself. Well reminded! I had forgot that was one of our premises. But then, I being a fool, and all my scholars being fools, I do not see how much harm can be done, either by my talking folly, or their hearkening to it.”

“No, if wise men were not forced to hearken also. I tell you that our streets and our porticoes buzz with your name and your nonsense. Keep all the fools of Athens in your gardens, and lock the gates, and you may preach folly as long and as loud as you please.”

“I have but one objection to this; namely, that my gardens would not hold all the fools of Athens. Suppose, therefore, the wise men, being a smaller body, were shut into a garden, and the city and the rest of Attica left for the fools?”

“I told you,” cried the cynic, in a voice of anger, “that I hate useless words.”

“Nay, friend, why then walk a mile to speak advice to me? No words so useless as those thrown at a fool.”

“Very true, very true;” and so saying, the stranger turned his back, and quitted the temple.

“There,” said the son of Neocles to his smiling disciples, “is a good warning to any, or all of us, who would be philosophers.”

“Nay, master,” cried Sofron, “do you think us in danger of following the pleasant example of this savage? Do you, indeed, expect to see Lycaon there, with beard, head and clothing, after the fashion of Gryphus?”

“Not beard, head and clothing, perhaps,” answered the Gargettian; “pride, vanity, and ambition, may take less fearful coverings than these.”

“Pride, vanity, and ambition? I should rather suspect Gryphus of the want of all three.”

“Nay, my son, believe me all those three qualities were concerned in the carving of those three frightful appendages of our cynic’s person. Pride need not always lead a man to cut mount Athos in two, like Xerxes; nor ambition, to conquer a world, and weep that there is yet not another to conquer, like Alexander; nor vanity, to look in a stream at his own face till he fall in love with it, like Narcissus. When we cannot cut an Athos, we may leave uncut our beard; when we cannot mount a throne, we may crawl into a tub; and when we have no beauty, we may increase our ugliness. If a man of small, or even of moderate talents, be smitten with a great desire of distinction, there is nothing too absurd, perhaps nothing too mischievous, for him to commit. Our friend, the cynic, happily for himself and his neighbors, seems disposed to rest with the absurd. Erostratus took to the mischievous—to eternize his name destroying that temple, by the building of which Ctesiphon immortalized his. Be it our care to keep equally clear of the one as of the other.”

“Do you, then,” asked Theon, “think a desire of distinction a vicious desire?”

“I think it is often a dangerous desire, and very often an unhappy one.”

“But surely very often a fortunate one,” said Leontium. “Without it, would there ever have been a hero?”

“And perhaps,” returned the sage, with a smile, “the world might have been as happy if there had not.”

“Well, without arguing for an Achilles, would there have been a Homer?”

“I agree with you,” replied the Master, more seriously. “The desire of distinction, though often a dangerous, and often an unhappy desire, is likewise often, though I believe here sometimes were a better word, a fortunate one. It is dangerous in the head of a fool; unhappy, in that of a man of moderate abilities, or unfavorable situation, who can conceive a noble aim, but lacks the talent or the means necessary for its attainment. It is fortunate only in the head of a genius, the heart of a sage, and in a situation convenient for its development and gratification. These three things you will allow do not often meet in one person.”

“Yet,” said Theon, “how many great men has Athens produced?”

“But it is not a consequent that they were happy?”

“Happy or not happy, who would refuse their fate?”

“I like that feeling,” replied the Gargettian; “nor do I dissent from it. The fate of greatness will always be enviable, even when the darkest storms trouble its course. Well-merited fame has in itself a pleasure so much above all pleasures, that it may weigh in the balance against all the accumulated evils of mortality. Grant then our great men to have been fortunate; are they, as you say, so many?—Alas! my son, we may count them on our fingers. A generation, the most brilliant in genius, leaves out of its thousands and millions but three or four, or a dozen, to the worship, even to the knowledge of futurity.”

“And these, only these three, four, or a dozen, have a right to the desire of distinction?”

“As to the right,” replied the sage, playfully, “I mean not to dispute that. The right lies with all men in our democracy to sit in a tub, or to walk in a dirty tunic.”

“But you will allow of no end in ambition but an absurd one.”

“I have not expressed myself well, or you have not understood me well, if you draw that conclusion. I surely have granted our great men to have had great ends of ambition.”

“But is it only great men, or men destined to be great, that may have such ends?”

“I allowed that others might; I only said that they would be unhappy in consequence. The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities.”

“Then,” cried Metrodorus, “I have substantially proved myself this morning to be no philosopher, when I chose a study beyond the reach of my pencil.”

“No,” said Leontium, playfully tapping his shoulder, “the Master will make a distinction between what is beyond the reach of our capacity, and what beyond the reach of our practice. Erostratus might never have planned the edifice he destroyed; Ctesiphon could not always have planned it.” The smile that accompanied these words, lighted one yet more brilliant in the face of Metrodorus. Theon guessed that he felt more than admiration and more than friendship for this female disciple.

“Your remark was well timed and well pointed,” said the Master, “and has saved me some talking.”

“I am not sure of that,” cried Sofron, stepping forwards; “for though Leontium has so nicely worded the distinction between want of capacity and want of practice in the general, I should like to be told, how a man is to make this distinction between his own in particular? For instance, I have a fancy to turn philosopher, and supersede my master; how am I to tell, at my first nonplus in logic or invention, whether the defect be in my capacity or my practice?”

“If it be only in the last, I apprehend you will easily perceive it; if in the first, not so readily. A man, if he set about the search, will quickly discover his talents; he may continue it to his death without discovering his deficiencies. The reason is plain; the one hurts our self-love, the other flatters it.”

“And yet,” interrupted Theon, “I think, in my first interview with the Philosopher of Gargettium, he remarked, that thousands had the seeds of excellence in them who never found them out.”

“I see you have a good memory,” returned the Master, “I did say so, and I think it still. Many might have been heroes, and many philosophers, had they had a desire to be either; had accident or ambition made them look into themselves, and inquire into their powers; but though jewels be hid in a sack of oats, they will never be found, unless the oats be shaken. Remember, however, we are now speaking of one class of men only—the ambitious: and the ambitious will never have any seeds in them, bad or good, that will not generate and produce their proper fruit. Ambition is the spur, and the necessary spur, of a great mind to great action; when acting upon a weak mind it impels it to absurdity, or sours it with discontent.”

“Nay, then,” said Sofron, “’tis but a dangerous inmate, as minds go; and I, for one, had better have none of it, for I doubt I am not born to be an Epicurus, and I am certain I have no inclination to be a Gryphus.”

“Well,” said the Master, “we have at least to thank Gryphus for our morning’s dialogue. If any of us wish to prosecute it farther, we may do it over our repast—the sun has reached his noon, so let us to the bath.”

They left the temple, and crossing the gardens in an opposite direction from that by which Theon had entered, soon reached a gate, which, to his surprise, opened on a court at the back of the Gargettian’s house, the same in which he had supped the preceding evening.

CHAPTER V.

The fervor of the day had declined, when Theon issued to the street from the house of Epicurus: at that instant he met in the face his friend Cleanthes; he ran to his embrace; but the young stoic, receding with mingled astonishment and horror—“Ye gods! from the house of Epicurus?”

“I do not marvel at your surprise,” returned Theon, “nor, if I recall my own feelings of yesterday, at your indignation.”

“Answer me quickly,” interrupted Cleanthes; “is Theon yet my friend?”

“And does Cleanthes doubt it?”

“What may I not doubt, when I see you come from such a mansion?”

“Nay, my brother,” said Theon, kindly throwing his arm round the neck of his friend, and drawing him onwards, “I have been in no mansion of vice, or of folly.”

“I do not understand you,” returned the stoic, but half yielding to his kindness; “I do not know what to think, or what to fear.”

“Fear nothing; and think only good,” said the Corinthian: “True, I come from the gardens of pleasure, where I have heard very little of pleasure, and a very great deal of virtue.”

“I see how it is,” returned the other; “you have lost your principles, and I, my friend.”

“I do not think I have lost the first, and I am very sure you have not lost the last!”

“No!” exclaimed Cleanthes; “but I tell you, yes;” and his cheeks flushed, and his eyes flashed with indignation: “I have lost my friend, and you have lost yours. Go!” he continued, and drew himself from the arm of Theon. “Go! Cleanthes hath no fellowship with an apostate and a libertine.”

“You wrong me; and you wrong Epicurus,” said his friend, in a tone of more reproach than anger: “But I cannot blame you; yesterday I had myself been equally unjust. You must see him, you must hear him, Cleanthes. This alone can undeceive you—can convince you; convince you of my innocence, and Epicurus’s virtue.”

“Epicurus’s virtue! your innocence?—What is Epicurus to me? What is he, or should he be to you? Your innocence? And is this fastened to the mantle of Epicurus: see him to be convinced of your innocence?”

“Yes, and of your own injustice: Oh! Cleanthes, what a fool do I now know myself to have been! To have listened to the lies of Timocrates! To have believed all his absurdities! Come, my friend! come with me and behold the face of the Master he blasphemes!”

“Theon, one master, and but one master, is mine. To me, whether Timocrates exaggerate or even lie, it matters nothing.”

“It does, or it should,” said the Corinthian. “Will a disciple of Zeno not open his eyes to truth? Not see an error and atone for it, by acknowledging it? I do not ask you to be the disciple of Epicurus—I only ask you to be just to him, and that for your own sake, more than mine, or even his.”

“I see you are seduced—I see you are lost,” cried the stoic, fixing on him a look in which sorrow struggled with indignation. “I thought myself a stoic, but I feel the weakness of a woman in my eyes.—Thou wert as my brother, Theon; and thou—thou also art beguiled by the Syren—left virtue for pleasure, Zeno for Epicurus.”

“I have not left Zeno.”

“You cannot follow both—you cannot be in the day and under the night at one and the same time.”

“I tell you there is no night in the gardens of Epicurus.”

“Is there no pleasure there,” cried the stoic, his mouth and brows curling with irony.

“Yes, there is pleasure there: the pleasure of wisdom and virtue.”

“Ah! have you learnt the Gargettian subtleties so soon? You have doubtless already worshipped virtue under the form of the courtezan Leontium; and wisdom under that of her master and paramour, the son of Neocles.”

“How little you know of either!” returned Theon. “But I knew as little yesterday.”

Cleanthes stopped. They were before the stoic portico. “Farewell! Return to your gardens. Farewell!”

“We do not yet part,” said Theon: “Zeno is still my master.” He followed his friend up the steps. A crowd of disciples were assembled, waiting the arrival of their master. Some, crowded into groups, listened to the harangues of an elder or more able scholar: others walking in parties of six or a dozen, reasoning, debating, and disputing: while innumerable single figures, undisturbed by the buzz around them, leaned against the pillars, studying each from a manuscript, or stood upon the steps with arms folded, and heads dropped on their bosoms, wrapped in silent meditations. At the entrance of Cleanthes, the favored pupil of their master, the scholars made way, and the loud hum slowly hushed into silence. He advanced to the centre, and the floating crowd gathered and compressed into a wide and deep circle. All eyes bent on the youth in expectant curiosity, for his countenance was disturbed, and his manner abrupt.

Cleanthes was of the middle size: so slender, that you wondered at the erectness of his gait and activity of his motion. His neck was small; his shoulders falling; his head elegantly formed; the hair smooth and close cut; the forehead narrow, and somewhat deeply lined for one so young: the eyebrows marked and even, save a slight bend upwards, as by a frown, above the nose. The eyes blue; but their gaze was too earnest, and their spirit too clear, to leave any of the melting softness so usual with that color:—And yet there were moments when this would appear in them; and when it did, it went to the soul of him who observed it, but such moments were short and rare. The nose was finely and perhaps too delicately turned; the mouth—mild and always in repose. The cheeks were thin, and though slightly flushed, the face had a look of paleness till enthusiasm awoke, and deepened all its dyes. The whole expression had more spirituality and variety, and the manner more agitation, than you would have looked for in the first and favorite pupil of Zeno. The youth turned a rapid glance round the circle: he threw out his right arm; the mantle dropped from his shoulder, and in a varied, piercing, and yet melodious voice he began—

“My friends! My brothers! Disciples of Zeno and of virtue. Give me your ears, and awake your faculties! How shall I tell the dangers that surround you? How shall I paint the demon that would ensnare you; Timocrates hath escaped from his enchantments, and told us that riot and revelling were in his halls, that impiety was in his mouth; vice in his practice; deformity in his aspect: and we thought that none but souls born for error, already steeped in infamy, or sunk in effeminacy, could be taken in his toils and seduced by his example. But behold! he hath changed his countenance—he hath changed his tongue:—amid his revels he hath put on the garb of decency: in his riot he talks of innocence; in his licentiousness, of virtue. Behold the youth! they run to him with greedy ears—they throng his gardens and his porticoes. Athens, Attica, Greece, all are the Gargettian’s. Asia, Italy, the burning Africa and the frozen Scythia—all, all send ready pupils to his feet. Oh! what shall we say? Oh! how shall we stem the torrent? Oh! how shall we fence our hearts—how our ears from the song of the Syren?—to what mast shall we bind ourselves, to what pilot shall we trust, that we may pass the shores in safety without dashing on the rocks?—But why do I speak? Why do I enquire? Why do I exhort? Is not the contagion already among us? In the school of Zeno—in this portico—in this circle are there not waverers—Yea, are there not apostates?” Emotion choked his utterance: he paused, and glanced his kindled eyes round upon the audience. Every breath was held in expectation; each looked on the other in doubt, dismay, and inquiry. Theon’s heart beat quick and high: he advanced one step, and raised his arm to speak; but Cleanthes, gathering his breath, again in a rapid voice continued:—