l, that is practically prudent, if it be metaphysically possible,'
said Herbert. 'Do you know that I have always been of opinion, that
Pontius Pilate has been greatly misrepresented by Lord Bacon in the
quotation of his celebrated question. 'What is truth?' said jesting
Pilate, and would not wait for an answer. Let us be just to Pontius
Pilate, who has sins enough surely to answer for. There is no
authority for the jesting humour given by Lord Bacon. Pilate was
evidently of a merciful and clement disposition; probably an
Epicurean. His question referred to a declaration immediately
preceding it, that He who was before him came to bear witness to the
truth. Pilate inquired what truth?'

'Well, I always have a prejudice against Pontius Pilate,' said Lord
Cadurcis; 'and I think it is from seeing him, when I was a child,
on an old Dutch tile fireplace at Marringhurst, dressed like a
burgomaster. One cannot get over one's early impressions; but when you
picture him to me as an Epicurean, he assumes a new character. I fancy
him young, noble, elegant, and accomplished; crowned with a wreath and
waving a goblet, and enjoying his government vastly.'

'Before the introduction of Christianity,' said Herbert, 'the
philosophic schools answered to our present religious sects. You said
of a man that he was a Stoic or an Epicurean, as you say of a man now
that he is a Calvinist or a Wesleyan.'

'I should have liked to have known Epicurus,' said Cadurcis.

'I would sooner have known him and Plato than any of the ancients,'
said Herbert. 'I look upon Plato as the wisest and the profoundest of
men, and upon Epicurus as the most humane and gentle.'

'Now, how do you account for the great popularity of Aristotle in
modern ages?' said Cadurcis; 'and the comparative neglect of these, at
least his equals? Chance, I suppose, that settles everything.'

'By no means,' said Herbert. 'If you mean by chance an absence of
accountable cause, I do not believe such a quality as chance exists.
Every incident that happens, must be a link in a chain. In the present
case, the monks monopolised literature, such as it might be, and they
exercised their intellect only in discussing words. They, therefore,
adopted Aristotle and the Peripatetics. Plato interfered with their
heavenly knowledge, and Epicurus, who maintained the rights of man to
pleasure and happiness, would have afforded a dangerous and seducing
contrast to their dark and miserable code of m