away toward the sea, broken
here and there by sullen sedgy tarns.

Here he spent his monotonous existence, riding hard and drinking
obstinately, but never, even in the latter case, rising into
conviviality. A long, bushy beard, and portentous mustache, grizzled,
though he was scarcely past middle age, which could not conceal a deep
sabre-scar, gave him a grim, sinister expression; and his voice had that
brief imperious accent which is peculiar to men for many years used to
give the word of command.

That worn, haggard face told a real tale. The furrows there had been
plowed by an enduring remorse, very different from that comfortable,
half-complacent regret which some feel at the retrospect of their
youthful _fredaines_.

They shake their solemn old heads as they hold themselves up to us as a
warning; they sermonize with edifying gravity on the impropriety of such
misdemeanors; but we can trace through all this an under-current of
satisfaction tenderly fatuitous, as they go back to the days of their
gipsyhood, when Plancus was consul.

I have been amused with watching these eminent but somewhat sensual
Christians on such occasions, and seeing the dull eyes begin to glisten,
and the lips wrinkle themselves into a fat, unpleasant smile. _They_
have prospered since, and certainly it would be most absurd to torment
themselves now about the souls and bodies which they once sacrificed to
a whim. Over those ruins and relics the River of Oblivion has rolled
long ago--let them sleep on there and take their rest.

Have we not the bright example of the prototype of this class--the
pious AEneas? How creditable was his behavior when he looked back over
the black water on the trail of flame stretching from the funeral pyre
where Dido lay burning!

"He knew," says his admiring biographer, "what the madness of women
could do;" but the breeze was getting up astern, and favoring gods
beckoned him on to Italy and fortune; so he sighed twice or
thrice--perhaps he wept, for the amiable hero's tears were always ready
on the shortest notice--and then, like the captain of the _Hesperus_,
"steered for the open sea."

Did he feel a pang of remorse or shame at that meeting in the twilight
of Hades, when he called vainly on Elissa, and the dead queen, from
where she stood by the side of Sychaeus, who had forgiven her all, turned
on him the disgust and horror of her imperial eyes? Who can tell? The
greatest and best of men have their mome