e dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath
flown where you did not wish him to fly?

_Ternissa._ No! it would be cruel; the string about the leg of so
little and weak a creature is enough.

_Epicurus._ You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say
confidently; for whenever there is a sentiment in which strict justice
and pure benevolence unite, it must be His.

_Ternissa._ O Epicurus! when you speak thus--

_Leontion._ Well, Ternissa, what then?

_Ternissa._ When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as these, I am
grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as
some others have.

_Leontion._ You will grieve more, I suspect, my Ternissa, when he
possesses that authority.

_Ternissa._ What will he do?

_Leontion._ Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will
forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the
sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body. If you
invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table
live sheep and oxen and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you
would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is
yet living. One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye
were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern
kings, he could be looked at near only when his limbs are stiff, by
waxlight, in close curtains.

_Epicurus._ One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token
of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude;
one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might
(if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us
more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the
legacy cannot; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well
as ourselves: we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is
extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy,
sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we
commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with any one, and
with few the second.

Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little
Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and
boisterous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can
they do better?

_Leontion._ But those feathers, Ternissa, what god's may they be?
since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to Calaeis n