med circle whatever was then present to eye or
ear, while they talked or were silent together, and all petty
irritations, and the like, shrank out of existence, or kept certainly
beyond its limits. The natural fatigue of the long journey overcame
them quite suddenly at last, when they were still about two miles
distant from Rome. The seemingly endless line of tombs and cypresses
had been visible for hours against the sky towards the west; and it was
just where a cross-road from the Latin Way fell into the Appian, that
Cornelius halted at a doorway in a long, low wall--the outer wall of
some villa courtyard, it might be supposed-- [95] as if at liberty to
enter, and rest there awhile. He held the door open for his companion
to enter also, if he would; with an expression, as he lifted the latch,
which seemed to ask Marius, apparently shrinking from a possible
intrusion: "Would you like to see it?" Was he willing to look upon
that, the seeing of which might define--yes! define the critical
turning-point in his days?

The little doorway in this long, low wall admitted them, in fact, into
the court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt natural
hollows, which give its character to the country in this place; the
house itself, with all its dependent buildings, the spaciousness of
which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus wholly concealed from
passengers along the road. All around, in those well-ordered
precincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of a noble taste--a
taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of
the material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the
remains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both
as regards colour and form, so delicate as to seem really derivative
from some finer intelligence in these matters than lay within the
resources of the ancient world. It was the old way of true
Renaissance--being indeed the way of nature with her roses, the divine
way with the body of man, perhaps with his soul--conceiving the new
organism by no sudden and [96] abrupt creation, but rather by the
action of a new principle upon elements, all of which had in truth
already lived and died many times. The fragments of older
architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious
corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such
juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave
thought, of an intellectua