best of
stimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when
he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night.
"The morning for creation," he would say; "the afternoon for the
perfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception--the reception
of matter from without one, of other men's words and thoughts--matter
for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain,
brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers." To leave home early
in the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do
on the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer Lucian, whom he
had been bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with the
learned guest, having offered to be his guide [142] to the lecture-room
of a well-known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic
philosophy, a teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of
Rome. On reaching the place, however, they found the doors closed,
with a slip of writing attached, which proclaimed "a holiday"; and the
morning being a fine one, they walked further, along the Appian Way.
Mortality, with which the Queen of Ways--in reality the favourite
cemetery of Rome--was so closely crowded, in every imaginable form of
sepulchre, from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument out of
which the Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem, on a
morning like this, to be "smiling through tears." The flower-stalls
just beyond the city gates presented to view an array of posies and
garlands, fresh enough for a wedding. At one and another of them
groups of persons, gravely clad, were making their bargains before
starting for some perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies
rosationis, this being the time of roses, at the grave of a deceased
relation. Here and there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way,
in weird contrast to the gaiety of the hour.

The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolled
along. In one, reminding them of the poet's--Si lacrimae prosunt,
visis te ostende videri!--a woman prayed that her lost husband might
visit her dreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an imploring
cry, still [143] to be sought after by the living. "While I live,"
such was the promise of a lover to his dead mistress, "you will receive
this homage: after my death,--who can tell?"--post mortem nescio. "If
ghosts, my sons, do feel anything after death, my sorrow wi