ll be
lessened by your frequent coming to me here!" "This is a privileged
tomb; to my family and descendants has been conceded the right of
visiting this place as often as they please." "This is an eternal
habitation; here lie I; here I shall lie for ever." "Reader! if you
doubt that the soul survives, make your oblation and a prayer for me;
and you shall understand!"

The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by those
pathetic suggestions. It was long ago that after visiting the banks of
the Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of
Phaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for all
arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to
what might lie beyond its "flaming barriers." And at the age of sixty
he had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far from
unamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed
him. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine
aristocratic manners, with "a rampart," through which he himself never
broke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay,
animated, content with his old age [144] as it was, the aged student
still took a lively interest in studious youth.--Could Marius inform
him of any such, now known to him in Rome? What did the young men
learn, just then? and how?

In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young
student, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucian
himself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming
along briskly--a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the
sane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn of
feature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for
fine glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused
suddenly, and with a modest blush on recognising his companion, who
straightway took with the youth, so prettily enthusiastic, the freedom
of an old friend.

In a few moments the three were seated together, immediately above the
fragrant borders of a rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of the
exhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside, from which
they could overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Campagna, and
enjoy the air. Fancying that the lad's plainly written enthusiasm had
induced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual with
him, Marius listened to the conversati