his liberty, in concession to the actual manner, the distinctions, the
enactments of that great crowd of admirable spirits, who have elected
so, and not otherwise, in their conduct of life, and are not here to
give one, so to term it, an "indulgence." But then, under the
supposition of their disapproval, no roses would ever seem worth
plucking again. The authority they exercised was like that of classic
taste--an influence so subtle, yet so real, as defining the loyalty of
the scholar; or of some beautiful and venerable ritual, in which every
observance is become spontaneous and almost mechanical, yet is found,
[28] the more carefully one considers it, to have a reasonable
significance and a natural history.

And Marius saw that he would be but an inconsistent Cyrenaic, mistaken
in his estimate of values, of loss and gain, and untrue to the
well-considered economy of life which he had brought with him to
Rome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if he
did not make that concession, if he did but remain just there.

NOTES

21. +Transliteration: monochronos hedone. Pater's definition "the
pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now." The definition is
fitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, "single or
unitary time."

CHAPTER XVII: BEATA URBS

"Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye see."

[29] THE enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the
mighty invading hosts of the fifth century. Illusively repressed just
now, those confused movements along the northern boundary of the Empire
were destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism, which,
powerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress for a
time the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of Christ
was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light and beauty
of the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a partly mistaken
tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it might almost seem at
times, for eventual reconciliation thereto. Meantime Italy had armed
itself once more, in haste, and the imperial brothers set forth for the
Alps.

Whatever misgiving the Roman people may [30] have felt as to the
leadership of the younger was unexpectedly set at rest; though with
some temporary regret for the loss of what had been, after all, a
popular figure on the world's stage. Travelling fraternally in the
same litter with Au