life in these
melancholy haunts of a fallen majesty. You dwell with rapture on the
Roman splendors, and the luxuries of the imperial court. My
Sallust--"non sum qualis eram"--I am not what I was! The events of my
life have sobered the bounding blood of my youth. My health has never
quite recovered its wonted elasticity ere it felt the pangs of disease,
and languished in the damps of a criminal's dungeon. My mind has never
shaken off the dark shadow of the Last Day of Pompeii--the horror and
the desolation of that awful ruin!--Our beloved, our remembered Nydia! I
have reared a tomb to her shade, and I see it every day from the window
of my study. It keeps alive in me a tender recollection--a not
unpleasing sadness--which are but a fitting homage to her fidelity, and
the mysteriousness of her early death. Ione gathers the flowers, but my
own hand wreathes them daily around the tomb. She was worthy of a tomb
in Athens!

'You speak of the growing sect of the Christians in Rome. Sallust, to
you I may confide my secret; I have pondered much over that faith--I
have adopted it. After the destruction of Pompeii, I met once more with
Olinthus--saved, alas! only for a day, and falling afterwards a martyr
to the indomitable energy of his zeal. In my preservation from the lion
and the earthquake he taught me to behold the hand of the unknown God!
I listened--believed--adored! My own, my more than ever beloved Ione,
has also embraced the creed!--a creed, Sallust, which, shedding light
over this world, gathers its concentrated glory, like a sunset, over the
next! We know that we are united in the soul, as in the flesh, for ever
and for ever! Ages may roll on, our very dust be dissolved, the earth
shrivelled like a scroll; but round and round the circle of eternity
rolls the wheel of life--imperishable--unceasing! And as the earth from
the sun, so immortality drinks happiness from virtue, which is the smile
upon the face of God! Visit me, then, Sallust; bring with you the
learned scrolls of Epicurus, Pythagoras, Diogenes; arm yourself for
defeat; and let us, amidst the groves of Academus, dispute, under a
surer guide than any granted to our fathers, on the mighty problem of
the true ends of life and the nature of the soul.

'Ione--at that name my heart yet beats!--Ione is by my side as I write:
I lift my eyes, and meet her smile. The sunlight quivers over Hymettus:
and along my garden I hear the hum of the summer bees.