my Kaido where one blossom is remarkable for its fulness and its beauty, those beside it are hollow or small. Two great brothers were too much even for fable, when fable went down lower than the gods. Here are two; of whom either may contend with the heroes of antiquity, such as our country alone hath given birth to. Belief that the high capacious soul of these brethren will watch and sustain me from a distance, is dearer to me than to link my hand in theirs. But who is he that should dare to hope it? Who shall stand with them next to Liberty, next to Greece? Kaido. If only the thought of such as these dwelt with us, we might bear intense evil patiently. Zavellas. Sad indeed is it to consider how much of mischief can a few bad men accomplish; how little of good can many better. brittleness, cracked in the middle at one freezing glance? And what sounds, thinkest thou, will avenge this silence? I will tell thee: they are these. "The courage of Photo was a traitor's; his humility a slave's." The very thought, in my horror, makes me hug to me virtues which perhaps belong not to me. O! thou hast done wrong already: thou hast made me prize myself! Leave me my true worth; leave me my own: let me be and be known to be what I am! Kaido. Forgive me! forgive me! do not trust Ali Tebelen. Zavellas. He hath sworn such perfect esteem for me, and hath declared his resolution to celebrate the treaty with such solemnity, that either the dagger or poison (I foresee) will ratify it. Nevertheless there are those in Suli, who are per Now tell me, Kaido, what hast thou heard suaded that the embassy with which they would disquieting? entrust me, may prolong, if not establish their freedom. I indeed think differently: but where is now my vote? What right hath an exiled man to offer his opinion on the public weal? Kaido. Heard I not, O Photo! the speech of the arcons? Did they not conjure you, in the name of our country, to leave it! to accept the conditions of Ali Tebelen! to rely on his faith! the faith of a traitor! a murderer! an em- countrywomen! if I am less faithful in the charge poisoner! Zavellas. Thou hast remarked something since; for that only raised thy scorn, and thou wast silent. Kaido. Saw I not, amid the conflict of my woe and of my exultation, saw I not (and shall I forget it?) Photo Zavellas throw his arms around the necks of those elders, entreating them never more to think of him but in their orisons, never more to trust the enemy after this peace-offering! Zavellas. If I, undistinguished as I am and destitute of experience, could lay a charge so weighty on such authoritative men, how much greater right have they to demand from me the execution of their designs? Kaido. Brother! what I undertook to do, I have done; nor dare I attempt to dissuade you. I came not, O Photo! to remind you that you are banished by them who received at your hand their deliverance and existence; that your children through them have no father's roof to shelter, no father's eye to watch over them. This however I will announce to you.. for the blood of our parents cries out on me to say it. . and do not reprove me, Photo, though it should shake your purpose: if I am guilty of duplicity your danger makes me so. Zavellas. Thou faulterest: faulter still. Thou tremblest and I do not bid thee not to tremble. Peace! silence! tell me nothing. What canst thou teach me of Ali Tebelen which the least suspicious might not suspect? Sister! it is not this embrace that ought to assure thee I neither am stern toward thee nor insensible of thy love: my determination itself, which thou wouldst remove, should prove it; for on that rests the glory of our father's house. Couldst thou endure to find the voices in the street drop lower at thy approach; mirth become gloom; and hearty laughter hollow Kaido. Pardon me, O my countrymen and my ye have confided to me! I departed with no such intent. My brother stands before me, safe, healthy, free; can I suffer him to go and never more to see him, knowing that I never shall, and that a word of mine may preserve him to us all! Zavellas. Speak not that word, O Kaido, if reproach must follow it: if, when it hath fallen from thy lips, it must stand for ever between thee and honour. Life we shall have again: a God hath promised it: beatitude we may or we may not: fidelity to our fathers, our children, our country, is the grain that holds the germ of it. Let us never be numbered with those who barter it, or who believe that Heaven hath imparted to man a sounder sustenance. Kaido. Ali Tebelen (you know it not, I know it to a certainty) hath sworn your death. Now go, if any reason upon earth impels you; if any duty calls where none can be available, where none can be performed; go, if you shall benefit your country by giving up to chains and tortures the bravest of her defenders. Zarellas. This only course lies before me. * Kaido. Abandon your ruinous and untenable fortress, while the way is open and the toils un- | spread. Provisions must soon fail you, and egress be intercepted Fight among the hospitable and unconquerable of Parga. Their numbers are diminished year after year; but the courage of every man among them who hath fallen, seems to have been portioned out by some guardian angel on the thirsting hearts of the rest. Venice casts a look of compassion on them; and the Seven Isles continually send them succour. Never can that day be dreaded, under no sign in the heavens is it marked by destiny, when so valiant and vir tuous a race shall be abandoned. Humbled as * Santa Veneranda, a fortified monastery. i are the fortunes of her Protectress, the memory of her past exploits, of her power and of her dignity, keeps her upright. Will she aid in crushing the desolate will she sell the bruised slave at her own doors? Zavellas. No nation, O Kaido, is capable of this turpitude: none would wish it: none, wishing it, could accomplish it. Rather than be delivered over to the infidel, the Pargans would dig up again the bones of their forefathers, carry them in their bosoms, and plunge with them from the summit of the rocks into the sea. I too have a country if I cannot save her, I may at least obey her. The injury I have received (but indeed it should never be called so) only raises my heart the higher. Thanks to them who have given me a power, a victory, I could not have gained without them. Promise them my duty. Kaido. From these arms, then, God receive thee into his! Zavellas. Courage! courage! weak lingering Kaido! . . pray to Him for the soul of Zavellas.. for the safety of better men. EPICURUS*, LEONTION, AND TERNISSA. Leontion. Your situation for a garden, Epicurus, | irregular sounds that excite me involuntarily to is, I think, very badly chosen. Epicurus. Why do you think so, my Leontion? Leontion. First, because it is more than twenty stadia + from the city. Epicurus. Certainly the distance is inconvenient, my charming friend! it is rather too far off for us to be seen, and rather too near for us to be regretted. Here however I shall build no villa, nor anything else, and the longest time we can be detained, is from the rising to the setting sun. Now, pray, your other reason why the spot is so ineligible. Leontion. Because it commands no view of the town or of the harbour, unless we mount upon that knoll, where we could scarcely stand together, for the greater part is occupied by those three pinasters, old and horrible as the three Furies. Surely you will cut them down. Epicurus. Whatever Leontion commands. To me there is this advantage in a place at some distance from the city. Having by no means the full possession of my faculties where I hear unwelcome and intrusive voices, or unexpected and * Cicero was an opponent of Epicurus, yet in his treatise On Friendship he says, "De quâ Epicurus quidem ita dicit; omnium rerum quas ad beate vivendum sapientia comparaverit, nihil esse majus amicitiâ; nihil uberius, nihil jucundius." This is oratorical and sententious: he goes on, praising the founder and the foundation. "Neque verò hoc oratione solùm sed multo magis vitâ et moribus comprobavit. Quod quàm magnum sit, ficta veterum fabulæ declarant, in quibus tam multis tamque variis ab ultimâ antiquitate repetitis, tria vix amicorum paria reperiuntur, ut ad Orestem pervenias profectus a Theseo. At verò Epicurus unâ in domo, et eâ quidem angustâ, quàm magnos quantâque amoris conspiratione consentientes tenuit amicorum greges. Quod fit etiam nunc ab Epicureis." Certain it is, that moderation, forbearance, and what St. Paul calls charity, never flourished in any sect of philosophy or religion, so perfectly and so long as among the disciples of Epicurus. Cicero adds in another work, "De sanctitate, de pietate adversus Deos libros scripsit Epicurus: at quomodo in his loquitur? ut Coruncanium aut Scævolam Pontifices Maximos te audire dicas." Seneca, whose sect was more adverse, thus expresses his opinion: "Mea quidem ista sententia (et hoc nostris invitis popularibus dicam) sancta Epicurum et recta præcipere, et, si propius accesseris, tristia." Two miles and a half. listen, I assemble and arrange my thoughts with freedom and with pleasure in the fresh air and open sky; and they are more lively and vigorous and exuberant when I catch them as I walk about, and commune with them in silence and seclusion. Leontion. It always has appeared to me that conversation brings them forth more readily and plenteously; and that the ideas of one person no sooner come out than another's follow them, whether from the same side or from the opposite. Epicurus. They do: but these are not the thoughts we keep for seed: they come up weak by coming up close together. In the country the mind is soothed and satisfied: here is no restraint of motion or of posture. These things, little and indifferent as they may seem, are not so: for the best tempers have need of ease and liberty, to keep them in right order long enough for the purposes of composition; and many a froward axiom, many an inhumane thought, hath arisen from sitting inconveniently, from hearing a few unpleasant sounds, from the confinement of a gloomy chamber, or from the want of symmetry in it. We are not aware of this, until we find an exemption from it in groves, on promontories, or along the sea-shore, or wherever else we meet Nature face to face, undisturbed and solitary. Ternissa. You would wish us then away? Epicurus. I speak of solitude; you of desolation. Ternissa. O flatterer! is this philosophy? Epicurus. Yes; if you are a thought the richer or a moment the happier for it. Ternissa. Write it down then in the next volume you intend to publish. Leontion. I interpose and controvert it. That is not philosophy which serves only for one. Epicurus. Just criterion! I will write down your sentence instead, and leave mine at the discretion of Ternissa. And now, my beautiful Ternissa, let me hear your opinion of the situation I have chosen. I perceive that you too have fixed your eyes on the pinasters. think these are verses, or nearly: I hate those trees that never lose their foliage: KK The broad and billowy summits of yon monstrous trees, one would imagine, were made for the storms to rest upon when they are tired of raving. And what bark! It occurs to me, Epicurus, that I have rarely seen climbing plants attach themselves to these trees, as they do to the oak, the maple, the beech, and others. Leontion. If your remark be true, perhaps the resinous are not embraced by them so frequently because they dislike the odour of the resin, or some other property of the juices; for they too have their affections and antipathies, no less than their countries and their climes. Ternissa. For shame! what would you with me? Epicurus. I would not interrupt you while you were speaking, nor while Leontion was replying; this is against my rules and practice; having now ended, kiss me, Ternissa! Leontion. Of what, pray? Epicurus. Of itself; seeming to indicate that we, Leontion, who philosophise, should do the same. Leontion. Go on, go on! say what you please: I will not hate anything yet. Why have you torn up by the root all these little mountain ashtrees? This is the season of their beauty: come, Ternissa, let us make ourselves necklaces and armlets, such as may captivate old Sylvanus and Pan: you shall have your choice. But why have you torn them up? Epicurus. On the contrary, they were brought hither this morning. Sosimenes is spending large sums of money on an olive-ground, and has uprooted some hundreds of them, of all ages and sizes. I shall cover the rougher part of the hill with them, setting the clematis and vine and Ternissa. Impudent man! in the name of honey-suckle against them, to unite them. Pallas, why should I kiss you? Ternissa. O what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light of the vine-leaves, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible flowers! Epicurus. The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a sigh to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by enjoyment, renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is this, my sweet friend, that made you remember the Epicurus. Because you expressed hatred. Ternissa. Do we kiss when we hate? Epicurus. There is no better end of hating. The sentiment should not exist one moment; and if the hater gives a kiss on being ordered to do it, even to a tree or a stone, that tree or stone becomes the monument of a fault extinct. Ternissa. I promise you I never will hate a green light of the foliage, and think of the in- ' tree again. Epicurus. I told you so. Leontion. Nevertheless I suspect, my Ternissa, you will often be surprised into it. I was very near saying, "I hate these rude square stones!" Why did you leave them here, Epicurus? Epicurus. It is true, they are the greater part square, and seem to have been cut out in ancient times for plinths and columns: they are also rude. Removing the smaller, that I might plant violets and cyclamens and convolvuluses and strawberries, and such other herbs as grow willingly in dry places, I left a few of these for seats, a few for tables and for couches. Leontion. Delectable couches! Epicurus. Laugh as you may, they will become so when they are covered with moss and ivy, and those other two sweet plants, whose names I do not remember to have found in any ancient treatise, but which I fancy I have heard Theophrastus call "Leontion" and "Ternissa." Ternissa. The bold insidious false creature? Epicurus. What is that volume? may I venture to ask, Leontion? Why do you blush? Leontion. I do not blush about it. Epicurus. You are offended then, my dear girl. Leontion. No, nor offended. I will tell you presently what it contains. Account to me first for your choice of so strange a place to walk in: a broad ridge, the summit and one side barren, the other a wood of rose-laurels impossible to penetrate. The worst of all is, we can see nothing of the city or the Parthenon, unless from the very top. Epicurus. The place commands, in my opinion, a most perfect view. visible flowers as you would of some blessing from heaven. Ternissa. I see feathers flying at certain dis tances just above the middle of the promontory : what can they mean? Epicurus. Can not you imagine them to be feathers from the wings of Zethes and Calais, whe came hither out of Thrace to behold the favourite haunts of their mother Orithyeia? From the precipice that hangs over the sea a few paces from the pinasters, she is reported to have been carried off by Boreas; and these remains of the │ primeval forest have always been held sacred on that belief. Leontion. The story is an idle one. Ternissa. O no, Leontion! the story is very true. Leontion. Indeed? Ternissa. I have heard not only odes, but sacred and most ancient hymns upon it; and the voice of Boreas is often audible here, and the screams of Orithyeia. Leontion. The feathers then really may belong to Calais and Zethes. Ternissa. I don't believe it: the winds would have carried them away. Leontion. The gods, to manifest their power, as they often do by miracles, could as easily fix a feather eternally on the most tempestuous promontory, as the mark of their feet upon the flint. Ternissa. They could indeed: but we know the one to a certainty, and have no such authority for the other. I have seen these pinasters from the extremity of the Piræus, and have heard mention of the altar raised to Boreas: where is it! Epicurus. As it stands in the centre of the platform, we can not see it from hence. There is the only piece of level ground in the place. Leontion. Ternissa intends the altar to prove the truth of the story. Epicurus. Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can deceive, much less the old; the gay, much less the serious. Epicurus. I would never think of death as an embarrassment, but as a blessing. Ternissa. How! a blessing? Epicurus. What, if it makes our enemies cease to hate us? what, if it makes our friends love us the more? Leontion. Us? According to your doctrine, we Leontion. It is as wise to moderate our belief shall not exist at all. as our desires. Epicurus. Some minds require much belief, some thrive on little. Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts differently on different hearts: it troubles some, it consoles others in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism and self-devotion: in the ungenerous it fosters pride, impatience of contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone. Ternissa. We want it chiefly to make the way of death an easy one. Epicurus. There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen the declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its situation and dimensions may allow; but principally, I would cast underfoot the empty fear of death. Ternissa. O how can you? Epicurus. By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent's or friend's tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts; in short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while those around were in the most deplorable and desperate. Ternissa. It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that anyone I love would grieve too much for me. Epicurus. Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the apprehension of displeasing them our only fear. Leontion. No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was unsound; your means futile. Epicurus. Tell me then, whether the horse of a rider on the road should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow. Leontion. Yes. : Epicurus. I thought so it would however be better to guide him quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than a shadow it represents nothing, even imperfectly. Leontion. Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and intanglements to extricate? Let me have them; but let me not hear of them until the time is come. Epicurus. I spoke of that which is consolatory while we are here, and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better and better they certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field, and their rancour is tired with treading upon dust. The generous affections stir about us at the dreary hour of death, as the blossoms of the Median apple swell and diffuse their fragrance in the cold. Ternissa. I can not bear to think of passing the Styx, lest Charon should touch me: he is so old and wilful, so cross and ugly. Would Epicurus. Ternissa! Ternissa! I would accompany you thither, and stand between. not you too, Leontion? Leontion. I don't know. Ternissa. O that we could go together! Ternissa. All three, I mean.. I said. . or was going to say it. How ill-natured you are, Leontion! to misinterpret me; I could almost cry. Leontion. Do not, do not, Ternissa! Should that tear drop from your eyelash you would look less beautiful. Epicurus. Whenever I see a tear on a beautiful young face, twenty of mine run to meet it. If it is well to conquer a world, it is better to conquer two. Ternissa. That is what Alexander of Macedon wept because he could not accomplish. Epicurus. Ternissa! we three can accomplish it; or any one of us. Ternissa. How? pray! Epicurus. We can conquer this world and the next: for you will have another, and nothing should be refused you. Ternissa. The next by piety: but this, in what manner? Epicurus. By indifference to all who are indifferent to us; by taking joyfully the benefit that comes spontaneously; by wishing no more intensely for what is a hair's breadth beyond our reach than for a draught of water from the Ganges; and by fearing nothing in another life. Ternissa. This, O Epicurus! is the grand impossibility. Epicurus. Do you believe the gods to be as benevolent and good as you are? or do you not? Ternissa. Much kinder, much better in every way. Epicurus. Would you kill or hurt the sparrow that you keep in your little dressing-room with a string around the leg, because he hath flown where you did not wish him to fly? Ternissa. No it would be cruel: the string about the leg of so little and weak a creature is enough. Epicurus. You think so; I think so; God thinks so. This I may say confidently for when ever there is a sentiment in which strict justice and pure benevolence unite, it must be his. Ternissa. O Epicurus! when you speak thus ... Leontion. Well, Ternissa! what then? Ternissa. When Epicurus teaches us such sentiments as this, I am grieved that he has not so great an authority with the Athenians as some others have. Ternissa. It was yourself who doubted, or appeared to doubt, the flight of Orithycia. By admitting too much we endanger our religion. Beside, I think I discern some upright stakes at equal distances, and am pretty sure the feathers | are tied to them by long strings. Epicurus. You have guessed the truth. Epicurus. If you have ever seen the foot of a statue broken off just below the ankle, you have then, Leontion and Ternissa, seen the form of the ground about us. The lower extremities of it are divided into small ridges, as you will perceive Leontion. You will grieve more, I suspect, my if you look round; and these are covered with Ternissa, when he possesses that authority. Ternissa. What will he do? Leontion. Why turn pale? I am not about to answer that he will forget or leave you. No; but the voice comes deepest from the sepulchre, and a great name has its root in the dead body. If you invited a company to a feast, you might as well place round the table live sheep and oxen, and vases of fish and cages of quails, as you would invite a company of friendly hearers to the philosopher who is yet living.* One would imagine that the iris of our intellectual eye were lessened by the glory of his presence, and that, like eastern kings, he could be looked at near, only when his limbs are stiff, by wax-light, in closed curtains. Epicurus. One of whom we know little leaves us a ring or other token of remembrance, and we express a sense of pleasure and of gratitude: one of whom we know nothing writes a book, the contents of which might (if we would let them) have done us more good and might have given us more pleasure, and we revile him for it. The book may do what the legacy can not; it may be pleasurable and serviceable to others as well as ourselves we would hinder this too. In fact, all other love is extinguished by self-love: beneficence, humanity, justice, philosophy, sink under it. While we insist that we are looking for Truth, we commit a falsehood. It never was the first object with anyone, and with few the second. Feed unto replenishment your quieter fancies, my sweetest little Ternissa! and let the gods, both youthful and aged, both gentle and boister ous, administer to them hourly on these sunny downs: what can they do better? Leontion. But those feathers, Ternissa, what god's may they be? since you will not pick them up, nor restore them to Caläis nor to Zethes. Ternissa. I do not think they belong to any god whatever; and shall never be persuaded of it unless Epicurus say it is so. Leontion. O unbelieving creature! do you reason against the immortals? * Seneca quotes a letter of Epicurus, in which his friendship with Metrodorus is mentioned, with a remark that the obscurity in which they had lived, so great indeed as to let them rest not only unknown, but almost unheard of, in the midst of Greece, was by no means to be considered as an abatement of their good fortune. corn, olives, and vines. At the upper part, where cultivation ceases, and where those sheep and goats are grazing, begins my purchase. The ground rises gradually unto near the summit, where it grows somewhat steep, and terminates in a precipice. Across the middle I have traced a line, denoted by those feathers, from one dingle to the other; the two terminations of my intended garden. The distance is nearly a thousand paces, and the path, perfectly on a level, will be two paces broad, so that I may walk between you; but another could not join us conveniently. From this there will be several circuitous and spiral, leading by the easiest ascent to the summit; and several more, to the road along the cultivation underneath: here will however be but one entrance. Wild pomegranates and irregular tufts of gorse unite their forces against invasion. Ternissa. Where will you place the statues? for undoubtedly you must have some. Epicurus. I will have some models for statues. Pygmalion prayed the gods to give life to the image he adored: I will not pray them to give. marble to mine. Never may I lay my wet cheek upon the foot under which is inscribed the name of Leontion or Ternissa! Leontion. Do not make us melancholy: never let us think that the time can come when we shall lose our friends. Glory, literature, philosophy, have this advantage over friendship: remove one object from them, and others fill the void; remove one from friendship, one only, and not the earth, nor the universality of worlds, no, nor the intellect that soars above and comprehends them, can replace it. Epicurus. Dear Leontion! always amiable, always graceful! how lovely do you now appear to me! what beauteous action accompanied your words! Leontion. I used none whatever. Epicurus. That white arm was then, as it is now, over the shoulder of Ternissa; and her breath imparted a fresh bloom to your cheek, a new music to your voice. No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that of woman for woman. In youth you love one above the others of your sex: in riper age you hate all, more or less, in proportion to similarity of accomplishments and pursuits; which sometimes (I wish it |
