trow. By Jove, I think I should show you what it is to deal in the old root-and-branch fashion, for once. would let all the world see that I can let blood."

I

"I'll be bound you would," quoth Dromo, rubbing his chin; "and I hope the world would thank you for your pains."

"Come, come, jolly boy," quoth the tonsor, "there is a salve for every sore. Here is a cup of such wine as the emperor himself would not disdain to moisten his lips withal. Taste-drink-forget the cut, and sit more steady the next time you hear such a story. May Hermes be my guide, good friends, if he did not shake as much under my hands as if the Christians had attempted to make a meal of himself; and if they had done so, would they not have had a savoury banquet? Ha! ha! ha!"

"Ha! ha!" re-echoed half the company, and Dromo was fain to accept of the cup that was offered him, instead of attempting to make any further impression on the jocular barber. But before he had seen the foundation of it, Sabinus himself re-appeared at the door, and summoned us to go with him. The guests of Virro, however, prevailed on him to enter for a moment, and the centurion having taken his seat in the midst of the company, their conversation was resumed.

"You may say what you will of them," quoth one of the company, who I think had not before spoken since our entrance, "you may say what you please about them, but I believe I have seen a little more of them than any one among you all, and I cannot bring myself to believe every thing I hear said concerning their superstition. I neither know, nor desire to know, what their faith is ; but, by Jupiter, in point of practice I have known some of them behave so as might shame the best of ourselves; and I shall make bold to say, that if their religion does not create goodness, it at least does not always extinguish it."

"Ay, master goldsmith," quoth the barber, "you were always fond of having an opinion of your own; and, pray, what is it that you have had occasion to know

about the Christians, more than the rest of us who hear you? If you mean that you have seen some of them die bravely in the amphitheatre, why, that we have all heard of at least, and I think nobody disputes it."

"No, master barber," replied he, "that is not what I was thinking of; for, by Jove, whoever has lived in Rome as much as I have done, must be pretty well convinced that a bold death is no evidence of an innocent life. Why, I have seen your common thief-knave, when he knew he could do no better, brace you his nerves for the extremity, and die like a very Hercules. He must be a pitiful fellow, indeed, that would shame himself in the eyes of a whole city. If it were wished that wretches should expire like themselves, I take it, the best way would be to make them expire by themselves. No, that was not what I was thinking of. By Jove, I would rather judge of a man by his living than his dying—ay, or of a woman either."

True, true; 'tis all true you say," rejoins Virro; "and pray, what have you got to tell us about the life, then, of all the Christians ?"

"Not much," said he; "not much, master barber. Only, if they were all like one that I know, I should not be ashamed to commend them—ay, if it were before the face of the emperor himself. But you shall hear. My old mother (peace to her manes), was passing the Salarian one day last year, and there came by a hot-headed young spark, driving four abreast in a chariot as fiercely as if he had been a second Nero in the Circus. He called out, that I believe; but the dame was deaf, and whether he tried to pull up or no, I know not, but over she went, and one of the horses trod upon her old limbs as she fell. Another of the same sort came close behind, and I have been told they were running a race ; but however that might be, on they both passed like a whirlwind, and my poor mother was left by herself among the flying dust. But the gods had mercy on her, they sent a kind heart to her aid; and, by all Olympus, it beats in the breast of a Christian."

"So the Christian took up your old mother and was kind to her, friend Marcus ?"

"Kind!—why, she was carried into one of the stateliest, grandest villas on that side of Tiber, and tended for six weeks by a noble lady, as if she had been, not my mother, but her own; and this lady, friends-by Jove, I suspected it not for long after-this lady was a Christian; but I shall not say how I found it out, nor would I mention the thing at all but among honest men and good friends. She is a Christian, that is certain. I would give more gold than I ever showed in my booth at the Saturnalia, rather than hear she was one of those whom the Prætorians seized last night. But I shall hear, when I return to the city, both where they were taken and who they were."

"Where they were taken !" said the stranger, whose appearance I described a little while ago; "I can tell you well enough where they were taken, my good man; it was not far from the Appian Way, within one of the old monuments there,-the monument, it is said, of one of the noble branches of the Sempronii."

"Of the Sempronii ?" said the goldsmith. "Phoebus, Apollo, shield us !" and I think his colour changed as suddenly as ever it did in the cheek of a damsel, and from that moment he became as silent as hitherto he had been communicative.

The rest of the company were as quiet as he for some little space. The swarthy stranger, the silence yet continuing, arose from his seat, laid a piece of money upon the table, and moved towards the door, as if to take his departure. The barber also rose up as if to assist him in mounting, but he said to him, "Sit still, I pray you, my friend;" at the same time beckoning with his finger to the goldsmith, who, with a very dejected countenance, followed him into the street of the village. What passed between them there we perceived not; but the artificer re-entered not the chamber till some moments after we had heard the departing tread of the stranger's horses. When he did come in again, he had the appearance of being in great confusion, and drank off the cup of wine which stood before Sabinus, in a way that showed him quite unaware of what he was VOL. II.-E

doing. Shortly after he also took his departure, and we ourselves, bidding adieu to the jovial tonsor, walked slowly towards the paternal mansion of the centu

rion.

CHAPTER V.

AND we very soon reached it; for, as I have already said, it was situated but a little way out from the village. Some thick and tall hedges of beech intervened between it and the public way, which then at last took a direction different from that of the stream along whose banks we had been riding, leaving its cool waters to glide away towards the left among the green meadows and peaceful groves of the ancient Sabinus. Close to the house itself flourished, among other trees, the sad cypressthe only one the proprietor was at last to take with him. The dwelling itself was modest and low-roofed, having no external ornament but a single portico, with a few statues ranged between its pillars. We entered by this portico, and found the feeble old man sitting by himself (for his wife had already retired to her own chamber), in an apartment immediately adjacent, wherein the beams of the moon, having partial access, were mingled with the almost equally soft and subdued light of a painted lamp suspended from the ceiling. The father of my friend had all the appearance of being sinking apace beneath the progressive influence of the most hopeless of maladies-old age; yet he received me with an air, not of cheerfulness, but of kindness. The evening breeze, which found admission to his couch through the open pillars of the porch, he seemed to be inhaling eagerly, while his countenance exhibited in its wan and faint lines the pleasure with which its coolness affected him. Beside him were placed baskets of fragrant roses, gathered from the abundance of his gar

dens. The young Vernæ,* who from time to time brought in these newly pulled flowers, came into the chamber with a decent appearance of sobriety and concern; but they were never long gone before we could hear them laughing and shouting again at their play. "Poor children!" quoth the old man, observing that his son heard the noise with some displeasure; "check not the poor children in their mirth, Kæso;-why should they trouble themselves with thinking of the not remote victim of Orcus ?"

To which the centurion replied, somewhat softening as he spoke that loud and cheerful tone with which he was accustomed to address all persons, "Courage, my dear father, you must not speak so of yourself. Cerberus, I perceive, has only been making an ineffectual snap at you, and you will be growing younger again after all this."

At which the old man shook his head, without any external sign of emotion, and replied, in a low monotonous voice, "Younger in the wrong way, my boy; for I become every day smaller in body, and feebler, and less able to do any thing to help myself. Nor am I unconscious that I have seen my due proportion of time. And yet, O fast sliding gentle brook, which I see between these paternal trees, I am still loath to exchange thee for Styx, and to lose the cheerful and sacred light of the sun and moon. I wish only I were once more able to repair with thy stream to the banks of Father Tiber, that I might salute the good emperor, who has been so kind to my son, and who would treat even an old broken-down and long-retired soldier, like myself, with more favour than is to be expected from Rhadamanthus. Trajan lives (long may he live) and is in vigour, and may carry whither he will his eagles, which never droop their wings; but I—an old man and a feeble-feel full surely that it is the lot of human nature to tend downwards at last. As clouds let down their drops, so the many-peopled earth lets fall dismissed ghosts upon the Stygian shore."

While he was saying this, and other things in the

* Children of domestic slaves.