July 2

Let the Peace of God rule in your hearts.

SURELY, in this strange new society he had known for the first time to-day—in this holy family, like a fenced garden—was the fulfilment of all the judgments and preferences of that half-known friend, which of late years had been so often his protection in the perplexities of his life. Here was, it might be, if not the cure, yet the solace and anodyne of his great sorrows; of the constitutional sorrowfulness, which might be by no means peculiar to himself, but which had made his life, at all events, indeed like a long “disease of the spirit.” The very air of this place seemed to come out to meet him, as if full of mercy in its mere contact; like a soothing touch to an aching limb.

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean

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