August 2

A land where even the old are fair, And even the wise are merry of tongue.

HERE, surely! in its nest-like peace and warmth, its jealous exclusion of all that was against itself and its own immaculate naturalness, in the hedge set around the sacred thing on every side, this reinstitution of the family did but carry forward, and give effect to, the purposes, the kindness of Nature itself, friendly to man, at all those points, more especially, where it involved (by way of due recognition of some unfathomed divine condescension, in a certain fact or series of facts) pity, and a willing sacrifice of oneself, for the weak, for children and the aged, for the dead even. And then, for its constant outward token, its significant manner or index, it issued in a debonair grace, and some mystic attractiveness. . . . And still its grace was no mere simplicity. Things, new and old, seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house, the brain full of science, and the heart rich with various sentiment, possessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart.

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean

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