March 2

The olive leaf, the ivied wand, the sword in myrtle drest—

Each relic of the shadowy land—now wakes a vision blest.

ALL around, in those well-ordered precincts, were quiet signs of wealth and a noble taste—a taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with, consisting almost exclusively of the remains of older art, here arranged and harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so delicate, as to seem really derivative from a spirit fairer than any which lay within the resources of the ancient world. It was the old way of true Renaissance, the way of nature with her roses, the divine way with the body of man, and it may be with his very soul—conceiving the new organism, by no sudden and abrupt creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements all of which had indeed lived and died many times. The fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the precious corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave thought and intellectual purpose.

WALTER PATER, Marius the Epicurean

AND AN IDEAL