knowledge with the intellectual gains of former ages and
other nations. Honour, too, to our King, and, that I may be just, to
his illustrious wife; for wherever in the Grecian world a friend of the
Muses appears, whether he is investigator, poet, architect, sculptor,
artist, actor, or singer, he is drawn to Alexandria, and, that he may
not be idle, work is provided. Palaces spring from the earth quickly
enough."

"Yet not like mushrooms," Hermon interrupted, "but as the noblest, most
carefully executed creations of art-sculpture and painting provide for
their decoration both without and within."

"And," Proclus went on, "abodes are erected for the gods as well as for
men, both Egyptian and Hellenic divinities, each in their own style, and
so beautiful that it must be a pleasure for them to dwell under the new
roof."

"Go to the gardens of the Paneum, friends!" cried young Philotas;
and Hermon, nodding to Thyone, added gaily: "Then you must climb the
mountain and keep your eyes open while you are ascending the winding
path. You will find enough to do to look at all the new sights. You
will stand there with dry feet, but your soul will bathe in eternal,
imperishable, divine beauty."

"The foe of beauty!" exclaimed Proclus, pointing to the sculptor with a
scornful glance; but Daphne, full of joyous emotion, whispered to Hermon
as he approached her: "Eternal, divine beauty! To hear it thus praised
by you makes me happy."

"Yes," cried the artist, "what else should I call what has so often
filled me with the deepest rapture? The Greek language has no more
fitting expression for the grand and lofty things that hovered before
me, and which I called by that chameleon of a word. Yet I have a
different meaning from what appears before you at its sound. Were I
to call it truth, you would scarcely understand me, but when I conjure
before my soul the image of Alexandria, with all that springs from it,
all that is moving, creating, and thriving with such marvellous freedom,
naturalness, and variety within it, it is not alone the beauty that
pleases the eye which delights me; I value more the sound natural
growth, the genuine, abundant life. To truth, Daphne, as I mean it."

He raised his goblet as he spoke and drank to her.

She willingly pledged him, but, after removing her lips from the cup,
she eagerly exclaimed: "Show it to us, with the mind which animates
it, in perfect form, and I should not know wherein it was to be
d