istory serves us
well to this effect, but in the originals, not in the pages of the popular
epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to make us feel
the difference of epochs instead of the essential identity of man, and
even in the originals only to those who can recognize their own human
virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted and under strange
names, often interchanged. Martial is a poet of no good repute, and it
gives a man new thoughts to read his works dispassionately, and find in
this unseemly jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and
self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial,
to leave out these pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until
I found them for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand
things that help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of
the great Roman empire.

This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book--the
"Meditations" of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate gravity, the noble
forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there expressed
and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its writer, make
this book; a book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved.
Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feeling--those very mobile, those
not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies farther back: its lesson
comes more deeply home; when you have read, you carry away with you a
memory of the man himself; it is as though you had touched a royal hand,
looked into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another bond on
you thenceforth, binding you to life and to the love of virtue.

Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced by
Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain innocence, a
rugged austerity of joy, a sight of the stars, "the silence that there is
among the hills," something of the cold thrill of dawn, cling to his work
and give it a particular address to what is best in us. I do not know that
you learn a lesson; you need not--Mill did not--agree with any one of his
beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. Such are the best teachers: a dogma
learned is only a new error--the old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit
communicated is a perpetual possession. These best teachers climb beyond
teaching to the plane of art; it is themselves, and what is best in
themselves, that they communicate.

I shoul