Here, there, happy in flight, intoxicated in pause, from object
to object, point to point, now in the meadow, now on the heights,
now lingering to penetrate the groves and observe the processions,
then lost in efforts to pursue the paths and streams which trended
mazily into dim perspectives to end finally in-- Ah, what might
be a fitting end to scene so beautiful! What adequate mysteries
were hidden behind an introduction so marvellous! Here and there,
the speech was beginning, his gaze wandered, so he could not help
the conviction, forced by the view, and as the sum of it all,
that there was peace in the air and on the earth, and invitation
everywhere to come and lie down here and be at rest.

Suddenly a revelation dawned upon him--the Grove was, in fact,
a temple--one far-reaching, wall-less temple!

Never anything like it!

The architect had not stopped to pother about columns and porticos,
proportions or interiors, or any limitation upon the epic he sought
to materialize; he had simply made a servant of Nature--art can
go no further. So the cunning son of Jupiter and Callisto built
the old Arcadia; and in this, as in that, the genius was Greek.

From the bridge Ben-Hur went forward into the nearest valley.

He came to a flock of sheep. The shepherd was a girl, and she
beckoned him, "Come!"

Farther on, the path was divided by an altar--a pedestal of black
gneiss, capped with a slab of white marble deftly foliated, and on
that a brazier of bronze holding a fire. Close by it, a woman,
seeing him, waved a wand of willow, and as he passed called him,
"Stay!" And the temptation in her smile was that of passionate
youth.

On yet further, he met one of the processions; at its head a
troop of little girls, nude except as they were covered with
garlands, piped their shrill voices into a song; then a troop
of boys, also nude, their bodies deeply sun-browned, came dancing
to the song of the girls; behind them the procession, all women,
bearing baskets of spices and sweets to the altars--women clad in
simple robes, careless of exposure. As he went by they held their
hands to him, and said, "Stay, and go with us." One, a Greek, sang a
verse from Anacreon:

"For to-day I take or give;
For to-day I drink and live;
For to-day I beg or borrow;
Who knows about the silent morrow?"

But he pursued his way indifferent, and came next to a grove luxuriant,
in the heart of the vale at the point where it would be mo