en
coupled to a prowling footstep, he yet advanced so noiselessly over the
soft floor-cloth, that he stood at Arvina's elbow, and overlooked the page
in which he was reading, before the young man was aware of his vicinity.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, after standing a moment, and observing with a soft
pleasant smile the abstraction of his visitor, "so thou readest Greek, and
art thyself a poet."

"A little of the first, my consul," replied Arvina, arising quickly to his
feet, with the ingenuous blood rushing to his brow at the detection. "But
wherefore shouldst thou believe me the second?"

"We statesmen," answered the consul, "are wont to study other men's
characters, as other men are wont to study books; and I have learned by
practice to draw quick conclusions from small signs. But in this instance,
the light in your eye, the curl of your expanded nostril, the half frown
on your brow, and the flush on your cheek, told me beyond a doubt that you
are a poet. And you are so, young man. I care not whether you have penned
as yet an elegy, or no--nevertheless, you are in soul, in temperament, in
fantasy, a poet. Do you love Homer?"

"Beyond all other writers I have ever met, in my small course of reading.
There is a majesty, a truth, an ever-burning fire, lustrous, yet natural
and most beneficent, like the sun's glory on a summer day, in his immortal
words, that kindles and irradiates, yet consumes not the soul; a grand
simplicity, that never strains for effect; a sweet pathos, that elicits
tears without evoking them; a melody that flows on, like the harmony of
the eternal sea, or, if we may call fancy to our aid, the music of the
spheres, telling us that like these the blind bard sang, because song was
his nature--was within, and must out--not bound by laws, or measured by
pedantic rules, but free, unfettered, and spontaneous as the billows,
which in its wild and many-cadenced sweep it most resembles."

"Ah! said I not," replied Cicero, "that you were a poet? And you have been
discoursing me most eloquent poetry; though not attuned to metre,
rythmical withal, and full of fancy. Ay! and you judge aright. He is the
greatest, as the first of poets; and surpassed all his followers as much
in the knowledge of the human heart with its ten thousands of conflicting
passions, as in the structure of the kingly verse, wherein he delineated
character as never man did, saving only he. But hold, Arvina. Though I
could willingly spend hours