iends
for a country walk and an outdoor lunch in one of their favourite
meeting places.

[Footnote 2: A poet Julius Paulus is mentioned once by Aulus Gellius
in the _Attic Nights_, in terms which seem to suggest both his worldly
prosperity and his cultivated tastes. But the suggestion for his
character in this imaginary sketch has come, in reality, from
generous and ardent young students of to-day, turning reluctantly
from their life in Athens to patient achievement in the countries
whose sons they are.]

This place, an unfrequented precinct of Aphrodite, about two hours
distant from the marketplace, lay below the rocky summit of Hymettus
within the hollow of the foot hills. The walk was an easy one, but
the forenoon sun was warm and the young pedestrians upon their
arrival paused in grateful relief by a spring under a large plane
tree which still bore its leaves of wintry gold. The clear water,
a boon in arid Attica, completed their temperate lunch of bread and
eggs, dried figs and native wine. After eating they climbed farther
up the hillside and stretched themselves out in the soft grass that
lurked among boulders in the shade of a beech tree. Aulus, with the
air of performing an habitual action, produced a book. To-day it
proved to be a choice old volume of Ovid, which he had secured at
a bargain on the quay at Brindisi, convinced that it had belonged,
fully one hundred and fifty years ago, to the poet himself. It had
gone far, he said, toward consoling him for the loss of an original
Second Book of the _AEneid_ snatched up by a friend in the Image
Market at Rome. The Ovid was for Paulus's edification. Aulus unrolled
his treasure and read aloud "an accurate description of this very
spot:"

Violet crests of Hymettus a-flower
Neighbour a fountain consecrate.
Yielding and green is the turf. In a bower
Trees low-growing meet and mate;
Arbutus shadeth the green grass kirtle,
Sweet the scent of rosemary;
Fragrant the bay and the bloom of the myrtle;
Nay, nor fail thee here to see
Tamarisks delicate, box-wood masses,
Lordly pine and clover low.
Legions of leaves and the top of the grasses
Stir with healing zephyrs slow.

The reader's indifference to what confronted his eyes, added to his
dull regard for the verbal accuracy of ancient verses, shrivelled
the modern poet's ardent humour. Was this an example of the
intellectual enlightenment awaiting him, he had so fondly hoped, i