rying an ampulla or bottle in one hand, and in the
other a traveller's staff, a pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers; and
one of the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise.--One chief
source of the master's knowledge of healing had been observation of the
remedies resorted to by animals labouring under disease or pain--what
leaf or berry the lizard or dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; to
which purpose for long years he had led the life of a wanderer, in wild
places. The boy took his place as the last comer, a little way behind
the group of worshippers who stood in front of the image. There, with
uplifted face, the palms of his two hands raised and open before him,
and taught by the priest, he said his collect of thanksgiving and
prayer (Aristeides has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadae) to
the Inspired Dreams:--

"O ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilled the waves of
sorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp of safety before those who
travel by sea and land, be pleased, in your great condescension, though
ye be equal in glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri, and your
lot in immortal youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer, which in
sleep and vision ye have inspired. Order it aright, I pray you,
according to your loving-kindness to men. Preserve me [40] from
sickness; and endue my body with such a measure of health as may
suffice it for the obeying of the spirit, that I may pass my days
unhindered and in quietness."

On the last morning of his visit Marius entered the shrine again, and
just before his departure the priest, who had been his special director
during his stay at the place, lifting a cunningly contrived panel,
which formed the back of one of the carved seats, bade him look
through. What he saw was like the vision of a new world, by the
opening of some unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling-place. He
looked out upon a long-drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect,
hidden, by the peculiar conformation of the locality, from all points
of observation but this. In a green meadow at the foot of the steep
olive-clad rocks below, the novices were taking their exercise. The
softly sloping sides of the vale lay alike in full sunlight; and its
distant opening was closed by a beautifully formed mountain, from which
the last wreaths of morning mist were rising under the heat. It might
have seemed the very presentment of a land of hope, its hollows brimful
of a sh