if by doing so I can more than make up the loss
by obtaining brighter glimpses of earth and sky. Had I not found
Christianity, Fausta, this would have been my religion. I should have
forsaken the philosophers, and gone forth into the fields, among the
eternal hills, upon the banks of the river, or the margin of the
ever-flowing ocean, and in the lessons there silently read to me, I
should, I think, have arrived at some very firm and comfortable faith in
God and immortality. And I am especially happy in this, that nature in
no way loses its interest or value, because I now draw truth from a more
certain source. I take the same pleasure as before, in observing and
contemplating her various forms, and the clearer light of Christianity
brings to view a thousand beauties, to which before I was insensible.
Just as in reading a difficult author, although you may have reached his
sense in some good degree, unaided, yet a judicious commentator points
out excellences, and unfolds truths, which you had either wholly
overlooked, or but imperfectly comprehended.

All without the city walls, as within, bore witness to the graciousness
of the Emperor in the prolonged holiday he had granted the people. It
was as if the Saturnalia had arrived. Industry, such as there ever is,
was suspended; all were sitting idle, or thronging some game, or
gathering in noisy groups about some mountebank. As we advanced farther,
and came just beyond the great road leading to Tibur, we passed the
school of the celebrated gladiator Sosia, at the door of which there had
just arrived from the amphitheatre, a cart bearing home the bodies of
such as had been slain the preceding day, presenting a disgusting
spectacle of wounds, bruises, and flowing blood.

'There was brave fighting yesterday,' said Milo; these are but a few out
of all that fell. The first day's sport was an hundred of the trained
gladiators, most of them from the school of Sosia, set against a hundred
picked captives of all nations. Not less than a half of each number got
it. These fellows look as if they had done their best. You've fought
your last battle, old boys--unless you have a bout with Charon, who will
be loath, I warrant you beforehand, to ferry over such a slashed and
swollen company. Now ought you in charity,' he continued, addressing a
half-naked savage, who was helping to drag the bodies from the cart, 'to
have these trunks well washed ere you bury them, or pitch them into the
Ti