rs--life painless and fearless, needing nothing we can give, replete
with its own wealth, unmoved by prayer and promise, untouched by anger."

Do you remember that hymn, as one may call it, of Lucretius to Death, to
Death which does not harm us. "For as we knew no hurt of old, in ages
when the Carthaginian thronged against us in war, and the world was
shaken with the shock of fight, and dubious hung the empire over all
things mortal by sea and land, even so careless, so unmoved, shall we
remain, in days when we shall no more exist, when the bond of body and
soul that makes our life is broken. Then naught shall move us, nor wake
a single sense, not though earth with sea be mingled, and sea with sky."
There is no hell, he cries, or, like Omar, he says, "Hell is the vision
of a soul on fire."

Your true Tityus, gnawed by the vulture, is only the slave of passion and
of love; your true Sisyphus (like Lord Salisbury in _Punch_) is only the
politician, striving always, never attaining; the stone rolls down again
from the hill-crest, and thunders far along the plain.

Thus his philosophy, which gives him such a delightful sense of freedom,
is rejected after all these years of trial by men. They feel that since
those remotest days

"_Quum Venus in silvis jungebat corpora amantum_,"

they have travelled the long, the weary way Lucretius describes to little
avail, if they may not keep their hopes and fears. Robbed of these we
are robbed of all; it serves us nothing to have conquered the soil and
fought the winds and waves, to have built cities, and tamed fire, if the
world is to be "dispeopled of its dreams." Better were the old life we
started from, and dreams therewith, better the free days--

"_Novitas tum florida mundi_
_Pabula dia tulit, miseris mortablibus ampla_;"

than wealth or power, and neither hope nor fear, but one certain end of
all before the eyes of all.

Thus the heart of man has answered, and will answer Lucretius, the
noblest Roman poet, and the least beloved, who sought, at last, by his
own hand, they say, the doom that Virgil waited for in the season
appointed.

TO A YOUNG AMERICAN BOOK-HUNTER

_To Philip Dodsworth, Esq., New York_.

Dear Dodsworth,--Let me congratulate you on having joined the army of
book-hunters. "Everywhere have I sought peace and found it nowhere,"
says the blessed Thomas a Kempis, "save in a corner with a book." Whether
that good monk wrote the "D