happy, while she is fallen?--fallen, and for ever?'
'And why for ever?'
'As ashes cannot be rekindled--as love once dead can never revive, so
freedom departed from a people is never regained. But talk we not of
these matters unsuited to thee.'
'To me, oh! thou errest. I, too, have my sighs for Greece; my cradle
was rocked at the foot of Olympus; the gods have left the mountain, but
their traces may be seen--seen in the hearts of their worshippers, seen
in the beauty of their clime: they tell me it is beautiful, and I have
felt its airs, to which even these are harsh--its sun, to which these
skies are chill. Oh! talk to me of Greece! Poor fool that I am, I can
comprehend thee! and methinks, had I yet lingered on those shores, had I
been a Grecian maid whose happy fate it was to love and to be loved, I
myself could have armed my lover for another Marathon, a new Plataea.
Yes, the hand that now weaves the roses should have woven thee the olive
crown!'
'If such a day could come!' said Glaucus, catching the enthusiasm of the
blind Thessalian, and half rising.--'But no! the sun has set, and the
night only bids us be forgetful--and in forgetfulness be gay--weave
still the roses!'
But it was with a melancholy tone of forced gaiety that the Athenian
uttered the last words: and sinking into a gloomy reverie, he was only
wakened from it, a few minutes afterwards, by the voice of Nydia, as she
sang in a low tone the following words, which he had once taught her:--
THE APOLOGY FOR PLEASURE
I
Who will assume the bays
That the hero wore?
Wreaths on the Tomb of Days
Gone evermore!
Who shall disturb the brave,
Or one leaf on their holy grave?
The laurel is vowed to them,
Leave the bay on its sacred stem!
But this, the rose, the fading rose,
Alike for slave and freeman grows.
II
If Memory sit beside the dead
With tombs her only treasure;
If Hope is lost and Freedom fled,
The more excuse for Pleasure.
Come, weave the wreath, the roses weave,
The rose at least is ours:
To feeble hearts our fathers leave,
In pitying scorn, the flowers!
III
On the summit, worn and hoary,
Of Phyle's solemn hill,
The tramp of the brave is still!
And still in the saddening Mart,
The pulse of that mighty heart,
Whose very blood was glory!
Glaucopis forsakes her own,
The angry gods forget us;
But yet, the blue streams along,
Walk the feet of the silver Song;
And the night-bird wakes the moon;
And the bees in the blushing noon
Haunt the heart of the old Hymettus.
We are fallen, but not forlorn,
If something is left to cherish;
As Love was the earliest born,
So Love is the last to perish.
IV
Wreathe then the roses, wreathe
The BEAUTIFUL still is ours,
While the stream shall flow and the sky shall glow,
The BEAUTIFUL still is ours!
Whatever is fair, or soft, or bright,
In the lap of day or the arms of night,
Whispers our soul of Greece--of Greece,
And hushes our care with a voice of peace.
Wreathe then the roses, wreathe!
They tell me of earlier hours;
And I hear the heart of my Country breathe
From the lips of the Stranger's flowers.
Chapter V
NYDIA ENCOUNTERS JULIA. INTERVIEW OF THE HEATHEN SISTER AND CONVERTED
BROTHER. AN ATHENIAN'S NOTION OF CHRISTIANITY.
'WHAT happiness to Ione! what bliss to be ever by the side of Glaucus,
to hear his voice!--And she too can see him!'
Such was the soliloquy of the blind girl, as she walked alone and at
twilight to the house of her new mistress, whither Glaucus had already
preceded her. Suddenly she was interrupted in her fond thoughts by a
female voice.
'Blind flower-girl, whither goest thou? There is no pannier under thine
arm; hast thou sold all thy flowers?'
The person thus accosting Nydia was a lady of a handsome but a bold and
unmaidenly countenance: it was Julia, the daughter of Diomed. Her veil
was half raised as she spoke; she was accompanied by Diomed himself, and
by a slave carrying a lantern before them--the merchant and his daughter
were returning home from a supper at one of their neighbors'.
'Dost thou not remember my voice?' continued Julia. 'I am the daughter
of Diomed the wealthy.'
'Ah! forgive me; yes, I recall the tones of your voice. No, noble
Julia, I have no flowers to sell.'
'I heard that thou wert purchased by the beautiful Greek Glaucus; is
that true, pretty slave?' asked Julia.
'I serve the Neapolitan, Ione,' replied Nydia, evasively.
'Ah! and it is true, then...'
'Come, come!' interrupted Diomed, with his cloak up to his mouth, 'the
night grows cold; I cannot stay here while you prate to that blind girl:
come, let her follow you home, if you wish to speak to her.'
'Do, child,' said Julia, with the air of one not accustomed to be
refused; 'I have much to ask of thee: come.'
'I cannot this night, it grows late,' answered Nydia. 'I must be at
home; I am not free, noble Julia.'
'What, the meek Ione will chide thee?--Ay, I doubt not she is a second
Thalestris. But come, then, to-morrow: do--remember I have been thy
friend of old.'
'I will obey thy wishes,' answered Nydia; and Diomed again impatiently
summoned his daughter: she was obliged to proceed, with the main
question she had desired to put to Nydia unasked.
Meanwhile we return to Ione. The interval of time that had elapsed that
day between the first and second visit of Glaucus had not been too gaily
spent: she had received a visit from her brother. Since the night he
had assisted in saving her from the Egyptian, she had not before seen
him.
Occupied with his own thoughts--thoughts of so serious and intense a
nature--the young priest had thought little of his sister; in truth,
men, perhaps of that fervent order of mind which is ever aspiring above
earth, are but little prone to the earthlier affections; and it had been
long since Apaecides had sought those soft and friendly interchanges of
thought, those sweet confidences, which in his earlier youth had bound
him to Ione, and which are so natural to that endearing connection which
existed between them.
Ione, however, had not ceased to regret his estrangement: she attributed
it, at present, to the engrossing duties of his severe fraternity. And
often, amidst all her bright hopes, and her new attachment to her
betrothed--often, when she thought of her brother's brow prematurely
furrowed, his unsmiling lip, and bended frame, she sighed to think that
the service of the gods could throw so deep a shadow over that earth
which the gods created.
But this day when he visited her there was a strange calmness on his
features, a more quiet and self-possessed expression in his sunken eyes,
than she had marked for years. This apparent improvement was but
momentary--it was a false calm, which the least breeze could ruffle.
'May the gods bless thee, my brother!' said she, embracing him.
'The gods! Speak not thus vaguely; perchance there is but one God!'
'My brother!'
'What if the sublime faith of the Nazarene be true? What if God be a
monarch--One--Invisible--Alone? What if these numerous, countless
deities, whose altars fill the earth, be but evil demons, seeking to
wean us from the true creed? This may be the case, Ione!'
'Alas! can we believe it? or if we believed, would it not be a
melancholy faith answered the Neapolitan. 'What! all this beautiful
world made only human!--mountain disenchanted of its Oread--the waters
of their Nymph--that beautiful prodigality of faith, which makes
everything divine, consecrating the meanest flowers, bearing celestial
whispers in the faintest breeze--wouldst thou deny this, and make the
earth mere dust and clay? No, Apaecides: all that is brightest in our
hearts is that very credulity which peoples the universe with gods.'
Ione answered as a believer in the poesy of the old mythology would
answer. We may judge by that reply how obstinate and hard the contest
which Christianity had to endure among the heathens. The Graceful
Superstition was never silent; every, the most household, action of
their lives was entwined with it--it was a portion of life itself, as
the flowers are a part of the thyrsus. At every incident they recurred
to a god, every cup of wine was prefaced by a libation; the very
garlands on their thresholds were dedicated to some divinity; their
ancestors themselves, made holy, presided as Lares over their hearth and
hall. So abundant was belief with them, that in their own climes, at
this hour, idolatry has never thoroughly been outrooted: it changes but
its objects of worship; it appeals to innumerable saints where once it
resorted to divinities; and it pours its crowds, in listening reverence,
to oracles at the shrines of St. Januarius or St. Stephen, instead of to
those of Isis or Apollo.
But these superstitions were not to the early Christians the object of
contempt so much as of horror. They did not believe, with the quiet
scepticism of the heathen philosopher, that the gods were inventions of
the priests; nor even, with the vulgar, that, according to the dim light
of history, they had been mortals like themselves. They imagined the
heathen divinities to be evil spirits--they transplanted to Italy and to
Greece the gloomy demons of India and the East; and in Jupiter or in
Mars they shuddered at the representative of Moloch or of Satan.
Apaecides had not yet adopted formally the Christian faith, but he was
already on the brink of it. He already participated the doctrines of
Olinthus--he already imagined that the lively imaginations of the
heathen were the suggestions of the arch-enemy of mankind. The innocent
and natural answer of Ione made him shudder. He hastened to reply
vehemently, and yet so confusedly, that Ione feared for his reason more
than she dreaded his violence.
'Ah, my brother!' said she, 'these hard duties of thine have shattered
thy very sense. Come to me, Apaecides, my brother, my own brother; give
me thy hand, let me wipe the dew from thy brow--chide me not now, I
understand thee not; think only that Ione could not offend thee!'
'Ione,' said Apaecides, drawing her towards him, and regarding her
tenderly, 'can I think that this beautiful form, this kind heart, may be
destined to an eternity of torment?'
'Dii meliora! the gods forbid!' said Ione, in the customary form of
words by which her contemporaries thought an omen might be averted.
The words, and still more the superstition they implied, wounded the ear
of Apaecides. He rose, muttering to himself, turned from the chamber,
then, stopping, half way, gazed wistfully on Ione, and extended his
arms.
Ione flew to them in joy; he kissed her earnestly, and then he said:
'Farewell, my sister! when we next meet, thou mayst be to me as nothing;
take thou, then, this embrace--full yet of all the tender reminiscences
of childhood, when faith and hope, creeds, customs, interests, objects,
were the same to us. Now, the tie is to be broken!'
With these strange words he left the house.
The great and severest trial of the primitive Christians was indeed
this; their conversion separated them from their dearest bonds. They
could not associate with beings whose commonest actions, whose commonest
forms of speech, were impregnated with idolatry. They shuddered at the
blessing of love, to their ears it was uttered in a demon's name. This,
their misfortune, was their strength; if it divided them from the rest
of the world, it was to unite them proportionally to each other. They
were men of iron who wrought forth the Word of God, and verily the bonds
that bound them were of iron also!
Glaucus found Ione in tears; he had already assumed the sweet privilege
to console. He drew from her a recital of her interview with her
brother; but in her confused account of language, itself so confused to
one not prepared for it, he was equally at a loss with Ione to conceive
the intentions or the meaning of Apaecides.
'Hast thou ever heard much,' asked she, 'of this new sect of the
Nazarenes, of which my brother spoke?'
'I have often heard enough of the votaries,' returned Glaucus, 'but of
their exact tenets know I naught, save that in their doctrine there
seemeth something preternaturally chilling and morose. They live apart
from their kind; they affect to be shocked even at our simple uses of
garlands; they have no sympathies with the cheerful amusements of life;
they utter awful threats of the coming destruction of the world; they
appear, in one word, to have brought their unsmiling and gloomy creed
out of the cave of Trophonius. Yet,' continued Glaucus, after a slight
pause, 'they have not wanted men of great power and genius, nor
converts, even among the Areopagites of Athens. Well do I remember to
have heard my father speak of one strange guest at Athens, many years
ago; methinks his name was PAUL. My father was amongst a mighty crowd
that gathered on one of our immemorial hills to hear this sage of the
East expound: through the wide throng there rang not a single
murmur!--the jest and the roar, with which our native orators are
