"If ghosts, my sons, do feel anything after death, my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent coming to me here!" "This is a privileged tomb; to my family and descendants has been conceded the right of visiting this place as often as they please." "This is an eternal habitation; here lie I; here I shall lie for ever." "Reader! if you doubt that the soul survives, make your oblation and a prayer for me; and you shall understand!" The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by those pathetic suggestions.

It was long ago that after visiting the banks of the Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of Phaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for all arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to what might lie beyond its "flaming barriers." And at the age of sixty he had no misgivings.

His elegant and self-complacent but far from unamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed him.

It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine aristocratic manners, with "a rampart," through which he himself never broke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him.

Gay, animated, content with his old age [144] as it was, the aged student still took a lively interest in studious youth .-- Could Marius inform him of any such, now known to him in Rome?
What did the young men learn, just then?
and how?
In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young student, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucian himself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming along briskly--a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the sane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn of feature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for fine glancings at the stars.