[14] AND Marius, for his part, was grave enough.

The discourse of Cornelius Fronto, with its wide prospect over the human, the spiritual, horizon, had set him on a review--on a review of the isolating narrowness, in particular, of his own theoretic scheme.

Long after the very latest roses were faded, when "the town" had departed to country villas, or the baths, or the war, he remained behind in Rome; anxious to try the lastingness of his own Epicurean rose-garden; setting to work over again, and deliberately passing from point to point of his old argument with himself, down to its practical conclusions.

That age and our own have much in common--many difficulties and hopes.

Let the reader pardon me if here and there I seem to be passing from Marius to his modern representatives--from Rome, to Paris or London.
What really were its claims as a theory of practice, of the sympathies that determine [15] practice?
It had been a theory, avowedly, of loss and gain (so to call it) of an economy.