Contrasting with the incurable insipidity even of what was most exquisite in the higher Roman life, of what was still truest to the primitive soul of goodness amid its evil, the new creation he now looked on--as it were a picture beyond the craft of any master of old pagan beauty--had indeed all the appropriate freshness of a "bride adorned for her husband." Things new and old seemed to be coming as if out of some goodly treasure-house, the brain full of science, the heart rich with various sentiment, possessing withal this surprising healthfulness, this reality of heart.
"You would hardly believe," writes Pliny,--to his own wife!--"what a longing for you possesses me.

Habit--that we have not been used to be apart--adds herein to the primary force of affection.

It is this keeps me awake at night fancying I see you beside me.

That is why my feet take me unconsciously to your sitting-room at those hours when I was wont to [112] visit you there.

That is why I turn from the door of the empty chamber, sad and ill-at-ease, like an excluded lover."-- There, is a real idyll from that family life, the protection of which had been the motive of so large a part of the religion of the Romans, still surviving among them; as it survived also in Aurelius, his disposition and aims, and, spite of slanderous tongues, in the attained sweetness of his interior life.