16 



ses. It is here that statesmen, and poets and philosophers 

 have retired, and moulded those divine conceptions Avhich 

 have resulted in the advancement and elevation of man- 

 kind. It was upon such a retreat that that noblest Ro- 

 man,* styled by onef "the most wise, most worthy, 

 most happy and the greatest of all mankind," entered 

 after he had made his native city the mistress of the 

 world. In that venerated solitude, to which many a pil- 

 grim step turned in the succeeding ages of his country's 

 history, wiser than he who, in later times, 



ExcLcinged an empire for a cell, — 



he forgot alike his glories and their cares, and conceived 

 that illustrious sentiment, which could never have arisen 

 in an ignoble or ambitious mind, Nunquam Tnlnus solus 

 qudm cum solus. From the rose-beds of Psestum, rich 

 in the bloom of their double harvest,^ was wafted that 

 breath of flowers, which ages ago stirred and mingled 

 with the sublimest of human emotions in " Rome's least 

 mortal mind:" from that Psestum, whose fragrant odors 

 yet faint upon the summer gale, amidst the ruins of 

 man's less durable achievements; that Paistum, where 

 still 



The air is sweet with violets, running wild 



Mid broken pieces and fallen capitals ; 



Sweet as when Tully, writing down his thoughts, 



Those thoughts so precious and so lately lost, 



(Turning to thee, divine philosophy, 



Ever at hand to calm his troubled soul,) 



Sailed slowly by two thousand years ago, 



For Athens 5 when a ship, if northeast winds 



Blew from the Paestan gardens, slacked her course. Rogers. 



We have read, with ennobling emotions, in our school- 

 boy days, of the reluctance with which the royal gardener 



* Scipio. t Cowley. 



t Biferique rosaria Peesti. — Virg. 



