The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-02-08
THAT BRING GLAD rIDINGs OF GOOD 7HINGsl'
NEW ORLEANS, SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 8, 1874

NEW ORLEANS, SUNDAY N
great mind. Given a salvage of fve-and thirty
out of o hundred and forty-two, and yet the
whole of this wreck SO marvellous in beauty
surely that which is gone for ever must have
included much that is equal, probably some
thing far superior to what time has spared.
There is a curious fact recorded by Pliny the
younger, which speaks for itself. A Spaniard
of Gadiz had, only some five m onths before the
date of our story journeyed from the ends of
the earth to Rome merely to obtain sight of
Livy. There were imperial shows in the TO-
rum and hipPodrome and circus at the time;
there were races on foot, and on horseback,
and in chariots fights there were of all kinds
men against wild animals, men against each
other with the sword, with the deadly cestus;
wrestling Matches and the dreadful battles
of gladiators, five hundred q side; in short,
all the glitter and the glories and the horrors
of the old classic arena in its eliminating
days. There was also q strange new Greek
fence, since inherited by Naples, and preserved
all through the middle ages down to this hour,
with the straight, plant, three-edged raper,
to witness which even ladies thronged with
interest and partisanship. But the Spaniard
from Gades (Cervantes might surely have had
| such an ancestor) asked only to be shown Titus
Livius. Which in yonder group is Livyf The
wayfarer cared for nothing else that Roman
| civilization or Roman vanity could show him.
The great writer was pointed out, and then
| tho traveller, having satisfied the motive which
| had brought him to Rome, went back to Ostia,
where his lugger, If may call it, lay Il
picture it kind of wing-and-ving" rugged
vessel j and, refusing to profane his eyes with
any meaner spectacle set sail again for Spain,
where his youth had been illumined with the
| visions presented to sympathetic imagination
by the most charming of classical historians.
The Spaniards from an immemorial age are
deemed to have been heroes and appreciators
of heroes and no doubt this literary pilgrim,
once more at home, recurred many q time
long pondering, to the glorious deeds of the
Fdbia Gems.
How many other similar examples Livy may
have recorded for him we moderns cannot say
Before his gaze arose the finished column from
the fragments whereof we have gathered up
some scattered bricks and marbles. Niebuhr
had to deal with q ruin, and no who ought to
have guessed at and reconstructed the plan
of it, has contented himself with trying to do
molsh it's form.
Long previous to the date of our tale, Au-
gustus, trembling under the despotism of his
wife Livia, had begun to repeat those lament
ations with which scholars are familiar) for
the times when M@cenas had guided his active
day, and Virgil and Horace had beguiled his
lettered evenings. Virgil as is well known, had
been tormented with asthma, and ought posi-
bly, to have lived much longer but for some un-
recorded imprudence. Horace, as is likewise well
known, had been tormented with sore eye
lids - and with wine; he was blear-
eyed" (lippus). Augustus, therefore, used to
soy wittily, he placed them on each hand
Of him at the symposium, which had been re-
Gently borrowed in Italy from the Greeks, but
had not yet degenerated into the debauchery
and extravaganza into which they afterwards
sank more and more deeply during successive
reignS, az sit between, signs and tears" IL
suepiriis sedeo ct en- lGckryais. But no had long
lost these socalled signs and tears at either
hand of him. The signs and tears were now
his own.
CHAPTER II.
Our chronicle commences in Campanis, with
the Tyrrhenian Sea (now the southerly waters
of the Gulf of Genoa) on q travellers left hand
If he looks north. It was fair evening in
autumn, a. We have remarked, during that age
and state of the world the broad outlines of
which we have briefly given. Along the
Appiau, or, as it long afterward came to be also
called the Trajan Wsy, the queen of roads,
conveyance drawn by two borses, a carriage of
the common hackney description, not unlike
one species of the eetiGra used by the modern
Italians, was rolling sHiftIy-- north ward be-
tween the stage of MnturpD aud the next
stage, which was lonely post-house few
miles south of the interesting town of
FOrmi@-not Forum Appii, or the 1Aree TarerKs.
a place moro than fifty miles away in the di-
rectiOn of Rome, and upon the same road.