The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-07-21
The Younger Pliny.
Pembroke, n. II.

The most enlightened Christian be-
nevolence could not well have devised
anything more wise and noble than the
benefactions which Pliny made in his
lifetime to his beloved native place
and the requests by which these were
supplemented. He gave public Ii
brary to Como and the interest of a
large amount for its maintenance. He
established a school of rhetoric there,
agreeing to pay third part of the sal
airy of the professor, provided the rest
were subscribed by the citizens. He
also pledged a considerable sum, Sc
cured by sort of mortgage upon
landed property of his along the lake,
the interest of which was to be applied
to the education of the children of poor
gentlemen and to providing dowries
for the girls. He left money for the
establishment of public baths at Como,
and there may still be seen, in the
Brera at Milan, a mutilated stone con-
tanning "A fragment of the inscription in
his honor supposed to have been set
above the entrance to the building
There was yet another sum of money,
the interest of which was to be divided
among hundred of his own freedmen,
so long as any of these survived; and
when they were all gone it was to be
applied to an annual public festival for
the entire population of Como. 1t is
plain that he thought out the condi-
tions Of his charities as carefully as the
most scrupulous philanthropist of mod
ern days could do. To his slaves he
was, in the best sense of the word. a
paternal ruler-watching them in i'll
ness; mourning their loss; renting
their burdens if the crops were bad !;
encouraging them to make wills, and
seeing that the provisions of these tesla
ments were carried out; sending one
of his freedmen to the Riviera, in the
hope of curing his cough, with as many
injunctions to his friend, Paulinus, to
whose care he recommends him, as if
he were Introducing an invalid of the
greatest consequence. And what shall
we say of the letter to Geminius, in
which he so gracefully eXpounds his re-
fined and almost transcendental theory
of notes " and " beams?" 81 con-
slider him the most excellent and adj
mirable of all men," he writes, who
overlooks the errors of others, on the
ground that he himself sins every day,
and yet strives as earnestly to abstain
from sin as if he never overlooked a
fault in any one. Let us all endeavor-
at home, abroad, in every situation of
life-to be implacable to ourselves, but
merciful to others, even to those who
never pardon any but themselves. :"
There is another letter to the same
Germinius, in which he speaks of some
one whom Germinius had praised for
his liberality to certain persons. "And
| praise him, too,' replies Pliny,
provided he has not been liberal to
erous to his country, his neighbors,
his kindred, his friends, and, most of
all, his poor friends. Not like some
who are most lavish with those who
are able to give most to them" All
the more, perhaps, because the place,
time and manner of his death are I'M
certain, because his familiar name van
ishes without flourish or warning from
the records in which it occupied for a
time so interesting and conspicuous a
place, do we seem to feel his genial
presence beside us in every spot with
which that name is associated; most of
all, in those whose beauty, by intense
appreciation and affection, he has made
peculiarly his own. AS we loiter along
the shores of Como, we always fancy
him sitting in the shade, high up on
some wooded hillside, lost for the time
being to all outward sights and sounds
in his beloved book, while airy hunts
men follow their prey along the sylvan
reaches. Or, haply, we are threading
the enchanted solitude of the mysteri-
Gus pineta upon the Ostian shore; and
as we stoop to add to our gathered clus-
tiers of pale pink heath little pale
blue rosemary " for remembrance " of
him, we hear the tapping of an elastic
footstep upon the messy fag-stones
of the path behind us, and an out
stretched hand waves gaily and in
willingly toward glade in the dim forest,
through which we see CLEAN, for mo-
ment, in all their pristine glory, the
sunny colonnades of the Laurentine
villa.-Harriet W. Preston, IN the June
atlantic.