How diverting it would be, Lady Violet, if our modern controversialists
had those accomplishments, and if Mr. Max Muller could, literally,
"double up" Professor Whitney, or if any one could cause Peppmuller to
collapse with his queer Homeric theory! Plotinus had many such arts. A
piece of jewellery was stolen from one of his _protegees_, a lady, and he
detected the thief, a servant, by a glance. After being flogged within
an inch of his life, the servant (perhaps to save the remaining inch)
confessed all.

Once when Porphyry was at a distance, and was meditating suicide,
Plotinus appeared at his side, saying, "This that thou schemest cometh
not of the pure intellect, but of black humours," and so sent Porphyry
for change of air to Sicily. This was thoroughly good advice, but during
the absence of the disciple the master died.

Porphyry did not see the great snake that glided into the wall when
Plotinus expired; he only heard of the circumstance. Plotinus's last
words were: "I am striving to release that which is divine within us, and
to merge it in the universally divine." It is a strange mixture of
philosophy and savage survival. The Zulus still believe that the souls
of the dead reappear, like the soul of Plotinus, in the form of serpents.

Plotinus wrote against the paganizing Christians, or Gnostics. Like all
great men, he was accused of plagiarism. A defence of great men accused
of literary theft would be as valuable as Naude's work of a like name
about magic. On his death the Delphic Oracle, in very second-rate
hexameters, declared that Plotinus had become a demon.

Such was the life of Plotinus, a man of sense and virtue, and so modest
that he would not allow his portrait to be painted. His character drew