lose both by this pragmatical affectation of refinement, and prove that
they have no souls for either. Oh, my Clodius, how little your
countrymen know of the true versatility of a Pericles, of the true
witcheries of an Aspasia! It was but the other day that I paid a visit
to Pliny: he was sitting in his summer-house writing, while an
unfortunate slave played on the tibia. His nephew (oh! whip me such
philosophical coxcombs!) was reading Thucydides' description of the
plague, and nodding his conceited little head in time to the music,
while his lips were repeating all the loathsome details of that terrible
delineation. The puppy saw nothing incongruous in learning at the same
time a ditty of love and a description of the plague.'

'Why, they are much the same thing,' said Clodius.

'So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry--but my youth stared me
rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it
was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the
description of the plague, mind you!) elevated the heart. "Ah!" quoth
the fat uncle, wheezing, "my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the
utile with the dulce." O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! While I
was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freedman
was just dead of a fever. "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my
Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these
misfortunes!" Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with
the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of
genius--he wants its bones and flesh.'

Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his
countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he
was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among