without knowing it, keep the measure of their desires in accordance
with the brevity of life. I approach a much-patronised tavern, and
see inscribed above the entrance this quatrain in Neopolitan patois:


"Amice, alliegre magnammo e bevimmo
N fin che n'ce stace noglio a la lucerna:
Chi sa s'a l'autro munno n'ce verdimmo?
Chi sa s'a l'autro munno n'ce taverna?"
["Friends, let us merrily eat and drink
as long as oil remains in the lamp:
Who knows if we shall meet again in another world?
Who knows if in the other world there will be a tavern?"]


Even such counsels was Horace wont to give to his friends. You
received them, Posthumus; you heard them also, Leuconoe, perverse
beauty who wished to know the secrets of the future. That future
is now the past, and we know it well. Of a truth you were foolish
to worry yourselves about so small a matter; and your friend
showed his good sense when he told you to take life wisely and to
filter your Greek wines--"Sapias, vina liques." Even thus the
sight of a fair land under a spotless sky urges to the pursuit of
quiet pleasures. but there are souls for ever harassed by some
sublime discontent; those are the noblest. You were of such,
Leuconoe; and I, visiting for the first time, in my declining years,
that city where your beauty was famed of old, I salute with deep
respect your melancholy memory. Those souls of kin to your own who
appeared in the age of Chrisitianity were souls of saints; and the
"Golden Legend" is full of the miracles they wrought. Your friend