lives with freedom."[4] Modern poetry dwells with more elaboration,
but not with the truer or more delicate feeling than those ancient
epigrams, on the pretty ways of children, the freshness of school-
days, the infinite beauty of the girl as she passes into the woman; or
even such slight things as the school-prize for the best copy-book,
and the child's doll in the well.[5] A shadow passes over the picture
in the complaint of a girl sitting indoors, full of dim thoughts,
while the boys go out to their games and enjoy unhindered the colour
and movement of the streets.[6] But this is the melancholy of youth,
the shadow of the brightness that passes before the maiden's eyes as
she sits, sunk in day-dreams, over her loom;[7] it passes away again
in the portrait of the girl growing up with the sweet eyes of her
mother, the budding rose that will soon unfold its heart of flame;[8]
and once more the bride renders thanks for perfect felicity to the
gods who have given her "a stainless youth and the lover whom she
desired."[9] Many of the most beautiful of the dedicatory epigrams are
thanksgivings after the birth of children; in one a wife says that she
is satisfied with the harmonious life that she and her husband live
together, and asks no further good.[10] Even death coming at the end
of such a life is disarmed of terror. In one of the most graceful
epitaphs of the Roman period[11] the dead man sums up the happiness of
his long life by saying that he never had to weep for any of his
children, and that their tears over him had no bitterness. The
inscription placed by Androtion over the yet empty tomb, which he has
built for himself and his wife and children, expresses that placid
acceptance which finds no cause of complaint with life.[12] Family
affection in an unbroken home; long and happy life of the individual,
and still longer, that of the race which remains; the calm
acquiescence in the law of life which is also the law of death, and
the desire that life and death alike may have their ordinary place and