brotherhood of the Asclepiadae, ran a series of imageries, in low
relief, their delicate light and shade being [38] heightened, here
and there, with gold. Fullest of inspired and sacred expression, as
if in this place the chisel of the artist had indeed dealt not with
marble but with the very breath of feeling and thought, was the scene
in which the earliest generation of the sons of Aesculapius were
transformed into healing dreams; for "grown now too glorious to abide
longer among men, by the aid of their sire they put away their mortal
bodies, and came into another country, yet not indeed into Elysium
nor into the Islands of the Blest. But being made like to the
immortal gods, they began to pass about through the world, changed
thus far from their first form that they appear eternally young, as
many persons have seen them in many places--ministers and heralds of
their father, passing to and fro over the earth, like gliding stars.
Which thing is, indeed, the most wonderful concerning them!" And in
this scene, as throughout the series, with all its crowded
personages, Marius noted on the carved faces the same peculiar union
of unction, almost of hilarity, with a certain self-possession and
reserve, which was conspicuous in the living ministrants around him.

In the central space, upon a pillar or pedestal, hung, ex voto, with
the richest personal ornaments, stood the image of Aesculapius
himself, surrounded by choice flowering plants. It presented the
type, still with something of the [39] severity of the earlier art of
Greece about it, not of an aged and crafty physician, but of a youth,
earnest and strong of aspect, carrying an ampulla or bottle in one
hand, and in the other a traveller's staff, a pilgrim among his
pilgrim worshippers; and one of the ministers explained to Marius
this pilgrim guise.--One chief source of the master's knowledge of
healing had been observation of the remedies resorted to by animals