the freer revelation of himself by conversation, at the extent of his
early corruption. How often, afterwards, did evil things present
themselves in malign association with the memory of that beautiful
head, and with a kind of borrowed sanction and charm in its natural
grace! To Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were an
epitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its corruption, and
its perfection of form. And still, in his mobility, his animation,
in his eager capacity for various life, he was so real an object,
after that visionary idealism of the villa. His voice, his glance,
were like the breaking in of the solid world upon one, amid the
flimsy fictions of a dream. A shadow, handling all things as
shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.

Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and
abundantly, because with a good will. There was that in the actual
effectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make
the most of opportunity; and he had experience already that education
largely increased one's capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring
what it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the
art, namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, [54] the
elements of distinction, in our everyday life--of so exclusively
living in them--that the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or
debris of our days, comes to be as though it were not. And the
consciousness of this aim came with the reading of one particular
book, then fresh in the world, with which he fell in about this time-
-a book which awakened the poetic or romantic capacity as perhaps
some other book might have done, but was peculiar in giving it a
direction emphatically sensuous. It made him, in that visionary
reception of every-day life, the seer, more especially, of a
revelation in colour and form. If our modern education, in its