from Hadrian's favourite cabinet, the marvellous plate lying safe
behind the pretty iron wicker-work of the shops in the goldsmiths'
quarter. Meantime ordinary persons might have an interest in the
inspection of objects which had been as daily companions to people so
far above and remote from them--things so fine also [62] in
workmanship and material as to seem, with their antique and delicate
air, a worthy survival of the grand bygone eras, like select thoughts
or utterances embodying the very spirit of the vanished past. The
town became more pensive than ever over old fashions.

The welcome amusement of this last act of preparation for the great
war being now over, all Rome seemed to settle down into a singular
quiet, likely to last long, as though bent only on watching from afar
the languid, somewhat uneventful course of the contest itself.
Marius took advantage of it as an opportunity for still closer study
than of old, only now and then going out to one of his favourite
spots on the Sabine or Alban hills for a quiet even greater than that
of Rome in the country air. On one of these occasions, as if by
favour of an invisible power withdrawing some unknown cause of
dejection from around him, he enjoyed a quite unusual sense of self-
possession--the possession of his own best and happiest self. After
some gloomy thoughts over-night, he awoke under the full tide of the
rising sun, himself full, in his entire refreshment, of that almost
religious appreciation of sleep, the graciousness of its influence on
men's spirits, which had made the old Greeks conceive of it as a god.
It was like one of those old joyful wakings of childhood, now
becoming rarer and rarer with him, and looked back upon with much
regret as a measure of advancing age. In fact, [63] the last bequest
of this serene sleep had been a dream, in which, as once before, he
overheard those he loved best pronouncing his name very pleasantly,