into the court or garden of a villa, disposed in one of those abrupt
natural hollows, which give its character to the country in this
place; the house itself, with all its dependent buildings, the
spaciousness of which surprised Marius as he entered, being thus
wholly concealed from passengers along the road. All around, in
those well-ordered precincts, were the quiet signs of wealth, and of
a noble taste--a taste, indeed, chiefly evidenced in the selection
and juxtaposition of the material it had to deal with, consisting
almost exclusively of the remains of older art, here arranged and
harmonised, with effects, both as regards colour and form, so
delicate as to seem really derivative from some finer intelligence in
these matters than lay within the resources of the ancient world. It
was the old way of true Renaissance--being indeed the way of nature
with her roses, the divine way with the body of man, perhaps with his
soul--conceiving the new organism by no sudden and [96] abrupt
creation, but rather by the action of a new principle upon elements,
all of which had in truth already lived and died many times. The
fragments of older architecture, the mosaics, the spiral columns, the
precious corner-stones of immemorial building, had put on, by such
juxtaposition, a new and singular expressiveness, an air of grave
thought, of an intellectual purpose, in itself, aesthetically, very
seductive. Lastly, herb and tree had taken possession, spreading
their seed-bells and light branches, just astir in the trembling air,
above the ancient garden-wall, against the wide realms of sunset.
And from the first they could hear singing, the singing of children
mainly, it would seem, and of a new kind; so novel indeed in its
effect, as to bring suddenly to the recollection of Marius, Flavian's
early essays towards a new world of poetic sound. It was the
expression not altogether of mirth, yet of some wonderful sort of
happiness--the blithe self-expansion of a joyful soul in people upon