‘I think, of the ancients,’ said Cadurcis; ’Alcibiades and Alexander the Great are my favourites.  They were young, beautiful, and conquerors; a great combination.’

‘And among the moderns?’ inquired Herbert.

‘They don’t touch my fancy,’ said Cadurcis.  ‘Who are your heroes?’

’Oh!  I have many; but I confess I should like to pass a day with Milton, or Sir Philip Sidney.’

‘Among mere literary men,’ said Cadurcis; ‘I should say Bayle.’

‘And old Montaigne for me,’ said Herbert.

‘Well, I would fain visit him in his feudal chateau,’ said Cadurcis.  ’His is one of the books which give a spring to the mind.  Of modern times, the feudal ages of Italy most interest me.  I think that was a springtide of civilisation, all the fine arts nourished at the same moment.’

‘They ever will,’ said Herbert.  ’All the inventive arts maintain a sympathetic connection between each other, for, after all, they are only various expressions of one internal power, modified by different circumstances either of the individual or of society.  It was so in the age of Pericles; I mean the interval which intervened between the birth of that great man and the death of Aristotle; undoubtedly, whether considered in itself, or with reference to the effects which it produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilised man, the most memorable in the history of the world.’

‘And yet the age of Pericles has passed away,’ said Lord Cadurcis mournfully, ’and I have gazed upon the mouldering Parthenon.  O Herbert! you are a great thinker and muse deeply; solve me the problem why so unparalleled a progress was made during that period in literature and the arts, and why that progress, so rapid and so sustained, so soon received a check and became retrograde?’

‘It is a problem left to the wonder and conjecture of posterity,’ said Herbert.  ’But its solution, perhaps, may principally be found in the weakness of their political institutions.  Nothing of the Athenians remains except their genius; but they fulfilled their purpose.  The wrecks and fragments of their subtle and profound minds obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole.  Their language excels every other tongue of the Western world; their sculptures baffle all subsequent artists; credible witnesses assure us that their paintings were not inferior; and we are only accustomed to consider the painters of Italy as those who have brought the art to its highest perfection, because none of the ancient pictures have been preserved.  Yet of all their fine arts, it was music of which the Greeks were themselves most proud.  Its traditionary effects were far more powerful than any which we experience from the compositions of our times.  And now for their poetry, Cadurcis.  It is in poetry, and poetry alone, that modern nations have maintained the majesty of genius.  Do we equal the Greeks?  Do we even excel them?’