‘It is an odd thing, my dear Herbert,’ said Cadurcis to his friend, in one of these voyages, ‘that destiny should have given you and me the same tutor.’

‘Masham!’ said Herbert, smiling. ‘I tell you what is much more singular, my dear Cadurcis; it is, that, notwithstanding being our tutor, a mitre should have fallen upon his head.’

‘I am heartily glad,’ said Cadurcis. ‘I like Masham very much; I really have a sincere affection for him. Do you know, during my infernal affair about those accursed Monteagles, when I went to the House of Lords, and was cut even by my own party; think of that, the polished ruffians! Masham was the only person who came forward and shook hands with me, and in the most marked manner. A bishop, too! and the other side! that was good, was it not? But he would not see his old pupil snubbed; if he had waited ten minutes longer, he might have had a chance of seeing him massacred. And then they complain of my abusing England, my mother country; a step-dame, I take it.’

‘Masham is in politics a Tory, in religion ultra-orthodox,’ Herbert. ‘He has nothing about him of the latitudinarian; and yet he is the most amiable man with whom I am acquainted. Nature has given him a kind and charitable heart, which even his opinions have not succeeded in spoiling.’

‘Perhaps that is exactly what he is saying of us two at this moment,’ said Cadurcis. ‘After all, what is truth? It changes as you change your clime or your country; it changes with the century. The truth of a hundred years ago is not the truth of the present day, and yet it may have been as genuine. Truth at Rome is not the truth of London, and both of them differ from the truth of Constantinople. For my part, I believe everything.’

‘Well, that is practically prudent, if it be metaphysically possible,’ said Herbert. ‘Do you know that I have always been of opinion, that Pontius Pilate has been greatly misrepresented by Lord Bacon in the quotation of his celebrated question. ‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer. Let us be just to Pontius Pilate, who has sins enough surely to answer for. There is no authority for the jesting humour given by Lord Bacon. Pilate was evidently of a merciful and clement disposition; probably an Epicurean. His question referred to a declaration immediately preceding it, that He who was before him came to bear witness to the truth. Pilate inquired what truth?’

‘Well, I always have a prejudice against Pontius Pilate,’ said Lord Cadurcis; ‘and I think it is from seeing him, when I was a child, on an old Dutch tile fireplace at Marringhurst, dressed like a burgomaster. One cannot get over one’s early impressions; but when you picture him to me as an Epicurean, he assumes a new character. I fancy him young, noble, elegant, and accomplished; crowned with a wreath and waving a goblet, and enjoying his government vastly.’

‘Before the introduction of Christianity,’ said Herbert, ‘the philosophic schools answered to our present religious sects. You said of a man that he was a Stoic or an Epicurean, as you say of a man now that he is a Calvinist or a Wesleyan.’

‘I should have liked to have known Epicurus,’ said Cadurcis.

‘I would sooner have known him and Plato than any of the ancients,’ said Herbert. ‘I look upon Plato as the wisest and the profoundest of men, and upon Epicurus as the most humane and gentle.’

‘Now, how do you account for the great popularity of Aristotle in modern ages?’ said Cadurcis; ‘and the comparative neglect of these, at least his equals? Chance, I suppose, that settles everything.’

‘By no means,’ said Herbert. ‘If you mean by chance an absence of accountable cause, I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens, must be a link in a chain. In the present case, the monks monopolised literature, such as it might be, and they exercised their intellect only in discussing words. They, therefore, adopted Aristotle and the Peripatetics. Plato interfered with their heavenly knowledge, and Epicurus, who maintained the rights of man to pleasure and happiness, would have afforded a dangerous and seducing contrast to their dark and miserable code of morals.’

‘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 th............