Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/318

 Homer (I am glad you find a little room for poets among all these learned people), 'Military Surveying,' 'Mathematics for Practical Men.' Ah! if some one would only write a book of mathematics for unpractical women! Colonel Falkland said you were very studious; but it must be hard to read all these dry books in this climate. Already I feel it almost impossible sometimes to do anything useful, and they say this heat is nothing to what is coming by-and-by."

"These books belong most of them to Captain Braddon of my regiment. He was on the staff for many years, you know, and has a regular library. If the days are hot sometimes they are long enough for anything. The real difficulty ought to be, not reading books, but procuring them; but the best of us are sadly idle fellows, I am afraid."

"And here is the Blue-book, too, on the Crimean war," observed the commissioner, taking it up, and immediately becoming absorbed in its contents.

Then Yorke had the young lady to himself for a few sweet minutes, while he showed her Spragge's puppies and the talking mina, till the tea was brought, and the party sat down to partake of it, Yorke bringing a third chair from his bedroom, and still in his jockey-dress, which he would fain have changed, for the wearing of it seemed to invite continued attention to his feats and his fall, but that he recollected that the bedroom door could not be got to close; moreover, he grudged the time, and indeed the moments flew away only too quickly — for, the tea consumed, the commissioner was urgent to be going. Miss Cunningham too pleading as an excuse for hurrying away that Colonel Falkland would be waiting breakfast: and it seemed hardly five minutes before they were again in their carriage. And then he held Miss Cunningham's hand for a moment in his own, while she, looking into his face with her dark eyes, for the last time expressed in earnest tones her hope that he would not suffer from the effects of his accident; and then the carriage with the two orderlies behind was soon whirled away out of sight, leaving the young man standing on the steps of the veranda, his regret at their departure more than counterbalanced for the moment by the elation which their visit had caused. What if this visit should be the forerunner of happiness to come? Miss Cunningham sitting under his roof, and without the commissioner, and sharing not only his tea, but everything else.

How pointedly she had declared for simplicity! Well, his future house should be better than this, and yet be still simple and modest in comparison with what she was accustomed to.

Yorke's rise in public estimation in consequence of his performances was sufficiently indicated by his receiving in the forenoon an invitation to dine with Colonel Tartar the following evening at the hussar mess, where he sat next his host, with Major Winge on the other side, Gowett and Scurry, who were loud enough elsewhere, talking in subdued tones at the end of the table; and afterwards took a hand at sixpenny whist with the colonel, the doctor of the regiment, and the major; for Colonel Tartar, although not averse to an occasional bet in public, discouraged high play in his own mess-room.

 

 From Blackwood's Magazine.

Mallett. Julius Cæsar was a far more generous patron of painting. He bought of Timomachus, the painter of Athens, two figures, one representing Ajax and the other Medea, which he placed in the temple of Venus Genetrix, for which he paid eighty Attic talents, or £20,000. This is a handsome sum when one thinks that each picture only represented a single figure.

Belton. Who would have supposed the great first Cæsar was such a lover and patron of art? We never think of him in this relation, but rather as the great soldier and statesman.

Mallett. All the emperors or nearly all were devoted to art. And some of them, as Hadrian and Nero, you remember, were artists themselves. Art was a part of their education, as it was of every highborn Roman or Greek. The Fabii, clarissimæ gentis, had the cognomen of Pictor, derived from the chief of the family who painted the Temple of Health in 450 ; and this painting existed in the time of Pliny. We may also mention among others Cicero and Hortensius, Marcus Agrippa, Crassus, Titus Petronius, and more than all, Marcus Scaurus, and Lucius, and Marcus Lucullus, who were all liberal patrons and lovers of art. The sums which were spent by the latter on works of art seem almost fabulous.