Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/485

Rh proof positive in regard to the good type of an imperial Roman. The ideas could not have grown in an isolated way on uncongenial soil; there must have been other good, imperial Romans, and many of them. He is a noble exemplar of his own age, and we learn through him to respect his contemporaries. He is also interesting as a representative man in a more extended sense. He combines the cool, unbiased, intrepid spirit of modern scientific inquiry with the earnest veneration of the moralist, and the speculative curiosity and audacity of the metaphysician. To-day we find the scholars and poets a little out of sympathy with the scientific men, and the men of science declaring war against such doctors of orthodoxy as persist in standing aloof on (what they think) intrenched ground.

Antoninus seems to be habitually clear from prejudice or superstition. When he makes a statement it is evident that he is giving us his views as fully and freely as possible, without let or hinderance, and this absence of partisanship constitutes the special charm that seems destined to give a fresh perennial interest to his monograph. The subjects he touches on are of universal value to all human beings when in a thoughtful mood, and it seems very doubtful whether his pure and forcible statements will ever lose their power, because they have been from the outset so thoroughly refined from all dross in the literary method of their presentation that it is hardly possible to conceive of any advance in culture that will leave them behind the age in this respect.



HE citizens of Rochester were much inclined to congratulate themselves—and certainly on excellent grounds—when they had brought water thirty miles from the crystal depths of Hemlock Lake for the use of the city. But last year, to the astonishment and disgust of the people, their water became so offensive as to give rise to grave apprehensions respecting its effect on public health. In October it suddenly began to emit a peculiar fish-like odor, which continued until the following December. It was a very natural suggestion that this odor must be due to the presence of fish, which had somehow found their way from the lake into the main pipes, and thence into the smaller service-pipes, where their progress had been arrested, and they were undergoing slow decomposition. It is well known to those familiar with the experience of other large cities, that 