Page:Studies in Letters and Life (Woodberry, 1890).djvu/117

Rh this Marius does, thereby prefiguring in a way and practically making that "return to nature" which is the continually recurring necessity of all sincerity. If virtue does in fact wear this outward loveliness—and who would deny it?—why may not the lover of beauty have truly seen the new and springing forms of goodness, recognized them, and taken their promise into his life? In other words, was not that prescience of Marius merely a power of clear and honest seeing of the elements of beauty and ugliness there before him?

That this is Mr. Pater's view of the matter is indicated most definitely by the contrast which he continually insists on between Marcus Aurelius and Marius, and which he brings out clearly in the attitude of these two toward the gladiatorial shows. In the amphitheatre Marius is conscious of the Emperor, the strenuous Stoic, as "eternally his inferior on the question of righteousness." The young Epicurean has a "decisive conscience on sight" which is indubitable,—that conscience which, in its condemnation of the great sin of an age, is the touchstone of the select few in it, and makes them on the side of the future and aware of its excellence