Page:The Last Days of Pompeii - Bulwer-Lytton - Volume 1.djvu/32

 quent intervals with baskets of blushing fruit, and flowers more alluring to the antient Italians than to their descendants, (with whom, indeed, "latet anguis in herba," a disease seems lurking in every violet and rose)—(a)—the numerous haunts which fulfilled with that idle people the office of cafés and clubs at this day; the shops where on shelves of marble were ranged the vases of wine and oil, and before whose thresholds, seats, protected from the sun by a purple awning, invited the weary to rest and the indolent to lounge,—made a scene of such glowing and vivacious excitement, as might well give the Athenian spirit of Glaucus an excuse for its susceptibility to joy.

"Talk to me no more of Rome," said he to Clodius. "Pleasure is too stately and ponderous in those mighty walls: even in the precincts of the court—even in the golden house of Nero, and the incipient glories of the palace of Titus, there is a certain dulness of magnificence—the eye aches—the spirit is wearied; besides, my Clodius, we are discontented when we see the enormous luxury and wealth of others, with the mediocrity of our own state. But here we surrender ourselves