Tell me what brings you, gentle youth, to Rome?

Story of St. Philip Neri.

"Or all people in the world, said old Herodotus, the inhabitants of Ionia have to be thankful for the fairest sky and most delicious seasons." Such was

the remark of Lucius, as he was joined by the captain of the small ship in which he was, for the first time, approaching the coasts of Asia. His companion had walked to the prow of the vessel, where Lucius had long been standing, and seemed to be calculating whether the wind, which was bearing them quickly towards the mouth of the Hellespont, would take them through it. The headlands of Mount Ida began to get more clear as the high ground of Samothrace was melting away to the north-west. The captain's thoughts were entirely directed to the discharge of his cargo on the shore of the adjoining Propontis :

As when a pilot from among the Cyclades,
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens

A cloudy spot, down thither prone in flight
He speeds.

He gave little encouragement, therefore, to the remark of the young Briton, for such Lucius was. "Nay, Master Lucius, I am too busy to-day to think of any of your old-world stories. I suppose you would have me tell you, as when we were in that stormy weather off Zacynthus, what was the name of every headland. You put me beyond patience, when you would tell me about your old poet, with

his

'Thy woods, Zacynthus, from the deep appear;'

and about the voyagers who, going too near the shore, heard the wood-nymphs proclaim that 'Pan the great is dead.'"

"The last story I don't vouch for," answered

Lucius, with a laugh, "however Plutarch may; but you, an Italian, and from Campania too,-it is a shame that you should not know your own poet Virgil. However, such a fine day as to-day, you may well find time to tell me what these places are which we are approaching."

"I know more about the wines of Campania, which I hope to deliver to-morrow in the harbour of Nicomedia," said his rough companion, " than about any of your poets; and I am too busy in calculating how we shall get through this narrow channel of the Hellespont to think of any thing else to-day."

Lucius knew by experience that nothing more could be got from his unsociable companion; and wondering in himself at the little interest which was felt by their own countrymen in those great spirits with whom from childhood he had held familiar intercourse, he turned away to make out what he could by his own observations. Here was, no doubt, the plain of Troy on his right hand, where the petty events of a border contest had been enrolled by imperishable genius among the unfailing records of mankind. Further on, the town of Sestos, on the European shore of the Chersonese, reminded him of the insane ambition of Xerxes. Right across, where the free waves were now covered with bounding vessels, had been stretched that vast chain of boats over which the human stream had been driven for five days and nights incessantly. How marvellous that, from the very limits of India, men and animals

U

should thus be poured over this wide channel for the subjugation of another continent! He saw, at a glance, what had often surprised him in the descriptions of Homer, why the Hellespont is called broad. As a sea, it is nearly the most narrow of any; but regarded as a river, and such it looks to those who see it, its width is one of its striking characteristics.

"And now," thought Lucius, "all this power of Persia is passed away, and that of Greece, which followed it; and I come from the distant woods of Britain to seek my fortune in the capital of another empire. How strangely does the whole course of the world seem to be gathered together in a point, when we think of those few powers which have ruled in it; and none mightier or more extended than this, which sways in this distant East, and yet holds in subjection my countrymen, of whom Virgil wrote, but in the time of Augustus

The Briton, from the mighty world withdrawn !'

Such thoughts led the young man towards the consideration of his own fortunes; and as he passed the rich cities on the Asiatic shore, and saw their lights beaming over the waters, long after nightfall, the well-known feeling came over him, that in all this tide of life there was nothing which had sympathy with him; and that if the little trader which had brought him from Ostia were that night to sink in the waves, his fate would be as little heeded by all