CHAPTER XI.
The sun had far declined from its meridian, yet no cool breeze tempered the fervors of the heat. The air was chained in oppressive stillness, when suddenly a bustling wind shook the trees, and a low growling reverberated round the horizon. The scholars retired before the threatening storm; but Theon, his ear still filled with the musical voice of the sage, and his heart imbued with his gentle precepts, lingered to feed alone upon the thoughts they had awakened in him. “How mad is the folly of man!” he said, as he threw his back against a tree.—“Professing to admire wisdom and love virtue, and yet ever persecuting and slandering both.—How vain is it to look for credit by teaching truth, or to seek fame by the road of virtue!”
“Thy regret is idle, my son,” said a well known voice in his ear.
“Oh! my guardian spirit!” cried the startled youth—“Is it you?”
“I linger,” said the Gargettian, “to watch the approach of the storm, and I suppose you do the same.”
“No,” returned the youth, “I hardly heeded the heavens.”
“They are singular, however, at this moment.” Theon looked where the sage pointed; a dark mass of vapors was piled upon the head of Hymettus, from which two columns, shooting forth like the branches of some giant oak, spread themselves over the sky. The opposing sun, fast travelling to the horizon, looked red through the heated atmosphere, and flashed a deep glare on their murky sides. Soon half the landscape was blackened with the sinking clouds, that each moment increasing in bulk and density, seemed to touch the bosom of the earth. The western half glowed with a brilliant light, like molten gold. The distant outline was marked with a pencil of fire, while the gardens and villas that speckled the plaid, seemed illuminated in jubilee.
“See,” said the sage, stretching his hand towards the gilded scene, “see the image of that fame which is not founded in virtue. Thus bright may it shine for a moment, but the cloud of oblivion or infamy comes fast to cover its glory.”
“Is it so?” said Theon. “Do not the vile of the earth fill the tongues of men, and are not the noble forgotten? Does not the titled murderer inscribe his name on the tablets of eternity, with the sword which is dipped in the blood of his fellows?—And does not the man who hath spent his youth, and manhood, and age, in the courts of wisdom—who has planted peace at the hearth, and given truth to the rising age, does he not go down to the grave in silence, his bones unhonored, and his name forgotten?”
“Possibly his name; but, if he have planted peace at the hearth, and given truth to the rising age, surely not his better part—his virtues. Do not confound noise with fame. The man who is remembered, is not always honored; and reflect, what a man toils for, that probably will he win. The titled murderer, who weaves his fate with that of empires, will with them go down to posterity. The sage, who does his work in the silence of retirement, unobserved in his own generation, will pass into the silence of the grave, unknown to the future.”