Their youth should pass in innocence secure
From stain licentious, and in manners pure.
* * * * * * *
For these are sacred bards and, from above,
Drink large infusions from the mind of Jove.”[132]
To readers of his master-piece the Paradise Lost, it is perhaps a work of supererogation to point out the charming passages in which he sympathetically describes the food of the Age of Innocence:—
“Savoury fruits, of taste to please
True appetites.”
In Raphael’s discourse with his terrestrial entertainers, the ethereal messenger utters a prophecy (as we may take it) of the future general adoption by our race of “fruit, man’s nourishment,” and we may interpret his intimation:—
“time may come when men