The ceremonies of the day began with the very dawn, when, according to the form of simpler and better times, those among the disciples who had apartments within the Garden, bore the image of our Founder in procession from chamber to chamber, chanting verses in praise of—what had long ceased to be objects of our imitation—his frugality and temperance.
Round a beautiful lake, in the centre of the garden, stood four white Doric temples, in one of which was collected a library containing all the flowers of Grecian literature; while, in the remaining three, Conversation, the Song, and the Dance, held, uninterrupted by each other, their respective rites. In the Library stood busts of all the most illustrious Epicureans, both of Rome and Greece—Horace, Atticus, Pliny the elder, the poet Lucretius, Lucian, and the biographer of the Philosophers, lately lost to us, Dio[pg 7]genes Laertius. There were also the portraits, in marble, of all the eminent female votaries of the school—Leontium and her fair daughter Danae, Themista, Philænis, and others.
It was here that, in my capacity of Heresiarch, on the morning of the Festival, I received the felicitations of the day from some of the fairest lips of Athens; and, in pronouncing the customary oration to the memory of our Master (in which it was usual to dwell on the doctrines he inculcated) endeavoured to attain that art, so useful before such an audience, of diffusing over the gravest subjects a charm, which secures them listeners even among the simplest and most volatile.
Though study, as may easily be supposed, engrossed but little of the mornings of the Garden, yet the lighter part of learning,—that portion of its attic honey, for which the bee is not obliged to go very deep into the flower—was zealously cultivated. Even here, however, the student [pg 8]had to encounter distractions, which are, of all others, least favourable to composure of thought; and, with more than one of my fair disciples, there used to occur such scenes as the following, which a poet of the Garden, taking his picture from the life, described:—
“As o’er the lake, in evening’s glow,
That temple threw its lengthening shade,
Upon the marble steps below,
There sate a fair Corinthian maid,
Gracefully o’er some volume bending;
While, by her side, the youthful Sage