University of Virginia Library

Interior of the Cavern, hung with stalactites, &c. &c. At the extremity an Altar, on which lies a scroll. Two Priests standing on each side.
Enter Julian and Maximus.
JULIAN.
This silence, and these shadows, and cool air,
Impress the heart with reverence. The calm
Simplicity and the majestic repose
Of these eternal chambers, at the root
Of mortal habitation, that regard not
Time, but exist as if time had no lapse,
Do fill the mind with awe, and hold the senses
More anchored in the placid calm of faith,
And unresisting fealty to Heaven,
Than the more gorgeous fanes of upper air;
The monumental temples and proud palaces,
Where, on her throne of clay, sits militant
Awful Religion!

MAXIMUS.
Tread softly and with reverence. We are now
Before a present Deity. These halls
Are unprofaned with human workmanship:
All that thou see'st—those fretted roofs high arching
From their vast pillars, those broad coigns and friezes,
And sculptured pomp grotesque, and marble floors,
And roofs of pendulous chrystal:—these are all
Nature's primeval architecture.

JULIAN.
Gods!
How glorious are ye in your earthly dwelling!
Here let me kneel!

MAXIMUS.
Julian, dost thou believe
The mystery of that world of spirits divine,
The everlasting conclave, who sit throned
In Heaven, and rule the air and earth and waters;
Aye, and the penal caverns of deep Hell?
The sublimated essences, whence man
Takes his mixed character of good and evil:
Imperfect 'midst perfection?

JULIAN.
Pray you, pardon me:
My soul is like a steed in act to spring—
Hot expectation swelling every vein,
The course before him and the goal in sight.
This is no place to lecture points abstruse;
I stand at gaze. Who shall withhold me?

MAXIMUS.
Boy!
Thy mettle shall be tried. Who slew thy father?
Knock at thy heart and ask what Vengeance says.
Is there no name stored in its inmost core—
No execrated memory that smoulders,
Like a pent flame, within thy seething brain?
The book of fate lies open to thee.—Read.
Thy glory and Heaven's will, vindictive dæmons
Therein have graved in bloody characters!
Ha! does the light beam on thee? Thou art busy
Now with ten thousand thronging thoughts, dim gliding
Before the glass of apt imagination.
Do'st start?

JULIAN.
Thy dark surmises make the blood
Rush refluent to my heart. Shuddering I hear.
No, not for empires! But, go on—

MAXIMUS.
'Twere vain.
Those prodigies, those mysteries, those omens,
That should have nerved, have daunted thee. Away,
Thou art unworthy!

JULIAN.
Art thou mad? unworthy!
Oh, yes! most weak, most impotent, to stand
Thus parleying with dishonour!

MAXIMUS.
Be it so—
Then die the slave thou art. Nay, frown not on me.
I am an old man, and am sick of life:
My country was my all: she is betrayed;
And gladly would I die upon her bosom,
Kissing the wounds her worthless sons have made.
Yet had I hoped, oh! Julian, thou wert the stem,
To whose precocious growth and branching vigour,
I, and some millions of despairing souls,
(Now withering in the tempest of bad times)
Have long looked up for shelter. Thou wert the bow
Arching in beauty o'er our sullen skies—
The little cloud upon the desert's edge,
Feeding our faintness with fore-tasted showers.
But now—come, come, we'll talk no more on't. Well,
Go, stagnate in thy apathy. My lot
Is cast for death: I cannot sit beneath
The poison-tree and live.

JULIAN.
Is there no way,
No unpolluted pass, to Fame, unpaved
With human bones?

MAXIMUS.
Too scrupulous boy! Thou hast bruised the serpent's tail,
And wilt thou spare his head to sting thee? Fie!
Thou art a feeble reasoner. The tree,
Whence all our sprouting woes rankly have sprung,
Must be uprooted. It were vain to prune
The branches, when the stem is in its prime,
And the root vigorous.

JULIAN.
I would have mercy,
That, like the sweet bird in the depth of oaks,
Hath dwelling in heroic hearts.

MAXIMUS.
No doubt.
Yet mercy oft hath but a feeble judgment.
I would not kill, but execute. Remember,
Crime makes the felon, and pronounces that
Which else were murder, expiation.
Evil and good cannot be co-existent.
But your mind wanders from me.

JULIAN.
Nay, I listen
With a most rapt attention.

MAXIMUS.
Why should he live?
They, who would wish him well, should wish him dead,
Not as a King, but an undoubted Tyrant;
Not as his brow usurps another's crown,
(And that it does, thou art a living witness,)
But that his evil passions do pervert
Heaven's attributes, and his accursed deeds
Soil his else god-like presence with the stain
Of earth, and leave him the vile slave of guilt.
His death will be th' acquittance of our wrongs;
The balance of much evil: to it men look
For their withheld inheritance—as robbed heirs
Towards unjust guardians. Now, but a thread upholds
The axe of justice over him: who cuts it
Shall be his country's saviour. Thus did Brutus,
Even on the blood that sprung from his own veins,
Execute justice: when his country's good
Demanded the great sacrifice, he made it.
So shouldst thou too be honoured.

JULIAN.
My chafed spirit
Hath dallied with such thoughts: too deeply plunged
Into the vague abyss of thy dark counsels.

MAXIMUS.
Why should he wish to live? He will be happier
In the sealed chambers of the silent tomb,
Than on a sapped and tottering throne; 'mid guards,
Whose fawning knees and sycophantic tongues
Stir thoughts of bloody treason. Now, he dies
The death by inches—every hour brings with it
The anticipated torture. He regards
All seasons, and all places, and all men
With undisguised and irrepressible horror.
There 's suffocation for his bed, swift arrows
For his high throne of grandeur, sudden daggers
In his close walks, and poison at his board.
Where'er he moves destruction follows him,
A blood-hound on his track, and keen Dismay
With her hawk's wing o'ershadows him. I tell thee
He will be better in the grave: the curses
That shall accompany his obsequies
Will find no echo in the house of death—
His clay will be as callous to our strokes
As now his evil heart is to our prayers.
We shall look round for once, and say, where is he?
And then forget for ever!

JULIAN.
How tuneably
My soul, like a touched instrument, responds
Beneath thy master-hand! Aye, I have shaken
Allegiance from my heart; but, Maximus,
He is my blood—'twere parricide!

MAXIMUS.
Oh, Thou
Great Spirit, that do'st haunt these sacred caves,
And fillest with vengeance my unshrinking soul,
Even as a sacrificial cup with blood, deign visit
His fainting resolution; and light up
His veins and vaulting mind with thine own lightning.
Julian! must all our wrongs die unrevenged?
What, in the very presence of the Gods,
Wilt thou renounce their delegation? Go!
Go, bind the chains thou 'st sworn to sever! Go,
Fawn at the despot's footstool! Supplicate
Pardon, and say, “Behold thine enemies!”
There is no middle course. Thy steps must mount
On his neck, or on ours; or, failing both,
Die, like thy father, and be so forgotten.
Ah! art thou moved? That name hath stirred thee up
With memory of intolerable wrong.
Think of his bleeding corpse, crushed by that boar
That broke into his vineyard and assailed him,
Even as he sat in sunny confidence
In the sweet garden of his family;
With all his flowers around him, and no thought
But of domestic love and privacy.
Behold his spouting wounds, his dying eyes,
His moving, voiceless lips: thy maddening mother
With her fixed look: the murderer o'er his prey,
And turning from his victim and his vengeance
With the cold languor of satiety.
Think on it all—and thou, like Hannibal,
Lifting thy little hands, vowing revenge!

JULIAN
(walking aside with agitation).
Just Gods! Just Gods!

MAXIMUS.
Ay call, and they shall answer thee.
All laws of God, of Nature, and of Nations
Devote such, like the savage beasts of prey,
At any time, by every hand to perish!

JULIAN.
Oh! that the curse that strangles at my heart,
Might find a voice and die not! Oh, that the fury,
That maddens in my pulses and my brain,
Could take a palpable form, a vital nerve,
To tread him down and stamp him into dust!

MAXIMUS
(aside).
Hot spirit, art thou roused? Now be thy vengeance
Pander to cloaked ambition, and so work
The unseen will that rules thee!

JULIAN.
May all the pangs
Of dying guilt, anticipating Hell,
Glare on his tossing slumbers, and tear out
Rest from his eyes, till madness sears his brain,
And preys upon the ashes of his heart!
Oh! when he dies, may the infernal fiends
Smile hideous from the dim depths of his chamber
Upon his eye, when coming Death hath purged it—
May no sweet thought of recollected good
Slake his last burning thirst; but thronging visions
Of terrible conscience scare him! Hear me! hear me!

(During the latter part of this speech, the Priests bring forward the Altar and the parchment, upon a signal from Maximus.)
MAXIMUS.
Thou art thyself again! Now, Julian, now,
While the divine wrath triumphs in thy veins,
Be thy great curse accomplished. Take this pen;
His fate is in this scroll—sign, and he dies!

(Julian eagerly signs. Maximus gives the paper to a Priest, who departs with it instantly.)
MAXIMUS.
Now are the gods of Rome avenged! Constantius,
Thy hours are numbered—these few lines have slain thee.
Thou art arraigned and judged! Thy power gone by,
As a forgotten storm! Thou wert, and art not!
(Turning to Julian, who appears agitated.)
But how is this, my sov'reign? Why dost thou look
So pallid, and thus gaze on vacant air?
Thy foot is in the flood—fear not to trust
Thy bark upon the mountain wave; 'twill bear thee,
With thy magnificent freightage, to fair shores
And happy harbours. Fear it not.

JULIAN.
I fear!
It is a word unwritten in my heart!
But something—(a delusion of the brain)
Something hath shook me. As I signed just now,
A form of mild and melancholy beauty
Stood by my side and frowned. When I had signed,
I looked—the place was void! I do believe
That shape my guardian spirit and good genius;
And that he hath passed from me!

MAXIMUS.
Pshaw! such dreams
Are all unworthy of thy manhood. Let us
Return from these deep vaults to the pure air:
The uncertain flicker of our torches gives
A body to these vapours, and creates
Shadows like substances. We'll think not on them.
Now, champion of the gods, attend me. Now
Thou art worthy of the deep and awful rites
That veil our Eleusinian mysteries.
Knowledge and power—the future and the past
Are henceforth thine. One hour, and thou shalt quaff
Deep from the cup of immortality!

(Exeunt.