"But there were some truly good and great men amongst them," replied Chandos, whiled away for a moment from himself by his companion's conversation: "they might be too stern and severe, perhaps, in their adherence to right; but still excess of virtue is not likely to lead others wrong who make it their example." "I'll give you the advantage of the best of them," said Lockwood, "and be bound to pick a hole in any of their coats. We all know about Socrates, a nasty old he-goat, and won't talk of him. But take Lycurgus for an example, I mean, the Spartan. Now what he did to his countrymen would have been nothing better than swindling, if it had been about money instead of laws. He took an oath from them to do certain things till he came back from Delphi; and that certainly implied that it was his intention to come back. But instead of that, he went away from Delphi to Crete, for the express purpose of cheating the Spartans; had his old bones cast into the sea, that they might not play him as good a trick as he had played them; and left his laws to Sparta, and his name to immortality. But if I were to say to any man, 'Lend me five pounds till I come back from London,' and instead of going back, were to run away to Paris, just to avoid my creditor, what would be said of me? Now because the laws of Lycurgus were good, people think that his imposition was glorious; and thus they learn that Jesuitical maxim of the end justifying the means." "I agree with you so far," said Chandos, gravely, "that there was a great deal of false philosophy, if I may use the term, amongst the ancients: and I am thoroughly convinced that the only true philosophy that ever was propounded to man is to be found in the Bible." "Archimedes was the greatest man amongst them," rejoined Lockwood, following the course of his own thoughts, a habit of which he was very fond; "and in the study of his life and character, no great harm could be done to any one. But at our schools and colleges, what between Roman emperors, Greek magistrates, and gods and goddesses, we are brought all at once in our early youth into the midst of a crowd of rogues, prostitutes, and libertines, only fit for the back streets of a great town." Unwittingly, Chandos had been led from many a grave memory and painful consideration to topics which had often engaged his youthful mind; and he replied, with a gay laugh, which showed how naturally light and cheerful was the spirit when free from the oppressive weight of circumstances: "As to the gods and goddesses, I agree with you entirely. There was not a lady amongst them who, in our times, would not have figured in the Arches Court; and as to the men, Apollo was the most gentlemanlike person of the whole, and yet he would have been transported for rape or hanged for felony long ago."