In deciding whether Clement was a "solemn trifler," or not, there is another consideration which must not be omitted, and that is his sense of the humorous. It may sound incongruous when speaking of a Father of the Church, and much more of a reputed mystical Father like Clement, but we think no one can deny that he often supplements a serious argument by a little stroke of pleasantry. As many of his sentences stand, a look or a smile would lighten them up and make them sparkle into humor. Paper and ink cannot carry the tone of the voice or the glance of the eye, and Clement's voice has been silent and his eye dimmed for many a century; but may we not imagine that at times something of archness in the teacher's manner would impart to his weighty words a touch of quaintness, and the habitually thoughtful eye twinkle with a gleam of pleasantry? He would be no true follower of Plato if it were not so. Who shall say he was not smiling when he gave out that formal list of wines, of eatables, and of scents most affected by the fashionables of those days? He concludes an invective against scandalous feats by condemning the universal crown of roses as a "nuisance:" it was damp, it was cold; it hindered one from using either his eyes or his ears properly. He advises his audience to avoid much curious carving and ornamenting of bed-posts; for creeping things, he says, have a habit of making themselves at home in the mouldings. He asks if one's hands cannot be as well washed in a clay basin as in a silver one. He wonders how one can dare to put a plain little loaf on a grand "wing-footed" table. He cannot see why a lamp of earthenware will not give as good a light as one of silver. He alludes with disgust to "hissing frying-pans," to "spoon and pestle," and even to the "packed stomachs" of their proprietors; to Sicilian lampreys, and Attican eels; shell-fish from Capo di Faro, and Ascrean beet from the foot of Helicon; mullet from the Gulf of Thermae, and pheasants from the Crimea. We hear him contemptuously repeat the phrases of connoisseurs about their wines, the startling variety of which we know from other sources besides his writings: he speaks of the "scented Thasian," the aromatic "Lesbian," the "sweet wine of Crete," the "pleasant Syracusan." The articles of plate which he enumerates to condemn would be more than sufficient to furnish out a modern wedding breakfast. To scents he gives no quarter. We have heard a distinguished professor of chemistry assert, in a lecture, that wherever there is scent on the surface there is sure to be dirt beneath; and, from the well-known fact that in Capua there was one whole street occupied by perfumers, he could draw no other inference than that Capua must have been "a very dirty city." It would appear that Clement of Alexandria was much of this opinion. He gives a picture of a pompous {53} personage in a procession, "going along marvellously scented, for the purpose of producing a sensation, and