marvellous powers to govern all things?"[95] That Lucretius should be so open to impressions of this kind, in spite of his philosophy, is ra measure of his greatness as a poet. It adds weight and worth to all that he says--to his hatred of the polytheism and superstition round about him, and to his judgment upon their effect in darkening and benumbing the minds of men. He understands the feelings which he dislikes--he has felt them. The spectacle of the unguessed power that tramples on mankind has moved him; and he has suffered the distress of all delicate spirits in times of bloodshed and disorder. He knows the effect of such times upon those who still worship. "Much more keenly in evil days do they turn their minds to religion."[96] {28} We have now to consider another poet, a disciple of Lucretius in his early years, who, under the influence of Nature and human experience, moved away from Epicureanism, and sought reconciliation with the gods, though he was too honest with himself to find peace in the systems and ideas that were yet available. [Sidenote: Virgil] Virgil was born in the year 70 B.C.--the son of a little self-made man in a village North of the Po. He grew up in the country, with a spirit that year by year grew more sensitive to every aspect of the world around him. No Roman poet had a more gentle and sympathetic love of Nature; none ever entered so deeply and so tenderly into the sorrows of men. He lived through forty years of Civil War, veiled and open. He saw its effects in broken homes and aching hearts, in coarsened minds and reckless lives. He was driven from his own farm, and had, like AEneas, to rescue an aged and blind father. Under such experience his early Epicureanism dissolved--it had always been too genial to be the true kind. The Epicurean should never go beyond friendship, and Virgil loved. His love of the land in which he was born showed it to him more worthy to be loved than men had yet realized. Virgil was the pioneer who discovered the beauty, the charm and the romance of Italy. He loved the Italians and saw poetry in their hardy lives and quiet virtues, though they were not Greeks. His love of his father and of his land opened to him the significance of all love, and the deepening and widening of his experience is to be read in the music, stronger and profounder, that time reveals in his poetry.