Valerius. A Roman Story

Valerius. A Roman Story by J. G. Lockhart. Since you are desirous my friends that I should relate to you at length and in order the things which happened to me during my journey to Rome notwithstanding the pain which it must cost me to throw myself back into some of the feelings of that time I cannot refuse to comply with your request. After threescore years spent in this remote province of an empire happy for the most part in the protection of enlightened just and benevolent princes I remember far more accurately than things which occurred only a few months ago the minutest particulars of what I saw and heard while I sojourned young and a stranger among the luxuries and cruelties of the capital of the world as yet imperfectly recovered from the effects of the flagitious tyranny of the last of the Flavii.. My father as you have heard came with his legion into this island and married a lady of native blood some years before the first arrival of Agricola. In the wars of that illustrious commander during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus he had the fortune to find opportunities of distinguishing himself; but when his general was recalled by the jealousy of Domitian he retired from public life and determined to spend the remainder of his days in peace on the lands which belonged to him in right of his wife here in Britain. He laid the foundations of the house in which I have now the pleasure of receiving you; and here in the cultivation of his fields and in the superintendence of my education he found sufficient employment for an active though no longer an ambitious mind. Early in the reign of Trajan he died. Never did either Roman or British dwelling lament a more generous master.. I cannot pretend to regret the accident which immediately afterwards separated me from a gentle mother—never to see her more upon the earth. Yet deeply was the happiness of my returning hour stained by that privation. It is the common rule of nature that our parents should precede us to the grave; and it is also her rule that our grief for them should not be of such power as to prevent us from entering after they are gone into a zealous participation both of the business and the pleasures of life. Yet in after years the memory of that buried tenderness rises up ever and anon and wins rather than warns us to a deliberate contemplation of our own dissolution.. Towards the end of the winter following the death of my father there arrived letters which engaged anxious consideration. They were from members of his family none of whom either my mother or myself had seen. It was explained especially by Caius Licinius the lawyer (who was near of kin to our house) that by the death of a certain Patrician Cneius Valerius by name I had become legally entitled to a very considerable fortune to claim and take possession of which demanded my immediate presence in the metropolis. My rights said this jurist were indeed called in question by another branch of the family but were I on the spot his professional exertions with whatever interest he or any of his friends could command should be at my service for the sake of my father and of my name.