A few days afterwards the Bloomfields also and Miss Willoughby left Brussels for Paris.
It is far from our purpose to follow them step by step upon their route. The little love-affair we have undertaken to relate, leads us a dance upon the Continent; but we have no disposition to play the tourist one moment more than is necessary; and as no incidents connected with our story occurred in Paris, we shall not loiter long even in that gayest and most seductive of capitals. He who knows Paris—and who does not?—and at all understands what sort of traveller Mildred was, will easily conceive the delight she felt in visiting the public monuments, ancient and modern; in observing its populace, so diversified and mobile in their expression, so sombre and so gay; in traversing the different quarters of a city which still retains in parts whatever is most picturesque in the structures of the middle ages, whilst it certainly displays whatever is most tasteful in modern architecture, and which, in fact, in every sense of the word, is the most complete summary of human life that exists upon the face of the earth.
What modern city can boast a point of view comparable to that which bursts upon the stranger as he enters thePlace de la Concorde! What beautiful architecture to his right and to his left!—thePalais Bourbon, the distant Madeleine, the Chamber of Deputies—whilst before him runs the long avenue of the Champs Elysées, terminated by its triumphal arch. No crowding in of buildings. No darkening of the air. Here is open space and open sky, trees and fountains, and a river flowing through the scene. There is room to quarrel, no doubt, with some of its details. Those two beautiful fountains in the centre are beautiful only at a certain respectful distance; you must not approach those discoloured nymphs who are each squeezing water out of the body of the fish she holds in her arms. Nor can we ever reconcile ourselves to that Egyptian obelisk which stands between them; in itself admirable enough, but as much out of place as a sarcophagus in a drawing-room. But these and other criticisms of the like kind, are to be made, if worth while, on after reflection and a leisure examination; the first view which the scene, as a whole, presents to the eye, is like enchantment. So at least Mildred thought, when, the morning after their arrival, (while the breakfast was waiting for her uncle, who was compensating himself for the fatigues of the journey,) she coaxed her aunt to put her arm in hers, and just turn round the corner—she knew from the map where she was—and take one look at it whilst the sun was shining so brightly above them.
Nor are there many cities, however boastful of their antiquities, which present more picturesque views than meet the eye as, leaving the garden of the Tuileries, you proceed up the river; and the round towers, with their conical roofs, of thePalais de Justice, rise on the opposite banks, and you catch glimpses ofNotre Dame. In London, the houses have crowded down to the edge of the water, and are standing up to their ankles in it, so that the inhabitants may walk about its streets all their lives, and never know that a river is flowing through their city. From the centre of one of its bridges they may indeed assure themselves of the fact, and confirm, by their own observations, what they had learned in the geographical studies of their youth, that London is built on the river Thames; but, even from this position, it is more wood than water they will see. The shipping, and the boats of all kinds, blot out the river, and so crush and overcharge it that it is matter of wonder how it continues to exist and move under such a burden. It is otherwise in Paris. There one walks along the quay, and sees the river flowing through the city.
In spite of its revolutions, of its innovations, of its impatient progress, there is much still in Paris to carry back the thoughts of a visitor to antiquated times. If the Madeleine is a Grecian temple, if he finds that religious ceremonies are performed there with an elegance and propriety which propitiate the taste of the profane, if they fail to satisfy the fervour of the devout—a short walk will bring him to the venerable church of St. Germain, hard by the Louvre, where he will encounter as much solemnity and antiquity as he can desire; an antiquity, however, that is still alive, that is still worshipping as it used to worship. He will see at the further extremity of the church a dark, arched recess, imitative of a cavern or sepulchre, at the end of which lies the Christ, pale and bleeding, visible only by the light of tapers; and, if he goes to matins there, he will probably find himself surrounded by a crowd of kneeling devotees, kneeling on the stone pavement before this mediæval exhibition. Two distant ages seem to be brought together and made contemporaries.
But we will not be tempted to loiter on our way even at Paris; we take post horses and proceed with our party to Lyons.
A long ride, what an exceptional state it is!—what a chapter apart—what a parenthesis in life! The days we pass rolling along the road are always dropped out of the almanack; we have lost them, not in the sublime sense of the Roman emperor, but fairly out of the calendar; we cannot make up the tale of days and weeks. We start—especially if it is in a foreign country that we are travelling—with how much exhilaration! Every thing is new, and this charm of novelty lends an interest to the most trivial things we encounter. Not one of the least amusements of travel is this passing, in easy and rapid review, the wayside novelties which the road, the village, and the street that we scamper through, present to us. The changing costume of the peasant—the whimsical, traditionary head-dress of the women, which, whimsical as it is, retains its geographical boundaries with a constancy rarely found in anyfloraof the botanist—the oddly constructed vehicles, carts fashioned upon all conceivable plans, and drawn by horses, or mules, or oxen harnessed and decorated in what seems quite a masquerading attire—these, and a thousand other things, in their nature the most common and familiar, claim foroncethe power to surprise us. All the common-place of daily life comes before us,“Trick’d in this momentary wonderment.”Here in the south of France, for instance, a cart-horse approaches you with a collar surmounted by a large upright horn, and furnished, moreover, with two long curvingantennæbranching from either side, which, with the gay trappings that he wears, give to an old friend the appearance of some monstrous specimen of entomology; you might expect him to unfold a pair of enormous wings, and take flight as you advance, and not pass you quietly by, as he soon will, nodding his head in his old familiar style, and jingling his bells. While the mind is fresh, there is nothing which does not excite some transitory pleasure. But when the journey is felt to be growing long—very long—what a singular apathy steals over us! We struggle against this encroaching torpor—we are ashamed of it—we rouse the mind to thought, we wake the eye to observation—all in vain. Those incessant wheels of the carriage roll round and round, and we are rolling on as mechanically as they. The watch, which we refrain from consulting too often, lest the interest of its announcements should be abated, is our only friend; we look at it with a secret hope that it may have travelled farther than we venture to prognosticate; we proclaim that it is just two o’clock, and in reality expect that it is three, and try to cheat ourselves into an agreeable surprise. We look, and the hands point precisely at half-past one!
“What abusiness-likelooking thing,” said Mildred, as she roused herself from this unwelcome torpor, “seems the earth when it is divided into square fields, and cut into even furrows by the plough!—so palpably a mere manufactory for grain. Oh, when shall I see it rise, andlivein the mountain?”
“My dear Mildred,” said her aunt, gently jogging her, “do you know that you are talking in your sleep?”
“I have been asleep, my dear aunt, or something very like it, I know; but I thought just then I was quite awake,” was Mildred’s quiet reply.
When the party reached Lyons, there was some little discussion as to the route they should take into Italy. Mildred had hoped to cross the Alps, and this had been their original intention; but the easy transit down the river, by the steam-boat, to Avignon, was a temptation which, presenting itself after the fatigues of his long journey from Paris, was irresistible to Mr. Bloomfield. He determined, therefore, to proceed into Italy by way of Marseilles, promising his niece that she should cross the Alps, and pass through Switzerland on their return home.
Accordingly, they embarked in the steamer. Here Mr. Bloomfield was more at his ease. One circumstance, however, occasioned him a little alarm. He was watching, with some curiosity, the movements of two men who were sounding the river, with long poles, on either side of the vessel. The reason of this manœuvre never distinctly occurred to him, till he heard the bottom of the boat grating on the bed of the river. “No danger!” cried the man at the helm, who caught Mr. Bloomfield’s eye, as he looked round with some trepidation. “No danger!” muttered Mr. Bloomfield. “No danger, perhaps, of being drowned; but the risk of being stuck here fast in the midst of this river for four-and-twenty hours, is danger enough.” After this, he watched the motions of these men with their long poles with less curiosity, indeed, but redoubled interest.
It was in vain, however, that he endeavoured to communicate his alarm to Mildred, who contented herself with hoping, that if the boat really meant to stop, it would take up a good position, and where the view was finest. With her the day passed delightfully. The views on the Rhone, though not equal to those of the Rhine, form no bad introduction to the higher order of scenery; and she marked this day in her calendar as the first of a series which she hoped would be very long, of days spent in that highest and purest excitement which the sublimities of nature procure for us. On the Rhine, the hills rise from the banks of the river, and enclose it, giving to the winding stream, at some of its most celebrated points of view, the appearance of a lake. It is otherwise on the Rhone. The heights are ruder, grander, but more distant; they appertain less to the river; they present bold and open views, but lack that charm oftendernesswhich hangs over the German stream. In some parts, a high barren rock rises precipitately from the banks, and, the surface having been worn away in great recesses, our party was struck with the fantastic resemblance these occasionally bore to a series of vast architectural ruins. A beautiful sunset, in which the old broken bridge, with its little watch-tower, displayed itself to great advantage, welcomed them to Avignon.
Again, from Avignon to Marseilles, their route lay through a very picturesque country. One peculiarity struck Mildred: they were not so muchhillswhich rose before and around her, as lofty rocks which had been built up upon the plain—abrupt, precipitous, isolated—such as seem more properly to belong to the bottom of the sea than to the otherwise level surface over which they were passing. As their most expeditious conveyance, and in order to run no risk of the loss of the packet, our travellers performed this stage in thediligence, and Mildred was not a little amused by the opportunity this afforded of observing her fellow-passengers. It is singular how much accustomed we are to regard all Frenchmen as under one type; forgetting that every nation contains all varieties of character within itself, however much certain qualities may predominate. Amongst her travelling companions was an artist,notconceited, and neither a coxcomb nor an abominable sloven, but natural in his manners, and, as the little incident we shall have occasion to mention will prove, somewhat energetic in his movements. In the corner opposite to him sat a rather elderly gentleman, travelling probably in some mercantile capacity, of an almost infantine simplicity of mind, and the most peaceable temperament in the world; but who combined with these pacific qualitiesthe most unceasing watchfulness after his own little interests, his own comfort and convenience. The manner in which he cherished himself was quite amusing; and admirable was the ingenuity and perseverance he displayed in this object; for whilst quietly resolved to have his own way in every thing, he was equally resolved to enter into collision with no one. He was averse to much air, and many were the manœuvres that he played off upon the artist opposite, and on the controller of the other window, that he might get them both arranged according to the idea which he had formed of perfect comfort. Then, in the disposition of his legs, whilst he seemed desirous only of accommodating his young friend opposite, he so managed matters as to have his own limbs very comfortably extended, while those of his “young friend” were cramped up no one could say where. It greatly facilitated these latter manœuvres, that our elderly gentleman wore large wooden shoes, painted black. No one could tread onhistoes.
Sedulous as he was to protect himself against all the inconveniencies of the road, he seemed to have no desire to monopolize the knowledge he possessed requisite to this end, but, on the contrary, was quite willing to communicate the results of his travelling experience. He particularly enlarged on the essential services rendered to him by these very wooden shoes—how well they protected him from the wet—how well from external pressure! He was most instructive also and exact upon the sort of garments one should travel in—not too good, for travel spoils them—not too much worn, or too slight, for in that case they will succumb under the novel hardships imposed upon them. Pointing to his own coat, he showed how well it illustrated his principles, and bade the company observe of what a stout and somewhat coarse material it was fabricated. Warming upon his subject, he proceeded to give them an inventory of all the articles of dress he carried with him in his portmanteau—how many coats, shirts, pantaloons, &c. &c. All this he gave out in a manner the most urbane and precise, filling up his pauses with a short dry cough, which had nothing to do with any pulmonary affection, but was merely an oratorical artifice—a modest plan of his own for drawing the attention of his hearers.
Unfortunately he had not long succeeded in arranging matters to his perfect satisfaction, when a little accident robbed him of the fruit of all his labours. The artist, in his energetic manner of speaking, and forgetting that he had been induced by the soft persuasions of his neighbour to put up the window (an act which he had been led into almost unconsciously) thrust his elbow through the glass. Great was the consternation of our elderly traveller, and yet it was in the gentlest tone imaginable that he suggested to the artist the propriety, the absolute necessity, that he should get the window mended at the next place where they would stop to change horses. Mended the window accordingly was. When the new glass was in, and paid for, and they had started again upon their journey,thenthe friendly old gentleman placed all his sympathies at the command of the young artist. He was of opinion that he had been greatly overcharged for the window—that he had paid twice as much as he ought. Nay, he doubted whether he ought to have paid any thing at all—whether he could be said to have broken the window—for, as he now began to remember, he thoughtit was cracked before.
Mildred could hardly refrain from a hearty laugh at what she found to be as amusing as a comedy.
First the town of Aix, then that of Marseilles, received our travellers. Of Aix, Mildred carried away one impression only. As they entered into the town with all the rattling vehemence which distinguishes the diligence on such occasions, there stood before her an enormous crucifix, a colossal, representation of the Passion; and underneath it a company of showmen, buffoons of some description, had established their stage, and were beating their drums, as French showmen can alone beat them, and calling the crowd together with all manner of noise and gesticulation. Strange juxtaposition! thought Mildred—the crucifix and the mountebank! But not the fault of the mountebank.
What execrable taste is this which the Catholic clergy display! That which is fit only for the sanctuary—if fit at all for the eye of man, or for solitary and desolate spots—is thrust into streets and market-places, there to meet with a perpetual desecration. That which harmonizes with one mood only, the most sad and solemn of the human mind, is dragged out into the public square, where every part of life, all its comedy and all its farce, is necessarily transacted. If the most revolting contrasts occur—no, it is not the fault of the profane mountebank.
Marseilles, with all its dirt and fragrance, left almost as little impression upon her mind. The only remembrance that outlived the day was that of the peculiar dignity which seemed to have been conferred upon the market-women of the town. At other places, especially at Brussels, our party had been not a little amused by inspecting the countenances of the old women who sat, thick as their own apples, round theGrand Place, or on both sides of the street. What formidable physiognomies! What preternatural length of nose! What terrific projection of chin! But these sat upon the pavement, or on an upturned wicker basket; a stool or a low chair that had suffered amputation in the legs, was the utmost they aspired to. Here the market-women have not only possessed themselves of huge arm-chairs, but these arm-chairs are elevated upon the broad wooden tables that are covered with the cabbages, and carrots, and turnips, over which they thus magisterially preside. Here they have the curule chair. Manifestly they are theÆdiles Cerealesof the town. Our travellers did not, however, see them in their glory; they saw only down the centre of the street the row of elevated chairs, which, if originally of ivory, had certainly lost much of their brightness and polish since the time when the Roman Senate had presented them. The Court was not sitting as they passed.
The following day saw them in the steam-boat bound for Genoa. In a few hours they would be coasting the shores of Italy!
We cannot resist the opportunity which here occurs of showing, by an example, how justly our Mildred may be said to have been a solitary traveller, though in almost constant companionship. She was alone in spirit, and her thoughts were unparticipated. The steam-boat had been advertised to leave Marseilles at four o’clock in the afternoon. The clock had struck six, and it was still stationary in the harbour,—a delay by no means unusual with steam-boats in that part of the world. Mildred stood on the deck, by the side of the vessel, watching the movements of the various craft in the harbour. To her the delays which so often vex the traveller rarely gave rise to any impatience. She always found something to occupy her mind; and the passing to and fro of men in their usual avocations was sufficient to awaken her reflection. At a little distance from the steamer was a vessel undergoing some repairs; for which purpose it was ballasted down, and made to float nearly on one side. Against the exposed side of the vessel, astride upon a plank, suspended by a rope, swung a bare-legged mortal most raggedly attired, daubing its seams with some most disgusting-looking compound. The man swinging in this ignominious fashion, and immersed in the filth of his operation, attracted the notice of Mildred. What an application, thought she, to make of a man! This fellow-creature of mine, they use him for this! and perhaps for such as this only! They use his legs and arms—which are sufficiently developed—but where is the rest of him?—where is the man? He has the samehumanityas the noblest of us: what a waste of the stuff, if it is worth any thing!
This last expression Mildred, almost unconsciously, uttered aloud,—“What a waste of the stuff, if it is worth any thing!”
“My dear,” said Miss Bloomfield, who sat beside her, “it is nothing but the commonest pitch or tar. How can you bear to look at it?”
“Dearest aunt,” said Mildred, “I was not thinking of the pitch, but the man.”
“Whatcanyou be talking of, my child?” said her aunt, in utter amazement.
But there was one behind them who appeared to have understood whatMildred was talking of, and who now, by some observation, made his presence known to them. As she turned, she caught the eye of—Alfred Winston.
They met this time as old acquaintances; and that glance of intellectual freemasonry which was interchanged between them, tended not a little to increase their feeling of intimacy.
“And you too are going into Italy?” she said. “But how is it thatyouselect this route?”
“I made an excursion,” he replied, “last summer into Switzerland and the north of Italy, which accounts for myturningthe Alps on this occasion.”
The vessel now weighed anchor. Departure—and a beautiful sunset—made the view delightful. But daylight soon deserted them. Mr. Bloomfield came to take the ladies down to the cabin, where a meal, which might be called either dinner or supper, was preparing. Mildred would rather have remained on deck; but ashehad expressed his intention of doing so, she thought it better to descend with the rest.
Amongst the company in the cabin she immediately recognised one of her fellow-travellers of the previous day. There was the elderly gentleman with his black wooden shoes, and his short dry cough, gently but strenuously chiding thegarçonfor his delay. In these vessels the passage-money includes provisions, so that, eat or not, you pay; and our experienced traveller, having taken due precaution, as he soon afterwards informed all the company,notto dine, was very excusably somewhat impatient. Mildred was amused to find him supporting his character throughout with perfect consistency. Although every one but himself was suffering from heat, he—anxious only for the public good, and especially for the comfort of the ladies—maintained a strict watch upon both door and, window, and would have kept both, if possible, hermetically closed. And as the waiters handed round the soup, or any thing that was, fluid, he, with a mild solemnity of manner, warned them not toarroserhis coat, not to sprinkle that excellent garment which was doubtless destined, under so considerate a master, to see many years of service.
The next morning Mildred had risen with the dawn, leaving her aunt and the rest of the passengers locked in their slumbers. What a delightful sensation awaited her as she rose from the close cabin of the steamer, and, ascending upon deck, met the breeze, the sunrise, the dancing waters of the Mediterranean, and hailed at her side the mountain coast of Italy! It was the first time in her life she had seen the blue hill crested with the snowy summits of the more distant and lofty mountain,—a combination which the art of the painter is daily attempting to imitate, but the etherial effect of which it never can at all approach. What an enchantment is the first view of the greater beauties of nature! The first lake—the first mountain—the first time we behold the eternal snow, white as the summer cloud, but which passesnotaway—is an era in our existence,—a first love without its disappointment. The inhabitant of a mountainous country, though he may boast his greater intimacy with nature, though he may have linked all the feelings ofhomewith her grandeur and sublimity, can never know what the dweller in the plain and the city has felt, who, with matured taste, with imagination cultivated by literature, stands, in all the vigour of his mind, for the first time before the mountain! It was but a distant view of the Alps that Mildred now obtained; but that snowy ridge against the blue sky—that moved not, that was not cloud—exercised an indescribable fascination over her.
Winston was also soon upon deck; but, observing how well she was employed, he was careful not to disturb her. He well knew how essential was solitude to the highest gratification which either art or nature afford. It is but a secondary or declining excitement that we feel when we are restless to communicate it to another.The heart is but half full of its object, that, to complete its pleasure, craves for sympathy.
It was not till they were within sight of Genoa that he ventured to approach the side of the vessel where she was sitting.
“Now,” said he, with a smile, “it is permissible to talk. We approach the shore too near for picturesque effect; and the town of Genoa, seen here from the bay, whatever tourists may assert, is neither more nor less than what a sea-port town may be expected to be.”
“Yes,” said Mildred; “I was just observing to myself that a hilly coast, delightful to him who is on it, and delightful to the distant spectator, is at a certain mid-way station seen to great disadvantage. It has lost the cerulean hue—thatcolour laid in the air—that visible poetry which it had appropriated to itself; it has lost this enchantment of distance, and it is still too remote for the natural beauty of its several objects to be perceived. These are dwarfed and flattened. The trees are bushes, mere tufts of green; the precipices and cliffs are patches of gravel darker or lighter. For the charm of imagination it is too near; for the effect of its own realities, too remote. And yet—and yet—see what alifeis thrown over the scene by the shadow of that passing cloud, moving rapidly over the little fields, and houses, and the olive groves! How itbrightensall, by the contrast it forms with the stream of light which follows as rapidly behind it! I retract—I retract—Nature has a pencil which never is at fault; which has always some touch in reserve to kindle every scene into beauty.”
“But the town——”
“Oh, I surrender the town. Certainly, if this is the view which tourists admire, they shall never have the moulding of my anticipations. The sail by the coast has been delightful; but it is precisely here, in presence of this congregation of ordinary buildings, that the pleasure deserts us.”
“People,” said Winston, “have described Genoa the Proud as if its palaces stood by the sea. They have combined, I suspect, in one view all that the exterior and the interior of the town had presented to them. They have taken the little privilege of turning the city inside out; just as if one should make up a picture of the approach to London by the river Thames, by lining its banks with sections cut out of Regent’s Park. But here we are at anchor, and shall soon be able to penetrate into this city of palaces.”
They landed, and Alfred Winston assisted the ladies to disembark, but showed no symptoms of any intention to attach himself to their party. He did not even select the same hotel. But as all travellers are seeing the same sights, visiting the same churches, the same palaces, the same points of view, it was not possible for them to be long without meeting. And these casual encounters seemed to afford to both parties an equal pleasure.
We have seen that there was a strain of thought in Mildred’s mind, which found neither sympathy nor apprehension with her companions. Mr. Bloomfield was, indeed, more intelligent than his sister; but his half-perceptions, coupled unfortunately with no distrust whatever of himself, made him the more tedious companion of the two; for he would either inflict upon her some misplaced flippancy, or some wearisome common-place; which last he doubted not was extremely edifying to his niece. Good man! he little suspected that the great difference between himself and his niece consisted in this, that he was indeed incapable of receiving any edification from her; whilst she, in her own silent way, would often extract from the chaff he dealt in, some truth for herself. Her responsive “Yes,” was, often yielded in assent to a meaning other and higher than he was aware he had expressed. To her, therefore, the intellectual sympathy which she found in their fellow-traveller was peculiarly grateful; it was as novel as it was agreeable.
If she had refused to be pleased with the applauded view of the bay of Genoa, she was unfeignedly interested in the interior of the town. Nor, perhaps, is there any town in Italy, with the exception of Venice, which makes a more striking impression upon the traveller. He walks through a street of palaces, the painted fronts of many of which remind him of the scenes of the theatre—so that he canhardly believe himself to be in a real town; he sees the orange-tree upon the terrace above him, and its veritable golden fruit hangs over his head—is hanging in the open air: he feels he is now really in Italy! he sees the light arcade running by the side of the palace, with its decorated arch, its statues, its vases; and as he passes along the street, the open portico partly reveals the branching staircase, and the inner court, with its deserted galleries, and its now so solitary fountain. And as he walks on—in striking contrast—narrow, very narrow streets, at his right or at his left, descend upon him, dark and precipitous as a mountain gorge, bringing down the clattering mule, laden ingeniously enough with whatever is elsewhere stowed into a cart, or the antique sedan, the only vehicle in which a living man could navigate those straits. Then the multitude of priests and friars, black and brown—the white muslin veil thrown over the heads of the women, or the gaudy scarf of printed cotton substituted by the poorer sort (Miss Bloomfield exclaimed, and very naturally, that they had got their bed furniture about their ears)—all this, and much more, which it is not exactly our purpose to describe, give to the town an air of complete originality. The very decay, in some parts, of its antique state and grandeur, adds to its interest. One looks into the deserted porch, deserted of all but that sleepy shoe-black, who has installed himself in its shade with the necessary implements of his calling; and one sees the fountain still bubbling up, still playing there before its only companion, that stained and mutilated statue, who looks on with how pensive, how altered, how deploring an aspect!
The young priests, with their broad hats and well draped vests of spotless black cloth, Mildred thought the best dressed men she had any where seen. The finished dandy looks contemptible by the side of these. She could not pass the same compliment on the brown friar, corded and sandeled, with his low brow and his bare shaven crown. In vain does he proclaim that his poverty is voluntary, and most meritorious: he has a sad, plebeian aspect; and even his saintly brother in black manifestly looks down upon him, as they meet upon the pavement, as belonging to the democracy of their sacred order. Voluntary poverty! the faith in the existence of such a thing is rarer even than the thing itself; it is worn out; and in this age a mendicant friar can be nothing more than a legalised beggar, earning his subsistence (as the Church, we suppose, would explain it) by the useful office of stimulating the charity of men; there being in the natural constitution of society so few occasions for the practice of benevolence.
Our fellow-travellers had met in the church of theAnnunciation, one of the most gorgeous structures which the Catholic religion has erected for its worship. It would be almost impossible for gilding, and painting, and all the decorative arts, to produce any thing more splendid than the interior of this temple. Neither Versailles nor Rome has any thing to compete with the sumptuous effect which is here produced by these means. By drawing a red silk curtain across the upper windows, there is thrown over the gilding so rich a hue, that the roof and pillars glow as if with molten gold. High up, within the dome, there stand, in pairs, one at each side of every window, gilded statues; and these, in the red light thrown upon them, look as if invested with flame. They reminded Mildred of some description she had read in Southey’sCurse of Kehama.
Winston was disposed to quarrel with the building as being too gorgeous; but Mildred, who resigned herself more readily to genuine and natural impulses of pleasure, and who at all times expressed the unaffected dictates of her taste, would not acquiesce in any censure of the kind.
“No,” she maintained, “if the artist aim at being gorgeous, he must stop at no half measures. There is a higher aim, no doubt, where form and proportion ought more strictly to predominate over colour, and all the splendour of marble and of gilding. But if he is resolved to dazzle us—if to be sumptuous is his very object, let him throw timidity to the winds; let him build—as he has done here—in gold; let him paint—as on this ceiling—in such glowing colours aseven this roof of flame cannot overpower. Look up the dome; see how these clouds are rolling down upon us!”
“But,” said Winston, still disposed to be critical, “there is something else in that dome which seems disposed to fall; and which, from its nature, ought to manifest no such tendency. Do you remark those small Corinthian pillars placed round the upper part of the dome—how they lean inward? A pillar is the last thing which ought to look as if it needed support; yet these evidently, unless fastened to the wall, would, by their own gravity, fall down upon us. This is surely contrary to the simplest rules of taste, yet it is not the first time I have observed in Italy this species of ornament.”
“I acquiesce in your criticism,” said Mildred, with a smile; “now point me out something to admire.”
They sat down quietly on one of the benches, placed there for the service of the faithful, to survey at leisure this sumptuous edifice, and let its impression sink into their memory. But this pleasure was not a little interrupted by the devotees in their neighbourhood—dirty, ragged, squalid men and women, mumbling and spitting—spitting and mumbling. They were unreasonable enough to feel that the devotion of these people was quite an intrusive circumstance. For such worshippers!—such a temple!—thought Mildred. They were jabbering their prayers, like idiocy, behind her. “Let us move away,” she whispered. “After all,” said Winston, as they retired, “it is for their idiocy, and not our admiration, that the temple is built.”
On leaving this building they directed their steps towards the suburbs of the town, and entered a church which, in its modest appearance, formed a strong contrast with the one they had just visited. A level space before it, planted with trees, gave it the air of an English parish church. Neither the interior nor the exterior presented any architectural display. Whilst Mr. and Miss Bloomfield were walking up to the altar, and taking, as in duty bound, a survey of the whole building, Mildred and her companion lingered near the entrance, attracted by some monumental tablets set up against the walls. The bas-reliefs on one, or two of these were remarkable for their beauty, their elegance and tenderness, and the inscriptions accorded with them, and seemed full of feeling.
“I am glad,” she said, “we happened to enter here. I was beginning to be a little out of humour with my catholic brethren; but these tablets bring me back to a charitable and kindly mood.”
Winston joined her in reading some of the inscriptions.
“It is really,” said he, “the first time I can remember to have been affected by monumental inscriptions, or to have read them with any pleasure or patience. In an English churchyard, the tombstone eitherpreachesat you—and that with such an offensive dogmatism as none but a dead man would venture to assume—or it presents a fulsome collection of laudatory phrases, shovelled upon the dead with as much thought and consideration as were the dirt and clay upon his coffin. If verse is added, it seems to have been supplied, with the stone, by the stone-mason; the countrymen of Milton—and not alone the poor and ignorant—select, to be engraved on the enduring marble, some pitiable doggerel that ought never to have been heard beyond the nursery, so that few persons stop to read the epitaphs in our churchyards, unless in a spirit of mockery, and with the hope of extracting a jest from them.”
“For which reason, amongst others,” said Mildred, “I generally avoid them. I would respect the dead,—and the living in their affliction. But what a natural, humane, tender, and faithful spirit are some of these written in! And this beautiful figure of a young girl ascending to the skies, embracing the cross in her arms,—what a sweet piety it breathes! How well it bears out the inscription underneath, theconceitin which might otherwise have at least failed to please,—
è fatta in cielo quale parve in terra—un angelo.
è fatta in cielo quale parve in terra—un angelo.
“And here—how full of tenderness—how full of faith—seem these simple words!—
Quì dorme in pacela gentile e virtuosa giovine Maria, &c.Voleva all’ amplesso di Dio.
Quì dorme in pacela gentile e virtuosa giovine Maria, &c.Voleva all’ amplesso di Dio.
“And this,—
O Ginevra,Unico nostro tesoro!Arridi a noi dal cielocara angioletta,e ne prega da Dionovella prole che ti somigli,a rendere meno acerbo,il dolore della tua partita.
O Ginevra,Unico nostro tesoro!Arridi a noi dal cielocara angioletta,e ne prega da Dionovella prole che ti somigli,a rendere meno acerbo,il dolore della tua partita.
“Earth and Heaven—how they mingle here!”
“Is it poetry or religion that we are reading?” said Winston. “It seems to me as if these people had suddenly turned their poetry into faith.”
“Or have some of us been turning our faith into poetry? I believe,” added Mildred, “that, in every mind, not utterly destitute of imagination, the boundaries of the two are not very rigidly defined. There is always something of faith in our poetry, and something of poetry in our faith.”
They were now joined by Mr. and Miss Bloomfield, who had made their tour of the church; and the whole party retraced their steps towards their hotel. Winston felt that he had not once indulged Mr. Bloomfield in an opportunity of venting his lamentations over the evils of travel, and the discomforts of foreign parts; he therefore asked that gentleman how he had found himself accommodated at the hotel at which he had descended.
“Ay,” said Mr. Bloomfield, delighted to have a topic on which he could feelingly expatiate, “Descended!—’tis the Frenchman’s phrase. I know that I haveascendedto my hotel, and to no trivial elevation. Why, the hotel itself does not begin till where another house might end, and where it ends might be a problem for astronomers to calculate. The ladies got deposited somewhere beneath the clouds; but for myself I am really at a frightful altitude. I was conducted up a dark stone-staircase with an iron-bannister; after some time my guide branched off laterally through by-passages, with unglazed openings, having the most cheerless look-out imaginable, and across damp landing-places contiguous to sinks, and what seemed wash-houses, and where you heard the perpetual dripping of water. All this lay in the road to my bed-room; but the bed-room was not reached yet. I had again to mount—to mount—till I was almost giddy. When at length I attained the apartment destined for me—the only one, I was assured, vacant in the hotel—and was left up there alone in it, I felt so removed from all human fellowship, all succour or sympathy from the inhabitants of the earth below, that I do declare, if I had not been a little initiated on the journey—if I had come direct from my English home at Wimborne—and if, moreover, I was not here in character of protector to two ladies, and therefore bound to carry a bold face in all extremities—I do declare that I should have thrown myself down in utter despair upon the floor, and there lay till the undertaker should come and take me down again!—it seemed the only mode of descent that was at all practicable.”
“Certainly it would be the easiest and the safest,” said Winston, humouring his vein of exaggeration. “And yet it is hardly upon thefloorthat you would have thrown yourself—which being probably of painted tiles, would have given you a cruel reception. You would rather have chosen Captain Shandy’s attitude, when he was overwhelmed with grief, and flung yourself face foremost upon the bed.”
“Very true. And as to that same bed, whether owing to the fatigue of my toilsome ascent, or to some good properties of its own, I must confess I never slept on any thing more agreeable. Yet, on examination, I found it stuffed with the dried leaves of the Indian corn. Strange substitute for a feather bed! It is inconceivable how comfortable I found it. And to be the dried leaves of Indian corn—a sort of straw, in short. And the next morning when I woke, and saw by daylight the light and elegant drapery of my bed, and looked up at the gaily painted ceiling—I suppose in this country the pigeon-houses have their ceilings painted—I could hardly believe that I was in an attic—raised even to the fifth power of an attic.”
When Alfred Winston mounted tohis atticthat night—as Mr. Bloomfield persisted in calling every elevated dormitory—he ought, if fatigue was sufficient to ensure it, to have slept soundly too. But he did not. He did not sleep at all. And the result of this sleepless night was a resolution, which does not seem strictly consequent thereon,—a resolution to rise with the dawn, and leave Genoa immediately.
The fact was, that this Mildred Willoughby was exercising over him, not, as is often said, a fascination “for which he could not account,” but one for which he could account too well. She realized all that he had ever pictured to himself of feminine charms,—his ideal of woman,—grace, beauty, tenderness, and a mind highly cultivated. But he had not come to Italy to fall in love. Besides, what had he, in Italy or elsewhere, to do with love? It was a thing out of his calculation at all times and places, and just now more than ever. How could he see Italy—see any thing—with this Mildred by the side of him? He would escape from this dangerous party. It was their intention, he had heard, to proceed to Pisa; he would start at once to Florence, and visit Pisa on his return. By this means he should get the start of them, and he would keep it.
By eight o’clock that morning he was travelling on the road to Florence.
The Bloomfields were a little surprised at not encountering their agreeable companion again; and at length concluded that he had taken his departure. Rather abruptly, to be sure, yet what claim had either on the other to any of the ceremonies of social intercourse? They were mere travellers, whom hazard had thrown together.
“After all,” said Mr. Bloomfield; “we have never been introduced.”
“Very true,” said Miss Bloomfield, “that never struck me.”
Mildred was silent.
Winston so far succeeded in his design, that by hastening from Genoa, and leaving Pisa unvisited, he was enabled to view the galleries of Florence without being disturbed by any other beauty than that which looked on him from the walls, or lived in the creations of the sculptor. From Florence he had proceeded to Rome, and had surveyed its antiquities and the marvels of art it contained, still undistracted by the too fascinating Mildred.
But although he had secured his solitude from interruption by a person likely to interest him too keenly, he was not equally resolute, or equally successful, in keeping himself aloof from certain fellow-travellers with whom he had scarce one thought or one taste in common. Our readers may remember a young lady whom we attempted to describe, figuring not very advantageously at the ball-room at Brussels. This damsel belonged to a mamma who, in her own way, was a still greater oddity, and who, indeed, ought to be made responsible for the grotesque appearance of her daughter on that occasion. She insisted upon it that, as all the world knew they were travellers, just looking in, as it were, as they were passing through the town, they might very well go to the ball in their travelling dresses; and as she was one of those who held rigidly to the prudent maxim that “any thing was good enough to travel in,” these dresses were not likely, be the occasion what it might, to be remarkable for their freshness.
Mrs. Jackson was the widow of a citizen of London who had lately died, leaving her and her daughter a very ample fortune. Now, although Mr. Jackson had, ever since his marriage, been adding hundred to hundred by the sale of wax and tallow candles in the city, yet had he continued to inhabit the same little house at Islington into which he had first packed himself with dear Mrs. Jackson immediately after the honeymoon; nor had he, in any one way, made an effort to enjoy his increasing income. An effort it would have been. What more did Mr. Jackson want? What morecouldhe have enjoyed? The morning took him to his warehouse in the city,and the afternoon brought him back with an excellent appetite for an excellent dinner, and quite sufficiently fatigued to enjoy that comfortable digestive nap, in which Mrs. Jackson also joined him; and from which he woke up only the better prepared for the hearty slumbers of the night. His wealth, had he been obliged to spend it, would have added to his discomfort, instead of diffusing over him, as it did, a perpetual pleasant glow of self-importance. A larger and finer house, with the toil of receiving company in it, would have distressed him beyond measure. It was bad enough to be compelled, occasionally, to take his spouse to the theatre, or to a Christmas party: such enterprises were looked forward to with uneasy apprehension; and the gratification of havinggot overthem was the only one they afforded him. His ledger—his newspaper—his dinner and a fireside, quiet but not solitary, this was the summary of his happiness. His little wine-glass, as Boswell would have expressed it, was quite full; you would only have made a mess of it, and spoilt all, by attempting to pour in a whole tumbler-full of happiness.
One daughter only had blessed the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. She was still at boarding-school when her father died. But, after this event, her fond mamma could no longer bear the separation; and home she came, bringing with her that accurate and complete stock of human knowledge and female accomplishments which is usually derived from such establishments, namely, infinite scraps of every thing and every thing in scraps, with the beginning of all languages, of all arts, and all sciences. There was in her portfolio a map of China, faithfully delineated, and a group of roses not quite so faithful. She had strummed one sonata till she played it with all the certainty of animal instinct, and she had acquired the capability of saying, “How d’ye do?” in at least three several languages beside the English.
But the loss of “Jackson” even the society of the accomplished Louisa could not compensate. The widow was very dull. Her comfortable house at Islington ceased to bring comfort to her; and she was tormented by a most unusual restlessness. Her daughter, who had heard from her favourite companion at the boarding-school, of the charms of foreign travel,—of the romantic adventures, and the handsome counts and barons that are sure to be encountered on the road, took advantage of this restlessness to persuade her mamma to take a tour on the Continent. After much discussion, much hesitation, infinite talking, and reading of guide-books, and exploring of maps—they started.
Absurd!—impossible!—exclaims the intelligent reader—that good Mrs. Jackson should commit herself and her daughter to all the casualties of travel without a male companion. And for what purpose? What pleasure could rocks and mountains, or statues and pictures, give to her, that would be worth the trouble of getting to them? Very absurd and quite impossible! we ourselves should, perhaps, have exclaimed, had we been inventing incidents, and not recording a mere sober matter of fact. But so it was. And, indeed, let any one call to mind the strange groups he has encountered—scrambling about the Continent, the Lord knows why or wherefore—and whatever difficulty he may have in explaining Mrs. Jackson’s motives, he will have none in believing her conduct, were it twice as absurd. Of pleasure, indeed, she had little, and very much tribulation. To be sure she felt quite at home upon the steam-boat on the Rhine;—“it did so remind her” of a trip she once took to Greenwich with the dear departed. And then it was very amusing and instructive to both herself and her daughter to find out all the places as they passed on that “Panorama of the Rhine” which lay extended on their laps before them. Being on the spot, they could study the map with singular advantage. But it was not always they had a map of the country to look at, nor even anyone to tell them the names of the places. The idea of seeing a place and not knowing its name!—this always put Mrs. Jackson in a perfect fever: as well, she would say, shake hands with the Lord Mayor, and not know itwasthe Lord Mayor! And then what she suffered who can tell, from the strange outlandish viands put before, and alas! too often putwithin her? and that daily affliction—imposed on her with such unnecessary cruelty—of eating her meat without vegetables, or her vegetables without meat?
Still on she went—bustling, elbowing, sighing, scolding, complaining—but nevertheless travelling on. Being at Rome, in the same hotel with Winston, and finding that he had answered one or two of her questions very civilly and satisfactorily, both she and her daughter had frequently applied to him in their difficulties. And these difficulties generally resulted from a lack of knowledge so easily supplied, that it would have been mere churlishness to withhold the necessary information.
These difficulties, however, seemed to increase rather than diminish with their sojourn at Rome; and well they might. Louisa Jackson found them the most convenient things imaginable. She had been all the way on the look-out for adventures, counts, and barons, and had hitherto met with nothing of the sort. But Alfred Winston was as handsome as any count need be—why not fall in love with him? A gentleman she was convinced he was; of wealth she had sufficient, and to do her justice, had quite generosity enough to be indifferent as to his possessions; and for the rest, she would let her eye, let her heart, choose for her. The brave Louisa! And her eye and her heart—which mean here pretty much the same thing—had made no bad selection. As she had mentally resolved to bestow herself, and all her “stocks, funds, and securities,” upon our hero, and as she had wit enough to see that her only hold upon him at present, was through his compassion for their embarrassments, she was determined to keep an ample supply of them on hand.
They came sometimes without being called for, and without the least collusion on her part. It was from no principle of economy, but from a curiosity which could not be gratified so well in any other manner, that Mrs. Jackson and her daughter occasionally ventured to thread their way on foot through the streets of Rome. On one of these expeditions they found themselves in the neighbourhood of the Pantheon. Opposite this building there is a sort of ambulatory market, outrivalling all other markets, at least in the commodity of noise—a commodity in which the populace of Rome generally abound. On approaching it you think some desperate affray is going on; but the men are only parading and vaunting their disgusting fish, or most uninviting vegetables. The merits of these they proclaim with a perfect storm of vociferation. Mrs. Jackson, who had heard of revolutions on the Continent, did not doubt for a moment but that one of these frightful things was taking place before her. She and her daughter hurried back with precipitation, haunted by all the terrors of the guillotine and the lamp-post. Louisa remembered a certain beautiful princess she had read of, who had been compelled to drink a cup of blood to save her father. What if they should treat her as they did the beautiful princess, and offer her such another cup, and force her to drink it, as the only means of saving her mother? Her heroism did not desert her. She resolved she woulddrink half. But as they were hurrying away full of these imaginary dangers, they rushed upon one of a more real though less imposing description. It is no joke in the narrow streets of Rome, to meet with a string of carts drawn by huge oxen, wallowing along under their uneasy yokes. Just such a string of carts encountered them as they turned one of the many narrow streets that conduct to the Pantheon. The enormous brutes went poking their spreading horns this way and that, in a manner very quiet perhaps in the animals apprehensions, but very alarming to those of Mrs. Jackson; huge horns, that were large enough, she thought, to spit an alderman, and still have, room for her at the top. The two ladies, seeing the first of these carts approach, had drawn-up close against the wall, and placed themselves on a little heap of rubbish to be more completely out of the way. To their dismay the line of these vehicles seemed to be endless—there was no escape—in that position they had to stand, while each brute as he passed turned his horns round to them, not with any ferocious intention, but as if he had a great curiosity to feel them, and examine their texture—anattention which would have been highly indecorous, to say the least of it.
What could Winston do, who encountered them in this predicament, but offer his escort? He calmed their various terrors—both of mad bulls and of revolutions—reconducted them to the Pantheon, and secured an exceedingly happy day for one at least of the party.
Winston had now been some time in Rome, and with an inconsistency so natural that it hardly merits the name of inconsistency, he found himself looking about in the galleries and churches for Mr. Bloomfield and his party, and with a curiosity which did not bespeak a very violent determination to avoid them. He began to think that they had lingered a long while at Florence. He had forgot the danger—he remembered the charm.
One morning—having stolen out early and alone from his hotel—as he was engaged in viewing, for perhaps the last time, the sculpture of the Vatican, he observed standing before the statue of the Amazon, a female figure, as beautiful as it, and in an attitude which had been unconsciously moulded into some resemblance of the pensive, queen-like posture which the artist has given to the marble. It was Mildred. He hesitated—he approached. She, on her part, met him with the utmost frankness. His half-uttered apologies were immediately dropped. He hardly knew whether to be pleased or mortified, as she made him feel that the peculiar footing on which they stood tasked him to no apologies, no ceremonial, that he was free to go—and withal very welcome to return.
“You are before the Amazon,” said he: “it is the statue of all others which has most fascinated me. I cannot understand why it should bear the name it does. I suppose the learned in these matters have their reasons: I have never inquired, nor feel disposed to inquire into them; but I am sure the character of the statue is not Amazonian. That attitude—the right arm raised to draw aside her veil, the left hand at its elbow, steadying it—that beautiful countenance, so full of sadness and of dignity—no, these cannot belong to an Amazon.”
“To a woman,” said Mildred, “it is allowed to be indifferent on certain points of learning; and, in such cases as this, I certainly take advantage to the full of the privilege of my sex. I care not what they call the statue. It may have been called an Amazon by Greek and Roman—it may have been so named by the artist himself when he sent it home to his patron: I look at it as a creation standing between me and the mind of the artist; and sure I am that, bear what name it may, the sculptor has embodied here all that his soul had felt of the sweetness, and power, and dignity of woman. It is a grander creation than any goddess I have seen; it has more of thought——”
“And, as a consequence, more of sadness, of unhappiness. How the mystery of life seems to hang upon that pensive brow! I used to share an impression, which I believe is very general, that the deep sorrow which comes of thought, the reflective melancholy which results from pondering on the bitter problem of life, was peculiar to the moderns. This statue, and others which I have lately seen, have convinced me that the sculptor of antiquity has occasionally felt and expressed whatever could be extracted from the mingled poetry of a Byron or a Goethe.”
“It seems that the necessity of representing the gods in the clear light of happiness and knowledge, in some measure deprived the Greek artist of one great source of sublimity. But it is evident,” continued Mildred, “that the mysterious, with its attendant sorrow, was known also to him. How could it be otherwise? Oh, what a beautiful creation is this we stand before! And what an art it is which permits us to stand thus before a being of this high order, and note all its noble passions! From the real life we should turn our eyes away, or drop them, abashed, upon the ground. Here is more than life; and we may look on it by the hour, and mark its graceful sorrow, its queen-like beauty, and this over-mastered grief which we may wonder at, but dare not pity.”
They passed on to other statues.They paused before the Menander, sitting in his chair. “The attitude,” said she, “is so noble, that the simple chair becomes a throne. But still how plainly it isintellectual powerthat sits enthroned there! The posture is imperial; and yet how evident, that it is the empire of thought only that he governs in!”
“And this little statue of Esculapius,” she added, “kept me a long while before it. The healing sage—how faithfully is he represented! What a sad benevolence! acquainted with pain—compelled to inflict even in order to restore.”
They passed through the Hall of the Muses.
“How serene areallthe Muses!” said Winston. “This is as it should be. Even Tragedy, the most moved of all, how evidently her emotion is one of thought, not of passion! Though she holds the dagger in her down-dropt hand, how plainly we see that she has not used it! She has picked it up from the floor after the fatal deed was perpetrated, and is musing on the terrible catastrophe, and the still more terrible passions that led to it.”
They passed through theHall of the Animals; but this had comparatively little attraction for Mildred. Her companion pointed out the bronze centaur for her admiration.
“You must break a centaur in half,” said she, “before I can admire it. And, if I am to look at a satyr, pray let the goat’s legs be hid in the bushes. I cannot embrace in one conception these fragments of man and brute. Come with me to the neighbouring gallery; I wish to show you a Jupiter, seated at the further end of it, which made half a Pagan of me this morning as I stood venerating it.”
“The head of your Jupiter,” said Winston, as they approached it, “is surpassed, I think, by more than one bust of the same god that we have already seen; and I find something of stiffness or rigidity in the figure; but the impression it makes, as a whole, is very grand.”
“It will grow wonderfully on you as you look at it,” said Mildred. “How well it typifies all that a Pagan would conceive of the supreme ruler of the skies, the controller of the powers of nature, the great administrator of the world who has the Fates for his council! His power irresistible, but no pride in it, no joy, no triumph. He is without passion. In his right hand lies the thunder, but it reposes on his thigh; and his left hand rests calmly upon his tall sceptre surmounted by an eagle. In his countenance there is the tranquillity of unquestioned supremacy; but there is no repose. There is care; a constant, wakefulness. It is the governor of a nature whose elements have never known one moment’s pause.”
“I see it as you speak,” said Winston. Winston then proposed that they should go together and look at the Apollo; but Mildred excused herself.
“I have paid my devotions to the god,” she said, “this morning, when the eyes and the mind were fresh. I would not willingly displace the impression that I now carry away for one which would be made on a fatigued and jaded attention.”
“Is it not godlike?”
“Indeed it is. I was presumptuous enough to think I knew the Apollo. A cast of the head—esteemed to be a very good one—my uncle had given me. I placed it in my own room; for a long time it was the first thing that the light fell upon, or my eyes opened to, in the morning; and in my attempts at crayons I copied it, I believe, in every aspect. It seemed to me therefore that on visiting the Apollo I should recognise an old acquaintance. No such thing. The cast had given me hardly any idea of the statue itself. There was certainly no feeling of old acquaintanceship. The brow, as I stood in front of the god, quite overawed me; involuntarily I retreated for an instant; you will smile, but I had to muster my courage before I could gaze steadily at it.”
“I am not surprised; the divinity there is in no gentle mood. How majestic! and yet how lightly it touches the earth! It is buoyant with godhead.”
“What strikes me,” continued Mildred, “as the great triumph of the artist, is this very anger of the god. It is an anger, which, like the arrow he has shot from his bow, spends itself entirely upon his victim; there is no recoil, as in human passion, upon the mind of him who feels it. There is no jar there. The lightning strikesdown—it tarries not a moment in the sky above.”
We are giving, we are afraid, in these reports of Mildred’s conversation, an erroneous impression of the speaker. We collect together what often was uttered with some pauses between, and, owing to a partiality to our heroine, we are more anxious to report her sentiments than those of her companion. She is thus made to speak in a somewhat elaborate style, very different from her real manner, and represented as rather the greater talker of the two; whereas she was more disposed to listen than to speak, and spoke always with the greatest simplicity—with enthusiasm, it is true, but never with effort, or display of diction.
The delight which Winston experienced, (having already surveyed them for and by himself,) in retracing his steps through the marvels of Rome with such a companion, is indescribable. The pictures in the Borghese, and other palaces, broke upon him with a second novelty, and often with a deeper sentiment. But was there no danger in wandering through galleries with one by his side to whose living beauty the beauty on the canvass served only to draw renewed attention and heightened admiration? If he fled at Genoa, why does he tarry at Rome? There are some dangers, alas! that are seen the less the greater they become. He was standing with her before that exquisite picture in the Borghese palace representing the Three Ages; a youth is reclining in the centre, and a nymph is playing to him upon two flutes. He had seen it before, but he seemed now to understand it for the first time. “How plainly,” he murmured to himself, “is youth theallof life! How plainly is love theallof youth!”
As he was now somewhat familiar with Rome, he could be serviceable to the Bloomfield party in the capacity of cicerone. They were pleased with his services, and he found every day some incontrovertible reason why he should bestow them. The embarrassments of Louisa Jackson and her mamma were quite forgotten; nor could their difficulties excite a moment’s compassion or attention. In vain did Louisa sigh; no inquiry was made into the cause of her distress. In vain did she even, with plaintive voice, ask whether, “being a Protestant, she could take the veil, and be a nun?” the question was unheeded, and its deep significance unperceived.