There was a time, methought it was but lately departed,
  When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it;
  Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender. 
  There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early,
  Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted. 
  But it is over, all that!  I have slunk from the perilous field in
  Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested. 
  It is over, all that!  I am a coward, and know it. 
  Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless.

  VIII.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

  Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken,
  Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost il Moro;—­
  Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice. 
  I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit
  Moping and mourning here,—­for her, and myself much smaller. 
    Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,
  Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them? 
  Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels
  Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labor,
  And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture
  Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy,
  Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavor? 
    All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome, nor
  Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the
  Wreck of the Lombard youth and the victory of the oppressor. 
  Whither depart the brave?—­God knows; I certainly do not.

  IX.—­MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER.

  He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it. 
  You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him,
  If he perhaps should return;—­but that is surely unlikely. 
  Has he not written to you?—­he did not know your direction. 
  Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going! 
  Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you. 
  If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so? 
  Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?—­
  O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!—­
  You have written to Florence;—­your friends would certainly find him. 
  Might you not write to him?—­but yet it is so little likely! 
  I shall expect nothing more.—­Ever yours, your affectionate Mary.

  X.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

  I cannot stay at Florence, not even to wait for a letter. 
  Galleries only oppress me.  Remembrance of hope I had cherished
  (Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first
       time)
  Lies like a sword in my soul.  I am more a coward than ever,
  Chicken-hearted, past thought.  The