I please myself, too, with remembering some ardent souls among the American youth, who, I trust, will yet expand and help to give soul to the huge, over-fed, too-hastily-grown-up body.  May they be constant!  “Were man but constant, he were perfect.”  It is to the youth that Hope addresses itself.  But I dare not expect too much of them.  I am not very old; yet of those who, in life’s morning, I saw touched by the light of a high hope, many have seceded.  Some have become voluptuaries; some mere family men, who think it is quite life enough to win bread for half a dozen people, and treat them decently; others are lost through indolence and vacillation.  Yet some remain constant.

  “I have witnessed many a shipwreck, yet still beat noble hearts.”

* * * * *

Rome, January, 1848.—­As one becomes domesticated here, ancient and modern Rome, at first so jumbled together, begin to separate.  You see where objects and limits anciently were.  When this happens, one feels first truly at ease in Rome.  Then the old kings, the consuls, the tribunes, the emperors, the warriors of eagle sight and remorseless beak, return for us, and the toga-clad procession finds room to sweep across the scene; the seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more.

* * * * *

Rome, Jan. 12, 1848.—­In Rome, here, the new Council is inaugurated, and the elections have given tolerable satisfaction.  Twenty-four carriages had been lent by the princes and nobles, at the request of the city, to convey the councillors.  Each deputy was followed by his target and banner.  In the evening, there was a ball given at the Argentine.  Lord Minto was there, Prince Corsini, now senator, the Torlonias, in uniform of the Civic Guard, Princess Torlonia, in a sash of their colors given her by the Civic Guard, which she waved in answer to their greetings.  But the beautiful show of the evening was the Trasteverini dancing the Saltarello in their most beautiful costume.  I saw them thus to much greater advantage than ever before.  Several were nobly handsome, and danced admirably.  The saltarello enchants me; in this is really the Italian wine, the Italian sun.

The Pope, in receiving the councillors, made a speech, intimating that he meant only to improve, not to reform and should keep things safe locked with the keys of St. Peter.

I was happy the first two months of my stay here, seeing all the great things at my leisure.  But now, after a month of continuous rain, Rome is no more Rome.  The atmosphere is far worse than that of Paris.  It is impossible to walk in the thick mud.  The ruins, and other great objects, always solemn, appear terribly gloomy, steeped in black rain and cloud; and my apartment, in a street of high houses, is dark all day.  The bad weather may continue all this month and all next.  If I could use the time for work, I should not care; but this climate makes me so ill, I can do but little.