and lies almost in the shadow of the pyramid of Caius Cestius; and I could not help thinking of the wonder the Roman would have felt could he have known into what unnamable richness and beauty his Greek faith had ripened in the heart of the poor poet, where it was mixed with so much sorrow.  Doubtless, in his time, a prominent citizen like Caius Cestius was a leading member of the temple in his neighborhood, and regularly attended sacrifice:  it would have been but decent; and yet I fancied that a man immersed like him in affairs might have learned with surprise the inner and more fragrant meaning of the symbols with the outside of which his life was satisfied; and I was glad to reflect that in our day such a thing is impossible.

The grave of our beloved poet is sunken to the level of the common earth, and is only marked by the quaintly lettered, simple stone bearing the famous epitaph.  While at Rome I heard talk of another and grander monument which some members of the Keats family were to place over the dust of their great kinsman.  But, for one, I hope this may never be done, even though the original stone should also be left there, as was intended.  Let the world still keep unchanged this shrine, to which it can repair with at once pity and tenderness and respect.

A rose-tree and some sweet-smelling bushes grew upon the grave, and the roses were in bloom.  We asked leave to take one of them; but at last could only bring ourselves to gather some of the fallen petals.  Our Hebrew guide was willing enough, and unconsciously set us a little example of wantonness; for while he listened to our explanation of the mystery which had puzzled him ever since he had learned English, namely, why the stone should say “writ on water,” and not written, he kept plucking mechanically at one of the fragrant shrubs, pinching away the leaves, and rending the tender twig, till I, remembering the once-sensitive dust from which it grew, waited for the tortured tree to cry out to him with a voice of words and blood, “Perche mi schianti?”

VIII.

It seems to me that a candid person will wish to pause a little before condemning Gibson’s colored statues.  They have been grossly misrepresented.  They do not impress one at all as wax-work, and there is great wrong in saying that their tinted nakedness suggests impurity any more than the white nakedness of other statues.  The coloring is quite conventional; the flesh is merely warmed with the hue representing life; the hair is always a very delicate yellow, the eyes a tender violet, and there is no other particularization of color; a fillet binding the hair may be gilded,—­the hem of a robe traced in blue.  I, who had just come from seeing the fragments of antique statuary in Naples Museum, tinted in the same way, could not feel that there was any thing preposterous in Gibson’s works, and I am not ashamed to say that they gave me pleasure.