huge fragment of rock; it would have crushed my rash foe.  I poized it—­aimed it—­then my heart failed me.  I hurled it wide of the mark; it rolled clattering among the bushes into dell.  My little visitants, all aghast, galloped back into the covert of the wood; while I, my very heart bleeding and torn, rushed down the hill, and by the violence of bodily exertion, sought to escape from my miserable self.

No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of all that lives.  I will seek the towns—­Rome, the capital of the world, the crown of man’s achievements.  Among its storied streets, hallowed ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here, find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale,—­by the torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed—­by the vegetation liberated from the laws which he enforced—­by his habitation abandoned to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for ever.

I hailed the Tiber, for that was as it were an unalienable possession of humanity.  I hailed the wild Campagna, for every rood had been trod by man; and its savage uncultivation, of no recent date, only proclaimed more distinctly his power, since he had given an honourable name and sacred title to what else would have been a worthless, barren track.  I entered Eternal Rome by the Porta del Popolo, and saluted with awe its time-honoured space.  The wide square, the churches near, the long extent of the Corso, the near eminence of Trinita de’ Monti appeared like fairy work, they were so silent, so peaceful, and so very fair.  It was evening; and the population of animals which still existed in this mighty city, had gone to rest; there was no sound, save the murmur of its many fountains, whose soft monotony was harmony to my soul.  The knowledge that I was in Rome, soothed me; that wondrous city, hardly more illustrious for its heroes and sages, than for the power it exercised over the imaginations of men.  I went to rest that night; the eternal burning of my heart quenched,—­my senses tranquil.

The next morning I eagerly began my rambles in search of oblivion.  I ascended the many terraces of the garden of the Colonna Palace, under whose roof I had been sleeping; and passing out from it at its summit, I found myself on Monte Cavallo.  The fountain sparkled in the sun; the obelisk above pierced the clear dark-blue air.  The statues on each side, the works, as they are inscribed, of Phidias and Praxiteles, stood in undiminished grandeur, representing Castor and Pollux, who with majestic power tamed the rearing animal at their side.  If those illustrious artists had in truth chiselled these forms, how many passing generations had their giant proportions outlived! and now they were viewed by the last of the species they were sculptured to represent and deify.  I had shrunk into insignificance in my own eyes, as I considered the multitudinous beings these stone demigods had outlived, but this after-thought restored me to dignity in my own conception.  The sight of the poetry eternized in these statues, took the sting from the thought, arraying it only in poetic ideality.