One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the piazza, on the verge

of the area. It was a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome

actually sensible to the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor

force of thought, nor magic of song, could so vitally assure us that

Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people

wrought.

"And see!" said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it, "there is still a

polish remaining on the hard substance of the pillar; and even now, late

as it is, I can feel very sensibly the warmth of the noonday sun, which

did its best to heat it through. This shaft will endure forever. The

polish of eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half rubbed off, and the

heat of to-day's sunshine, lingering into the night, seem almost equally

ephemeral in relation to it."

"There is comfort to be found in the pillar," remarked Miriam, "hard

and heavy as it is. Lying here forever, as it will, it makes all human

trouble appear but a momentary annoyance."

"And human happiness as evanescent too," observed Hilda, sighing; "and

beautiful art hardly less so! I do not love to think that this dull

stone, merely by its massiveness, will last infinitely longer than

any picture, in spite of the spiritual life that ought to give it

immortality!"

"My poor little Hilda," said Miriam, kissing her compassionately, "would

you sacrifice this greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from

the transitoriness of all things, from the right of saying, in every

conjecture, 'This, too, will pass away,' would you give up this

unspeakable boon, for the sake of making a picture eternal?"

Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a demonstration from the rest

of the party, who, after talking and laughing together, suddenly joined

their voices, and shouted at full pitch, "Trajan! Trajan!"

"Why do you deafen us with such an uproar?" inquired Miriam.

In truth, the whole piazza had been filled with their idle vociferation;

the echoes from the surrounding houses reverberating the cry of

"Trajan," on all sides; as if there was a great search for that imperial

personage, and not so much as a handful of his ashes to be found.

"Why, it was a good opportunity to air our voices in this resounding

piazza," replied one of the artists. "Besides, we had really some hopes

of summoning Trajan to look at his column, which, you know, he never

saw in his lifetime. Here is your model (who, they say, lived and sinned

before Trajan's death) still wandering about Rome; and why not the

Emperor Trajan?"

"Dead emperors have very little delight in their columns, I am afraid,"

observed Kenyon. "All that rich sculpture of Trajan's bloody warfare,

twining from the base of the pillar to its capital, may be but an ugly

spectacle for his ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge, storied

shaft must be laid before the judgment-seat, as a piece of the evidence

of what he did in the flesh. If ever I am employed to sculpture a hero's

monument, I shall think of this, as I put in the bas-reliefs of the

pedestal!"




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