When we have once known Rome, and left her where she lies, like a

long-decaying corpse, retaining a trace of the noble shape it was, but

with accumulated dust and a fungous growth overspreading all its more

admirable features, left her in utter weariness, no doubt, of her

narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little

squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage, so

indescribably ugly, moreover, so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun

never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our

lungs,--left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied,

yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary

in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbing

those staircases, which ascend from a ground-floor of cook shops,

cobblers' stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region

of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists,

just beneath the unattainable sky,--left her, worn out with shivering

at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own

substance the ravenous little populace of a Roman bed at night,--left

her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever

faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach

of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly

bestowed on evil meats,--left her, disgusted with the pretence of

holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent,--left

her, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle

of which has been used up long ago, or corrupted by myriads of

slaughters,--left her, crushed down in spirit with the desolation of her

ruin, and the hopelessness of her future,--left her, in short, hating

her with all our might, and adding our individual curse to the infinite

anathema which her old crimes have unmistakably brought down,--when we

have left Rome in such mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery,

by and by, that our heart-strings have mysteriously attached themselves

to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were

more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we

were born.

It is with a kindred sentiment, that we now follow the course of our

story back through the Flaminian Gate, and, treading our way to the Via

Portoghese, climb the staircase to the upper chamber of the tower where

we last saw Hilda.

Hilda all along intended to pass the summer in Rome; for she had laid

out many high and delightful tasks, which she could the better complete

while her favorite haunts were deserted by the multitude that thronged

them throughout the winter and early spring. Nor did she dread the

summer atmosphere, although generally held to be so pestilential. She

had already made trial of it, two years before, and found no worse

effect than a kind of dreamy languor, which was dissipated by the first

cool breezes that came with autumn. The thickly populated centre of the

city, indeed, is never affected by the feverish influence that lies in

wait in the Campagna, like a besieging foe, and nightly haunts those

beautiful lawns and woodlands, around the suburban villas, just at the

season when they most resemble Paradise. What the flaming sword was to

the first Eden, such is the malaria to these sweet gardens and grove. We

may wander through them, of an afternoon, it is true, but they cannot

be made a home and a reality, and to sleep among them is death. They are

but illusions, therefore, like the show of gleaming waters and shadowy

foliage in a desert.




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