he solemn grandeur of antiquity. I remembered the dark
monk, and floating figures of "The Italian," and how my boyish blood had
thrilled at the description. I called to mind Corinna ascending the Capitol
to be crowned, and, passing from the heroine to the author, reflected how
the Enchantress Spirit of Rome held sovereign sway over the minds of the
imaginative, until it rested on me--sole remaining spectator of its
wonders.

I was long wrapt by such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless flight;
and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this spot,
suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the present--
into self-knowledge--into tenfold sadness. I roused myself--I cast off
my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the shouts of the
Roman throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes, now beheld the
desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own blue sky; the shadows lay
tranquilly on the ground; sheep were grazing untended on the Palatine, and
a buffalo stalked down the Sacred Way that led to the Capitol. I was alone
in the Forum; alone in Rome; alone in the world. Would not one living man
--one companion in my weary solitude, be worth all the glory and
remembered power of this time-honoured city? Double sorrow--sadness,
bred in Cimmerian caves, robed my soul in a mourning garb. The generations
I had conjured up to my fancy, contrasted more strongly with the end of all
--the single point in which, as a pyramid, the mighty fabric of society
had ended, while I, on the giddy height, saw vacant space around me.

From such vague laments I turned to the contemplation of the minutiae of my
situation. So far, I had not succeeded in the sole object of my desires,
the finding a companion for my desolation. Yet I did not despair. It is
true that my inscriptions were set up for the most part, in insignificant
towns and villages; yet, even without these memorials, it was possible that
the person, who like me should find himself alone in a depopulate land,
should, like me, come to Rome. The more slender my expectation was, the
more I chose to build on it, and to accommodate my actions to this vague
possibility.

It became necessary therefore, that for a time I should domesticate myself
at Rome. It became necessary, that I should look my disaster in the face--
not playing the school-boy's part of obedience without submission; enduring
life, and yet rebelling against the laws by which