count. A man cannot throw off the habits of sixteen
years. Since that age, it is true, I had lived luxuriously, or at least
surrounded by all the conveniences civilization afforded. But before that
time, I had been "as uncouth a savage, as the wolf-bred founder of old
Rome"--and now, in Rome itself, robber and shepherd propensities, similar
to those of its founder, were of advantage to its sole inhabitant. I spent
the morning riding and shooting in the Campagna--I passed long hours in
the various galleries--I gazed at each statue, and lost myself in a
reverie before many a fair Madonna or beauteous nymph. I haunted the
Vatican, and stood surrounded by marble forms of divine beauty. Each stone
deity was possessed by sacred gladness, and the eternal fruition of love.
They looked on me with unsympathizing complacency, and often in wild
accents I reproached them for their supreme indifference--for they were
human shapes, the human form divine was manifest in each fairest limb and
lineament. The perfect moulding brought with it the idea of colour and
motion; often, half in bitter mockery, half in self-delusion, I clasped
their icy proportions, and, coming between Cupid and his Psyche's lips,
pressed the unconceiving marble.

I endeavoured to read. I visited the libraries of Rome. I selected a
volume, and, choosing some sequestered, shady nook, on the banks of the
Tiber, or opposite the fair temple in the Borghese Gardens, or under the
old pyramid of Cestius, I endeavoured to conceal me from myself, and
immerse myself in the subject traced on the pages before me. As if in the
same soil you plant nightshade and a myrtle tree, they will each
appropriate the mould, moisture, and air administered, for the fostering
their several properties--so did my grief find sustenance, and power of
existence, and growth, in what else had been divine manna, to feed radiant
meditation. Ah! while I streak this paper with the tale of what my so named
occupations were--while I shape the skeleton of my days--my hand
trembles--my heart pants, and my brain refuses to lend expression, or
phrase, or idea, by which to image forth the veil of unutterable woe that
clothed these bare realities. O, worn and beating heart, may I dissect thy
fibres, and tell how in each unmitigable misery, sadness dire, repinings,
and despair, existed? May I record my many ravings--the wild curses I
hurled at torturing nature--and how I have passed days shut out from
light and