a part of us. I earnestly entreat you to take me
away."

So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our villa, and the
embowering shades of this abode of beauty; to calm bay and noisy waterfall;
to Evelyn's little grave we bade farewell! and then, with heavy hearts, we
departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome.

[1] Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Norway.
[2] Solomon's Song.

CHAPTER IX.

NOW--soft awhile--have I arrived so near the end? Yes! it is all over
now--a step or two over those new made graves, and the wearisome way is
done. Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words capacious
of the grand conclusion? Arise, black Melancholy! quit thy Cimmerian
solitude! Bring with thee murky fogs from hell, which may drink up the day;
bring blight and pestiferous exhalations, which, entering the hollow
caverns and breathing places of earth, may fill her stony veins with
corruption, so that not only herbage may no longer flourish, the trees may
rot, and the rivers run with gall--but the everlasting mountains be
decomposed, and the mighty deep putrify, and the genial atmosphere which
clips the globe, lose all powers of generation and sustenance. Do this, sad
visaged power, while I write, while eyes read these pages.

And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the re-born world--
beware, fair being, with human heart, yet untamed by care, and human brow,
yet unploughed by time--beware, lest the cheerful current of thy blood be
checked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy sweet dimpling smiles be changed
to fixed, harsh wrinkles! Let not day look on these lines, lest garish day
waste, turn pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose moaning boughs will
be harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep embowered in earth's dark
entrails, where no light will penetrate, save that which struggles, red and
flickering, through a single fissure, staining thy page with grimmest
livery of death.

There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate
distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend's
gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills
eternity--then, again, I feel the gasping throes--

We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian's earnest desire, we took
Venice in our way to Rome. There was something to the English peculiarly
attractive in the idea of this wave-encircled, island-enthroned city.
Adrian had never seen it. We went down the