The animal nature of man is everywhere the prevailing one.
Food, concupiscence, and greediness for power are, as in every species
of animals, the most powerful provocatives to activity; they are the
sources of harmony as well as of discord, of the rise and fall of
nations. Disinterested virtue, eternal right, and incontrovertible
truth, are more felt than recognised and encouraged. Their names are
proclaimed in the schools, while their essence does not, at all times,
pervade the teachers themselves. And whoever should, with a pious
zeal, profess them, would soon become the laughing-stock of those
surrounding him, and the victim of the general frensy.

The present time was too gloomy for me, I longed for things nobler and
more perfect. In the period of a blooming imagination, I could not but
create a more beautiful world, in which virtue, justice, and truth,
embraced each other, and where the senses diffused the tenderest
feelings. I turned poet, and lamented the fall of Rome and Greece,
which gave hopes of a more delightful existence of mankind, and
bitterly disappointed their expectations.

The ruins of the vast amphitheatre at Nismes, that ancient splendid
monument of Roman greatness, became my favourite haunt. When walking
through the lofty arcades between the gray pillasters, or looking down
over the magnificent ruins from the Attica, I felt as if the spirit of
that majestic antiquity embraced me, and, lamenting, pressed me to its
breast.

Here I lingered with pleasure, but never without a feeling of sadness.
The remains of long-departed human generations became to me books of
history. The hands of several nations have been patching up this work
of Roman magnificence. The two half-decayed towers of the Attica,
solitary masses of stone piled up without taste and sense of art, were
reared by the Goths, the conquerors of the Romans. And the huts of
wood in the arena beneath, are the dwellings of poor labourers and
workmen of modern days. What a change of times, and of the men that
lived in them!

The shriek of a female under the vaults startled me one evening out of
my dreams. Darkness had already crept into the halls. I hastened down
the steps from the second story, and perceived a well-dressed woman in
the power of a common man. The sound of my steps frightened the
villain, and he disappeared among the columns. A young girl with
dishevelled hair sat on a block of marble, trembling, and almost beside