ing, and anon
crowd through the air to the roof-tops. Shadow upon the one side, bright
light upon the other, azure above and swallows. Ever rolling the human
stream flows, mostly on the south side yonder, near enough to be
audible, but toned to bearableness. A stream of human hearts, every atom
a living mind filled with what thoughts?--a stream that ran through Rome
once, but has altered its course and wears away the banks here now and
triturates its own atoms, the hearts, to dust in the process. Yellow
omnibuses and red cabs, dark shining carriages, chestnut horses, all
rushing, and by their motion mixing their colours so that the commonness
of it disappears and the hues remain, a streak drawn in the groove of
the street--dashed hastily with thick camel's hair. In the midst the
calm lions, dusky, unmoved, full always of the one grand idea that was
infused into them. So full of it that the golden sun and the bright wall
of the eastern houses, the shade that is slipping towards them, the
sweet swallows and the azure sky, all the human stream holds of wealth
and power and coroneted panels--nature, man, and city--pass as naught.
Mind is stronger than matter. The soul alone stands when the sun sinks,
when the shade is universal night, when the van's wheels are silent and
the dust rises no more.

At summer noontide, when the day surrounds us and it is bright light
even in the shadow, I like to stand by one of the lions and yield to the
old feeling. The sunshine glows on the dusky creature, as it seems, not
on the surface, but under the skin, as if it came up from out of the
limb. The roar of the rolling wheels sinks and becomes distant as the
sound of a waterfall when dreams are coming. All the abundant human life
is smoothed and levelled, the abruptness of the individuals lost in the
flowing current, like separate flowers drawn along in a border, like
music heard so far off that the notes are molten and the theme only
remains. The abyss of the sky over and the ancient sun are near. They
only are close at hand, they and immortal thought. When the yellow
Syrian lions stood in old time of Egypt, then too, the sunlight gleamed
on the eyes of men, as now this hour on mine. The same consciousness of
light, the same sun, but the eyes that saw it and mine, how far apart!
The immense lion here beside me expresses larger nature--cosmos--the
ever-existent thought which sustains the world. Massiveness exalts the
mind till the vast road