earing from Lucilla, but in vain. He could not flatter himself with the
hope that Lucilla did not know the exact time for his journey--he had
expressly stated it. Sometimes he conceived the notion of seeking her
again; but he knew too well the weakness of his generous resolution;
and, though infirm of thought, was yet virtuous enough in act not to
hazard it to certain defeat. At length in a momentary desperation, and
muttering reproaches on Lucilla for her fickleness and inability to
appreciate the magnanimity of his conduct, he threw himself into his
carriage, and bade adieu to Rome.

As every grove that the traveller passes on that road was guarded once
by a nymph, so now it is hallowed by a memory. In vain the air, heavy
with death, creeps over the wood, the rivulet, and the shattered
tower;--the mind will not recur to the risk of its ignoble tenement; it
flies back; it is with the Past! A subtle and speechless rapture fills
and exalts the spirit. There--far to the West--spreads that purple sea,
haunted by a million reminiscences of glory; there the mountains, with
their sharp and snowy crests, rise into the bosom of the heavens; on
that plain, the pilgrim yet hails the traditional tomb of the Curiatii
and those immortal Twins who left to their brother the glory of
conquest, and the shame by which it was succeeded: around the Lake of
Nemi yet bloom the sacred groves by which Diana raised Hippolytus
again into life. Poetry, Fable, History, watch over the land: it is a
sepulchre; Death is within and around it; Decay writes defeature upon
every stone; but the Past sits by the tomb as a mourning angel; a soul
breathes through the desolation; a voice calls amidst the silence. Every
age that bath passed away bath left a ghost behind it; and the beautiful
land seems like that imagined clime beneath the earth in which man,
glorious though it be, may not breathe and live--but which is populous
with holy phantoms and illustrious shades.

On, on sped Godolphin. Night broke over him as he traversed the Pontine
Marshes. There, the malaria broods over its rankest venom: solitude hath
lost the soul that belonged to it: all life, save the deadly fertility
of corruption, seems to have rotted away: the spirit falls stricken into
gloom; a nightmare weighs upon the breast of Nature; and over the wrecks
of Time, Silence sits motionless in the arms of Death.

He arrived at Terracina, and retired to rest. His sleep was filled with
fearfu