d seemed to him the encouragers of
the soft sensations he had indulged. Now, they appeared to reprove the
very weakness which hallowed themselves--the associations spoke to him
in another tone. The broken statue of the river god--the desert
silence in which the water of the sweet fountain keeps its melancholy
course--the profound and chilling Solitude of the spot--all seemed
eloquent, not of love, but the broken hope and the dreary loneliness
that succeed it! The gentle plant (the capillaire) that overhangs the
sides of the grotto, and nourishes itself on the dews of the fountain,
seemed an emblem of love itself after disappointment--the love that
might henceforth be Lucilla's--drooping in silence on the spot once
consecrated to rapture, and feeding itself with tears. There was
something mocking to human passion in the very antiquity of the spot;
four-and-twenty centuries had passed away since the origin of the tale
that made it holy--and that tale, too, was fable! What, in this vast
accumulation of the sands of time, was a solitary atom! What, among the
millions, the myriads, that around that desolate spot had loved, and
forgotten love, was the brief passion of one mortal, withering as it
sprung! Thus differently moralises the heart, according to the passion
which bestows on it the text.

Before he regained his home, Godolphin's resolve was taken. The next day
he had promised Constance to attend her to Tivoli; he resolved then to
take leave of her, and on the following day to return to Lucilla. He
remembered, with bitter reproach, that he had not written to her for a
length of time, treble the accustomed interval between his letters;
and felt that, while at the moment she had written the lines he had now
pressed to his bosom, she was expecting, with unutterable fondness
and anxiety, to receive his lukewarm assurances of continued love, the
letter he was about to write in answer to hers was the first one that
would greet her eyes. But he resolved, that in that letter, at least,
she should not be disappointed. He wrote at length, and with all the
outpourings of a tenderness reawakened by remorse. He informed her of
his immediate return, and even forced himself to dwell upon it with
kindly hypocrisy of transport. For the first time for several weeks,
he felt satisfied with himself as he sealed his letter. It is doubtful
whether that letter Lucilla ever received.

CHAPTER XL.

TIVOLI.--THE SIREN'S CAVE.--THE CONFE