nder
arches are not warehoused for sale to forestiere, but lying on the
sarcophagus, over the bones or the _praecordia_ of Boniface VIII. of
Roveres and Borgias.

Waiting at the head of that staircase for the beadle, faint strains of
music come from very far. In St. Peter's a great choral service like
this one going on in the left-hand chapel, becomes a detail lost as in
the life of a whole city.

_March_ 17.

VI.

SAN STEFANO.

San Stefano Rotondo on that rainy afternoon, the extraordinary
grandeur of this circular church filled with diffuse white light.
Architecturally one of the most beautiful Roman churches, certainly,
with its circle of columns surrounding the great central well, where
two colossal pillars carry the triumphal arch, carry a great blank
windowed wall above it, immensely high up. Those columns, that wall,
pearly white, of carved and broken marble against pure chalky
brilliancy of whitewash, seem in a way the presiding divinities of
this great circular sanctuary in the church's centre; or is it the
white light, the solemn pure emptiness among them? An immanent
presence, greater certainly than could be any gigantic statue.

_March_ 18.

VII.

VIA LATINA.

Afterwards, in fitful rain, we went to the Tombs and the little
roofless basilica near them in the Via Latina; and walked up and down,
a melancholy little party enough, grubbing up marbles and picking them
out of the rubbish heap among the quickening grass. The delicate grey
sky kept dissolving in short showers; the corn and ploughed purple
earth (_that compost!_) were drenched and fragrant with new life; and
the air was full of the twitter of invisible larks. But in this warm
soft renewal there was, for us, only the mood of lost things and
imminent partings; and the song of the peasants in the field hard by
told not, as it should, of their mountains, but of this sad, wet
landscape traversed by endless lines of ruins. Suddenly in the clouds,
a solid dark spot appeared; the top, the altar slab of Mons Latialis.
And little by little the clouds slipped lower, the whole mountain
range of hills stepped forth from the vapours, with its great peaceful
life and strength.

_March_ 18.

SPRING 1905.

I.

ROME AGAIN.

Yesterday, after D. Laura's, took Du B. that walk through the Ghetto,
along the Tiber quays by the island; a stormy, wet day. Rome again! As
we stood by the worn Januses of the bridge and looked into th