and shoulders like ours!" they said to me; "such a
bearing, such a spirit within!" I cannot overestimate even the physical
good they did me; it was from them that I gained the inspiration for
bodily development and for all athletic exercise which has, since then,
helped me over many a rough passage in the path of life. But they also
awoke higher ambitions and conferred finer benefits.

From these excursions into the ideal I would return to out-of-doors with
another inexhaustible zest. That ardent, blue Roman sky and penetrating,
soft sunshine filled me with life and joy. The breath and strength of
immeasurable antiquity emanated from those massive ruins, which time
could deface but never conquer. Emerald lizards basked on the hot walls;
flowers grew in the old crevices; butterflies floated round them; they
were haunted by spirits of heroes. There is nothing else to be compared
with the private, intimate, human, yet sublimated affection which
these antique monuments wrought in me. They were my mighty brothers,
condescending to my boyish thoughts and fancies, smiling upon me,
welcoming me, conscious of my love for them. Each ruin had its separate
individuality for me, so that to-day I must play with the Coliseum,
to-morrow with the Forum, or the far-ranging arches of the Aqueduct, or
the Temple of Vesta. Always, too, my eyes were alert for treasures in
the old Roman soil, coming, as it seemed, direct from the dead hands of
the vanished people into mine. I valued the scraps that I picked up thus
more than anything to be bought in shops or seen in museums. These
bits of tinted marble had felt the touch of real Romans; their feet had
trodden on them, on them their arms had rested, their hands had grasped
them. Two thousand years had dulled the polish of their surfaces; I took
them to the stone-workers, who made them glow and bloom again--yellow,
red, black, green, white. They were good-natured but careless men, those
marble-polishers, and would sometimes lose my precious relics, and when
I called for them would say, every day, "Domane--domane," or try to put
me off with some substitute--as if a boy could be deceived in such
a matter! I once found in the neighborhood of a recent excavation a
semi-transparent tourmaline of a cool green hue when held to the light;
it had once been set in the ring of some Roman beauty. It had, from long
abiding in the earth, that wonderful iridescent surface which ancient
glass acquires. Rose, my