lling with them my
much-enduring pockets; in this way drinking in Rome in my own way,
also, and to my boyish advantage. He tells me tales of old Rome, always
apposite to the occasion; draws from me, sometimes, my private views as
to persons, places, and scenes, and criticises those views in his own
terse, arch, pregnant way, the force and pertinency whereof are revealed
to me only in my later meditations upon them. It is only after one has
begun to deal in this way with Rome that its magic and spell begin to
work upon one; and they are never to be shaken off. Anxiety and pain may
be mingled with them, as was the case with my father before we said
our final farewell to the mighty city; but it is thereby only the more
endeared to one. Rome is one of the few central facts of the world,
because it is so much more than a fact. Byron is right--it is the city
of the soul.

On one of the last evenings of our first season we went to the
Thompsons', and were there shown, among other things, a portfolio
of sketches. There is in The Marble Faun a chapter called "Miriam's
Studio," in which occurs a reference to a portfolio of sketches by
Miriam herself; the hint for it may have been taken from the portfolio
of Mr. Thompson, though the sketches themselves were of a very different
quality and character. The latter collection pleased me, because I was
just beginning to fill an album of my own with such lopsided attempts to
represent real objects, and yet more preposterous imaginative sallies as
my age and nature suggested. My father was interested in them on account
of the spiritual vigor which belongs to the artist's first vision of
his subject. In their case, as well as in his own, he felt that it was
impossible, as Browning put it, to "recapture that first, fine, careless
rapture." But the man of letters has an advantage over the man of paint
and canvas in the matter of being able to preserve the original spirit
in the later, finished design.

Towards the close of this first season in Rome the Bryants came to town,
and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he was not
a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated with awe
his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near the end of
May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the Bryants and Miss
Hosmer and some English people were there; and I understood nothing of
what passed except the breakfast, which was good, until, at the end