ideal standard. Certainly this weather corresponds with mine; and
I begin to believe the climate of Italy is really what it has been
represented. Shivering here last spring in an air no better than the
cruel cast wind of Puritan Boston, I thought all the praises lavished
on

"Italia, O Italia!"

would turn out to be figments of the brain; and that even Byron,
usually accurate beyond the conception of plodding pedants, had
deceived us when he says, you have the happiness in Italy to

"See the sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow,"

and not, according to a view which exercises a withering influence on
the enthusiasm of youth in my native land, be forced to regard each
pleasant day as a _weather-breeder_.

How delightful, too, is the contrast between this time and the spring
in another respect! Then I was here, like travellers in general,
expecting to be driven away in a short time. Like others, I went
through the painful process of sight-seeing, so unnatural everywhere,
so counter to the healthful methods and true life of the mind. You
rise in the morning knowing there are a great number of objects worth
knowing, which you may never have the chance to see again. You go
every day, in all moods, under all circumstances; feeling, probably,
in seeing them, the inadequacy of your preparation for understanding
or duly receiving them. This consciousness would be most valuable if
one had time to think and study, being the natural way in which the
mind is lured to cure its defects; but you have no time; you are
always wearied, body and mind, confused, dissipated, sad. The objects
are of commanding beauty or full of suggestion, but there is no quiet
to let that beauty breathe its life into the soul; no time to follow
up these suggestions, and plant for the proper harvest. Many persons
run about Rome for nine days, and then go away; they might as well
expect to appreciate the Venus by throwing a stone at it, as hope
really to see Rome in this time. I stayed in Rome nine weeks, and came
away unhappy as he who, having been taken in the visions of the night
through some wondrous realm, wakes unable to recall anything but the
hues and outlines of the pageant; the real knowledge, the recreative
power induced by familiar love, the assimilation of its soul and
substance,--all the true value of such a revelation,--is wanting; and
he remains a poor Tantalus, hungrier than before he had tasted this
spiritual food.

No; Rome is not a