of one.

* * *

Anything in the open air is always well; it is because men now-a-days
shut themselves up so much in rooms and pen themselves in stifling
styes, where never the wind comes or the clouds are looked at, that
puling discontent and plague-struck envy are the note of all modern
politics and philosophies. The open air breeds Leonidas, the factory
room Felix Pyat.

* * *

I lit my pipe. A pipe is a pocket philosopher, a truer one than
Socrates. For it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very
tiresome when one thinks of it.

* * *

I have had some skill in managing the minds of crowds; it is a mere
knack, like any other; it belongs to no particular character or culture.
Arnold of Brescia had it, and so had Masaniello. Lamartine had it, and
so had Jack Cade.

* * *

It is of use to have a reputation for queerness; it gains one many
solitary moments of peace.

* * *

Ersilia was a good soul, and full of kindliness; but charity is a flower
not naturally of earthly growth, and it needs manuring with a promise of
profit.

* * *

The soul of the poet is like a mirror of an astrologer: it bears the
reflection of the past and of the future, and can show the secrets of
men and gods; but all the same it is dimmed by the breath of those who
stand by and gaze into it.

* * *

"You are not unhappy now?" I said to her in farewell.

She looked at me with a smile.

"You have given me hope; and I am in Rome, and I am young."

She was right. Rome may be only a ruin, and Hope but another name for
deception and disappointment; but Youth is supreme happiness in itself,
because all possibilities lie in it, and nothing in it is as yet
irrevocable.

* * *

There never was an AEneas; there never was a Numa; well, what the better
are we? We only lose the Trojan ship gliding into Tiber's mouth, when
the woodland thickets that bloomed by Ostia were reddening with the
first warmth of the day's sun; we only lose the Sabine lover going by
the Sacred Way at night, and sweet Egeria weeping in the woods of Nemi;
and are--by their loss--how much the poorer!

Perhaps all these things never were.

The little stone of truth, rolling through the many ages of the world,
has gathered and grown grey with the thick mosses of romance and
superstition. But tradition m