r que l'on put y trouver de l'affectation; and I suppose, if one
should now suddenly collapse from conventional rotundity to antique
statuesqueness, the great "on" would very readily "y trouver de
l'affectation." Nevertheless, though one must dress in Rome as Romans
do, and though the Roman way of dressing is, taking all things into the
account, as good as any, and if not more graceful, a thousand times
more convenient, wholesome, comfortable, and manageable that Helen's,
still it does seem that, when one steps out of the ordinary area of
Roman life and assumes an abnormal position, one might, without
violence, assume temporarily an abnormal dress, and refresh our dilated
eyes once more with flowing, wavy outlines. Music is one of the
eternities: why should not its accessories be? Why should a discord
disturb the eye, when only concords delight the ear?

But I lift my eyes from Camilla's unpliant drapery to the red red rose
in her hair, and thence, naturally, to her silent face, and in that
instant ugly dress and red red rose fade out of my sight. What is it
that I see, with tearful tenderness and a nameless pain at the heart?
A young face deepened and drawn with suffering; dark, large eyes, whose
natural laughing light has been quenched in tears, yet shining still
with a distant gleam caught from the eternal fires. O still, pathetic
face! A sterner form than Time has passed and left his vestige there.
Happy little girl, playing among the flickering shadows of the
Rhine-land, who could not foresee the darker shadows that should settle
and never lift nor flicker from her heavy heart? Large, lambent eyes,
that might have been sweet, but now are only steadfast,--that may yet
be sweet, when they look tonight into a baby's cradle, but gazing now
upon a waiting audience, are only steadfast. Ah! so it is. Life has
such hard conditions, that every dear and precious gift, every rare
virtue, every pleasant facility, every genial endowment, love, hope,
joy, wit, sprightliness, benevolence, must sometimes be cast into the
crucible to distil the one elixir, patience. Large, lambent eyes, in
which days and nights of tears are petrified, steadfast eyes that are
neither mournful nor hopeful nor anxious, but with such unvoiced
sadness in their depths that the hot tears well up in my heart, what do
you see in the waiting audience? Not censure, nor pity, nor
forgiveness for you do not need them,--but surely a warm human
sympat