on, you might see a soil which mocked the very hues of gold,
and the water insects, in their quaint shapes and unknown sports,
grouping or gliding in the mid-most wave. A small temple of the lightest
architecture stood before the fountain, and in a niche therein a
mutilated statue,--possibly of the Spirit of the place. By this fountain
my evening walk would linger till the short twilight melted away and
the silver wave trembled in the light of the western star. Oh, then what
feelings gathered over me as I turned slowly homeward! the air still,
breathless, shining; the stars gleaming over the woods of the far
Apennine; the hills growing huger in the shade; the small insects
humming on the wing; and, ever and anon, the swift bat, wheeling round
and amidst them; the music of the waterfall deepening on the ear; and
the light and hour lending even a mysterious charm to the cry of the
weird owl, flitting after its prey,--all this had a harmony in my
thoughts and a food for the meditations in which my days and nights were
consumed. The World moulders away the fabric of our early nature, and
Solitude rebuilds it on a firmer base.

CHAPTER II.

THE VICTORY.

O EARTH! Reservoir of life, over whose deep bosom brood the wings of the
Universal Spirit, shaking upon thee a blessing and a power,--a blessing
and a power to produce and reproduce the living from the dead, so that
our flesh is woven from the same atoms which were once the atoms of our
sires, and the inexhaustible nutriment of Existence is Decay! O eldest
and most solemn Earth, blending even thy loveliness and joy with a
terror and an awe! thy sunshine is girt with clouds and circled with
storm and tempest; thy day cometh from the womb of darkness, and
returneth unto darkness, as man returns unto thy bosom. The green herb
that laughs in the valley, the water that sings merrily along the wood;
the many-winged and all-searching air, which garners life as a harvest
and scatters it as a seed,--all are pregnant with corruption and carry
the cradled death within them, as an oak banqueteth the destroying worm.
But who that looks upon thee, and loves thee, and inhales thy blessings
will ever mingle too deep a moral with his joy? Let us not ask whence
come the garlands that we wreathe around our altars or shower upon our
feasts: will they not bloom as brightly, and breathe with as rich a
fragrance, whether they be plucked from the garden or the grave? O
Earth, my Mother Earth