r I do really
become a bedlamite, and wear a strait waistcoat, let me be brought
back among you; your people will then be proper company.

"I assure you what I here say and feel has nothing to do with
England, either in a literary or personal point of view. All my
present pleasures or plagues are as Italian as the opera. And after
all, they are but trifles; for all this arises from my 'Dama's'
being in the country for three days (at Capo-fiume). But as I could
never live but for one human being at a time, (and, I assure you,
_that one_ has never been _myself_, as you may know by the
consequences, for the _selfish_ are _successful_ in life,) I feel
alone and unhappy.

"I have sent for my daughter from Venice, and I ride daily, and
walk in a garden, under a purple canopy of grapes, and sit by a
fountain, and talk with the gardener of his tools, which seem
greater than Adam's, and with his wife, and with his son's wife,
who is the youngest of the party, and, I think, talks best of the
three. Then I revisit the Campo Santo, and my old friend, the
sexton, has two--but _one_ the prettiest daughter imaginable; and I
amuse myself with contrasting her beautiful and innocent face of
fifteen with the skulls with which he has peopled several cells,
and particularly with that of one skull dated 1766, which was once
covered (the tradition goes) by the most lovely features of
Bologna--noble and rich. When I look at these, and at this
girl--when I think of what _they were_, and what she must be--why,
then, my dear Murray, I won't shock you by saying what I think. It
is little matter what becomes of us 'bearded men,' but I don't like
the notion of a beautiful woman's lasting less than a beautiful
tree--than her own picture--her own shadow, which won't change so
to the sun as her face to the mirror. I must leave off, for my head
aches consumedly. I have never been quite well since the night of
the representation of Alfieri's Mirra, a fortnight ago. Yours
ever."

[Footnote 46:

"Am I now reposing on a bed of flowers?"

See ROBERTSON.]

* * * * *

LETTER 340. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Bologna, August 29. 1819.

"I have been in a rage these two days, and am still bilious
therefrom. You shall hear. A captain of dragoons, * *, Hanove