Am I happy, ask
you? Oh, what can Rome give me equal to what I possess at Athens? Here,
everything awakens the soul and inspires the affections--the trees, the
waters, the hills, the skies, are those of Athens!--fair, though
mourning-mother of the Poetry and the Wisdom of the World. In my hall I
see the marble faces of my ancestors. In the Ceramicus, I survey their
tombs! In the streets, I behold the hand of Phidias and the soul of
Pericles. Harmodius, Aristogiton--they are everywhere--but in our
hearts!--in mine, at least, they shall not perish! If anything can make
me forget that I am an Athenian and not free, it is partly the
soothing--the love--watchful, vivid, sleepless--of Ione--a love that has
taken a new sentiment in our new creed--a love which none of our poets,
beautiful though they be, had shadowed forth in description; for mingled
with religion, it partakes of religion; it is blended with pure and
unworldly thoughts; it is that which we may hope to carry through
eternity, and keep, therefore, white and unsullied, that we may not
blush to confess it to our God! This is the true type of the dark fable
of our Grecian Eros and Psyche--it is, in truth, the soul asleep in the
arms of love. And if this, our love, support me partly against the
fever of the desire for freedom, my religion supports me more; for
whenever I would grasp the sword and sound the shell, and rush to a new
Marathon (but Marathon without victory), I feel my despair at the
chilling thought of my country's impotence--the crushing weight of the
Roman yoke, comforted, at least, by the thought that earth is but the
beginning of life--that the glory of a few years matters little in the
vast space of eternity--that there is no perfect freedom till the chains
of clay fall from the soul, and all space, all time, become its heritage
and domain. Yet, Sallust, some mixture of the soft Greek blood still
mingles with my faith. I can share not the zeal of those who see crime
and eternal wrath in men who cannot believe as they. I shudder not at
the creed of others. I dare not curse them--I pray the Great Father to
convert. This lukewarmness exposes me to some suspicion amongst the
Christians: but I forgive it; and, not offending openly the prejudices
of the crowd, I am thus enabled to protect my brethren from the danger
of the law, and the consequences of their own zeal. If moderation seem
to me the natural creature of benevolence, it gives, also, th