me sufficient for him. And by degrees, as he succeeded in
forgetting, so as to have power to forgive, peace and tranquillity
revisited his mind. Venice was the city of his dream; he had known her,
he said, ere he visited her, and after the East she it was that haunted
his imagination. Reality spoiled nothing of his dream; he loved every
thing about her,--the solemn gayety of her gondolas, the silence of her
canals, the late hours of her theatres and soirees, the movement and
animation reigning on St. Mark's, where the gay world nightly assembled.
Even the decay of the town (which saddened him later), harmonizing then
with the whole scene, was not displeasing. He regretted the old costumes
given up; but the Carnival, though waning, still recalled ancient
Venice, and rejoiced his heart. Familiar with the Italian language, he
took pleasure in studying, also, the Venetian dialect, the naivete and
softness of which charmed him, especially on woman's lips. Stretched in
his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, especially
at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their splendor in Venice.
In summer and autumn he delighted to give the rein to his horse along
the solitary banks of the Lido, or beside the flower-enamelled borders
of the Brenta. He loved the simplicity of the women, the freedom from
hypocrisy of the men. Feeling himself liked by those among whom chance
or choice had thrown him, frequenting theatres and society that could
both amuse and instruct, though powerless to fill his thoughts, for
these latter required more substantial food, and some hard difficult
study to occupy them, being free from all disquieting passions, and
wishing to remain thus, sociable as he was by temperament, though loving
solitude for the sake of his genius; under all these circumstances, he
could satisfy, in due proportion, the double exigency of his nature; for
he lived, as we have seen, amid a small circle of sympathetic
acquaintances, and of friends arriving from England, who clustered round
him without interfering with the independence he had regained, and which
formed the natural necessary element for his mind; though he had been
deprived of it in England by the cant and pusillanimity of his friends.
If, then, he was not exactly happy at this time, at least he was on the
road leading to happiness. For he was beginning to make progress in the
path of philosophy,--a gentle, indulgent, generous philosophy, as deep
as it