Sigh of Ages? Let us hope. They have hoped these thousand years. The
very revolvement of the chances may bring it--it is upon the dice.

"If the Neapolitans have but a single Massaniello amongst them, they
will beat the bloody butchers of the crown and sabre. Holland, in worse
circumstances, beat the Spains and Philips; America beat the English;
Greece beat Xerxes; and France beat Europe, till she took a tyrant;
South America beats her old vultures out of their nest; and, if these
men are but firm in themselves, there is nothing to shake them from
without.

"January 28. 1821.

"Lugano Gazette did not come. Letters from Venice. It appears that the
Austrian brutes have seized my three or four pounds of English powder.
The scoundrels!--I hope to pay them in _ball_ for that powder. Rode out
till twilight.

"Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written (life and
circumstances permitting), to wit, Sardanapalus, already begun; Cain, a
metaphysical subject, something in the style of Manfred, but in five
_acts_, perhaps, with the chorus; Francesca of Rimini, in five acts; and
I am not sure that I would not try Tiberius. I think that I could
extract a something, of _my_ tragic, at least, out of the gloomy
sequestration and old age of the tyrant--and even out of his sojourn at
Caprea--by softening the _details_, and exhibiting the despair which
must have led to those very vicious pleasures. For none but a powerful
and gloomy mind overthrown would have had recourse to such solitary
horrors,--being also, at the same time, _old_, and the master of the
world.

"_Memoranda._

"What is Poetry?--The feeling of a Former world and Future.

"_Thought Second._

"Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,--worldly, social,
amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,--does there mingle a certain
sense of doubt and sorrow--a fear of what is to come--a doubt of what
_is_--a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the
future? (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.) Why is this?
or these?--I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible
of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a
precipice--the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and,
therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at
least, _Hope_ is; and _what Hope_ is there without a deep leaven of
Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as Hope? and, if it were not
for Hope, whe