my deepest heart I admitted the truth, the partial truth at least, of her assertion of the unreality of my love. The reality I believed would come. The way to hasten its approach was, meanwhile, to study, to watch, to observe, - doubtless even to enjoy. I certainly enjoyed Florence and the three days I spent there. But I shall not attempt to deal with Florence in a parenthesis. I subsequently saw that divine little city under circumstances which peculiarly colored and shaped it. In Rome, to begin with, I spent a week and went down to Naples, dragging the heavy Roman chain which she rivets about your limbs forever. In Naples I discovered the real South—the Southern South, in art, in nature, in man, and the least bit in woman. A German lady, an old kind friend, had given me a letter to a Neapolitan lady whom she assured me she held in high esteem. The Signora B― was at Sorrento, where I presented my letter. It seemed to me that "esteem" was not exactly the word; but the Signora B-—— was charming. She assured me on my first visit that she was a "true Neapolitan," and I think, on the whole, she was right. She told me that I was a true German, but in this she was altogether wrong. I spent four days in her house; on one of them we went to Capri, where the Signora had an infant-her only one at nurse. We saw the Blue Grotto, the Tiberian ruins, the tarantella and the infant, and returned late in the evening by moonlight. Signora sang on the water in a magnificent contralto. As I looked upward at Northern Italy, it seemed, in contrast, a cold, dark hyperborean clime, a land of order, conscience, and virtue. How my heart went out to that brave, rich, compact little Verona ! How there Nature seemed to have mixed her colors with potent oil, instead of as here with crystalline water, drawn though it was from the Neapolitan Bay! But in Naples, too, I pursued my plan of vigilance and study. I spent long mornings at the Museum and learned to know Pompei; I wrote once to Miss

The

Evans, about the statues in the Museum, without a word of wooing, but received no answer. It seemed to me that I returned to Rome a wiser man. It was the middle of October when I reached it. Unless Mr. Evans had altered his programme, he would at this moment be passing down to Naples.

ens

A fortnight elapsed without my hearing of him, during which I was in the full fever of initiation into Roman wonders. I had been introduced to an old German archæologist, with whom I spent a series of memorable days in the exploration of ruins and the study of the classical topography. I thought, I lived, I ate and drank, in Latin, and German Latin at that. But I remember with especial delight certain long lonely rides on the Campagna. The weather was perfect. Nature seemed only to slumber, ready to wake far on the hither side of wintry death. From time to time, after a passionate gallop, I would pull up my horse on the slope of some pregnant mound and embrace with the ecstasy of quickened senses the tragical beauty of the scene; strain my ear to the soft low silence, pity the dark dishonored plain, watch the heavcome rolling down in tides of light, and breaking in waves of fire against the massive stillness of temples and tombs. The aspect of all this sunny solitude and haunted vacancy used to fill me with a mingled sense of exaltation and dread. There were moments when my fancy swept that vast funereal desert with passionate curiosity and desire, moments when it felt only its potent sweetness and its high historic charm. But there were other times when the air seemed so heavy with the exhalation of unburied death, so bright with sheeted ghosts, that I turned short about and galloped back to the city. One afternoon after I had indulged in one of these supersensitive flights on the Campagna, I betook myself to St. Peter's. It was shortly before the opening of the recent Council, and the city was filled with foreign ecclesiastics, the increase being of course especially noticeable in the

churches. At St. Peter's they were present in vast numbers; great armies encamped in prayer on the marble plains of its pavement: an inexhaustible physiognomical study. Scattered among them were squads of little tonsured neophytes, clad in scarlet, marching and counter-marching, and ducking and flapping, like poor little raw recruits for the heavenly host. I had never before, I think, received an equal impression of the greatness of this church of churches, or, standing beneath the dome, beheld such a vision of erected altitude, of the builded sublime. I lingered awhile near the brazen image of St. Peter, observing the steady procession of his devotees. Near me stood a lady in mourning, watching with a weary droop of the head the grotesque deposition of kisses. A peasant-woman advanced with the file of the faithful and lifted up her little girl to the well-worn toe. With a sudden movement of impatience the lady turned away, so that I saw her face to face. She was strikingly pale, but as her eyes met mine the blood rushed into her cheeks. This lonely mourner was Miss Evans. I advanced to her with an outstretched hand. Before she spoke I had guessed at the truth.

"You're in sorrow and trouble!" She nodded, with a look of simple gravity.

day, and had remained unconscious from first to last. The American physician had been extremely kind, and had relieved her of all care and responsibility. His wife had strongly urged her to come and stay in their house, until she should have determined what to do; but she had preferred to remain at her hotel. She had immediately furnished herself with an attendant in the person of a French maid, who had come with her to the church and was now at confession. At first she had wished greatly to leave Rome, but now that the first shock of grief had passed away she found it suited her mood to linger on from day to day. "On the whole," she said, with a sober smile, "I have got through it all rather easily than otherwise. The common cares and necessities of life operate strongly to interrupt and dissipate one's grief. I shall feel my loss more when I get home again." Looking at her while she talked, I found a pitiful difference between her words and her aspect. Her pale face, her wilful smile, her spiritless gestures, spoke most forcibly of loneliness and weakness. Over this gentle weakness and dependence I secretly rejoiced; I felt in my heart an immense uprising of pity, — of the pity that goes hand in hand with love. At its bidding I hastily, vaguely sketched a magnificent scheme of devotion and

question me, Mr. Brooke!" she softly cried; "I expected nothing. I was waiting for my stronger self."

Perhaps your stronger self has come." She rose to her feet as if she had not heard me, and went forward to meet her maid. This was a decent, capable-looking person, with a great deal of apparent deference of manner. As I rejoined them, Miss Evans prepared to bid me farewell. "You have n't yet asked me to come and see you," I said.

"Come, but not too soon?"

unites the charm of an air of latent symbolism with a steadfast splendor and solid perfection of design. Beside a low sculptured well sit two young and beautiful women : one richly clad, and full of mild dignity and repose; the other with unbound hair, naked, ungirdled by a great reverted mantle of Venetian purple, and radiant with the frankest physical sweetness and grace. Between them a little winged cherub bends forward and thrusts his chubby arm into the well. The picture glows with the inscrutable chemistry of the

"Come to-morrow." She refused to allow me to go with her to her carriage. I followed her, however, at a short interval, and went as usual to my restaurant to dine. I remember that my dinner cost me ten francs, - it usually cost me five. Afterwards, as usual, I adjourned to the Caffè Greco, where I met my German archæologist. He discoursed with even more than his wonted sagacity and eloquence; but at the end of half an hour he rapped his fist on the table and asked me what the deuce was the matter; he would wager I had n't heard a word of what he said.

I went forth the next morning into the Roman streets, doubting heavily of my being able to exist until evening without seeing Miss Evans. I felt, however, that it was due to her to make the effort. To help myself through the morning, I went into the Borghese Gallery. The great treasure of this collection is a certain masterpiece of Titian. I entered the room in which it hangs by the door facing the picture. The room was empty, save that before the great Titian, beside the easel of an absent copyist, stood a young woman in mourning. This time, in spite of her averted head, I immediately knew her and noiselessly approached her. The The picture is one of the finest of its admirable author, -rich and simple and brilliant with the true Venetian fire. It

"Does it remind you of Venice?" I said, breaking a long silence, during which she had not noticed me.

She turned and her face seemed bright with reflected color. We spoke awhile of common things; she had come alone. "What an emotion, for one who has loved Venice," she said, "to meet a Titian in other lands.”

“They call it,” I answered,

and as

I spoke my heart was in my throat, "a representation of Sacred and Profane Love. The name perhaps roughly expresses its meaning. The serious, stately woman is the likeness, one may say, of love as an experience, the gracious, impudent goddess of love as a sentiment; this of the passion that fancies, the other of the passion that knows." And as I spoke I passed my arm, in its strength, around her waist. She let her head sink on my shoulders and looked up into my eyes.

"One may stand for the love I denied," she said; "and the other

"The other," I murmured, “for the love which, with this kiss, you accept." I drew her arm into mine, and before the envious eyes that watched us from gilded casements we passed through the gallery and left the palace. We went that afternoon to the PamfiliDoria Villa. Saying just now that my stay in Florence was peculiarly colored by circumstances, I meant that I was there with my wife.

H. James Jr.

IR

RREVERENCE and want of faith are, according to current criticism and popular delineations of life, the prevalent defects of the age. How much of both may be traced to its fluency! Sacredness and silence are twin born; expression is usually in the inverse ratio to conviction, or, rather, the more earnest a belief or an affection the more is it reticent. We discuss subjects about which our fathers only mused; we proclaim what they cherished, we expose what they concealed. Facility of intercourse breeds contempt, badinage begets scorn, talk engenders indifference. We take up a weekly journal and find the mysteries not less than the frivolities of life made a note of; womanhood is dissected as remorselessly as crime; character is assailed as recklessly as faction; society is analyzed as coolly as finance. Each of these primal and permanent elements of humanity has, or should have, to every unperverted man and woman, associations and significance hallowed to memory, to conscience, or to hope. Yet each is flippantly interpreted by garrulous tongues, caricatured by unscrupulous pens. In the vain attempt to talk or write them into "victorious clearness," they are profaned, perverted, betrayed. The distance that lends enchantment is annihilated by egotistic hardihood. Forms and phases of religion are so debated and depicted that no shrine is left whereat the devout may kneel undisturbed; love is portrayed by the novelist, not as an individual sentiment, a personal instinct, but an accidental, social phenomenon; the lofty thought, the comprehensive deed of the statesman evaporates in the jargon of the politician; the essence, the vital principle of civic and domestic integrity being thus diffused, through excess of speech, all that intensifies will and harmonizes sentiment - true passion, dis

tinct purpose is lost in the eclipse of faith, which germinates and flowers in silence.

Travellers of moral sensibility unite in declaring that they are brought singularly near the heart of nature in the East; the deserts, shores, ruins, and even cities there, at certain seasons, bring them into what seems like the primeval relation of humanity to the universe, - an experience fraught with grateful mystery to the weary and fevered child of modern civilization. Doubtless much of this occult charm is due to local associations acting upon sensitive minds and to the meditative mood incident to the climate; but no small part thereof is owing to silence, not only as the characteristic of the people, but as the law of life, inasmuch as the press, parliaments, and social usages of the West are in abeyance; the countless intrusions and impertinences, from politics to pastime, have died away on the eager ear of the wanderer; he is thrown back upon himself; only nature and the past appeal to his consciousness, and there is nothing in the present to remind him of the gregarious habits, the perpetual chatter of the busy routine of his life at home. He has entered the realm of

silence; his pet phrases, his hoarded quotations, his conventional compliments, his partisan argument, and his table-talk have lost their significance. His soul no longer evaporates in speech, his thought is no longer diffused by expression, but ideas, emotion, and sentiment are fused and fostered in the alembic of contemplation, deepened and purified by silence. He realizes how les Orientaux trouvent d'ineffables délices dans un beau silence, and that this heretofore contemned element of life est une des richesses de l'Orient. All the poetry of the East sought by imaginative enthusiasts, from Byron to Lamartine, and from Volney

to Chateaubriand, is solemnized by this lapse of speech, by this instinctive reticence, so that a kind of religious experience, a return to the patriarchal feeling, to the simplicity of Scripture sublimity, to the content of the human heart with nature, is apparent. In a word, there is then and there brought home to consciousness a sense of the artificial relation of language to thought; it is clearly suggested to the mind that, after all, this redundant expression overlays and dwarfs quite as much as it expands the vital significance of life; that breath and brain are incalculably wasted in talk; that publicity profanes, discussion disenchants, and that to possess one's soul in peace is better than all triumphs of utterance, whether from rostrum or in salon. Nowhere more than in the East is it felt how "silent is the light that moulds and colors all things"; nowhere do the latent facts of consciousness so assert themselves. "Lan

guage," says Isaac Taylor, "consisting as it does of arbitrary signs, is manifestly a rudiment of the material system. It is a fruit and a consequence of our corporeity; in the recesses of the human soul there is a world of thought which, for the want of determinate and fit symbols, never assumes any fixed form." This vague but vivid sphere of ideas and feelings becomes conscious and prevalent in the East, and is one secret of her charm.

The silence of Nature is often her most expressive influence. How noiselessly are her wondrous processes carried on, the growth of vegetation, the condensation of moisture, the ebb and flow of the tides, the gathering and illuminating of clouds, the stainless particles woven into avalanche and earth-shroud, the lull of the wind and wave, germination, efflorescence, harvest, frost, sultriness, crystallization, the tinting of flower, rainbow, and'insect; all the means and methods of transformation; all the sublime movements of the universe, from the law that keeps a planet in its orbit to that which paints the lily and poises the

I have heard a naval hero declare that the most intense experience came to him with the awful silence preceding the battle, and not in the excitement of the fray. To look upon the quiet sleep of a child is to hear the deep, "sad music of humanity," fraught with solemn tenderness; and the tranquillity of death is more awe-inspiring than life's most eager manifestation. Lamb has memorably described the religious silence of a Quaker meeting, and Taine reveals the secret of Fra Angelico's naïve art, when he refers the childlike piety that inspired it to the calm isolation of St. Mark's, where for years no sound breaks the long day's stillness but the echo of the friars' steps, gliding from chapel to refectory. Silence is the nurse of devotion, the conservator of primal instincts; and monasticism has a genuine basis in human needs; not merely penitential may be the system of La Trappe, but recuperative also; only in our age the discipline of silence should be a voluntary pen ance, that, like so many other forms of voluntary renunciation, it can become, as it were, a renewal, not a lapse of the best conscious life, an æsthetic resource, a physiological refreshment ;