and the genius of Italy. He spoke Italian better than his mother
tongue. At evening he would sit beneath the pines of the Villa
Pamphili, and gazing on the setting sun and on the white fragments
scattered on the plain, like the bleached bones of departed Rome, would
pour forth extemporaneous stanzas that made us weep; but he never
wrote. "Raphael," would I sometimes say, "why do you not write?"

"Ah!" would he answer, "does the wind write what it sighs in this
harmonious canopy of leaves? Does the sea write the wail of its shores?
Nought that has been written is truly, really beautiful, and the heart
of man never discloses its best and most divine portion. It is
impossible! The instrument is of flesh, and the note is of fire!
Between what is felt and what is expressed," would he add, mournfully,
"there is the same distance as between the soul and the twenty-six
letters of an alphabet! Immensity of distance! Think you a flute of
reeds can give an idea of the harmony of the spheres?"

I left him to return to Paris. He was at that time striving, through
his mother's interest, to obtain some situation in which he might by
active employment remove from his soul its heavy weight, and lighten
the oppressive burden of his fate. Men of his own age sought him, and
women looked graciously on him as he passed them by. But he never went
into society, and of all women he loved his mother only.

We suddenly lost sight of him for three years; though we afterwards
learned that he had been seen in Switzerland, Germany, and Savoy; and
that in winter he passed many hours of his nights on a bridge, or on
one of the quays of Paris. He had all the appearance of extreme
destitution. It was only many years afterwards that we learned more. We
constantly thought of him, though absent, for he was one of those who