and vexations that one is glad to take refuge in simpler pleasures once
more--to return to primitive emotionalism. There are so many Emperors of
past days! And like the old custodian, I have not so much as set eyes on
them.

Yet this Frederick is no dim figure; he looms grandly through the
intervening haze. How well one understands that craving for the East,
nowadays; how modern they were, he and his son the "Sultan of Lucera,"
and their friends and counsellors, who planted this garden of exotic
culture! Was it some afterglow of the luminous world that had sunk below
the horizon, or a pale streak of the coming dawn? And if you now glance
down into this enclosure that once echoed with the song of minstrels
and the soft laughter of women, with the discourse of wits, artists and
philosophers, and the clang of arms--if you look, you will behold
nothing but a green lake, a waving field of grass. No matter. The
ambitions of these men are fairly realized, and every one of us may keep
a body-guard of pagans, an't please him; and a harem likewise--to judge
by the newspapers.

For he took his Orientalism seriously; he had a harem, with eunuchs,
etc., all proper, and was pleased to give an Eastern colour to his
entertainments. Matthew Paris relates how Frederick's brother-in-law,
returning from the Holy Land, rested awhile at his Italian court, and
saw, among other diversions, "duas puellas Saracenicas formosas, quae in
pavimenti planitie binis globis insisterent, volutisque globis huo
illucque ferrentur canentes, cymbala manibus collidentes, corporaque
secundum modules motantes atque flectentes." I wish I had been there. . . .

I walked to the castle yesterday evening on the chance of seeing an
eclipse of the moon which never came, having taken place at quite