broadening and glowing, into a marble basin, at whose bottom, in the
shining noon, you might see a soil which mocked the very hues of gold,
and the water insects, in their quaint shapes and unknown sports,
grouping or gliding in the mid-most wave. A small temple of the
lightest architecture stood before the fountain, and in a niche therein
a mutilated statue,--possibly of the Spirit of the place. By this
fountain my evening walk would linger till the short twilight melted
away and the silver wave trembled in the light of the western star. Oh,
then what feelings gathered over me as I turned slowly homeward! the air
still, breathless, shining; the stars gleaming over the woods of the far
Apennine; the hills growing huger in the shade; the small insects
humming on the wing; and, ever and anon, the swift bat, wheeling round
and amidst them; the music of the waterfall deepening on the ear; and
the light and hour lending even a mysterious charm to the cry of the
weird owl, flitting after its prey,--all this had a harmony in my
thoughts and a food for the meditations in which my days and nights were
consumed. The World moulders away the fabric of our early nature, and
Solitude rebuilds it on a firmer base.



CHAPTER II.

THE VICTORY.

O EARTH! Reservoir of life, over whose deep bosom brood the wings of
the Universal Spirit, shaking upon thee a blessing and a power,--a
blessing and a power to produce and reproduce the living from the dead,
so that our flesh is woven from the same atoms which were once the atoms
of our sires, and the inexhaustible nutriment of Existence is Decay! O