life,--to taste viands unknown for years,--to see the horizon,--to feel
the breath of heaven,--to trace once more those charts of living
history, the journals, resume acquaintance with favorite authors,
converse together, move unchained, think aloud,--this sudden and entire
transition awakened a sensation of almost infantile joy. But privation
had too long been their lot to be instantly ignored with impunity; a
reaction followed; the weakness incident to long confinement,
prostrated faculties, and inadequate nourishment brought on illness;
they could not, at once, bear the excitement, digest the food, or
sustain the keen pleasure; and a rigorous climate quelled their
sensitive vitality. But universal sympathy now environed them; their
very custodian ministered to their wants; and the Emperor ordered them
to be removed to the Castle of Gradisca, on the confines of Italy,
where a milder atmosphere prevailed.

How much had occurred while these years of arbitrarily imposed
monasticism crept heavily by, to excite the speculative thought and
kindle the sympathies of educated men! To what new aspects of
civilization and fresh phases of contemporaneous history their
liberation suddenly introduced them!

Their journey from Brunn to Gradisca was a perfect contrast to that
melancholy transit, so many years before, from Venice to Spielberg. It
was near the beginning of April, 1836, when they started in carriages
with a commissary and a few guards; in every town and village through
which they passed, crowds surrounded them with gratulations; the inns
where they stopped were besieged with well-wishers; Nature, too, seemed
to hail their release with vernal beauty; and so they journeyed on, to
be received as honored guests rather than prisoners-of-state at the
Castle of Gradisca. Their sojourn here was as recreative as was