Suffers religious faith. Elate with view

Of what is won, we overlook or scorn

The best that should keep pace with it, and must,
Else more and more the general mind will droop,
Even as if bent on perishing. There lives
No faculty within us which the Soul

Can spare, and humblest earthly Weal demands,
For dignity not placed beyond her reach,
Zealous co-operation of all means

Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,
And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.
By gross Utilities enslaved we need
More of ennobling impulse from the past,
If to the future aught of good must come
Sounder and therefore holier than the ends
Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,
We covet as supreme. O grant the crown

That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff
From Knowledge-If the Muse, whom I have served
This day, be mistress of a single pearl

Fit to be placed in that pure diadem;

Then, not in vain, under these chesnut boughs
Reclined, shall I have yielded up my soul

To transports from the secondary founts
Flowing of time and place, and paid to both.
Due homage: nor shall fruitlessly have striven,
By love of beauty moved, to enshrine in verse
Accordant meditations, which in times
Vexed and disordered, as our own, may shed
Influence, at least among a scattered few,
To soberness of mind and peace of heart

* Compare "Despondency Corrected," Excursion, Book IV. (Vol. V.

p. 188)

"Within the soul a faculty abides," &c.

-ED.

Friendly; as here to my repose hath been

This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood;* the light
And murmur issuing from yon pendent flood,
And all the varied landscape. Let us now
Rise, and to-morrow greet magnificent Rome.†

II.

THE PINE OF MONTE MARIO AT ROME.

[SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT told me that, when he first visited Italy, pine-trees of this species abounded, but that on his return thither, which was more than thirty years after, they had disappeared from many places where he had been accustomed to admire them, and had become rare all over the country, especially in and about Rome. Several Roman villas have within these few years passed into the hands of foreigners, who, I observed with pleasure, have taken care to plant this tree, which in course of years will become a great ornament to the city and to the general landscape. May I venture to add here, that having ascended the Monte Mario, I could not resist the embracing the trunk of this interesting monument of my departed

* See the Fenwick note.-ED.

+ It would be ungenerous not to advert to the religious movement that, since the composition of these verses in 1837, has made itself felt, more or less strongly, throughout the English Church;-a movement that takes, for its first principle, a devout deference to the voice of Christian antiquity. It is not my office to pass judgment on questions of theological detail; but my own repugnance to the spirit and system of Romanism has been so repeatedly and, I trust, feelingly expressed, that I shall not be suspected of a leaning that way, if I do not join in the grave charge, thrown out, perhaps in the heat of controversy, against the learned and pious men to whose labours I allude. I speak apart from controversy; but, with strong faith in the moral temper which would elevate the present by doing reverence to the past, I would draw cheerful auguries for the English Church from this movement, as likely to restore among us a tone of piety more earnest and real than that produced by the mere formalities of the understanding, refusing, in a degree which I cannot but lament, that its own temper and judgment shall be controlled by those of antiquity.-W. W., 1842.

The Monte Mario is to the north-west of Rome, beyond the Janiculus and the Vatican. The view from the summit embraces Rome, the Campagna, and the sea. It is capped by the villa Millini, in which the 'magnificent solitary pine-tree' of this sonnet still stands, amidst its cypress plantations.-Ed.

friend's feelings for the beauties of nature, and the power of that art which he loved so much, and in the practice of which he was so distinguished.]

I SAW far off the dark top of a Pine

Look like a cloud-a slender stem the tie
That bound it to its native earth-poised high
'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,
Striving in peace each other to outshine.
But when I learned the Tree was living there,
Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,*
Oh, what a gush of tenderness was mine!
The rescued Pine-tree, with its sky so bright
And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,
Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,
Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome

(Then first apparent from the Pincian Height) †
Crowned with St Peter's everlasting Dome. ‡

III.

AT ROME.

[SIGHT is at first sight a sad enemy to imagination and to those pleasures belonging to old times with which some exertions of that power will always mingle: nothing perhaps brings this truth home to the feelings more than the city of Rome; not so much in respect to

* "It was Mr Theed, the sculptor, who informed us of the pine-tree being the gift of Sir George Beaumont."-H. C. Robinson. (See Memoirs of W. W., Vol. II. p. 330).-ED.

From the Mons Pincius, "collis hortorum," where were the gardens of Lucullus, there is a remarkable view of modern Rome.-ED.

Within a couple of hours of my arrival at Rome, I saw from Monte Pincio the Pine-tree as described in the sonnet; and, while expressing admiration at the beauty of its appearance, I was told by an acquaintance of my fellow-traveller, who happened to join us at the moment, that a price had been paid for it by the late Sir G. Beaumont, upon condition that the proprietor should not act upon his known intention of cutting it down.-W. W.

the impression made at the moment when it is first seen and looked at as a whole, for then the imagination may be invigorated and the mind's eye quickened; but when particular spots or objects are sought out, disappointment is I believe invariably felt. Ability to recover from this disappointment will exist in proportion to knowledge, and the power of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and parts, and to make details in the present subservient to more adequate comprehension of the past.]

Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill?

Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful Rock,
Tarpeian named of yore,* and keeping still
That name, a local Phantom proud to mock
The Traveller's expectation ?-Could our Will
Destroy the ideal Power within, 'twere done
Thro' what men see and touch,-slaves wandering on,
Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.
Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;
Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,
From that depression raised, to mount on high.
With stronger wing, more clearly to discern
Eternal things; and, if need be, defy

Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.

IV.

AT ROME-REGRETS.-IN ALLUSION TO NIEBUHR AND OTHER MODERN HISTORIANS.

THOSE old credulities, to nature dear,

Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock
Of History, stript naked as a rock

'Mid a dry desert? What is it we hear?

* The Tarpeian rock, from which those condemned to death were hurled, is not now precipitous, as it used to be: the ground having been much raised by successive heaps of ruin.—ED.

The glory of Infant Rome must disappear,*
Her morning splendours vanish, and their place
Know them no more. If Truth, who veiled her face
With those bright beams yet hid it not, must steer
Henceforth a humbler course perplexed and slow;
One solace yet remains for us who came
Into this world in days when story lacked
Severe research, that in our hearts we know
How, for exciting youth's heroic flame,
Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.

V.

CONTINUED.

COMPLACENT Fictions were they, yet the same
Involved a history of no doubtful sense,
History that proves by inward evidence
From what a precious source of truth it came.
Ne'er could the boldest Eulogist have dared
Such deeds to paint, such characters to frame,
But for coeval sympathy prepared

To greet with instant faith their loftiest claim.
None but a noble people could have loved
Flattery in Ancient Rome's pure-minded style:
Not in like sort the Runic Scald was moved;
He, nursed 'mid savage passions that defile
Humanity, sang feats that well might call

For the blood-thirsty mead of Odin's riotous Hall.

* Niebuhr, in his Lectures on Roman History (1826-29), was one of the first to point out the legendary character of much of the earlier history, and its "historical impossibility." He explained the way in which much of it had originated in family and national vanity, &c.-ED.