Along with the lamp on Hilda's tower, the sculptor now felt that a light
had gone out, or, at least, was ominously obscured, to which he owed
whatever cheerfulness had heretofore illuminated his cold, artistic
life. The idea of this girl had been like a taper of virgin wax, burning
with a pure and steady flame, and chasing away the evil spirits out of
the magic circle of its beams. It had darted its rays afar, and modified
the whole sphere in which Kenyon had his being. Beholding it no more, he
at once found himself in darkness and astray.
This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became sensible what a
dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible weight is there imposed on
human life, when any gloom within the heart corresponds to the spell of
ruin that has been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered,
as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns, and among the tombs,
and groped his way into the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs, and
found no path emerging from them. The happy may well enough continue to
be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go thither in
melancholy mood, if you go with a ruin in your heart, or with a
vacant site there, where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now
vanished,--all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself
upon that spot, and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and
granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous bricks of its material
decay.
It might be supposed that a melancholy man would here make acquaintance
with a grim philosophy. He should learn to bear patiently his individual
griefs, that endure only for one little lifetime, when here are the
tokens of such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale, and when so
many far landmarks of time, all around him, are bringing the remoteness
of a thousand years ago into the sphere of yesterday. But it is in vain
that you seek this shrub of bitter sweetness among the plants that root
themselves on the roughness of massive walls, or trail downward from the
capitals of pillars, or spring out of the green turf in the palace of
the Caesars. It does not grow in Rome; not even among the five hundred
various weeds which deck the grassy arches of the Coliseum. You look
through a vista of century beyond century,--through much shadow, and a
little sunshine,--through barbarism and civilization, alternating with
one another like actors that have prearranged their parts: through
a broad pathway of progressive generations bordered by palaces and
temples, and bestridden by old, triumphal arches, until, in the
distance, you behold the obelisks, with their unintelligible
inscriptions, hinting at a past infinitely more remote than history
can define. Your own life is as nothing, when compared with that
immeasurable distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly, a
gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow, on the step or two that
will bring you to your quiet rest.