Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/798

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Amours de Voyage.
[May,

Talking, collating the journals, go fever my brain about things o'er Which I can have no control. No, happen whatever may happen, Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis; People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city; Rome will be here, and the Pope the custode of Vatican marbles. I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco; I have essayed it in vain; 'tis vain as yet to essay it: But I may haply resume some day my studies in this kind.

Not as the Scripture says, is, I think, the fact. Ere our death-day,

Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but Knowledge abideth. Let us seek Knowledge,—she will roast come and go as it happens. Knowledge is hard to seek, and harder yet to adhere to. Knowledge is painful often; and yet when we know, we are happy. Seek it, and leave mere Faith and Love to come with the chances. As for Hope,—to-morrow I hope to be starting for Naples. Rome will not do, I see, for many very good reasons. E Eastward, then, I suppose, with the coming of winter, to Egypt.

{{c|XIV.—Mary Trevellyn To Miss Roper. You have heard nothing? of course, I know you can have heard nothing. Ah, well, more than once I have broken my purpose, and sometimes, Only too often, have looked for the little lake-steamer to bring him. But it is only fancy,—I do not really expect it. Oh, and you see I know so exactly how he would take it: Finding the chances prevail against meeting again, he would banish Forthwith every thought of the poor little possible hope, which I myself could not help, perhaps, thinking only too much of; He would wipe himself, and go. I see it exactly. So I also submit, although in a different manner.

Can you not really come? We go very shortly to England.

So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil! Go, little book! thy tale, is it not evil and good? Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer. Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age, Say, I am fitting about many years from brain unto brain of Feeble and useless youths born to inglorious days; But as little the world, I am sent in a Heaven slumber, When from Janiculum heights thundered the cannon of France.