* * * * *

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

  Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio,
  And taste with a distempered appetite!  Shakspeare.

  Il doutait de tout, meme de l’amour.—­French Novel.

  Solvitur ambulando.  Solutio Sophismatum.

       Flevit amores
  Non elaboratum ad pedem.—­Horace.

  Over the great windy waters, and over the clear crested summits,
    Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,
  Come, let us go,—­to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,
    Where every breath even now changes to ether divine. 
  Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, “The world that we
      live in,
    Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;
  ’Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;
    Let who would ’scape and be free go to his chamber and think;
  ’Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;
    ’Tis but to go and have been.”—­Come, little bark, let us go!

  I.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

    Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer,
  Or at the least to put us en rapport with each other. 
  Rome disappoints me much,—­St. Peter’s, perhaps, in especial;
  Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me: 
  This, however, perhaps, is the weather, which truly is horrid. 
  Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful,
  That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai,
  Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also.

    Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but
  Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it. 
  All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings,
  All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages,
  Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future. 
  Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it! 
  Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy me these churches! 
  However, one can live in Rome as also in London. 
  Rome is better than London, because it is other than London. 
  It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of
  All one’s friends and relations,—­yourself (forgive me!) included,—­
  All the assujettissement of having been what one has been,
  What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one;
  Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English. 
  Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him,—­
  Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

  II.—­CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.