I have travelled. I went last year to Milan, and then to Genoa, and thence to Leghorn, Pisa and Rome. "Genoa is famous among the Italian cities for the number and splendor of its palaces and so has received the title of The Superb,' for the Italians have a pretty way of giving their chief cities some descriptive title. In Leghorn, which was the next place at which I stopped, there is not much to see besides straw hats, glass, paper and soap. There are about as many things of interest there as there are snakes in Ireland that is, none at all. It is rather strange, too, for most every Italian city, even when small, has either a fine cathedral or some fine work of art. I went to Pisa to see the cathedral and the famous leaning tower, over which, when a school-boy studying geography, I wondered so much, and over which Galileo made the old churchmen wonder when he performed from it his experiments with falling bodies. But I couldn't begin to tell you all I saw in Rome. Three civilizations, an Etruscan, Roman and Christian, have conspired to make it the most interesting city in the world. The number and grandeur of the relics of old Rome surpass anything I had imagined. Whatever the Romans built, they built grand, massive and solid, as if they were fully persuaded that Rome was to be the Eternal City. Had no barbaric violence overthrown and demolished them, hundreds of her structures would stand to-day more perfect than the Pantheon, and even now, many an old column and arch stands as solid, and presses the ground as firmly as when first erected. Everywhere you turn yourself, you will see some old ruin lifting its head picturesquely against the sky. It is a long, fatiguing walk to go through all the rooms and see the enormous treasures, works of antique art, which have been found and preserved in the Capitol and the Vatican. Nor in point of art does modern Rome fail to rival the ancient in interest. She is crowded with the miracles of the great master. I wish, if you never have, you would read Hawthorne's book, called Transformation. As far it goes, it is an excellent, accurate description of Rome. Most of his criticisms seem to me superb. Hilda's tower has verily a local habitation and a name, for I have seen it, but whether any such being as Hilda ever inhabited it, I cannot say. I made two long visits at Rome. I stayed some hours for several days in the museum at Naples, where are the articles found during the excavation of Herculaneum and Pompeii. We had a splendid day and a fine party for making the ascent of Vesuvius. Many persons came back disappointed, because even in quiet weather the smoke is blown about so one can scarcely see anything. We had a favorable day, and I enjoyed the excursion immensely. One gets so little idea of a real live crater from books. One must see the monster, to have any faint conception of the lava fields and enormous, bellowing, smoking crater. I felt as if I were on some other planet, they were so different from anything I had ever seen. I had some singular sensations at Pompeii, for here is a veritable old Roman city with streets, houses, temples, gates, fountains, baths, tombs, mosaic paintings, laid bare to the sun, so you tread where its inhabitants trod two thousand years ago. I saw many of the articles there found and preserved, in the museum at Naples. I had a charming ride at Sorrento, just across the bay from Naples. We plucked the fresh fruit from the trees of the beautiful orange groves, and visited a little island, near where was a grotto and some water with a peculiar bluish lustre. I was at Rome during the ceremonies of the Holy Week. They are the most imposing in all the pompous ritual of the Romish church. On Easter Sunday, when the Pope elevated the host, and all the long line of splendid military in St. Peters and all good Catholics went down as by one accord on their knees, and adored in a silence broken at length by a beautiful burst of silver trumpets, the scene was quite imposing. The washing and kissing of the Apostles' feet by the Pope was a mere form, for they were already as clean as water could make them. Not so with the washing of the pilgrim's feet, for they were dirtier than mud. Italy lies behind me like a rich dream, for nature has made it a paradise in loveliness, and art has beautified from Venice to Sicily a land she could not save. "Florence is the most delightful of Italian cities to me, certainly it is the loveliest. It is in the midst of a lovely valley, the most charmingly verdant spot I ever saw; with every varying shade of green, from the light of the olive, to the dark of the pine. Of the pictures in the galleries at Dresden, Rome and Florence, you can believe every thing that you hear, for they are absolutely wonderful. It would seem impossible that so much great and varied expression ever could be transferred to canvas. There is a statue in Florence of the Venus de Medici, so famous the world over; yet I saw standing by my side some who failed to like it, it seemed to me for no better reason than that it is old and tarnished, and the arms and hands badly restored. With the exception of these arms and hands, I have never seen such grace and elegance. "I had the pleasure of a few moments' talk with Garibaldi. I was charmed with his perfect simplicity and unaffectedness of manner. The people of Italy almost worship him. I saw where he first entered the Sardinian chambers; and as he was going into the building, they crowded about him with uncontrollable enthusiasm. It is a good thing for a nation which long oppression has made extremely selfish, to have one man whom they can genuinely love, who can draw out from every breast its nobler sympathies." "But," added Selwyn, coming back to his own thougnts again, "I shall travel no more; wherever I go, I carry an unhappy, restless traveller with me, my own aching, sorrowing, broken heart, whose constant beat seems only like that of a sleepless sentinel, waking me out of every pleasant dream, calling me back every hour to bitter memories. I hear every where under life's darkened windows, hung with crape, this ceaseless beat of my sad sentinel heart. You tell me not to think, to act, to enjoy. O, Douglass, you know not my wretchedness. There is a shore for the mooring of the lost voyager's bark, a lull for the direst tempest, a waning for the silver moon: the raging billow sleeps at last. At the coming of the morning the bannered clouds fold their white tents, but thought never folds her wingsthe spirit's bark is never moored. Thought's billowy surges rise higher as they roll on, but never blend with the ocean of oblivion. Her strange electric light pales not with declining suns, or waning moons, her throbbings lull not with lulling tempests. I am weary of life. My poor thought is a weather-beaten traveller over the stormy past, keeping at midnight her sleepless guard like a vigil of arms, always walking among tombs and shadows, and then to sleep only to awake and find the next morning the same old haunting trouble rising and going about with you. You who have never had a trouble, to walk and talk and sleep and dream with you, know not how Trouble's to-day goes hand in hand with its elder brother of yesterday, walking restlessly the lonely hall of the soul, and when you open your eyes in the morning, and the bright sunshine steals in, there is the ་ raven trouble croaking at your chamber door, croaking evermore.' My soul is like a haunted house. Such noises and shrieks and groans and half-hushed voices and raps and wails, startle me at night and torment by day. My life is a burnt-over prairie-the flowers are gone." Mr. Selwyn walked back and forth gloomily. "You need change of scene," said Mr. Douglass; "go and spend a few days with me at Niagara." "I have visited Niagara," said Mr. Selwyn. "If there's a pall within, even beautiful nature will seem only a shadowy procession of slow, mournful pall-bearers to the shrouded heart. My kneeling soul has said its mournful litany under the brow of table rock, beneath earth's great baptismal font, sprinkled with ascending spray, where is shadowed forth in rising clouds, the glory of the Father, Son and Spirit. Long shut up within brick walls, catching but glimpses and patches of the blue sky, it is like walking with God in the cool of the day, to stand so near the presence chamber of the invisible One, and touch the shadowy robes of the great High Priest, bordered with light from yonder gates of pearl, while ascends from liquid voices the grandest voluntary of ages, where God's great thoughts are ever issuing from crystal sheets, with radiant emerald bound." "How our little griefs," said Douglass, "little cares, little losses, shrink out of sight before these great waters, which have roared on so patiently and sublimely for weary years, while the tide of many a life-stream has gone out and passed away." "The roar of these great waters," said Selwyn, never dies away from my spirit. Those solemn voices echo ever with the voices of the night. Louder and deeper than the moan. ing of the great waterfall, is the wail of my grief at midnight, sobbing out its voluntary, as it ever accumulates from the great lakes of sorrow, rushing on through the sea of trouble, dashing its cold spray of tears along the silent shore of memory, bearing me on to the eddying whirlpool of regret. O," said he bitterly, "if there were only some Ne penthe I could press to my lips, and forget the painful past! If I could turn over the old dark page, and begin a new life that would not be so haunted with echoes and shadows and ghosts!" CHAPTER XIX. THE CONVENIENT CRACK-DR. BACHUNE'S WISDOM-ORTHODOXY-WHITE CRAVATS-PURITANS. "Good are the Ethics, I wis; good absolute--not for me, though; "And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, Shall be lifted nevermore." EDGAR ALLEN POE. "Thus much would I conceal, that none should know MICHAEL ANGELO. "I WONDER What is the matter with that man," said Mrs. Edwards, as Mr. Selwyn went up to his room from breakfast; (Mrs. Edwards kept a boarding-house; she had about twenty gentleman boarders.) "He pays promptly, has a valuable library, rare pictures, costly wardrobe, the best room in the house; he must be wealthy. I keep his room scrupulously clean, his linen as white and polished as sugar, salt, spermacetti and gum arabic can make it. I try to have him feel at home; I don't understand the man; I set before him omelets done to a charm, cream biscuit, delicious steak, irresistible coffee, plum pudding, and everything that bachelors dote on. I don't believe he'd notice it if I put salt in his tea, instead of sugar-it does beat all! This morning I had such fresh corn bread, hot griddle cakes, warm biscuit, right before him when he came down late, and he |