href="#ua461ef63-5dd4-5089-8e34-d6be7a892bd5">Chapter X. The Sylvan Dance
Chapter XI. Fragmentary Sentences
Chapter XII. A Stroll on the Pincian
Chapter XIII. A Sculptor’s Studio
Chapter XV. An Aesthetic Company
Chapter XVI. A Moonlight Ramble
Chapter XVII. Miriam’s Trouble
Chapter XVIII. On the Edge of a Precipice
Chapter XIX. The Faun’s Transformation
Chapter XXI. The Dead Capuchin
Chapter XXII. The Medici Gardens
Chapter XXIII. Miriam and Hilda
Chapter XXIV. The Tower among the Apennines
Chapter XXVI. The Pedigree of Monte Beni
Chapter XXIX. On the Battlements
Chapter XXXI. The Marble Saloon
Chapter XXXII. Scenes by the Way
Chapter XXXIII. Pictured Windows
Chapter XXXIV. Market Day in Perugia
Chapter XXXV. The Bronze Pontiff’s Benediction
Chapter XXXVII. The Emptiness of Picture Galleries
Chapter XXXVIII. Altars and Incense
Chapter XXXIX. The World’s Cathedral
Chapter XL. Hilda and a Friend
Chapter XLI. Snowdrops and Maidenly Delights
Chapter XLII. Reminiscences of Miriam
Chapter XLIII. The Extinction of a Lamp
Chapter XLIV. The Deserted Shrine
Chapter XLV. The Flight of Hilda’s Doves
Chapter XLVI. A Walk on the Campagna
Chapter XLVII. The Peasant and Contadina
Chapter XLVIII. A Scene in the Corso
Chapter XLIX. A Frolic of the Carnival
Chapter L. Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello
Volume I
CHAPTER I
MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO
Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.
From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusion of modern edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyond —