II. ROME 277

the street of the Trinita di Monte for him, with which he had many happy associations. There was another practical chance for me in life at this crisis,-I might have made the most precious records of all the cities in Italy. But all my chances of being anything but what I am were thrown away, or broken short, one after another. An entirely mocking and mirage-coloured one, as it seemed then, yet became, many a year later, a great and beautiful influence on my life.

39. Between my Protestantism and, as Tom Richmond rightly called it, Proutism, I had now abjured Roman shows altogether, and was equally rude and restive, whether I was asked to go to a church, a palace, or a gallery,-when papa and mamma began to perceive some dawn of docility in me about going to hear musical church services. This they naturally attributed to my native taste for Gregorian chants, and my increasing aptitude for musical composition. But the fact was, that at services of this kind there was always a chance of seeing, at intervals, above the bowed heads of the Italian crowd, for an instant or two before she also stooped-or sometimes, eminent in her grace above a stunted group of them,-a fair English girl, who was not only the admitted Queen of beauty in the English circle of that winter in Rome, but was so, in the kind of beauty which I had only hitherto dreamed of as possible, but never yet seen living: statuesque severity with womanly sweetness joined.¹ I don’t think I ever succeeded in getting nearer than within fifty yards of her; but she was the light and solace of all the Roman winter to me, in the mere chance glimpses of her far away, and the hope of them.

40. Meantime, my father, to whom our Roman physician had given an encouraging report of me, recovered some of his natural cheerfulness, and enjoyed, with his niece, who

¹ [Miss Tollemache, afterwards Mrs. Cowper Temple (Lady Mount Temple): see below, p. 349-the friend to whom he dedicated Sesame and Lilies in 1871 (Vol. XVIII. p. 47), and who, as he says in Vol. XVII. p. 145, “aided him in chief sorrow”: see Vol. XXIV. p. xxi.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]