III. CUMÆ 283

would make a nice ball-room, but is good for nothing else.”

“Nov. 30th.-Drove up to the Capitol-a filthy, melancholy-looking, rubbishy place; and down to the Forum, which is certainly a very good subject; and then a little further on, amongst quantities of bricks and rubbish, till I was quite sick.”

With disgust, I meant; but from December 20th to 25th I had a qualm of real fever, which it was a wonder came to no worse. On the 30th I am afoot again; thus:-

“I have been walking backwards and forwards on the Pincian, being unable to do anything else since this confounded illness, and trying to find out why every imaginable delight palls so very rapidly on even the keenest feelings. I had all Rome before me; towers, cupolas, cypresses, and palaces mingled in every possible grouping; a light Decemberish mist, mixed with the slightest vestige of wood smoke, hovering between the distances, and giving beautiful grey outlines of every form between the eye and the sun; and over the rich evergreen oaks of the Borghese gardens, a range of Apennine, with one principal pyramid of pure snow, like a piece of sudden comet-light fallen on the earth. It was not like moonlight, nor like sunlight, but as soft as the one, and as powerful as the other. And yet, with all this around me, I could not feel it. I was as tired of my walk, and as glad when I thought I had done duty, as ever on the Norwood road.”

46. There was a girl walking up and down with some children, her light cap prettily set on very well dressed hair: of whose country I had no doubt; long before I heard her complain to one of her charges, who was jabbering English as fast as the fountain tinkled on the other side of the road, “Qu’elle n’en comprenait pas un mot.” This girl after two or three turns sat down beside another

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