III. CUMÆ 293

twenty, indeed in the last day of decline. He died during the night, and we were of some use to the despairing servant afterwards. I forget now whether we ever knew who the youth was. I find his name in my diary, “Farquharson,” but no more.¹

As we drew northward, however, out of the volcanic country, I recovered heart; the enchanted world of Venice enlarging in front of me. I had only yet once seen her, and that six years ago, when still a child. That the fairy tale should come true now seemed wholly incredible, and the start from the gate of Padua in the morning,-Venice, asserted by people whom we could not but believe, to be really over there, on the horizon, in the sea! How to tell the feeling of it!

54. I have not yet fancied the reader’s answer to the first question proposed in outset of this chapter,-does he think me a fortunate or unfortunate youth?

As to preparation for the future world, terrestrial or celestial, or future self in either, there may be two opinions-two or three perhaps-on the matter. But, there is no question that, of absolute happiness, I had the share of about a quarter of a million of average people, all to myself. I say “people,” not “boys.” I don’t know what delight boys take in cricket, or boating, or throwing stones at birds, or learning to shoot them. But of average people in continuity of occupation, shopmen, clerks, Stock Exchange people, club and Pall Mall people, certainly there was no reckoning the quantity of happiness I had in comparison, followed indeed by times of reaction, or of puzzled satiety; and partly avenged by extremes of vexation at what vexed nobody else; but indisputably and infinitely

¹ [The first draft adds here:-

“From Terni, by Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, to Florence. I may perhaps give scraps of the descriptive diaries elsewhere. Altogether I am impressed by their coldness and apathy, as compared to what I feel now, in great part of course caused by my then total ignorance of the real beauty of architecture-but more by the chrysalid stupidity of that period of my life-compared to which my old age is really youth.”

For some of the “scraps” referred to, see now the Appendix; below, p. 617.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]