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The proposal for a moonlight ramble was received
with acclamation by all the younger portion of the company.
They immediately set forth and descended from
story to story, dimly lighting their way by waxen tapers,
which are a necessary equipment to those whose thoroughfare,
in the night-time, lies up and down a Roman staircase.
Emerging from the courtyard of the edifice, they
looked upward and saw the sky full of light, which seemed
to have a delicate purple or crimson lustre, or, at least,
some richer tinge than the cold, white moonshine of other
skies. It gleamed over the front of the opposite palace,
showing the architectural ornaments of its cornice and
pillared portal, as well as the iron-barred basement windows,
that gave such a prison-like aspect to the structure,
and the shabbiness and squalor that lay along its base.
A cobbler was just shutting up his little shop, in the basement
of the palace; a cigar vendor's lantern flared in the
blast that came through the archway; a French sentinel
paced to and fro before the portal; a homeless dog, that
haunted thereabouts, barked as obstreperously at the

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party as if he were the domestic guardian of the precincts.

The air was quietly full of the noise of falling water,
the cause of which was nowhere visible, though apparently
near at hand. This pleasant, natural sound, not
unlike that of a distant cascade in the forest, may be
heard in many of the Roman streets and piazzas, when
the tumult at the city is hushed; for consuls, emperors,
and popes, the great men of every age, have found no
better way of immortalizing their memories, than by the
shifting, indestructible, ever new, yet unchanging, up-gush
and downfall of water. They have written their names
in that unstable element, and proved it a more durable
record than brass or marble.

“Donatello, you had better take one of those gay, boyish
artists for your companion,” said Miriam, when she
found the Italian youth at her side. “I am not now in a
merry mood, as when we set all the world a-dancing the
other afternoon, in the Borghese grounds.”

“I never wish to dance any more,” answered Donatello.

“What a melancholy was in that tone!” exclaimed
Miriam. “You are getting spoilt, in this dreary Rome,
and will be as wise and as wretched as all the rest of
mankind, unless you go back soon to your Tuscan vineyards.
Well; give me your arm then! But take care
that no friskiness comes over you. We must walk evenly
and heavily to-night!”

The party arranged itself according to its natural affinities
or casual likings; a sculptor generally choosing a

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painter, and a painter a sculptor, for his companion, in
preference to brethren of their own art. Kenyon would
gladly have taken Hilda to himself, and have drawn her
a little aside from the throng of merry wayfarers. But
she kept near Miriam, and seemed, in her gentle and
quiet way, to decline a separate alliance either with him
or any other of her acquaintances.

So they set forth, and had gone but a little way, when
the narrow street emerged into a piazza, on one side of
which, glistening, and dimpling in the moonlight, was the
most famous fountain in Rome. Its murmur — not to say
its uproar — had been in the ears of the company, ever
since they came into the open air. It was the Fountain
of Trevi, which draws its precious water from a source
far beyond the walls, whence it flows hitherward through
old subterranean aqueducts, and sparkles forth as pure as
the virgin who first led Agrippa to its wellspring, by her
father's door.

“I shall sip as much of this water as the hollow of my
hand will hold,” said Miriam. “I am leaving Rome in a
few days; and the tradition goes, that a parting draught
at the Fountain of Trevi insures the traveller's return,
whatever obstacles and improbabilities may seem to beset
him. Will you drink, Donatello?”

“Signorina, what you drink, I drink,” said the youth.

They and the rest of the party, descended some steps
to the water's brim, and, after a sip or two, stood gazing
at the absurd design of the fountain, where some sculptor
of Bernini's school had gone absolutely mad, in marble.
It was a great palace-front, with niches and many

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basreliefs, out of which looked Agrippa's legendary virgin,
and several of the allegoric sisterhood; while, at the
base, appeared Neptune, with his floundering steeds and
Tritons blowing their horns about him, and twenty other
artificial fantasies, which the calm moonlight soothed into
better taste than was native to them.

And, after all, it was as magnificent a piece of work as
ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the palatial
façade, was strown, with careful art and ordered irregularity,
a broad and broken heap of massive rock, looking
as if it might have lain there since the deluge. Over a
central precipice fell the water, in a semicircular cascade;
and from a hundred crevices, on all sides, snowy jets
gushed up, and streams spouted out of the mouths and
nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glistening drops;
while other rivulets, that had run wild, came leaping from
one rude step to another, over stones that were mossy,
slimy, and green with sedge, because, in a century of
their wild play, Nature had adopted the Fountain of
Trevi, with all its elaborate devices, for her own. Finally,
the water, tumbling, sparkling, and dashing, with joyous
haste and never-ceasing murmur, poured itself into a
great marble-brimmed reservoir, and filled it with a quivering
tide; on which was seen, continually, a snowy semicircle
of momentary foam from the principal cascade, as
well as a multitude of snow-points from smaller jets.
The basin occupied the whole breadth of the piazza,
whence flights of steps descended to its border. A boat
might float, and make voyages from one shore to another,
in this mimic lake.

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In the daytime, there is hardly a livelier scene in
Rome than the neighborhood of the Fountain of Trevi;
for the piazza is then filled with the stalls of vegetable
and fruit dealers, chestnut roasters, cigar vendors, and
other people, whose petty and wandering traffic is transacted
in the open air. It is likewise thronged with idlers,
lounging over the iron railing, and with Forestieri, who
came hither to see the famous fountain. Here, also, are
seen men with buckets, urchins with cans, and maidens (a
picture as old as the patriarchal times) bearing their pitchers
upon their heads. For the water of Trevi is in request,
far and wide, as the most refreshing draught for feverish
lips, the pleasantest to mingle with wine, and the whole-somest
to drink, in its native purity, that can anywhere
be found. But, now, at nearly midnight, the piazza was
a solitude; and it was a delight to behold this untamable
water, sporting by itself in the moonshine, and compelling
all the elaborate trivialities of art to assume a natural
aspect, in accordance with its own powerful simplicity.

“What would be done with this water-power,” suggested
an artist, “if we had it in one of our American
cities? would they employ it to turn the machinery of a
cotton-mill, I wonder?”

“The good people would pull down those rampant
marble deities,” said Kenyon, “and possibly they would
give me a commission to carve the one-and-thirty (is that
the number?) sister States, each pouring a silver stream
from a separate can into one vast basin, which should
represent the grand reservoir of national prosperity.”

“Or, if they wanted a bit of satire,” remarked an

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English artist, “you could set those same one-and-thirty
States to cleansing the national flag of any stains that it
may have incurred. The Roman washerwomen at the
lavatory yonder, playing their labor in the open air, would
serve admirably as models.”

“I have often intended to visit this fountain by moonlight,”
said Miriam, “because it was here that the interview
took place between Corinne and Lord Neville, after
their separation and temporary estrangement. Pray
come behind me, one of you, and let me try whether the
face can be recognized in the water.”

Leaning over the stone brim of the basin, she heard
footsteps stealing behind her, and knew that somebody
was looking over her shoulder. The moonshine fell
directly behind Miriam, illuminating the palace-front and
the whole scene of statues and rocks, and filling the basin,
as it were, with tremulous and palpable light. Corinne,
it will be remembered, knew Lord Neville by the reflection
of his face in the water. In Miriam's case, however,
(owing to the agitation of the water, its transparency,
and the angle at which she was compelled to lean over,)
no reflected image appeared; nor, from the same causes,
would it have been possible for the recognition between
Corinne and her lover to take place. The moon, indeed,
flung Miriam's shadow at the bottom of the basin, as well
as two more shadows of persons who had followed her, on
either side.

“Three shadows!” exclaimed Miriam. “Three separate
shadows, all so black and heavy that they sink in
the water! There they lie on the bottom, as if all three

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were drowned together. This shadow on my right is
Donatello; I know him by his curls, and the turn of his
head. My left-hand companion puzzles me; a shapeless
mass, as indistinct as the premonition of calamity! Which
of you can it be? Ah!”

She had turned round, while speaking, and saw beside
her the strange creature, whose attendance on her was
already familiar, as a marvel and a jest, to the whole
company of artists. A general burst of laughter followed
the recognition; while the model leaned towards
Miriam, as she shrank from him, and muttered something
that was inaudible to those who witnessed the scene. By
his gestures, however, they concluded that he was inviting
her to bathe her hands.

“He cannot be an Italian; at least, not a Roman,” observed
an artist. “I never knew one of them to care
about ablution. See him now! It is as if he were trying
to wash off the time-stains and earthly soil of a thousand
years!”

Dipping his hands into the capacious washbowl before
him, the model rubbed them together with the utmost
vehemence. Ever and anon, too, he peeped into the
water, as if expecting to see the whole Fountain of Trevi
turbid with the results of his ablution. Miriam looked at
him, some little time, with an aspect of real terror, and
even imitated him by leaning over to peep into the basin.
Recovering herself, she took up some of the water in the
hollow of her hand, and practised an old form of exorcism
by flinging it in her persecutor's face.

“In the name of all the Saints,” cried she, “

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vanish, Demon, and let me be free of you, now and forever!”

“It will not suffice,” said some of the mirthful party,
“unless the Fountain of Trevi gushes with holy water.”

In fact, the exorcism was quite ineffectual upon the
pertinacious demon, or whatever the apparition might be.
Still he washed his brown, bony talons; still he peered
into the vast basin, as if all the water of that great drinking-cup
of Rome must needs be stained black or sanguine;
and still he gesticulated to Miriam to follow his
example. The spectators laughed loudly, but yet with a
kind of constraint; for the creature's aspect was strangely
repulsive and hideous.

Miriam felt her arm seized violently by Donatello.
She looked at him, and beheld a tiger-like fury gleaming
from his wild eyes.

“Bid me drown him!” whispered he, shuddering between
rage and horrible disgust. “You shall hear his
death-gurgle in another instant!”

“Peace, peace, Donatello!” said Miriam, soothingly;
for this naturally gentle and sportive being seemed all
aflame with animal rage. “Do him no mischief! He is
mad; and we are as mad as he, if we suffer ourselves to
be disquieted by his antics. Let us leave him to bathe
his hands till the fountain run dry, if he find solace and
pastime in it. What is it to you or me, Donatello?
There, there! Be quiet, foolish boy!”

Her tone and gesture were such as she might have
used in taming down the wrath of a faithful hound, that
had taken upon himself to avenge some supposed affront

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to his mistress. She smoothed the young man's curls
(for his fierce and sudden fury seemed to bristle among
his hair), and touched his cheek with her soft palm, till
his angry mood was a little assuaged.

“Signorina, do I look as when you first knew me?”
asked he, with a heavy, tremulous sigh, as they went
onward, somewhat apart from their companions. “Methinks
there has been a change upon me, these many
months; and more and more, these last few days. The
joy is gone out of my life; all gone! all gone! Feel
my hand! Is it not very hot? Ah; and my heart
burns hotter still!”

“My poor Donatello, you are ill!” said Miriam, with
deep sympathy and pity. “This melancholy and sickly
Rome is stealing away the rich, joyous life that belongs
to you. Go back, my dear friend, to your home among
the hills, where (as I gather from what you have told
me) your days were filled with simple and blameless
delights. Have you found aught in the world that is
worth what you there enjoyed? Tell me truly, Donatello!”

“Yes!” replied the young man.

“And what, in Heaven's name?” asked she.

“This burning pain in my heart,” said Donatello;
“for you are in the midst of it.”

By this time, they had left the Fountain of Trevi considerably
behind them. Little further allusion was made
to the scene at its margin; for the party regarded Miriam's
persecutor as diseased in his wits, and were hardly
to be surprised by any eccentricity in his deportment.

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Threading several narrow streets, they passed through
the Piazza of the Holy Apostles, and soon came to Trajan's
forum. All over the surface of what once was
Rome, it seems to be the effort of Time to bury up the
ancient city, as if it were a corpse, and he the sexton; so
that, in eighteen centuries, the soil over its grave has
grown very deep, by the slow scattering of dust, and the
accumulation of more modern decay upon older ruin.

This was the fate, also, of Trajan's forum, until some
papal antiquary, a few hundred years ago, began to hollow
it out again, and disclosed the full height of the
gigantic column, wreathed round with bas-reliefs of the
old Emperor's warlike deeds. In the area before it,
stands a grove of stone, consisting of the broken and
unequal shafts of a vanished temple, still keeping a majestic
order, and apparently incapable of further demolition.
The modern edifices of the piazza (wholly built,
no doubt, out of the spoil of its old magnificence) look
down into the hollow space whence these pillars rise.

One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the
piazza, on the verge of the area. It was a great, solid
fact of the Past, making old Rome actually sensible to
the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor force of
thought, nor magic of song, could so vitally assure us
that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what
its rulers and people wrought.

“And, see!” said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it,
“there is still a polish remaining on the hard substance
of the pillar; and even now, late as it is, I can feel very
sensibly the warmth of the noonday sun, which did its

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best to heat it through. This shaft will endure forever!
The polish of eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half
rubbed off, and the heat of to-day's sunshine, lingering
into the night, seem almost equally ephemeral in relation
to it.”

“There is comfort to be found in the pillar,” remarked
Miriam, “hard and heavy as it is. Lying here forever,
as it will, it makes all human trouble appear but a momentary
annoyance.”

“And human happiness as evanescent too,” observed
Hilda, sighing; “and beautiful art hardly less so! I do
not love to think that this dull stone, merely by its massiveness,
will last infinitely longer than any picture, in
spite of the spiritual life that ought to give it immortality!”

“My poor little Hilda,” said Miriam, kissing her compassionately,
“would you sacrifice this greatest mortal
consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all
things — from the right of saying, in every conjuncture,
`This, too, will pass away' — would you give up this
unspeakable boon, for the sake of making a picture eternal?”

Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a demonstration
from the rest of the party, who, after talking and
laughing together, suddenly joined their voices, and
shouted at full pitch, —

“Trajan! Trajan!”

“Why do you deafen us with such an uproar?” inquired
Miriam.

In truth, the whole piazza had been filled with their

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idle vociferation; the echoes from the surrounding houses
reverberating the cry of “Trajan,” on all sides; as if
there was a great search for that imperial personage, and
not so much as a handful of his ashes to be found.

“Why, it was a good opportunity to air our voices in
this resounding piazza,” replied one of the artists. “Besides,
we had really some hopes of summoning Trajan to
look at his column, which, you know, he never saw in his
lifetime. Here is your model (who, they say, lived and
sinned before Trajan's death) still wandering about Rome;
and why not the Emperor Trajan?”

“Dead emperors have very little delight in their columns,
I am afraid,” observed Kenyon. “All that rich
sculpture of Trajan's bloody warfare, twining from the
base of the pillar to its capital, may be but an ugly spectacle
for his ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge,
storied shaft must be laid before the judgment-seat, as a
piece of the evidence of what he did in the flesh. If
ever I am employed to sculpture a hero's monument, I
shall think of this, as I put in the bas-reliefs of the pedestal!”

“There are sermons in stones,” said Hilda, thoughtfully,
smiling at Kenyon's morality; “and especially in
the stones of Rome.”

The party moved on, but deviated a little from the
straight way, in order to glance at the ponderous remains
of the Temple of Mars Ultor, within which a convent of
nuns is now established, — a dove-cote, in the war-god's
mansion. At only a little distance, they passed the portico
of a Temple of Minerva, most rich and beautiful in

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architecture, but wofully gnawed by time and shattered
by violence, besides being buried midway in the accumulation
of soil, that rises over dead Rome like a flood-tide.
Within this edifice of antique sanctity, a baker's shop
was now established, with an entrance on one side; for,
everywhere, the remnants of old grandeur and divinity
have been made available for the meanest necessities of
to-day.

“The baker is just drawing his loaves out of the oven,”
remarked Kenyon. “Do you smell how sour they are?
I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge for the desecration
of her temple) had slily poured vinegar into the
batch, if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer
their bread in the acetous fermentation.”

They turned into the Via Alessandria, and thus gained
the rear of the Temple of Peace, and passing beneath its
great arches, pursued their way along a hedge-bordered
lane. In all probability, a stately Roman street lay buried
beneath that rustic-looking pathway; for they had now
emerged from the close and narrow avenues of the modern
city, and were treading on a soil where the seeds of
antique grandeur had not yet produced the squalid crop
that elsewhere sprouts from them. Grassy as the lane
was, it skirted along heaps of shapeless ruin, and the bare
site of the vast temple that Hadrian planned and built.
It terminated on the edge of a somewhat abrupt descent,
at the foot of which, with a muddy ditch between, rose,
in the bright moonlight, the great curving wall and multitudinous
arches of the Coliseum.