CHAPTER II.

Corinne now carefully avoided all explanations. She wished to render her lover's life as calm as possible. Their every interview had tended to convince her that the disclosure of what she had been, and sacrificed, was but too likely to make an unfavorable impression; she, therefore, sought again to interest him in the still unseen wonders of Rome, and thus retard the instant that must clear all doubts. Such a situation would be insupportable beneath any other feeling than love, which sheds such spells over every minute, that, though still desiring some indefinite futurity, we receive a day as a century of joy, and pain, so full of sensations and ideas is each succeeding morrow. Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it. The more terrible separation seems, the less probable it becomes: like death, it is an evil we rather name than believe, as if the inevitable were impossible. Corinne, who, in her innocent artifice for varying Oswald's amusements, had hitherto reserved the statues and paintings, now proposed taking him to see them, as his health was sufficiently re-established.--"It is shameful," she said, with a smile, "that you should be still so ignorant; therefore to-morrow we will commence our tour through the galleries and museums."--"As you will," replied Nevil; "but, indeed, Corinne, you want not the aid of such resources to keep me with you; on the contrary, I make a sacrifice to obey you, in turning my gaze to any other object, be it what it may."

They went first to the Vatican, that palace of sculpture, where the human form shines deified by paganism, as are the virtues by Christianity. In those silent halls are assembled gods and heroes; while beauty, in eternal sleep, looks as if dreaming of herself were the sole pleasure she required. As we contemplate these admirable forms and features, the design of the Divinity, in creating man, seems revealed by the noble person he has deigned to bestow on him. The soul is elevated by hopes full of chaste enthusiasm; for beauty is a portion of the universe, which, beneath whatever guise presented, awakes religion in the heart of man. What poetry invests a face where the most sublime expression is fixed forever, where the grandest thoughts are enshrined in images so worthy of them! Sometimes an ancient sculptor completed but one statue in his life; that constituted his history. He daily added to its perfection: if he loved or was beloved; if he derived fresh ideas from art or nature, they served but to embellish the features of this idol. He translated into looks all the feelings of his soul. Grief, in the present state of society so cold and oppressive, then actually ennobled its victim; indeed, to this day the being who has not suffered can never have thought or felt. But the ancients dignified grief by heroic composure, a sense of their own strength, developed by their public freedom. The loveliest Grecian statues were mostly expressive of repose. The Laöcoon and the Niobe are among the few stamped by sorrow; but it is the vengeance of Heaven, and not human passion, that they both recall. The moral being was so well organized of old, the air circulated so freely in those manly chests, and political order so harmonized with such faculties, that those times scarce ever, like our own, produced discontented men. Subtle as were the ideas then discovered, the arts were furnished with none but those primitive affections which alone can be typified by eternal marble. Hardly can a trace of melancholy be found on their statues. A head of Apollo, in the Justinian palace, and one of the dying Alexander, indeed, betray both thoughtfulness and pain; but they belonged to the period of Grecian slavery, which banished the tranquil pride that usually pervaded both their sculpture and their poetry. Thought, unfed from without, preys on itself, digging up and analyzing its own treasures; but it has not the creative power which happiness alone can give. Even the antique sarcophagii of the Vatican teem but with martial or joyous images; the commemoration of an active life they thought the best homage they could pay the dead--nothing weakened or discouraged the living. Emulation was the reigning principle in art as in policy; there was room for all the virtues, as for all the talents. The vulgar prided in the ability to admire, and genius was worshipped even by those who could not aspire to its palm. Grecian religion was not, like Christianity, the solace of misery, the wealth of the poor, the future of the dying: it required glory and triumph; it formed the apotheosis of man. In this perishable creed, even beauty was a dogma; artists, called on to represent base or ferocious passions, shielded the human form from degradation by blending it with the animal, as in the satyrs and centaurs. On the contrary, when seeking to realize an unusual sublimity, they united the charms of both sexes; as in the warlike Minerva, and the Apollo Musagets; felicitous propinquity of vigor and sweetness, without which neither quality can attain perfection! Corinne delayed Oswald some time before the sleeping figures that adorn the tombs, in the manner most favorable to their art. She observed that statues representing an action suspended at its height, an impulse suddenly checked, create, sometimes, a painful astonishment; but an attitude of complete repose offers an image that thoroughly accords with the influence of southern skies. The arts there seem but the peaceful spectators of nature; and genius itself, which agitates a northern breast, there appears but one harmony the more. Oswald and Corinne entered the court in which the sculptured animals are assembled with the statue of Tiberius in the midst of them: this arrangement was made without premeditation; the creatures seemed to have ranged themselves around their master. Another such hall contains the gloomy works of the Egyptians, resembling mummies more that men. This people, as much as possible, assimilated life with death, and lent no animation to their human effigies; that province of art appeared to them inaccessible. About the porticos of this museum each step presents new wonders; vases, altars, ornaments of all kinds, surround the Apollo, the Laöcoon, and the Muses. Here may one learn to appreciate Homer and Sophocles, attaining a knowledge of antiquity that cannot be elsewhere acquired. Amid these porticos are fountains, whose incessant flow gently reminds you of past hours; it is two thousand years since the artists of these _chefs-d'œuvres_ existed. But the most melancholy sights here are the broken statues, the torso of Hercules, heads separated from their trunks; the foot of a Jupiter, which it is supposed must have belonged to the largest and most symmetrical statue ever known. One sees the battle-field whereon Time contended with Glory; these mutilated limbs attesting the tyrant's victory, and our own losses. After leaving the Vatican, Corinne led Oswald to the colossal figures on Monte Cavallo, said to be those of Castor and Pollux. Each of these heroes governs a foaming steed with one hand: this struggle of man with brute, like all the works of the ancients, finely exemplifying the physical powers of human nature, which had then a dignity it no longer possesses. Bodily exercises are generally abandoned to our common people; personal vigor, in the antique, appeared so intimately connected with the moral qualities of those who lived in the heart of war, a war of single combats, that generosity, fierceness, command, and height of stature, seemed inseparable, ere intellectual religion had throned man's potency in his soul. As the gods wore our shape, every attribute appears symbolical: the "brawns of Hercules" suggest no recollections of vulgar life, but of divine, almighty will, clothed in supernatural grandeur.

Corinne and Oswald finished their day by visiting the studio of the great Canova. The statues gained much from being seen by torchlight, as the ancients must have thought, who placed them in their Thermes, inaccessible to the day. A deeper shade thus softens the brilliant uniformity of the marble: its pallor looks more like that of life. At that time Canova had just achieved an exquisite figure, intended for a tomb; it represented Grief leaning on a Lion. Corinne detected a resemblance to Nevil, with which the artist himself was struck. Our Englishman turned away his head, to avoid this kind of attention, whispering to his beloved: "Corinne, I believed myself condemned to this eternal grief ere I met you, who have so changed me, that sometimes hope, and always a delicious agitation, pervades the heart that ought to be devoted to regret."