th the
impertinence of their cold criticism.

Kenyon, though young, had care enough within his breast to render the
Carnival the emptiest of mockeries. Contrasting the stern anxiety of his
present mood with the frolic spirit of the preceding year, he fancied
that so much trouble had, at all events, brought wisdom in its train.
But there is a wisdom that looks grave, and sneers at merriment; and
again a deeper wisdom, that stoops to be gay as often as occasion
serves, and oftenest avails itself of shallow and trifling grounds of
mirth; because, if we wait for more substantial ones, we seldom can be
gay at all. Therefore, had it been possible, Kenyon would have done well
to mask himself in some wild, hairy visage, and plunge into the throng
of other maskers, as at the Carnival before. Then Donatello had danced
along the Corso in all the equipment of a Faun, doing the part with
wonderful felicity of execution, and revealing furry ears, which looked
absolutely real; and Miriam had been alternately a lady of the antique
regime, in powder and brocade, and the prettiest peasant girl of the
Campagna, in the gayest of costumes; while Hilda, sitting demurely in a
balcony, had hit the sculptor with a single rosebud,--so sweet and fresh
a bud that he knew at once whose hand had flung it.

These were all gone; all those dear friends whose sympathetic mirth had
made him gay. Kenyon felt as if an interval of many years had passed
since the last Carnival. He had grown old, the nimble jollity was tame,
and the maskers dull and heavy; the Corso was but a narrow and shabby
street of decaying palaces; and even the long, blue streamer of Italian
sky, above it, not half so brightly blue as formerly.

Yet, if he could have beheld the scene with his clear, natural eyesight,
he might still have found both merriment and splendor in it. Everywhere,
and all day long, there had been tokens of the festival, in the baskets
brimming over with bouquets, for sale at the street corners, or borne
about on people's heads; while bushels upon bushels of variously colored
confetti were displayed, looking just like veritable sugar plums; so
that a stranger would have imagined that the whole commerce and business
of stern old Rome lay in flowers and sweets. And now, in the sunny
afternoon, there could hardly be a spectacle more picturesque than the
vista of that noble street, stretching into the interminable distance
between two rows of lofty edifices, from e