k from that wicked and miserable city. The world has grown
either too evil, or else too wise and sad, for such men as the old
Counts of Monte Beni used to be. His very first taste of it, as you see,
has changed and spoilt my poor young lord. There had not been a single
count in the family these hundred years or more, who was so true a Monte
Beni, of the antique stamp, as this poor signorino; and now it brings
the tears into my eyes to hear him sighing over a cup of Sunshine! Ah,
it is a sad world now!"

"Then you think there was a merrier world once?" asked Kenyon.

"Surely, Signore," said Tomaso; "a merrier world, and merrier Counts of
Monte Beni to live in it! Such tales of them as I have heard, when I was
a child on my grandfather's knee! The good old man remembered a lord of
Monte Beni--at least, he had heard of such a one, though I will not make
oath upon the holy crucifix that my grandsire lived in his time who used
to go into the woods and call pretty damsels out of the fountains, and
out of the trunks of the old trees. That merry lord was known to dance
with them a whole long summer afternoon! When shall we see such frolics
in our days?"

"Not soon, I am afraid," acquiesced the sculptor. "You are right,
excellent Tomaso; the world is sadder now!"

And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, he sighed
in the same breath to think how the once genial earth produces, in every
successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding
ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment
are rarer in our refined and softened era,--on the contrary, they never
before were nearly so abundant,--but that mankind are getting so far
beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any
longer. A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself
among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated
cheerfulness to shame. The entire system of man's affairs, as at present
established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy
soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should
endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose
them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in
life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which
can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than