d, is my comfort,--
Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given.

VI.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send; and the chance
that
Takes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without asking
Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,--
Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being
In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,--
So in your image I turn to an _ens rationis_ of friendship.
Even to write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise.

VII.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

There was a time, methought it was but lately departed,
When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it;
Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender.
There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early,
Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted.
But it is over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field in
Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested.
It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it.
Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless.

VIII.--CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken,
Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost _il Moro_;--
Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice.
I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit
Moping and mourning here,--for her, and myself much smaller.
Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,
Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?
Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels
Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labor,
And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture
Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy,
Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavor?
All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome, nor
Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the
Wreck of the Lombard youth and the victory of the oppressor.
Whither depart the brave?--God knows; I certainly do not.

IX.--MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER.

He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it.
You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him,
If he perhaps should return;--but that is surely unlikely