to breathe on the summit of a lofty ridge, where all
around, as far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but the
same unvarying, miserable, heart-sinking barrenness, without a trace
of human habitation, except the black fort or the highest point of
Radicofani--a soft sound of bells came over my ear as if brought upon
the wind. There is something in the sound of bells in the midst of a
solitude which is singularly striking, and may be cheering or
melancholy, according to the mood in which we may happen to be.

* * * * *

_Florence, April 14._--I have not written a word since we arrived at
Sienna. What would it avail me to keep a mere journal of suffering? O
that I could change as others do, could forget that such things have
been which can never be again! that there were not this tenacity in my
heart and soul which clings to the shadow though the substance be
gone!

This is not a mere effusion of low spirits; I was never more cheerful.
I have just left a gay party, where Mr. Rogers (whom by special good
fortune we meet at every resting-place, and who dined with us to-day)
has been entertaining us delightfully. I disdain low spirits as a mere
disease which comes over us, generally from some physical or external
cause; to prescribe for them is as easy as to disguise them is
difficult: but the hopeless, cureless sadness of a heart which droops
with regret, and throbs with resentment, is easily, very easily
disguised, but not so easily banished. I hear every body round me
congratulating themselves, and _me_ more particularly, that we have at
last reached Florence, that we are so far advanced on our road
homewards, that soon we shall be at Paris, and Paris is to do
wonders--Paris and Dr. R** are to _set me up_ again, as the phrase is.
But I shall never be set up again, I shall never live to reach Paris;
none can tell how I sicken at the very name of that detested place;
none seem aware how fast, how very fast the principle of life is
burning away within me: but why should I speak? and what earthly help
can now avail me? I can suffer in silence, I can conceal the weakness
which increases upon me, by retiring, as if from choice and not
necessity, from all exertion not absolutely inevitable; and the change
is so gradual, none will perceive it till the great change of all
comes, and then I shall be at rest.

* * * * *

Florence looked most beautiful as