ive us as Memory receives the way-worn; receive
us in silence, amidst ruins! Where is the traveller we pursue? Turn the
hippogriff loose to graze: he loves the acanthus that wreathes round
yon broken columns. Yes, that is the arch of Titus, the conqueror of
Jerusalem,--that the Colosseum! Through one passed the triumph of the
deified invader; in one fell the butchered gladiators. Monuments of
murder, how poor the thoughts, how mean the memories ye awaken, compared
with those that speak to the heart of man on the heights of Phyle, or
by thy lone mound, grey Marathon! We stand amidst weeds and brambles
and long waving herbage. Where we stand reigned Nero,--here were his
tessellated floors; here,

"Mighty in the heaven, a second heaven,"

hung the vault of his ivory roofs; here, arch upon arch, pillar on
pillar, glittered to the world the golden palace of its master,--the
Golden House of Nero. How the lizard watches us with his bright,
timorous eye! We disturb his reign. Gather that wild flower: the Golden
House is vanished, but the wild flower may have kin to those which the
stranger's hand scattered over the tyrant's grave; see, over this soil,
the grave of Rome, Nature strews the wild flowers still!

In the midst of this desolation is an old building of the middle ages.
Here dwells a singular recluse. In the season of the malaria the native
peasant flies the rank vegetation round; but he, a stranger and a
foreigner, no associates, no companions, except books and instruments
of science. He is often seen wandering over the grass-grown hills, or
sauntering through the streets of the new city, not with the absent brow
and incurious air of students, but with observant piercing eyes that
seem to dive into the hearts of the passers-by. An old man, but not
infirm,--erect and stately, as if in his prime. None know whether he be
rich or poor. He asks no charity, and he gives none,--he does no evil,
and seems to confer no good. He is a man who appears to have no world
beyond himself; but appearances are deceitful, and Science, as well as
Benevolence, lives in the Universe. This abode, for the first time since
thus occupied, a visitor enters. It is Zanoni.

You observe those two men seated together, conversing earnestly. Years
long and many have flown away since they met last,--at least, bodily,
and face to face. But if they are sages, thought can meet thought, and
spirit spirit, though oceans divide the forms. Death itself divi