a roving life returned, it
was to the regions about the "blue Olympus" he always fondly looked
back. Since his adoption of Italy as a home, this propensity had in a
great degree subsided. In addition to the sedatory effects of his new
domestic r, there had, at this time, grown upon him a degree of
inertness, or indisposition to change of residence, which, in the
instance of his departure from Ravenna, was with some difficulty
surmounted.

The unsettled state of life he was from thenceforward thrown into, by
the precarious fortunes of those with whom he had connected himself,
conspired with one or two other causes to revive within him all his
former love of change and adventure; nor is it wonderful that to
Greece, as offering _both_ in their most exciting form, he should
turn eagerly his eyes, and at once kindle with a desire not only to
witness, but perhaps share in, the present triumphs of Liberty on
those very fields where he had already gathered for immortality such
memorials of her day long past.

Among the causes that concurred with this sentiment to determine him
to the enterprise he now meditated, not the least powerful,
undoubtedly, was the supposition in his own mind that the high tide
of his poetical popularity had been for some time on the ebb. The
utter failure of the Liberal,--in which, splendid as were some of his
own contributions to it, there were yet others from his pen hardly to
be distinguished from the surrounding dross,--confirmed him fully in
the notion that he had at last wearied out his welcome with the
world; and, as the voice of fame had become almost as necessary to
him as the air he breathed, it was with a proud consciousness of the
yet untouched reserves of power within him he now saw that, if
arrived at the end of _one_ path of fame, there were yet others for
him to strike into, still more glorious.

That some such vent for the resources of his mind had long been
contemplated by him appears from a letter of his to myself, in which
it will be recollected he says,--"If I live ten years longer, you
will see that it is not over with me. I don't mean in literature, for
that is nothing; and--it may seem odd enough to say--I do not think
it was my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something,--the
times and Fortune permitting,--that 'like the cosmogony of the world
will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.'" He then adds this but too
true and sad prognostic:--"But I doubt whether my co