ld not know
him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature
required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying
groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb. And there was no
comfort that his fellows could make him; it availed nothing."

We know it can not last long; we know that the morning is fast
approaching, when they will find him "stark dead, and lying as he had
smiled;" when they will bear him forth, according to his vow, to his
resting-place in Joyous Guard; when there will be pronounced over him
that famous funeral oration--the truest, the simplest, the noblest, I
think, that ever was spoken over the body of a sinful man.

CHAPTER XXXI.

"I pray God pardon me,
That I no more, without a pang,
His choicest works can see."

It was long before Livingstone's health recovered the check to its
improvement given by that interview. However, as the spring advanced he
began to regain strength rapidly, and toward the end of May he and I
started in the _Petrel_, which he had just bought, for a cruise in the
Mediterranean.

It would seem hard that any one, coasting for the first time along the
shores of Italy, and penetrating ever and anon far into the interior,
should not feel and display some interest in the succession of pictures,
of living Nature and dead Art, that meet you at every step. I can not
say that I ever detected the faintest symptom of such in my companion.
He strayed with me through the old Forum, and through Adrian's Villa,
and lingered by the Alban Lake; but it was more to keep me in
countenance than any thing else. I liked them better this second time of
seeing them than I did the first; I doubt if they left an impression on
his mind equal to the dimmest photograph that ever was the pride of an
amateur and the puzzle of his friends. The brilliant landscapes made up
of bold headlands, hanging woods, and sunny bays fared no better. Guy
did not come on deck for two hours after we cast anchor off Mola di
Gaeta.

Our _ciceroni_ were much pained and scandalized at an indifference
which exceeded all they had yet encountered in the matter-of-fact
_Signori Inglesi_. I saw one of them look quite relieved when, after
quitting us, he had to listen to an excitable young Jewess endeavoring
to express her raptures in the most execrable Italian. The physical
effort it cost her was awful to witness, especially as she was wintering
in Italy fo