b>--,

'I givib tie/0: Mifit0b

BOUGHT WfTH THE INCOME
OF THE
Qeorge Gabriel Fund

A TO'UR IN

EUROPE

BY
DENTON J. SNIDER

ST. LOUIS, MO.
SIGMA PUBLISHING CO.
210 PINE ST.
(For sale by --\. C. M'Clurg & Co., Booksellers, Chicaso, Ills.)

COPTEIGHT BY D. J. SnIDER, 1907

NixoN-JoNEi PRiNriNG Co., 215 Pine Street, St. Louis

CONTENTS

I. From St. Louis to London . . - 5
II. London  17
III. Paris  43
IV. Eome  104
V. The German Loup  251
VI. Rome II  354
VII. Transit  410
VIII. Athens  438
IX. The Delphic Loup  488
X. Athens II  50f<
XI. Return to Delphi  529
XII. Homeward  563
XIII. Postscript  592
(iii)

A TOUR IN EUROPK.

3from St. Xoui0 to Xon^on.
New. York, Dec. 25th, 1877.
Breaking loose from friends in St. Louis and
passing a day with my old father and my two
sisters in Cincinnati, and stopping a few hours
to call on some Shakespearians in Philadelphia,
I have now reached this city, to be on hand for
to-morrow's steamer. Enough of the Western
Continent for the present; I am going back to
my original home for an ancestral dip. My
people for many generations have been on the
march westward, and have never turned back; I
am the first one of my stock to do so, as far as
I know. You, my philosophic friend, give me
a forecast of what the thing means. (5)

6 FROM ST. LOUIS TO LONDON.
The journey has to begin now ; I can hardly
brook another hour's delay. I felt the time ripe
for it quite a while since ; but I had to wind up
that book on Shakespeare, and print it, before I
could set out in peace. I now leave behind me
one bit of work duly finished, and begin another
very different — the Lord knows what. So I
stand this evening on the brink of the Ocean,
looking out upon its indefinite expanse. It
would be idle to try to give you any ready-made
plan of my journey. I only know that I am
going to Rome ; nothing on this side of Provi
dence can divert me from that purpose. Think
of it — Rome, the center of history, religion, art.
What shall I be able to make of it, and it of me?
Heathenize, catholicize, or diabolize me? — for
it has certainly shown all these powers.
But as regards possible inner mutations, I
cannot prognosticate. I feel, however, though
in a very vague way, that this trip is or ought to
be one of life's nodes. I have come to the end
of something, and now I am beginning some
thing else. What is it? I cannot tell. Per
haps some potent delusion beckons me over the
water, in order to make of me another comedy.
At any rate I intend to send you and three or
four other friends the record. So you see I am
in a contemplative mood as most people are at
the beginning of such a journey ; but contempla
tion, shadowy enough of itself, thins out into

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 7
infinite space, when I try to peer across the sea
beyond what is just yonder. Over the billows
settles down a dense fog, in which, my philo
sophic friend, you have often been before.
To-night I shall have to leave you in it, after
conjuring it up in response to my mood, with the
the hope of having it lift little by little here
after, as I journey toward the sunrise.
On Peck, Pec. 26th, 1877.
This morning the good steamer Bothnia, of
the Cunard Line, for Liverpool, started out of
New York harbor, having on board not more
than fifty passengers. I was not absent, though
I confess somewhat absent-minded, thinking of
those left behind. In a short time land disap
pears, and we enter the domain of old Nep
tune, whose acquaintance I now make for the
first time in his own palace. Thus far he has
treated us exceedingly well, manifesting a divine
serenity which breaks into favoring smiles
wherever our boat ploughs into his placid face
and starts it to rippling. A personal feeling I
am already getting to have with the hoary old
sea-god, and if he continues so propitious, a
hecatomb of bullocks should be his portion, as
in Homer's time^ particularly if I can ever tread
the soil of Hellas.

» FROM ST. LOUIS TO LONDON.
At Sea, Pec. 26th, 1877 to Jan. Sth.
I am going to write a letter to you every day
on ship-board, and then send the whole batch
from London, if Neptune permits and the deity
who presides over the storms of the stomach
does not rumbletoomuch in his domains. So the
herald Mercury may drop several messages in
your lap at once from over the sea. For my own
part I am resolved to practice the virtue of silence
during this voyage. I have recently talked too
much ; I was disgusted with myself both at Chi
cago and Jacksonville for my excessive garrulity.
The result is a Katzenjammer of the tongue in
fecting the brain. Such is my resolve now; so
I shall be a quiet spectator of old ocean and of-
my fellow passengers.
Going out of New York we had a smooth,
beautiful sea ; everybody on board was gazing
on the variety of scenery which even at this
time of year gives such a charm to the wonder
ful harbor. It grew slightly nebulous, but the
mild weather was a recompense. I sat with my
feet against the railing and merely gazed into the
billowy distance, without being able to think at
all. It is strange how this indefinite expanse
makes the mind indefinite, how this immensity
stretches our thoughts about it into such extreme
tenuity, that they lose all distinctness and defy
expression in language. So you must not expect

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 9
me to tell you what I think of the ocean, at
least not now ; for I do not think at all, though
I have looked all day. This is my first real ac
quaintance with it ; who can be blamed for being
a little timid and reticent at the. introduction to
this monster?
There is quite a good miscellaneous library on
board, so that some old companions are with me
after all ; and I shall not be slow to have a short
talk with them after I can turn away from the sea.
Pec. 27th.
Still an unruffled mirror with cool but not cold
weather. I felt a little qualmish this morning,
rose early and went to walk on the deck. The
exercise in the fresh air soon drove away every
sensation of sickness. But I had another re
ward, the view of a sunrise at sea. Three ob
jects took part in the spectacle : the sun, the
clouds and the waves. The innumerable little
strips of gauze seemed to threaten the luminary
with obscuration before he rose ; they hung over
his path in a manner which the fancy compared
to a large pack of hounds chasing down their
game. But no sooner had the bright face
appeared above the edge of the water than they
took to flight, stretching their long bodies in a
race down the sky, and from the sun to me a
golden path was made over the surface of the
wavelets.

10 FROM ST. LOUIS TU LONDON.
This evening we are in the Gulf stream ; the
result is, a very balmy atmosphere with a good
stiff breeze. Life is here a perpetual promenade.
I have been curious to notice what of all the
poetry and prose that I have read about the sea,
would come back to me now, as the fittest
description of it. I could hardly believe my own
soul when it whispered the Odyssey, the oldest
sea poem. All the images which it employs re
turn, and. the types which Homer has created
seem to be absolutely permanent. I live among his
watery shapes, and salute them as old acquaint
ances. First the sea-god himself, hoary Posei
don, becomes a necessity; this immense mass of
movable undulating water upon whose back we
ride is a living thing and a divinity. I can hardly
look upon the sea in any other way than as an
animated object, the huge body has life in it, it
has spirit too. Then the forms of water which
people this world — Tritons, Nereids, Nymphs —
you can see them all, have indeed need of them
all. But especially Proteus, ever-changing but
the one in all change, gets to be a real deity in
in this aqueous world.

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 11

Pec. 29th.
This is now the fourth day at sea ; the weather
persists in being amiable. If such continues, I
shall not behold Neptune in a pet, and I almost
wish for a touch of his wrath. Having seen
him in good humor now for so long a time, it
would be pleasant to have a little change.
Already by my exclusiveness I have built up a
kind of wall about myself ; I have not been un
friendly, still I have not been communicative. I
walk the deck alone, till my solitary habits have
been remarked, and people avoid me, not wish
ing to disturb me. Everybody is getting
acquainted and is taking the measure of the rest.
There is a good deal of chattering at the table
and elsewhere. Two or three men have shown
their souls in complete undress before the whole
company by their prattle. I often am impelled
to exclaim inwardly : Let not thy tongue lay
bare thy Holy of Holies to profane view ! I feel
like turning away from a person who persists in
stripping his soul stark naked in public. It is
worse than bodily nudity. Disgusting the thing
becomes when are displayed the running sores of
the soul, as the beggar revels in showing his
paralyzed limbs and physical deformities.
You can imagine with what delight I often turn
away from the inside of this ship and of man to
the outside world here, seeking some communi-

12 FROM ST. LOUIS TO LONDON.
cation from the elusive tricksy spirits playing
peek-a-boo with me and with themselves in these
waters. Dec. 31st.
bo you know that I became aware of working
unconsciously at a problem to-day? I have been
trying to form the sea, which falls so naturally,
for me at least, into the marine shapes of Greek
Mythology. Otherwise the whole remains bound
less, chaotic, idealess. Of course Homer formed
it for me living a thousand miles distant from
the Ocean. The old poet forces us to be plas
tic, when we once catch his spirit, and to work
after him; he makes us statuaries of the Gods,
impelling us to form them out of the water as
the only formable material before us. Phidias
is said to have caught his artistic inspiration from
Homer, creating after him the Greek Pantheon
and putting it into marble. That divinely cre
ative spirit with the power of imparting itself or
some of itself to others, may well be deemed the
chief boon of the old Greek bard.
Such has been my inner occupation this entire
day, the last of the year, as I am borne along
out of the new back into the old world. You
are deft in psychic interpretation; tell me, is
this some long-lapsed ancestral trait rising up
from the submerged world of the past within me,
at the view of its primordial source, the sea?

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 13
Really, then, this voyage is making me acquainted
with myself. '
Jan. 1st, 1878.
Behold a change ! Neptune has answered my
prayers, let me believe ; the tall waves are put
ting on their white caps and have started to rock
the ship in a lullaby which makes the timbers
creak in a chorus with the winds. Half a gale,
says an old tar. Enough, I cried to the sea-
god ; I do not ask for a full gale now ; wait till
my sea-legs grow a little.
The much-expected has arrived somewhat un
expectedly and with a considerable splash of
energy. This morning I rose with a decided
feeling of not being sea-worthy, and if I had not
hurried out of my berth to take a walk on deck
I would have made an unwilling offering to the
sea-god. The entire day I have been walking,
walking, doing nothing else; like the old nag
Dolly in the treadmill I have to keep going,
otherwise it is up with me. At breakfast the
wry faces and turned-up noses of the whole com
pany made a comedy if one had felt like laugh
ing ; the absentees cast a funereal gloom over the
dinner deepened 'by the melancholy silence of the
dishes and glasses, of the knives and forks.
It is something of a study to see different peo
ple grappling with the situation. The ladies will
not suffer the remedies of sea-sickness to be dis-

1* FROM ST. LOUIS TO LONDON.
cussed, or even to be mentioned in their pres
ence, so tyrannically is their stomach ruled by
their imagination. One worthy matron sitting
near me at the table forbade any courteous inquiry
after her health as too suggestive of recent ex
periences; I have become afraid of my own
politeness, and now I shall have to be more silent
than ever. Let us rejoice even amid the gloom
that in our prosaic age the imagination has still
one realm of authority ; that is the only chance
of having a little celebration of this uncanny
New Year's day.
The jolliest fellow on board was Jack of the
steerage, now taking his first trip across the
ocean. He was laughing around on deck full of
good humor and sportiveness, when suddenly the
qualms overtook him ; he leaned over the railing,
yielded up to Neptune a tribute of meat and
barley-meal, then raising up his head with a
shout of enthusiasm he uttered the words of
Byron :
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll.
I saw a young lady looking over the side of the
vessel with such intentness that her eye seemed
to penetrate to the very bottom of the sea. "I
hope you are enjoying that beautiful marine
view," said I, " you show a most intense love of
nature." At my compliment the tear started in
her eye, her heart was full to overflowing, her

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 15
utterance did not vent itself in words — friend ,
you know the rest. Jany. 4th.
Nearly all are again on deck, the waves have
ceased their rollicking, the Irish coast has
appeared in the distance. Queenstown is
passed and the ship turns up the last stretch of
water with a sense of parting from a friend.
I have become attached to the sea lying asleep
with his infinite power — an image of the In
finite. During this voyage he turned over once
in a kind of dream but never really woke up,
still less showed himself in a frenzy. No limit
to him in any direction-, yet the possibility of all
limits. What seems to be a limit — the horizon —r
is really no limit, but a delusion of our senses. Ap
pearance cannot confine him, he is virtually a God
above appearance. Last night I saw him in his
sparkling robes, he was indeed folded in dia
monds. The phosphorescence followed in light
graceful curves from the wake of the vessel,
producing a quivering flow of brilliants along the
surface of the sea. Old ocean needs to be stirred
up a little in order to shine; his light would
seem to be latent, unless it is rubbed out of him.
Huge monster that he is, he must be worried and
baited like a bear before showing his mettle.
One goes on reflecting in this idle marine at
mosphere, piling fancy on fancy, till the

16 FBOM ST. LOUISkTO LONDON.
structure rises up far out of the ocean into
Cloudland, So let me continue: all divinity
then, all genius can be called forth only by
struggle; the greater the struggle, the greater
the divinity, who has to quell the tumult if he be
indeed divine. Nay, in a stick of wood there is
fire, if you rub it hard enough — fire sufficient to
Bet ablaze the world, were it ready to kindle. So
too in the dullest mortal clod there is a divine
spark which struggle may sometimes chafe and
worry into a flame of demonic energy. Oceanus
would lie there, the lazy God, no more than so
much dishwater, were he not prodded a little by
our prow.
On the Way, Jany Sth.
Eeached Liverpool at about 9 a. m., and
groped about through the murky air to the
Station, from which we soon started on the
train for London, where we are due this even
ing. The famous English landscape bids me
welcome by veiling its face in a fog. After
passing through miles of a monotonous brick
desert we roll, into Victoria Station. London,
the first landing-place of my journey, is reached,
lodging is found, and to-morrow soon fills my
dreams.

Xont)on. London, Jan'y 7, 1878.
I spent to-day and yesterday in wandering
about the city, with map and guide book in hand
trying to orient myself in this overwhelming mass
of remarkabilities. It is the hardest work I ever
undertook. The physical labor, the nervous
strain, the mental effort combine to draw upon
human resources so heavily that the bank
threatens to suspend. A little strength is left to
write a few lines to you this evening, in ful
filment of my promise to send you a personal
record of my battle single-handed with all
Europe. It has become clear to me that I must con
centrate here chiefly upon two points. The
first is the National Gallery, which has gathered
2 (17)

18 LONDON.
into one place more and better specimens of
European Painting than can be found anywhere
else. The second is the British Museum, of
which I shall confine myself to one department,
that of Greek Sculpture. Already I can feel
that this has more to tell me in my present stage
of mental development than any other sort of
human expression. I passed through the Greek
rooms to-day, but could only interrogate the
Statues: Tell me what it is you are saying?
That they have a language is certain, but I
shall have to learn it — which is only possible
through an intimate personal intercourse. Af
ter quite a little search among the German
booksellers here I succeeded in finding a copy
of Overbeck's Geschichte der Plastik, not the
latest edition, but amply sufficient for my pres
ent studies. Its chief attraction is a very full
account of the Elgin marbles, the gem of the
Museum, which I have already seen and pro
pose trying with all my might to appropriate.
London, Jan. 9, 1878.
I woke up this morning to the sound of strange
music, the like of which I never heard before.
I sprang from the couch and looked out of the
window, when I saw a company of British
Red Coats marching down the street headed by
a band of eight or ten bagpipers in Higliiiuul

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 19
costume, who were playing in perfect unison a
familiar air of auld Scotland. When I went
down stairs I learned that this band belonged to
the Scotch Fusileers, a battalion of whom is lo
cated in this vicinity somewhere. We shall have
to look them up too, in the interest of old mem
ories of soldiering. I have frequently heard
the bagpipe singly, but never a band of them
before. The color of the sound (Tonfarbe)
seems much changed when thus massed.
The odd, to me weird music played in my head
quite a while of its own accord, and unaccount
ably drove out of some corner of my brain a
reminder that this is my birthday. I was sur
prised at the fact, though it has often occurred
before. To-day I am thirty-seven years old,
not very aged nor very young, just about in the
middle of life's journey, which Dante placed at
thirty-five. Like Dante I find myself " in a
Dark Wood, where the straightway is lost," not
indeed in Inferno but in London, which is often
as dark as the Netherworld with a sulphurous
smell upon the air. Still I am not yet of the
damned, for I have Hope, a worldful of it all to
myself, so that the terrible inscription over
Hell-gate — Lasciate ogni speranza — does not
apply to me yet (Leave all Hope, ye who enter).
But if this be the middle of life's journey right
here to-day in London, cast me my horoscope
for thirty-seven years hence in your next letter.

20 LONDON.
Where shall I be? What kind of a streak shall
I have left behind me through the intervening
years ? If that be too long a stretch of time for
your prophetic reach, then rede me the riddle of
this European journey,' for to me it is a riddle
and getting more riddlesome, as I seek to plan it
peering into what is to come.
But enough of these birthday musings. I must
be up and off to the National Gallery where I
have resolved to devote the day to Turner, in
whose huge mass of color I have already groped
for certain lines of organization. I take notes, go
home to read and write, trying to knead chaos
into some luminous shreds of cosmos.
. That last sentence had ended the letter, but I
must scrawl to you in a postscript a little incident
which has made an impression upon me. I find
I am lodged in a building called " The Shakes
peare," which of all London, I stumbled on in
the dark, without knowing its name. So I fancy
a Shakespearian demon is still following me over
the sea, and perchance directing me after I
thought I had shaken him off and left him behind
in St. Louis. '
Great Caesari This letter cannot get itself
ended and let me alone. Another incident with
its impression stronger than ever has just now
tumbled down upon me from the Unknown.
The foregoing had been written and laid aside
for a moment to let the ink dry, when I picked

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 31
up a book on the Lives of the great Painters,
which I have been reading. The book seemed
•to open of itself at the account of Raphael, when
my eye lit on the following statement: " Raph
ael died on his birthday at the age of thirty-
seven." What an earthquake of presentiment I
Tell me, O my Oracle, why is just that sent
to me now? I shall never reach seventy-four;
I feel I raay never see you and St. Louis
again, may never get out of London. Dear me I
that Hope which I insolently boasted of has
gotten a sudden wrench at the hands of the Gods.
Good-by in a hurry ; from this hellish dream
land of prognostication I must flee at once to
the rainbow world of Turner.

London, Jany 10th, 1878.
Yesterday was my birthday ; I spent it exam
ining the Turners in the British National Gallery.
But nothing about them at present; to-day I
devoted wholly to Westminster Abbey. To
get the full significance of it, one must see it in
three different relations. First is the outside —
this is somewhat discordant, as three different
styles, if not more, thrust themselves into the
eye. The two towers ih front are strikingly out
of manner and even proportion with the rest of
the structure ; they are too jejune in ornament
and too small. Then in the rear is the so-called

22 LONDON.
Chapel of Henry VII, which offends in just the
opposite way — it is too large an addition to the
building and is overloaded with details of orna
ment compared with the main edifice. So taken
into the eye as a whole, the structure is not har
monious. But in spite of these two exceptions,
the effect from the outside is noble and inspiring;
the work is colossal — a huge cross lying there
on the earth, as a refuge and protection to man,
who can flee within its precincts ahd be saved.
It is a bulwark supported by immense abutments
of massive rock, against which all opposition
and all evil would be shattered. It is large too —
an enclosure for the whole people, the im
pregnable fortress of Divinity. Such is the main
impression, though many hints are scattered
everywhere through it. From the outside it must
be seen and felt to be the cross built eternally
as the refuge of the people. Thence we pass
inside which gives the second point of view.
Here again a discord arises, for me at least, on
account of its being made a graveyard and a
receptable for every kind of barbarous monu
ment. Such a place is not for Death, it is Life,
Salvation. Still if the Abbey be to keep alive
the illustrious dead, for the memory at least,
why make them intruders upon the eye at every
point? I take my seat in the aisle and try to
keep monument, effigy, and inscription out of
sight; my eye starts with a noble clustered

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 23
column rising high like a forest oak ; the fibres
runup and shoot out into limbs which intertwine
with other branches coming from other trees ;
the whole is curiously jointed together above into
a projecting roof yet with interstices at the sides
between the trunks to let in the light, whereby
comes the window. It is a grove — " the groves
were God's first temples" — and Architecture
has taken thence her finest inspiration, and cer
tainly her earliest hint. But the feeling is pro
tection, safety, refuge; now we are inside; the
outside, the world can not prevail against us.
Also the Cross appears more prominent, is in
fact the inside itself. But we are to become still
more internal and be melted into harmony with
the Invisible Spirit of the structure. This is
the third effect and most complete : Music is
heard echoing through these aisles, arches and
chapels ; it is the voice of supplication — an ap
peal to protect — just what the structure has
said, which now vibrates in unison with the fer-
-vent anthem. Architecture has been called
frozen Music ; but Music is Architecture voiced
and melting into harmony. I see now why chant
ing belongs to the Cathedral. Sermons must
be tame and inadequate in such a place. The
Gothic is a rhapsody, and hence this letter.

24 LONDON.
London, Jan. 15th, 1878.
I am sure that you would like to get a line
from your boy over the sea. I am now lodged
in London, and a tremendous city it is. Yester
day I was in Threadneedle Street, at the Bank
of England, where the great monetary transac
tions of the world take place. What a rush and
crush ! Every species of man from all parts of
the Globe is to be met with. My little hotel is
very moderate in comfort and expense. All
provisions are dearer here than in America. I
tried some oysters, they were very poor yet
more expensive than ours. Indeed one object
of my trip is to see what people eat and how it
tastes. Yesterday on the street I tried the
popular dish known as stewed eels, it was sold
on the sidewalk by a man in dirty clothing who
hands you a dirty spoon to help yourself with,
often putting in salt and pepper with his dirty
fingers. An unsavory dish, but the stomach of a,
traveler ought to be well-trained, and I make the
boast that mine is under specially good disci
pline. So I took it down, with some qualms to
be sure, but I did not like it. On another occa-
sion, I tried a soup which I saw a fat, sweaty
wench dipping out to a lot of very poor people
at a penny a bowl. I first passed by, but then I
thought it too good an opportunity to see on
what the indigent classeiB live, so I went back

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 25
and called for a bowl. But — oh horrors — it
was too much for even my plebeian stomach;
the second spoonful absolutely refused to let
itself be swallowed, and I handed it to the red-
faced maid with a desperate compliment: " a
life-saving Soup? " A gamin stood by and
shouted, " give it to me " — which I asked her
to do; he took it down easily at a couple of
gulps, smacking his lips with the delicious
flavor. Poor urchin! it was perhaps the first
nourishment which he had had that day. But
there was one experience which positively dis
gusted me with traveling — the r6-appearancei
of an old enemy whose acquaintance I made in
the army, and whom I think I have described to
you already. I believe he must have overtaken
me on ship-board ; but his first arrival is buried
in total obscurity — and there let it remain.

London, Jan. 17,1878.
I have taken an overdose of Turner, I did not
wish to see any of his works yesterday, and
to-day my satiety continues. So I have gone
to studying the Italian school of Painting, which
is well represented in the National Gallery.
Here too the mass is enormous, and the whole
descends upon you at first like a deluge. How
can it be put into order so that the mind can get
hold of it? The single picture shows 'an ordei-

26 LONDON.
usually which is of ten very striking ; but this great
totality of a Nation's Art must have some principle
and some structure whereby it can be organized.
I hunt among books treating the subject; finally.
I light on Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary
Art; after purchasing it and reading it, I find
it leaves out or rather has no idea of what I want.
I return to the ¦¦ pictures themselves, and stand
before them all day thinking, comparing, class
ifying in various ways. Then I jot down in my
note book my reflections and draw my tabulated
schemes ever varying with new knowledge.
I have gotten most satisfaction from a divis
ion into subjects taken from the Old Testament
and the New. The Hebrew mind was not
friendly to artistic representation of things di
vine ; in fact the Semitic bent turns away from
the plastic principle which makes idols. Still
the Italian painters have not failed to reproduce
many figures and scenes from that old Hebrew
world out of which the Christian springs. The
life of Christ, however, from the Annunciation
to the R,esurrection and Last Judgment, is the
grand central theme of Christian Art, and is
really what creates it. This creative soul in
Italian painting is its supreme worth and attrac
tion ; after it all modern pictures seem but imita
tions more or less successful. In like manner
the Sculpture which comes after the Greek, lacks
that original artistic impulse which had to

A TOUR IN EUROPE 27
re-make the Gods in marble ; no such inner neces
sity of their production can exist in our world.
These Italian pictures rouse the desire of see
ing the country which produced them in such
flowery abundance. The same emotion is excited
by the Greek statues. The Northern or Teu
tonic impulse to break over the Alps southward
into the Mediterranean sunlands, an impulse
which runs quite through all European History
from the invasions of the Barbarians till the pres
ent, can still be felt in London — I believe I feel
it myself. The marriage of Faust and Helen,
the most striking symbolic act in Goethe's great
poem, is still going on, for it celebrates the
spiritual union of the two halves of Europe
The American through inheritance will take part
in the wedding, as he shares in the ancestral
impulse. Later I may give you some account of
the nuptials.
London, Jan'y 18, 1878.
It is now about noon, and I am writing this
letter by gaslight ; even this furnishes hardly
enough illumination to see what I write. The
street lamps are lit, and from the neighboring
houses comes an indistinct yellow glare of the
lights. So you see I am enjoying the luxury of
a London fog which, however, is not fog wholly
but a mixture of every kind of smoke and gas
under heavcH. Vision is not merely obstructed,

28 LONDON.
but throat and lungs are highly irritated ; if one
hurries so as to cause rapid breathing, one is
literally choked. I thought I would suffocate
this morning in my walk through St. James
Park; but by holding mantle before mouth and
nose I succeeded in seiving the air of a part of its
offensive qualities.
Moreover, I have been in London two weeks
already and I have not beheld the face of the
sun during that time. It is always cloudy if not
foggy — this is true not only of London but of
England, for a goed part of the year. It is now
manifest to me why Englishmen have done so
little in the plastic arts : the truth is there is no
light here by which to see works of this kind.
Form demands strong light, indeed sunlight;
every edge must be seen, every part illuminated.
But here one positively can not see the little per
fections which make up Art ; at best the outlines
are dimmed and the works grow dingy in this
atmosphere. Where Phoebus Apollo smiles not, there
can not be much original Art. Only in his
sunny glance do these plastic shapes leap forth
from the hand of the Artist, endowed with
life. But it is remarkable how much of Greek
and Itahan Art has found its way to these dim
latitudes — a perpetual reminiscence of the lands
of the Sun. America is a much brighter clime

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 29
than England and, I think, will be a home for
Art much more congenial than this country.
But there is another ground for the inferior
place which England has always occupied in
Plastic Art. You may laugh at me, but I shall
tell you my opinion — it results from the peculi
arity of English women. First of all they are
no dressers. Yesterday the opening of Parlia
ment took place, and all London from the proud
est peeress to the poorest plebeian, were out on
the streets. The aristocrats -went dashing by
in their blazoned carriages, the middle classes
brushed past me on foot — I believe there is no
exaggeration in saying, the English women are
no dressers. That is, they lack taste, lack sense
of form and harmony. But there is a second
inferiority — they have no external forms, at
least not beautiful. Hawthorne complained long
ago that they were beefy. This thick dumpy
shape of the women is almost universal ; nor are
they able to conceal it by skillful dressing. I
need not say that such a shape has neither
majesty on the one hand nor grace on the other.
This seems perhaps a harsh charge, but it is the
result of my observation for two weeks at the
Museum, at the National Gallery, and on the
streets. To be sure there are exceptions, perhaps many
of them, but I do not think that I have misrep
resented the general type. Now when we reflect

30 LONDON.
that the highest ideal is usually embodied in the
form of a woman, and that Art itself may be
called feminine — Das Pwig-weibliche, in the
language of Goethe — we can have an idea of the
effect of the female national type upon the Art
of a nation. The typical Englishwoman cannot
possibly inspire a feeling for beautiful form, and
the English artist must turn away from his
country for his ideals — which means, there is
no English plastic art. Hence England's great
est painters have taken refuge in landscape. The
most graceful woman I have seen in London was
talking French, and was evidently a French
woman. Having said some unfavorable things of the
Englishwoman, I must do her the justice of
stating that she seems to be the most domestic
woman in the world — a far nobler quality than
any beauty of form. Everywhere one sees
mothers walking with their children in the parks,
but seldom the father appears. To-day I noticed
a lady very richly dressed with two little girls
dressed just like her, exact miniatures of the
mother, who had given to the child just what
she was, as it were saying, these are mine, be
hold the reserablance. The mother, the wife —
but here, young ladies, I had better drop this
subject, observing that the Englishwoman has
not the external element of form, but has su
premely the internal element of character.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 31
Hence she is poetic, but not plastic; we can thus
account for the presence of a Shakespeare and
the absence of a Raphael or Canova.
I forgot that one of your group is of English
descent, nay of noble descent — pardon my free
dom, it is merely an opinion, an impression. I
seek to let everything and everybody stamp
themselves on my mind, just as they are, with
out adding any crotchets of my own. Perhaps
the picture will alter after more information.
But I have often racked my brain for a reason
why this land of greatest poets should be utterly
devoid of other kinds of artists, except possibly
some architects. Such is my solution — there is
no sun, there is no ideal form of woman. When
I go to Italy, 1 may change my mind.
You — I mean you all, for I imagine myself
now talking to four young ladies — would often
laugh and perhaps be often disgusted, were you
to see me in my various situations and adven
tures. I am totally unknown, and revel in the
idea of not always acting with dignity, indeed of
not always acting with propriety. To-day I
mingled with the crowd of dirty laborers before
Parliament House, bought a penny's worth of
gingerbread, sat down on a stone and ate my
homely repast in the heart of London ! There I
hear the people utter themselves, and see John
Bull in undress — the heaving of the national
heart can thus be discerned without its artificial

32 LONDON.
covering. I chat with beggars, street-sweepers,
drunkards; go into grog-shops, market-places,
long-winding filthy alleys — but I shall shock
you if I continue. Here I am not a member of
society but a traveler, yea an outcast, bent on
seeing — to that character I shall be true till I
return to St. Louis, when I propose to be grave
the rest of my life, aye dignified, if I can.

London, Jan'y 19th, 1878.
I expected ere this to be in Eome, but I have
found it so profitable to stay and study for a
while in London, that I am still undecided when
I shall leave. The English have brought to
their nebulous climate so many of the beautiful
things of the South that one cannot tear himself
away from them without pain. The British
Museum is the brightest spot that I know of,
for in ic are found all those ancient statues
which may be truly called children of the Sun.
Foggy London seems the most uncongenial abode
for them on the face of the globe ; they appear
to me almost to shiver standing up there oix their
pedestals so lightly draped or entirely naked.
Then again the lack of light is most serious, the
perfect outline of form becomes dim or is
wholly lost in this unsunny atmosphere. Every
thing about these beautiful shapes speaks almost
mournfully: " this not my native country, take

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 33
me away to the land of the Sun." Like Mig
non I imagine I hear their talks and sympathize
with their sorrowful longing. They are in the
most direct contradiction with their surround
ings, and certainly it requires no great amount
of sensitiveness to feel their exiled condition.
Yet one raust overcome this incongruity, and enter
into their presence in order to look upon and be
filled with their glorious forms — forms, one
may say, of eternal sunshine. They give a
foretaste of Italy aud the South which alraost
turns to suffering through the intense longing
which they excite. It seeras as if I could not
now stop at Rorae so long, but raust continue
my journey till I reach Athens and behold the
fragments of the Parthenon.
I confess that the objects which I have here
seen with the greatest pleasure are the sculptures
from Athens in the Elgin Room of the British
Museum. It may be that I was better prepared
for their appreciation on account of a little study
which I gave them over ten years ago ; cer
tain it is that they have furnished as yet my chief
artistic enjoyment. I relished them quite from
the start, though I do not pretend to say that I
fully fathomed thera at that time, nor do I now.
The Parthenon has completely filled me ; it was
one of the greatest works of beauty that has
been seen upon this planet of ours. In this
Elgin Room its sculptured fragments have been
3

34 LONDON.
piously gathered together and placed in some
thing like sequence and harmony. The original
temple with its immense wealth of artistic orna
ments gradually builds itself anew in the imagi
nation ; we first behold the absolutely harmonious
structure as a whole, viewing it from a distance ;
then we approach to the front and gaze long on
the wonderful figures of the pediment; next we
pass around the building on the outside and look
at the so-called metopes in the frieze ; then we
enter the colonnades where new and most beautiful
decorations in low relief fix the eye ; — this is
what I have been doing for some days already,
and must continue to do till I can recover my
lost self. I lounge on the benches before the
temple all day, and idly look up at Apollo rising
from the sea, reining-in the horses of the sun ;
what an arm is his, swelling like the waves of
the ocean itself! But the eight draped goddesses
there in succession ; — whence and who are you?
So I try to hear their voices and get their secret ; I
haunt daily their abode, like a living person amid
departed spirits.
London, Jan'y 22d, 1878.
With your interest in the working of political
institutions, my legal friend, it would be worth
your while to be now in England. Parliament
has just opened, — the question is, shall we go
to war with Russia? England is very unwilliuo-
to fight, but I believe that her people have come

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 35
to the conclusion that a great national necessity is
overshadowing her peaceful pursuits — that na
tionality demands war. Of course, there are two
parties, the one for peace, theother for fight; I
stand aloof and listen to their argumentation in
the newspapers with rauch interest. I confess
that ray feelings are but little enlisted on either
side. I am a spectator and frora ray quiet
height I try to observe the play of principle, of
interest and of Human Nature generally.
England is just now in a state of struggle with
herself; feeling that she raust do something she
can not make up her mind exactly what is to be
done. Like the countryman who had his hands
on the Galvanic Battery, she can't let go of the
thing, but it makes her dance. The air is full
of discussion, confusion, uncertainty. The
peace party has two main points of view: the
coraraercial and the ethical. War is unfavorable
to coramerce and the English are first a comraer
cial people — that is the one argument in its
essence. But it ignores the higher principle of
nationality which alone can secure commerce.
The commercial view is that of the shop-keeper
whose world is inclosed in the walls of his petty
booth, who is not even conscious of his total de
pendence on what is outside of him.
But the mo.st interesting conflict going on at
present is between the Moral and the National.
There is the Quaker view which believes in no

36 LONDON.
war, which dwells upon the suffering and the
corruption' which result therefrom, and finally
pillars itself upon our universal humanity. This
party is represented by the famous Radical, John
Bright, who has recently made a speech in
deprecation of all war and of the Crimean War
in particular. Gladstone leans to the same side,
and in fact the whole liberal party which is
strongly tinctured with huraanitarianism, often
verging toward downright sentimentalism. Of
course it is the old struggle of which you have
heard rae speak so often; nationality may de
mand the temporary sacrifice of morality which
the purely moral man refuses to make. But
then is England a nation? If she is and intends
to remain one, she must defend nationality at
whatever cost. Now it is just this instinct which
is starting to manifest itself mightily in the pef)-
ple, and it is most interesting to watch its move^
ments. It takes on the most alien forms, usually
clothing itself in the garb of self-interest — as
for instance, " we must protect our Eastern
empire, our coraraercial routes, our trade with
the Orient, etc." — soraetiraes it invokes national
honor or even national ambition . But this par
ticular instinct is wonderful, so honest, so deep-
reaching, and, I assert, within its proper sphere
so unerring. Cultivated reflection would destroy
the nation, wereit not buttressed by the people —

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 37
mark well, I do not mean the populace but the
people. Good-day, let rae take my hat now.

London, Jan'y 23rd, 1878.
I was at Triibner's a few days ago to see if the
Journal [of Speculative Philosophy] had arrived,
for I was very desirous of reading your review.
But it had not yet come. I find that this house
as yet knew nothing of the new book [on Shakes
peare] , not even that it had appeared. Well,
what else could have been expected? I would
have been much surprised to have found it
there. I have now been in London almost three
weeks, much longer than I at first intended, as
it was my purpose to remain here a good while
on my way back. But so rauch is gathered in
the British museum and in the National Gallery
that I resolved not to miss the opportunity. So
I set to work quite diligently, but as was natural
under the circumstances, I undertook too rauch.
I have been mainly interested in, the works of
ancient Sculpture from the Parthenon and other
temples of the Acropolis, and in the frieze of
Phigalia (look into your Overbeck) which is a
most wonderful work, having almost the subjec
tive intensity of Painting although it is supposed
to go back to the age of Phidias.
Since completing this last paragraph, I

38 LONDON.
jumped up and ran to the window in order to
see the sun whose face has not before been
visible while I have been in England. From
such a stateraent you can see how imperfectly
this climate can show works of Plastic Art, in
which the play of light upon every edge and at
great distances is required. Positively the pub
lic monuments here cannot be seen; half the
time I have not been able to see to the top of
Nelson's monument, though light may be better
ac other seasons of the year. Thus the figures
stand in the fog like colossal shadows, in dim
but huge outlines. One is reminded of the
heroes of the Nibelung — Nebelland — Fogland,
in eternal contrast to the clear sunny forms of
the South.
It is my intention to go hence to Paris in a
day or two; my stay there is undetermined, but
will not be long — as I ara eager to get to Rorae,
whioh feeling this English climate has intensi
fied. I hope you are well, and that you have
less work than usual. Write me, if it be only
one line. London, Jan'y 23d, 1878.
Your Shakesperian Excellency has doubtless
heard of my trip to Europe, as I visited your
correspondents, friends of you and me and Will
iam Shakespeare, in Philadelphia. I had a very
pleasant time there and was loth to leave so
soon, for I have a number of acquaintances in

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 39
that city — among them several young ladies.
You certainly will not be astonished to hear such
a confession from a lover of Shakespeare. On
my return I shall not fail to give them a call once
more. But, as you may suppose, these Phila
delphia memories have grown somewhat dim in
the exciting novelty of this European world.
Everywhere new objects thrust themselves be
fore the eye, new problems present themselves
to the mind. There is the political condition, at
this moraent exceedingly dark, agitated, uncer
tain. England to-night is. suspending a balance
frora Heaven, like the Homeric Jupitet, a balance
in which she is weighing peace and war in the
two scales. Shall I confess it — I sympathize
with the war party — for the question is nation
ality, which to me is higher than coraraercial or
even moral considerations, though these have
their weight.
I have seen none of the eminent Shakesperians
of England to whom you were so kind as to give
me letters, though I have been here nearly three
weeks. I enjoy the luxury of absolute obscurity,
and follow my own path without molestation.
Sorae of thera I would like very much to see ;
but I hold back, from timidity I suppose. I
have an unconquerable aversion to intruding
upon distinguished people. I know too well
how some of them — Dickens and Macaulay for
instance — have spoken of visitors and especially

40 LONDON,
of American visitors. I shall try to give no oc
casion for that perhaps just reproach of ill-
mannered boldness so frequently cast upon our
countrymen. Of the fate of my book [published the week I
left the country] I know absolutely nothing, but
I have dreamed twice that the sale was almost
nothing, and that the publisher was sick of the
enterprise. Such was my dream, but such
is also my inmost feeling about the matter. The
truth is I ran away frora St. Louis to get rid of
the talk and worry which were sure to attend
the publication. One of my last acts was to
order a copy to be sent to you, which I suppose
you have received.
I go to-morrow to Paris where I shall remain
a week or two aud then depart for Eome, which
city is the chief objective point of my journey.
Lcame to Europe in order to live for a while in
the Past, therefore I go to that place which has
in it the works and the atmosphere of antiquity.
I shall probably return to England in the sum
mer.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 41
London, Jan'y 24th, 1878.
I intended to start for Paris this morning but
I missed the train, and must wait till this evening.
So I returned to my roora and reviewed my
French in order to be a little more ready for the
approaching change of speech. Indeed I have
practiced French a g8od deal here in London ;
the youth who makes my bed speaks it and no
English. A stray waif he has floated hither
from the Mediterranean, with a little world of
diablery in him, which rouses the ire of the
landlady and causes her English tongue to slash
to pieces the French vocabulary, and to fling the
bleeding fragraents of it at the head of the boy
in a kind of Vesuvian eruption. Yesterday I
felt a little danger myself from her red-hot mis
siles, when I interceded for the urchin.
Twenty days I have passed in England, and I
have filled them brimming full and running over,
so that the largest part of what I have seen and
thought has been spilled into oblivion and lost.
^till quite a little speck remains in meraory and
in writing ; I feel soraehow that I shall return
fo London for a new dip, in spite of that in
fernal preraonition which enveloped me on my
birthday in a spectral cloud. I shall again
salute you, my friend, from London; but when?
Let the time stay in the bosom of the Gods, who

42 LONDON.
can settle it among themselves — that being
their business and not mine.
Do you know that I have been somewhat sur
prised at myself dropping so completely Litera
ture and turning to Art? Probably it is the
feeling that here is the great opportunity ; the
best books you can have anywhere, but not the
masterpieces of Sculpture and Painting. Lon
don is, however, but their prelude, their creative
soul was born elsewhere, and that must be the
final object of appropriation. It may be said that
two great National Arts have been taken captive by
the English and brought as prisoners here to
London — Sculpture and Painting — the one from
ancient Greece and the other from medieval Italy.
Itseems to me that I begin to hear the sighs of the
inmates for their horaes ; at least they hint of a
very different environment from their present
one as the place of their birth. A vague sym
pathy with these beautiful children of the South
and of sunshine begins to make itself throb in
me and to drive me toward the place of their
origin. Still I rejoice to have seen them here in
the land of fog and ice neatly arrayed in their
two huge prisons, the National Gallery and the
British Museum.

parte.
Paris, Jan'y 25th, 1878.
Grand Hotel de Paris is my present residence —
but do not send any letters hither, as I shall
soon be off for Eome. I regret that I traveled
by nighfrever the intervening land and water ; the
next tirae I shall do otherwise. The passengers
on the boat from Dover to Calais were a sicker
set than those on the Bothnia crossing the Atlan
tic. I fought the battle out by walking on deck.
I went down stairs once, but ran back on seeing
forty or fifty people wallowing about and trying
to turn themselves inside o,ut. At Calais three
different nationalities were chucked into a little
apartment of a railroad car ; an Italian who might
have been a Sicilian bandit sat on one side of
me, and a red-cheeked English girl on the other —
(43)

44 PABI8,
the Lord bless her for her musical lisp. We all
soon took to snoozing and dropping down on one
another for a moment, with quick recovery of
position after a lapse. Finally Morpheus gave
such a strong potion to the young lady, that she
could not get hold of herself again, but laid her
reclining head on her neighbor- — you can guess
who that was. Thus Aurora brought our flying
train into Paris.
Grand Hotel, Pans, Jan'y 27, 1878.
I write beneath brilliant chandeliers, holding
pyramids of lighted candles, over and around
which are hung clusters of glass prisms pro
ducing all the colors of the rainbow. Before
me is an immense -mirror extending from floor
to ceiling in a frame of Venetian glass which
curls and twists into many shapes, and changes
into many hues. The walls are decorated with
reclining figures in gilt relief which run down to
the panels inthe form of hanging festoons. You
may be sure that I am somewhat distracted ; when
I raise my head frora looking at this paper for
the purpose of thinking what I shall tell you,
I can not think ; the eye turning inward is al
ways violently jerked outward by the dazzle, by
the violence of external sensation. One inquires
naturally, what does allthis mean, and for whom
is it made? Concerning the former question I

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 45
have not fully raade up ray mind ; concerning the
latter I think that I know somewhat already.
Take the central figure, a woman of course. For
forty-eight hours I have noticed her — for how
could I help it? Moreover, she may fitly be
called the presiding Goddess of this Temple;
her toilet, her dress, but above all, her carriage
siraply pull the glance by main force. Look at
the eyes of every man as she crosses the
room, and there are forty men here ; if their
heads were worked by a single rope like so raany
puppets the action could not be more sirailar. I
ara no better than the rest, she holds the string
to tny eyes also. A few minutes ago she brushed
up to the desk where I am sitting in order to get
a newspaper or on sorae other errand of course ;
then I was made aware that I had another sense
capable of delicious gratification, for at once I
thought myself enveloped in all the perfuraed
airs of Araby the Blest. When I add that she
seems to be alone here at the Hotel, I have fin
ished her picture.
But it is already after 6 o'clock p. m. ; it is
tirae to dine. This raay be called the chief di
vine service of Pans, and the dining hall is con
sequently a worthy place of worship. , As one
enters, a glow of light confronts the eye and
makes one think for a moment that divinity may
be present in person, and that mortal man can
not endure his presence. The room is nearly

46 PARIS.
round ; on every side are huge mirrors so that you
cannot look without seeing your other self darting
before you — disagreeably I say. But this reflec
tion of appearance is highly characteristic, for
the grand question here is, not what am I? but
what do I seem to be? Your external form is
held up before you at every turn ; a mirror is
that silent servant who can whisper in your ear
only one thing : How do I look? Paris is the city
of mirrors. One lies down and gets up before a
mirror, one drinks and eats before a mirror, one
seems to live and die before a mirror. In fact
the mirror may be taken as the type of Parisian
life, whose principle is appearance. The mirror
indeed — giving only the shadow of your flesh or
merely of what the flesh has on, veritably the
appearance of an appearance. I often wonder
if these people have at all any looking-glass of
the soul, but this is as yet a riddle to me.
Since I have been in Paris, my endeavor has
been directed mainly to one point: to learn
how to eat. The humiliating discovery I have
made here, that this most rudimentary function
of animate existence I am wholly unversed in.
Yesterday I sat next to a gentleman who gave
the most exquisite order for his breakfast ; I
really felt as if I did not want to eat in his pres
ence and I would have run off, were not eating a
matter of life and death. It is quite as if I had
been lodged on some new planet, where I would

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 4tl
have to go through with ray infantile lactation
and teeth-cutting again. Yes, I assure you, I
am lacking in that suprerae Parisian accomplish
ment — I don't know how to dine. You ought
to see the waiters look at me — seme with pity,
but all with contempt. They know so rauch
more about this subject that they seem to think
and almost make me believe that I have no
right to eat on account of my ignorance of its
first principles. Verily gastronomy is the chief
among sciences here. I have in vain sought to
get the run of its infinitely varied and finely
shaded nomenclature ; it is like learning a new
language. I rayself have heard the Parisian
test applied by a disgusted Frenchraan who sat
not far frora rae : ce sauvage ne salt diner — that
savage does not know how to dine.
But having eaten our dinner we next go on
the street. Another glare — Paris by gaslight.
Not merely the street-lamps are lit, but every
store is illuminated with hundreds of flaming
jets disposed in such a manner as to show the
articles in the windows . Then these articles —
of every variety, form, color and richness — why
try to describe thera to you? It is of no use to
atterapt to make black ink rival the eye. A line
of fairy palaces on each side of the street, with
angels inside full of grace and beauty — such is
the appearance, whatsoever the reality may be.
On the boulevard is a crowd of well-dressed men

48 PARIS.
and women surging toward the new Opera
House where is given the grand masquerade of
the season. As my Hotel is just opposite to
the Opera House, there is agood opportunity for
seeing without going far. Policemen are called
out to keep the ways open, and to stem the
the iraraense crush of people. Now here we see
a new trait of Paris worthy of reflection —
what is the logic of this love of disguise?
It is a carnival, the whole population par
ticipating. I do not say or think that it is
wrong, but it is an expression of the char
acter, of what is within. The mask is also
an appearance, this time a conscious putting
on, wherein each one says: I am not what I
seem. The unconscious expression of the sarae
fact is Paris herself; the masquerade merely
speaks out the truth. Paris, Feb. 4th, 1878.
For the first time in Europe I went to the
theater in order to see Victor Hugo's Hernani
which is just now having a great run at the
Theatre Frangais. I bought a copy and read
the draraa beforehand. What strikes a person
chiefly is the absence of raotivation ; the charac
ters rush in unexpectedly, nobody knows whence
or for what reason ; it is clear that the whole
drama is intended to produce effect by surprise

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 49
more than by clearly drawn motives. Hence the
internal movement of the incidents is very capri
cious according to my notion.
Like all dramas or indeed like all artistic pro
ducts in literature, it has an ethical setting in
which it raoves. It is fundamentally a conflict of
love — a woman of high birth and ravishing
beauty has three lovers : the wealthy but aged
Castilian nobleman, the King Carlos, afterwards
Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Hernani, a bold
but highborn brigand, whom she loves in return.
Thus there are two cases of unrequited love,
and in the way ofthe requited love is thrown both
a political and doraestic obstacle. This frame-
wsrk, you see, is nothing new or uncommon;
the struggle between the lovers brings forth many
situations which have also been employed often
enough before. The gradation is, however, very
strong — Emperor, Noble, Bandit — Love rejects
the Emperor and prefers the Bandit. So its
intensity is manifested.
But the destiny of the two unrequited lovers
is what makes the piece. Charles the king of
Spain undergoes a most wonderful transforma
tion of character. He is ambitious of being
elected Emperor of Germany, though hitherto
he has been chiefly concerned in affairs of gal
lantry; his disposition is proud, tyrannical, cruel,
sensual. But he goes to Aix-la-Chapelle where the
election is to take place, and there visits the tomb
4

50 PABI8.
of Charlemagne, the greatest name in medieval
History ; in the presence of the august dead he
becomes inspired with a new purpose in life;
what his purpose is, appears in the career of
Chaleraagne hiraself. To fulfill a grand political
destiny, to win the greatest narae of his age, to
be truly eraperor of the world — that is now his
ambition, excited at the tomb of his great prede
cessor. Hence the affairs of love dwindle to
nothing — he renounces the fair Doiia and takes
the Empire for his bride. This is the grand
transformation — from the lover or rather from
the libertine into the supreme political man of
his time. Such an ambition kindled by the ex
ample of the heroes of the race, and over their
very ashes — is it not a colossal motive, and at
the same tirae most true and genuine? What do
you think of it? I confess it has made a pro
found impression upon me, quite as much in the
reading as in the acting. This one thought will
in my judgment give enduring vitality to this
drama. Then there is another motive used with much
power. Love for one woman conquers hate for
every body else. Hernani is swollen with ven
geance against the King, yet in the presence of
his Dona he can never bring himself to commit
any act of hatred even when the King stands be
fore him. A volcano of fierce passions burns and
roars in the soul of Hernani, but it is all subdued

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 51
by the gentle whisper of love. A most beautiful
and true motive, I think, yet not so sublirae as
the one before mentioned ; raoreover, it has been
used with intense power by Shakespeare when
Eomeo after his troth-plight with Juliet meets
the furious Tybalt, the enemy of his house. No
insult can induce him to fight now, particularly
with a relative of his beloved. But Victor Hugo
has generalized the raotive, and wound it like a
thread of light through his entire drama. In
fact one might have given more prominence to
this idea than he has, for sometimes it seems to
grow a little dim to my eye at least.
But I have told you nothing about the acting.
No doubt it was excellent, still hardly so good as
I expected; perhaps ray idea was keyed up at too
lofty a pitch. The part of Hernani is by an
actor who seems to be much admired ; for me he
rants too much, though I know myself to be
over-sensitive on that point. Much more satis
factory to me is the old Noble who recites most
superbly, but this is not acting. Everywhere
one sees talent, industry, care, training — but
the only spark of genius yet darted into me carae
from Sarah Bernhardt, who plays the part of the
Dona. Genius, you know, is indescribable, so I
shall not try to swathe her in predicates. She
seems unequal; but in her passages of true revela
tion she brings her words to the burning central
thought — there it is, the fire of genius which

52 PARIS,
smelts you and the whole audience into a glowing
unity with itself. Her words run through the
soul, not torturing, blasting, cursing with their
presence — I doubt whether she possesses that
demonic, tragic intensity which belonged appar
ently to Charlotte Cushman and belongs to Sal-
vini — the sounds of her voice leave within me
the impression of music quite as much as of
words. Long after I came home and went to
bed her sweet modulations kept humming in my
ears or- rather in my soul, and still they rise up
like echoes in the far distance while I am writing
to you about them. The impression was new to
me in this form ; the marriage of music and of
language was so perfect yet without cither's
interfering with the other. It was quite as if I
had heard a new Art, one that had the distinct
ness of speech and all the melody of music, a
new and higher unity of the Drama and the
Opera. Yet Bernhardt is unequal; her acting is
like the string of brilliants around her neck,
flashing into the eye of -the spectator at many
a turn and attitude, but sometinies the sparkle
quite goes out into the dull dim twilight of the
stage. That is, her impersonation is not a unity
culminating in one grand climax, but a series of
exquisitely rendered passages. Her limits are
plainly seen at the end of the piece, where she
tries to be tragic. I cannot reconcile myself to

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 53
it at all, her rapid speech becomes sputter, her
violence turns to frenzy. Paris, Feb. 7fh, 1878.
I am trying to work into the greatest French
literary character of this century, Victor Hugo.T W ^
Yesterday I went to the Bibliotheque Nationale,
and read quite a full account of his life. He is
now an old raan towards 80 (born in 1802).
He is to France what Goethe is to Germany, a
parallel which does not include character but
designates their relative importance. A great
genius he is in unquestionably, who is to be
studied long, carfully and under many aspects.
Moreover a French genius which Anglo-Saxons
do not understand as well as German genius. I
feel in him much that is unharmonious with my
nature, nay repulsive; but no great raan is to be
flippantly dismissed. So much however I think
I may say now : in the bottora of his nature he is
not institutional. Hence comes the lack of
ballast which has been often reraarked both in
his political career and in his writings. Hence
too he is lyrical rather than dramatic, and it is
his just instinct which has led him to abandon
the drama during the latter half of his literary
career. I am now reading his Chdtimenis, which.
work contains some of the strongest writing ever
produced, in my- judgment. Let him be passed

54 PABIS.
now ; when I get a better notion of hira, I shall
impart it to you — for what else have I to write
about except what I ara doing and thinking?
French political life has had no attractions for
me as yet ; the petty parties, the petty intrigues
and maneuvres to gain sorae petty point do not en
tice me away from the Louvre, from the Library,
from the Boulevards. There is so much here,
"all beckoning for your attention, that you sorae
tiraes stand still in perplexity which way to
turn, and even think of running aw'ay frora the
city in order to get rid of so many importu
nate objects. But I shall try to obtain a sniff
of the political atmosphere before I depart for
Eome, whioh will be in two or three weeks.
Eegards to Madam and the rest of the family.
Address rae at Eome, Poste Eestante.
Paris, Feb. 10th, 1878.
My Dear Young Ladies : —
You see that I have not yet reached Rome ;
Paris, with its manifold attractions still holds
me back. I thought I should have been there a
month ago almost, but I always think to myself,
what is the use of leaving so much behind, so
much that is excellent? So I continue to tarry,
and shall reraain sorae days yet.
My situation here is somewhat remarkable, at
least I am fond of thinking so. Just across the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 55
street is the famous Palais Royal — not a palace
in which the President of France lives, or the
Government performs its functions — but a vast
collection of shops and restaurants with a very
large inner court and a long colonnade extend
ing round the same. There one sees the gayety
of the city in its shopping phase — countless
swarras of beautiful and finely-dressed ladies
throng the aisles in every direction — one
asks involuntarily, whence do they all corae?
And I always asked myself, Who gives them all
that money to spend?
A few steps from my lodgings is the colossal
National Library, the largest in the world, it is
said. At 10 o'clock the doors of the reading
room are opened, and just about that tirae I pass
over the street, turn a corner and go in. There
I write on a piece of paper the book or books
which I wish to consult, and soon am lost till 4
o'clock P. M., when the doors are closed, and
everybody is politely invited to retire. But I
am not so completely absorbed that I do not
raise my eyes and look around. Who is that
old, ragged, greasy, blear-eyed nondescript sit
ting aUngside of me? His first appearance is
repulsive, but the species is new, and curiosity
draws the glance more closely. A black-letter
manusoript or book (as near as I can guess) he
is perusing with a glow of delight which makes
the dirt on his face look like the spots on the sun.

56 PABIS.
It is the genuine bibliophile or antiquarian, a
species of animals that worm and bore and dig
through this vast library, finding therein suste
nance enough. I venture to say there is no
such creature in St. Louis, at least I never saw
any in my time. Here is a man who abjures
money, comfort, family (if he has any) to bur
row in these abysses of recorded nothing. Well,
let us pass him, not without a look of compas
sion, for the poor man, inveterate student all his
days, has not yet learned the first lesson of eru
dition : that all the wisdom of this world is con
tained is some half-dozen well-known and easily
accessible books, were these only read aright.
Quite a different sort of raan is sitting just
opposite to me, he has the long gown and felt hat
of some religious order — a man sleek and oily,
reraarkable for his hanging dewlap and round
abdoraen. I used to think that the descriptions
of monastic pleasures were mainly fables dic
tated by religious bigotry. But that man over
there is an argument which lives, indeed speaks,
saying : My Heaven — is a good dinner. But
what is he reading? Sacred discourses of Mas-
silon — the lazy scamp is probably poaching a
sermon instead of writing it himself. Such is
my conjecture, not a charitable one, I confess;
say that I am wrong and you will not displease
me. — I know that I am showing my impolite
ness, young ladies, in looking over the shoulders

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 57
of people who are reading; but yonder is a
French youth, a type of the man who will rule
France the next generation ; I have noticed him
now for some time — he reads with a feverish
activity, sometimes with spasmodic jerks — page
after page he turns over, indeed he does not
read, he devours. With dreamy swiraraing eyes
he is raanifestly floating through sorae imagin
ary world; in his faoe you can see the sunshine
and clouds passing over his soul within, reflect
ing the raighty spell of that book. What can it
be? I must see — Jean Jacques Rousseau!
Eternal wizard — when shall France be free from
thy fascination? Here is a youth, you may
call him a representative youth, whose life will
be influenced by what he has read to-day ; I
know that the words are burnt into his very
brain. The dream of a return to Nature out of
an artificial society — the abstraction which tears
up by the roots all the institutions of man — is
dancing through his young and enthusiastic but
nebulous head; his dim belief is in a universal
community of everything; I could imagine that
the shout was already playing on his lips : To
the Parricades. To me he is a most lovely and
lovable youth, so romantic, devoted, ideal; his
life Iknow he would give with a toss, to realize
his principle; but just he is the possibility of
French Revolutions.
But why write toyou about these things which

58 PABIS.
you doubtless care little for? You will, however,
recollect that in the rambles of our philosophical
class I often recurred to this topic, and here on
the soil of France I cannot help noting illustra
tions, sometimes perhaps fanciful enough. In
deed I have seen the Revolutionary French
woraan too ; I knew of her existence before and
had her picture in my mind, but great is my de
light to have beheld her living, or rather gestic
ulating ; for her gestures were as revolutionary
as her language. Some evenings ago I went to
hear a lecture at the Salle des Conferences, a'
hall where the red spirits of Communism are re
ported to be in the habit of gathering. At the
entrance I noticed a woman in the center of a
group of men and ladies ; she was engaged in a
very earnest tirade against the false religion, the
false politics, in fact, the general falsity of the
age. Ah, thought I, Paris then has its preacher
too; enter ye in, for the harvest is abundant and
the laborers very few. Her manner and her
countenance at once marked her out as an origi
nal character ; so when the doors were opened and
the people entered the hall, I kept near her all
the time, and unobserved took a seat directly
behind her. As the lecture did not begin at
once, she commenced talking to three or four
acquaintances around her; I could not always
catch her meaning, but I understood enough to
know that her own sex was now undergoing an

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 59
unmerciful flagellation. But her profile I saw,
and it almost made me cower with its look of
fierce determination ; yet it had nowithstanding
muoh feminine grace which lured back the eye.
I do not think that I have ever witnessed such a
rare combination : a will red-hot with its pur
pose, yet overflown witha woman's tenderness —
for, young ladies, a man's attribute is not ten
derness. Likewise her thought had the same
two extremes : bloody savagery and an ideal
happiness for man. The lecture commenced, but
I watched her countenance, reflecting her feel
ings in regard to what she heard from the lips of
the lecturer — what a play of love and of hate I
I would give more to know that woman than any
other person that I have seen in my travels; in
her one beholds thousands, entire generations
with their governing principle. She is indeed a
demonic woman, of which class I have never seen
but one besides her in ray life ; a sjoirit within —
a demon, not a devil necessarily — controls them
with a, power far above their natural selves. You
must not laugh at me, girl.«, and think that it was
only another case of falling in love at first sight —
no, such a being does not excite love as much as
terror. But she was still a woman, and even
while she was declaiming against female vanity,
I could not help noting little instances of her
own vanity. Why, Madam, I would ask — why
those diaraond earrings? or why earrings at all?

60 PABIS.
Or why that trick of persistently turning the left
side of your face toward those gentlemen, sorae
tiraes to your own inconvenience? I see the
reason from where I sit — you look best seen at
that angle, a front view of your face shows the
sides to be unsymmetrical. All of which she
must have been conscious of — yet listen to her
homily on vanity ! But she is the greatest char
acter I have yet come upon in Europe.
I believe that I have already told you that the
chief attribute of a good traveler was, in my
opinion, susceptibility. He ought to convert
himself into a photographic apparatus just as big
as his soul will allow, in order to take impres
sions of objects. A true image of what he sees
is the Golden Fleece of every grand voyage; let
the traveler return with that, and his reward
will be somewhat. Let him not cloud his per
ceptions with his own whims or systems; let him
make his mind the clearest mirror, unstained
with even his own breath. So I try to act and
to feel, moving among these strange shapes in
a strange world. Having tried to show you the
impression made by certain characters, let rae
pass to Art.
But here the subject becoraes unraanageable,
the quantity of Art in Paris is enormous —
the Louvre alone, in which I have spent about
half of my time, contains enough to occupy me
the rest of my days. But let me try to impart

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 61
to you my last impression. Only a few hours
ago I tcturned frora ray third visit to Notre
Dame, the celebrated Cathedral, and still the
music of its proportions is singing through me.
How impossible it is to convey by words what is
revealed in these great works ! Language is one
expression, Art is another totally different;
neither can take the place of the other. To
cram the Cathedral of Notre Darae into catego
ries — it is an impossibility ; the structure must
be seen and communed with long and deeply, be
fore it will impart its secret. I lounged several
hours in front of it, looking at its glorious
fagade — truly the face, the outer expression of "
the Church. The mind is at first dazed by the
sight — overwhelmed in two directions, by the
Great and the Small. The massiveness of every
thing first sraites you; then the eye naturally
begins to analyze, proceeding to the parts; what
an infinite wealth of details ! Confining the look
to a small fragment, you would say that it has
the finish of a miniature, so raany are the little
castles, niches, turrets, pieces of fretted work,
sculptured ©rnaraents. . Yet the whole creates no
confusion, no feeling of constraint or pettiness;
on the contrary these ornaments are thrown into
grand masses which produce the effect of sub
lime magnitude. Such is the double impres
sion — that of the Great and of the Small — of
massive grandeur on the one hand and of almost

62 PABIS.
microscopic ornament on the other. When you
have gazed on that glorious church-face for a long
time, it begins to have a voice and speaks or rather
sings in a strain whioh grows more and more intel
ligible, though notutterable in words; its chant
accords best with the grand s-n'ell of the organ in
side of the structure. Now what is the secret of
this glorious harmony ? — for the rationale of it m,-iy
be expressed in language, though not the work
itself. The eye will after awhile come upon the
fundamental type or form — the key-note of the
composition; this type will be seen everywhere
repeated in the Great and the Sraall, with many
variations to be sure, for it must transform itself
according to the situation and requirements.
Now it is a door, now a window, now an arched
support, now a little trefoil; always adjusting
itself to the immediate demand, it is still in the
deepest harmony with the whole edifice. Such
is this fundamental type, the creative idea it may
be called ; it is as it were reflected in thousands
of mirrors, very large and very sraall, but always
showing the same faoe. Let now the eye tra
verse the building; everywhere, even in the
minutest part it beholds that which carries it up
ward to the Whole, to the Infinite indeed. The
colossal Cathedral thus, on the other hand, seems
to spring into myriads of crystallized shapes; as
the body of water shoots into crystals of ice, re
peating themselves' indefinitely in the greatest

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 63
and in the least forras. The conteraplation of
such a pile reared of harraonious stone is a new
experience; when those proportions once reach
down into the soul, it starts into a sort of rhyth
mic movement with them which lasts long after
the building is out of sight. Doubtless it is a
preparation for the worship of the Divine Archi
tect whose abodfe is here within — but to-day I
cannot con,duot you into the inside of the church,
for I see that three sheets of paper is about cov
ered with my scrawlings, and I judge that you all
are in no very pious frame of raind at this long
letter. Sorae other tirae we raay walk down
the aisles of Notre Darae, and in the raeanwhile.
my dear young ladies, I remain, yours, etc,
Paris, Feb. 13th, 1878.
For two or three days I had been thinking of
sending sorae answer to your friendly letter,
when last night I received a copy of the St.
Louis Republican frora your present residence.
I ara rauch obligedtoyou for this pleasant token, it
has the face of an old familiar acquaintance frwm
whom one has b6en long separated. It seems as
if an age had passed since I set out frora St.
Louis, but it is not yet two months. So much has
been seen and experienced by me in that short
time that it appears to span quite a large seg
ment of my whole life. I read the newspaper

64 PARIS.
through with great delight, not so much for
what it contained as for what it recalled. The
dear old city came back to me with its well-
known faces and localities ; indeed, I was trans
ported in thought to its thoroughfares where
once more I met and shook hands with old
friends. I must confess that its perusal gave
me a slight touch of home-sickness — the first
yet felt, though I frequently feel an intense long
ing to seethe little girl. But I rallied quickly from
my emotions, for I had taken a ticket for the
Theatre Frangais, where the Misanthrope of
Moliere was going to be played, and it was high
time to be off.
The truth is, I do not descend enough into my
thoughts and feelings now, the weight of the ex
ternal world is so great and intense that it keeps
one's senses occupied all the time. At most the
superficial memory is taxed, for I and probably
raany people undertake to accomplish too much ;
everything interesting must be seen and read
about. Thus, however, there result only crara-
raing and confusion, wherein nothing, however
beautiful or noble, sinks down into the soul. Yet
I am no very great sinner in this respect, for I
always try in the evening to think and feel about
what I have seen during the day. The difficulty
is, one truly great work of Art offers so many
points of view that we never get done think
ing about it. My opinion is that a good trav-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 65
eler ought to go to his roora and remain there
at least half of his time in order to think over
and write into shape what he has seen. A man
who looks all the while sees nothing. He must
let, indeed must raake the object descend into
hiraself and become a part of himself. So I try
to knead over the raw material which enters the
eye ; for even the finest work is merely a crude
raass until its creative idea be attained. I do
not know why I am telling you all this except to
inform you that I occupy myself very busily
about two things: to see and to reflect upon
what I see.
When I «hall set out for Rome, I do not know
yet — probably, in one or two weeks hence. In
traveling I put myself into the hands of Provi
dence, or rather of my own guiding angel when
he whispers in my ear : " Up, it is time to go."
I follow the friendly hint with unswerving trust.
I raake no definite .plan, but only the vague out
line of a plan which must be filled up in its de
tails by the above-mentioned spirit. I have
enough to keep me here some days yet — I mean
things partially done which ought not to be
left unfinished. Still I feel very eager to be on
my way, as the winter will soon be at an end.
As my main object in this European visit is to
see Art, I doubtless ought to reach its center
as soon as possible, which is, of course, Rome.
Besides, I begin to feel a strong desire to hear
5

66 PABIS.
something from home, not having received any
news since my departure.
I do not think it possible now for me to ac
cept your kind invitation to come and stay with
you a little while in Germany. Nothing, you must
know, would give me greater pleasure; but, dear
friend, Art is long. Life is short. If I was cer
tain of having a full year before me for seeing
Italy, I might pay you a visit; as the matter
stands, I have to be industrious, else not even
my skin will be wet through by the holy water
of Art. I wish indeed a transformation, a re
generation, if possible; but this can only come
through time and labor. Later I may take a
little tour in your northern fogland so belabored
by Goethe.
The best works of Art in Paris I feel that I
have seen, though by no means digested; I have
merely taken a long sweet first draught, which
has quenched my thirst here for the time being.
In Architecture Notre Dame gives the highest
delight, more intense interest than any other
edifice I have yet seen. The Madeleine too rises
up very majestically, yet lightly, and I shQuld
judge, gives a good idea of the form and signifi
cance of the ancient Greek temple. Many other
churches have been visited by me, yet not often
and long enough fully to reach down into their
thought. The Pantheon for instance I have seen
but once and then on a cold day when all emo-

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 67
tion was chilled into numbness — still the irapres
sion left on my mind is one of grandeur. The
Louvre too I like to walk around and see how the
architects, centuries apart, struggled to make a
harmwnious building and to a large extent suc
ceeded. Perhaps the structure which most dis
appoints the stranger in Paris is the new Opera
House — I mean in its exterior appearance.
Like the Second Empire under which it origi
nated, it is a gorgeous failure.
In Sculpture the Louvre is a huge rich casket
containing many of the most precious gems of
the earth. As I walked along the halls of
statuary arranged in rows through which the
spectator passes, I saw many an old friend whose
picture had long been known to me. I felt on
terms of intimacy at once, and without further
introduction proceeded to hold converse with the
original shapes whose iraages I had before seen
only in a dream, as it were. Yet even they were
shy at first of telling their secret, and long I sat
before sorae of them, seeking to get an answer
to my questions. They did speak to me, but it
is very hard for me to impart what they said —
indeed it cannot be expressed in speech but only
in sculpture. One thing has been seared upon
my brain in these visits and communings with
great works : Art is one form of expression,
language another, and the two forms are not in
terchangeable. Sometime I may try to hint

68 PARIS.
to you from afar what the fair Venus of Milo
whispered in ray ear.
Paris, Feb. 14th, 1878.
The quantity of Painting gathered in the Louvre
is absolutely oppressive. Soraetiraes I doubt
whether these immense collections of works of
Art constitute the best way of making them
produce their true impression. Would it not be
better to scatter them in the churches and public
buildings through the city, so that the eye and
mind would be corapelled to rest on one great
picture or on one class of pictures? People
would be far more likely to remain in one place
till they get at least an impression. But as the
raatter stands at present, they run through the
galleries of the Louvre in a few hours ; the most
diverse schools, styles and subjects pass before
their view ; no human being, not even a God can
compass them, and bring order into such vast
materials in so short a time. I plead guilty to
ray own indictment, to a certain extent at least,
for I have lost precious hours in the attempt to
see too much.
But both London and Paris are in all that con
cerns Art only a foretaste of the South. You
look into the catalogues, you read the history of
what you are studying, you examine the subject
of the wdrk — everything points directly to

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 69
Italy, and more remotely to Greece. You ask
of these fair forms, where were you born? where
reared? The answer comes in a thousand voices,
" not here, not here, but amid the sunny climes
of the Mediteranean." Sometimes I imagine
that the statues have a look of sadness in this
Northern twilight, as they stand there showing
unmistakable signs of a homeless exile. Why
does that Venus unrobe herself to this wintry
air? One thinks that she must shiver and com
plain of her hard destiny. The lady who, dressed
in warm furs, stops and stares at her, is the
Northern Venus, and with true instinct partly
pities and partly is ashamed of the nudity of her
sister. So too with the Italian paintings, torn
from their surroundings, frora their worshippers,
to be gazed at raerely for their beauty. One
asks, what mean ye here tumbled amid this
chaos of canvas? Every figure, I may truly say,
points to Rome as its home, and the home of
Art. Pahin, dahin O, mein Gelitbter m'ocht' Ich
Ziehen. Eegards to Madarae, to whom I intended
to write a German versicle,but the paper has run
out, you see.

70 PARIS.

Paris, Feb. 15th, 1878.
It is now about three weeks since I left Lon
don, which tirae I have put in very industriously,
if not very profitably. I try to see all that is
most worth seeing, which is much more than one
ought to undertake. My great dissipation is in
sight; I indulge in a perfect debauch of vision.
I mean to say, that the eye is the only one of
the senses to which I give loose rein ; whatever
experience is derived from seeing, I intend to
have it. The other kinds of debauchery of
which Paris is full have no attractions for me ; I
am on a spree, not of appetite, but of vision. So
I look at everybody and everything.
I did indulge in sorae expensive living when I
first carae, but I have quit after being fully
satiated. I paid for a dinner the highest price I
ever gave, just to find out what a Parisian din
ner was. Now I have settled down to my old
homely fare, and feel perfectly contented. I
have not quite learned to order my meals yet —
this is the hardest part of the French language.
To-day for the third dish, I ordered some roast
beef, and the waiter brought a plate of beans.
Of course I ate them down as if they were just
the thing I called for. Any explanation would
only have involved me raore deeply in the laby
rinthine nomenclature of this French cookery. I

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 71
take my meals at the Eestaurant when I want
them, but I see many other articles of diet ex
posed for sale, and curiosity often prompts me
to buy them and find out what they taste like.
So I carry them to my room and there devour
them, frequently making out a full meal in that
way. In fact one can buy every kind of meat al
ready cooked in nearly every style and exhibited
in the show windows of the busiest thorough
fare. What a variety of meat-pies ! Then at
the baker's shop are things undreamed of in our
western world. I see the narae and price on the
article, go in and ask for it, then walk off to my
quarters. Several times I have been sold, not
being able to finish the enterprise. I bought
some time ago a species of fish cured in oil,
thinking of my beloved sardines — but not only
did they at last refuse to be eaten, but sorae threat
ened to return to daylight after having been
swallowed. Strange fruits, too, from the Orient
and Africa are objects which I like to look upon
in the show-window, before which I usually stop
and gaze often amid a troop of children and ser
vant-girls. A day or two ago I came across a
man who was selling some fruits in a cart; I
stopped him and purchased of those unknown to
me. One kind frora Africa he particularly
recomraended, "excellent, and for the stomach."
I ate of them freely and I assure you that they

72 PABIS,
did start a radical movement and renovation, I
suppose, in the stomach. So always one has to
pay his tuition for whatever kind of knowledge
he acquires.
I go every day to a Eestaurant where, besides
getting a good economical dinner, I see a little
girl who recalls the one I left at home. The
little thing is full of liveliness, and chatters from
a full heart in a sort of bird song. When -she
talks to her papa in a steady flow of infantile
prattle, it seems as if I understood her meaning
perfectly, though I do not catch the half or quar
ter of her babbling words. Her features and
tones bring back to me many a little memory
which is not always sighless. No mother has
yet appeared, I take it that the two are alone in
the world, for the father seems at times de
jected and dotes with the strongest affection on
the child, receiving much solace frora its prat-
tlings. Poor little girl! What monsters lurk
along thy path through this world — the thought
must make thy father's heart quake with terror.
The cold of winter here, though not very,
great, seeras very penetrating. But the means
for warming rooms is not sufficient unless one
goes to a great expense. Wood is burnt in a
fire-place, quite after the old fashion; but it is
very dear, and the fire-place is small; on cold
days I shiver over my little blaze in a most un
comfortable manner. As a last resort Igo to the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 73
library, which, however, is not well heated, ex
cept near the registers.
I have heard nothing yet from America though
it is time for letters to have arrived. I have had
them all directed to Eome. I ara acquainted
with nobody here and have not raet a soul whom
I ever knew. I could probably find sorae St.
Louis people if I were to search, but I have not
even registered my narae at the American era
bassy. I know some people who came over with
me on the Bothnia, but these I avoid, for my
hands are now overflowing with what I have
undertaken. When I get very weary, I buy
some trifle and take the opportunity of talking
with the shop girl, whereby many a little gleam
of human nature makes its appearance. I am
perfectly contented with my isolation ; when I
shall have finished my programme, which how
ever is not very definite, I shall again pack and
go. There is a freedom in the customs here whioh
requires some tirae to get used to. Particularly
as regards Art, the public taste is very liberal, if
not more than liberal. You know that the An
tique for the most part is undraped ; the statues
of men stand around in the Louvre in all their
nudity and by the hundreds. I confess I was a
little put back when I saw women and particu
larly young ladies, in the company of young gen
tlemen, go up and examine all tbe naked details.

74 PARIS.
(hands off of course). I cannot help watching
in a sly way the actions of different women in
such a situation. Some, it is true, refuse to look
at all, sorae pass by with a blank gaze, a few
show color, others titter a little — but the most
take it all as a raatter of course. . But to-day I
felt outraged when I saw a fine looking, well
dressed man conducting his two little girls
through the galleries of sculpture, and standing
quite a while before a nude Apollo. He was tell
ing them evidently the mythological story and
intending to instruct them, but even my love of
Art cannot yet reconcile me to such' an act. I
cannot but think that sexual passion needs not
to be put into a hot house, it will develop soon
enough and with sufficient intensity. Hence
come some of the recruits for the 120,000 prosti
tutes who are said to be in Paris. A good
story is told of some distinguished Pari-sian lady so
noted for her beautiful form that she was asked
and consented to sit naked as a raodel for a
sculptor. On telling her experience to an English
woraan, the latter exclaimed : " Why, how could
you stand it there? " She replied most naively,
" It was not cold in the room."
Well, this is Art, you say, but the same free
dom reappears in public manners. Going down
to my landlady's sitting-room the other morning
to make some inquiry, I there found a gentle
raan, one of her tenants, in his night-clothes,

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. , 75
who also was on a similar errand. That's the
difference. The matter would have been suspic
ious, had not the whole family, including hus
band, been present, and evidently accustomed to
such displays on the part of their lodgers. In
open public are the urinal stands, some of which
have not even an upright board to hide the
functions of Nature, so important, yet de
manding some little mystery in their Anglo-
Saxon performance at least. Not in an alley,
but right on the street, the urine runs off into the
gutter, while woraen pass by on the paveraent
close enough to brush against the raen. I do
not say that all are so open, but sorae are, for I
have seen what I tell you with my own eyes.
But I am surprised at the social and moral
change in crossing the English channel.
By the time this letter reaches you, the last
winter sun will have sunk beneath the horizon,
and the new spring have entered upon its joyful
course. May it bring to your old age itself —
a new spring which will rejuvenate you in every
pore. My prophetic soul seems to behold you at
this distance in a vision, and moreover tells me
that I shall see your face again — nay that an
other gay trip to some watering place is before
us like our last summer's journey to old Mary
land. But let not Hope fly too far before and
pluck the fruit ere it be ripe. I still have great
tracts of space to traverse, in which I may dis-

76 PABIS.
appear, and you have climbed up the mountain
of life to the dizzy apex of threescore and ten
nearly, where you stand perched on a needle's
point, as it were — liable at any moment to
swing off into the abyss. Believe me, I often
think of you and the other ones with you, to all
of whom give my love and tell me about them
in your reply. Paris, Feb. 16th, 1878.
Literature has again taken hold of me
strongly, and I am reading more French
books than I ever read in my life before. The
great Library offers a good opportunity. Then
the best works of the language are found in
little shops everywhere at prices astonishingly
cheap with paper covers. In the main I read
them without difficulty, though now and then I
am puzzled by a word which sends me to the
dictionary, and this, quite a good-sized one, I
have bought. My room begins to look like that
of a student. Of course I cannot take all this
printed luggage with me, so I have made ar
rangements with my landlady to keep these
books for me tilH return, for return I must to
Paris and take another look into this French
world ere I start on the final trip homeward
across the Atlantic.
In spite of all my efforts there is still some
thing alien to me in French Literature, and so

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 77
in French spirit. There always was. I pe
rused diligently at home the masterpieces of
the classical period, those of Corneille and Ea-
cine; some of them I studied with great care
and even taught in the High School, but to the
last I felt that their soul stayed outside of mine.
The French elaboration of the Greek tragic drama
affected me soraewhat like a travesty. That line
of French-Greek characters strung through hun
dreds of plays — Achille, Ulysse, Alceste, Iphi-
genie, Phedre, Medea andthe rest — seem to me
to be danced about like puppets through centu
ries of the French drama. I tell you this not
by way of criticisra but to show you my own
literary limitation which I am trying to under
stand and to overcome. The fault is mine. It
is not for me toss to one side in contempt a
form of Literature in which not only France ex
pressed itself for generations, but all Europe,
Teutonic as well a^ Latin. Hence I go to every
specimen of the old French classic drama pre
sented on the stage, reading the piece before
hand and then looking it over afterwards, as
well as studying the audience during the repre
sentation. Still I have to confess that I have
not yet gotten into that inner spontaneous flow
of sympathy with it which a great national Lit
erature ought to tap at the fountain head.
One of these classics, Molifere, I enjoy ; that
is, I get into the comedy of the old French

78 PABIS.
spirit better than into the tragedy. I have
for this dug out a reason which holds good
with me if with no one else : that old French
tragedy is at bottom comic, self-undoing, ab
surd, and it is Molifere, who really, even if un
consciously, turns the thing inside out with a
laugh. For instance, Racine's Iphigenia at
Aulis is to my mind more ludicrous than laory-
mose ; to me at least it furnished delicious mor
sels for the scoffing demon at a recent reading.
I fancy Molifere going around and tearing off
masks, for that world of Louis XIV was a
raasked world. Look at him unmasking the reli
gious hypocrite in Tartuffe, which I have just
seen. Tragedy itself became a brilliant masque
rade at that time, and the comic poet strips it of
its disguise for the amusement of the masquers
themselves. Undoubtedly France is and has been for some
time in a reaction against its classical drama so-
called. This is one reason, probably the main
reason why Victor Hugo is such a favorite at
present. For he dominates here the literary and
theatrical world. His pieces, though no longer
new, draw better than any others and produce a
stronger impression, as I have watched the
audiences at the Theatre Frangais. Perhaps too,
this reaction may account for my present inclin
ation for Hugo, who is the greatest personality
in cotemporary French Literature. Still I run

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 79
against his limits on many sides, he is not of the
very greatest. But enough for once.

Paris, Feb. 19, 1878.
I have been intending for a long time to write
a letter to you, but something has always inter
fered in an antagonistic way. I am busy, quite
busy, and often wish that the hours of the day
were doubled in order to finish the work laid
out. Two things I have to be doing, if I am to
derive any benefit from my journey : to see and
to think; for seeing without thinking is a wild
sensuous phantasmagory, and thinking without
seeing is baseless speculation. The twain must
be wedded, if there be any worthy fruit of
travel. But' both take tirae and are exhausting;
thus the day always ends without the task be
ing done.
I have made no acquaintances here and avoid
making any; no person can find me, if there
should happen to be a huraan being in the city
who raight wish to see me — which I doubt very
much ; I do not go to any place where I shall
be likely to make or meet with acquaintances.
This seems unfriendly and selfish, perhaps; but
it is the only means of accoraplishing what you
undertake. A few hours dissipation would ruin
the day, and possibly the following day, with
out any reward that I know of ; so I have de-

80 PABIS.
ferred my carnival till I return home. Yet I am
lonely at times, and it is a humiliating feeling
to meet thousands of people day after day on
the street and in the galleries, without being
greeted once ; you begin to ask yourself this
question: of what significance am I, this atom,
anyhow? The individual certainly has his lit
tleness and unimportance brought home to him
in a great world-city like Paris ; and it is no
wonder that so many come here and commit sui
cide. Finding themselves to be nothing, they
put the logic to theraselves by means of a pis
tol-shot or dose of poison, thus literally making
themselves nothing. No person is allowed by
the police to ascend the Arc de Triomphe
without company, lest he precipitate himself
beneath. But, on the other hand, there is always
enough to restore the balance, the individual
can here find a world, which he may take into
himself if he have the strength. On the whole
I have never been in better spirits in my life
than since my arrival in Europe. First of all,
one is relieved of the petty vexations which
worry the practical life of man; here one is
freed for the tirae being of the necessity of
working for bread and butter, and is fed by
the angels. Every vocation begets friction;
at present there is no need of thinking of
my vocation. What a blessing ! But, secondly.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 81
I am within a five minutes' walk of the Louvre,
a world in itself, where one can find society
enough and of the best kind ; indeed one can
choose his company freely, without the restraints
of social etiquette. That is the world for me.
I have a room entirely to myself in the fourth
story of a building and there are three stories
more above me occupied in the main by farailies,
some of which are lodged just under the roof.
Thus every house is packed with huraan flesh,
like sardines in a box. In this way you may see
how even the poor of Paris live high. Particu
larly the upper stories are densely tenanted, for
the lower rooras are taken for business. To the
rear of my roora is a large open court surrounded
by high houses, from ray window I can see
innuraerable little industries busily prosecuted,
chiefly by young woraen. Artificial flowers, toys,
needle work, in fine all the little fancies in which"
the French are so skillful, spring into being there
before the eye. But this is not all. If I pre
sent myself at the window on the, stairway. I
have a dozen glances cast toward me at once,
which dozen soon call more, so every window
across the court soon has one pair of eyes or
more looking, laughing, coquetting with me.
Even from that distance one has his choice, the
prettiest face will be selected, then the rest turn
quickly away. A little touch of jealous spite can
not help showing itself and huraan nature takes

82 PABIS.
a petty revenge for even so trivial a matter. It
is laughable to see how speedily the young girl
writes her own vanity out in her actions :
" I am the prettiest, if you don't think so, I
shall not look at you." So a little amusement
one may have, ascending the long stairway, and
resting on its landing places.
This is merely by the way, however; my real
home is in the gallery of statuary in the Louvre ;
thither I go daily, seeking to make acquain
tances. It is astonishing to see with what flip
pancy and carelessness people treat the sculpture
there. They run through the halls, casting a
look to the right or to the left, stopping for a
moraent if any object happens to excite a passing
curiosity. Doubtless many visitors can not re
main long in the city, but this is certainly not
the case with all — and all that I have seen rush
ahead. I suppose that I have already been in
the gallery of sculpture a dozen times, and when
I once am there, I have to remain the whole day.
It satisfies me, this is the company I am endeav
oring to know. But one thing jars, I wish to
see somebody like me ; yet, during my period of
observation I have not noticed a single person
who devoted fifteen minutes to the study of a
statue. Such a way of treating great works of
any kind is so contrary to my mode of thinking
that I can not help being vexed by it a little.
Immediate impressions are demanded by the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 83
populace, even bythe cultivated populace; but
ancient sculpture can not possibly make an im
mediate impression, and I hold that no great
product of any kind can do so. Greatness
comes from thought, thought can be attained by
thinking only, and thinking demands long con
tinued effort. So I sit down before the white
marbles and question and cross-question them by
the hour, often without receiving any answer.
Sometimes I feel half ashamed of myself for
lingering so long in the presence of a statue
whose parts I am trying to bring into harmon
ious proportion, or whose idea I ara seeking to
grasp. I imagine that the French guard looks
at me with suspicion, as I seem to be sitting
there dreaming away tht time or jotting down
something in my note book ; he will soraetiraes
corae up to rae and take my paper to see whether
I be not drawing a sketch, for which one has to
obtain perraission. No, it is but a scrawl of
words in a strange tongue, signs of a struggle
with the statue which refuses to give up its
thought. Especially my repeated visits to the
same statue is enough to excite a Christian
doubt. One day an old woman from the
country, who had noticed me tarrying in the
hall, asked me if I believed in that God; she had
heard that some of these statues were Gods in a
country far away, and that the people of that
country were in the habit of coming here secretly

84 PARIS.
and worshipping their divinities, who had been
captured in war and carried as prisoners to this
room by Napoleon. What could I tell the old
woman? Yes, that image of Venus was divine
to rae, and I was indeed a worshipper frimi a far
off country, and hither I had wandered trying to
find ray Gods.
I feel that there is sorae change going on
within, what it is, I cannot tell. All this con
teraplation of the great originals of Artists is a
new field of activity ; it is a vast realm of
beauty which I had raerely heard of before, but
whose description sounded like a tale of fairy
land. To be suddenly thrown into it at this
period of life may bring forth some permanent
result, or may be only a temporary dazzling of
the senses ; still it smites me strongly now. I
go ahead without thinking much of this matter,
the effect will be the same at any rate. It was
a vague instinct of wanting something that drove
me to Europe after having kept, the longing and
j the purpose burning in me for many years.
The loadstone that now attracts me is Art, par-
j ticularly the Antique ; why it is so, I cannot
i divine. The demon within pulls and I have to
I follow, my intelligence as yet can give no ac
count of his doings. I drop all the other at
tractions of this most attractive city of the
world, and go for my society and entertainraent
to the cold, passionless shapes of the Louvre;

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 85
why is it so, you may ponder too, my friend, and
give me your view.
You see I take some pride in my seclusion, yet
there is no contempt in it, I hope. You would
be astonished to see what a recluse I have made
of myself right in the heart of this great throb
bing city, itself the center of the life of the
globe, as the French claim with no little justice.
I almost think that I am nearly solitary in my
pursuit even here, for I have not been able to dis
tinguish a single student of the Antique in the
Louvre ; I mean, not those who study it for tech
nical, historical or antiquarian purposes, but
those who seek to absorb its spirit for the culture
which it imparts, for that peculiar transformation
of soul which it must, as one vaguely feels, bring
about.. Yes, Goethe says so, and he is now the
truest guide in this respect. I hold that the
Antique with its absolute sense of forra, even
with its very coldness is best calculated to assuage
the raging fever of the modern world, to give at
least one cool draught to the volcanic spirit of
our time and of our country. It has no longer
any chaos, or fierce chaotic stragglings — the
tTitans were put down long ago by Jupiter, now sit
ting serenely on Olympus ; here in the Louvre we
may, partially at least, behold him and his divine
family in their reposeful triumph.
On looking back, it seems to me that I have
talked so much about myself and my moods in

86 PARIS.
this letter, that I shall have to give you a little
antidote on another sheet. Let me tell you the
result of a short study of two of the greatest
Italian painters whose names are so well known
to you — Eaphael and Leonardo Da Vinci.
There are half a dozen pictures by Leonardo in
the Louvre, and more than a dozen by Eaphael;
so there are enough to make a start with. The
first point which you begin to be cognizant of is
that each of these artists has one distinct ulti
mate type in his mind, and from this type spring
all his works, whatever be their variety ; it con
stitutes not only their unity, but is their creative
center. Now to work through all externals to
this type and impress it upon the mind, is the
supreme object of the student, in my judgment;
you then have the primitive image from which
the artist himself does hardly more than copy in
one way or another, he must paint from his
ideal and that ideal is fundamentally one and
the same.
Putting Leonardo's paintings together, and
seeking the face common to them all, you will
soon acquire his type, particularly his feraale
type. I do not think this will ever go from me,
I hope indeed to carry it with me always. The
visage is rather long and inclines to sharpness,
yet it is in the highest degree refined; also tiiere
is usually a sraile playing over the features, a
very subtle sraile of self-consciousness. The

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 87
eye repeats the sarae trait, it looks at you with a
knowing glance, as if there were sorae secret ly
ing back in the mind; yet all this is done so un
obtrusively that it does not offend, but actually
constitutes the charm and the very essence of
Leonardo's manner. This cunning smile de
stroys the naive expression, to be sure ; for there
is a consciousness of self, and the character be
comes double, still such a face is subtle and in
tellectual. Thus Mona Lisa has a dash of
coquetry and La Peile Fenronniere looks out of
the corner of her eyes roguishly, though the
delicate sraile hardly reaches her lips. Double
ness there is in these faces — not duplicity, still
you raay call it cunning. Now have you seized
my thought? But I know how impossible it is
to paint a look with words; color is its language.
Coraing to Eaphael's type you find it very dif
ferent, indeed opposite you raay say, though it
varies soraewhat according to the periods of his
life. The face is full, the cheeks are inclined to
be a little puffed,- upper part of the visage is
broad, lower part narrows itself to a diraunitive
chin. Such is the Eaphaelitic type in its excess,
but the artist will raodify it into perfect sym
metry in his later and best works; still it is al
ways the same face peering from behind at you,
though it runs through the whole scale from
homeliness to a completely harmonious expres
sion. Thus we behold Eaphael continually

88 PARIS.
painting from the one inner model, by no means
some naked shape in his studio. How different,
though, is the keen-visaged type of Leonardo!
But it is the eye of Eaphael's figures, perhaps
one ought to say, the entire gaze, which is the
supreme expression of his Art. The look is
that of absolute unconsciousness,' there is no
doubleness now; it is the soul in its primitive
innocence, not yet blossomed into self-know
ledge. The Madonnas, though they be of the
plainest sort, have that unconscious look of de
yotion and of devotedness which can have no
predicate in human speech ; gaze at their faces
imaged on the canvas, that is the true utterance
of them. What is most delightful in childhood,
and most attractive in womanhood are there
combined; innocence and beauty are one and
all. The type of Eaphael is, therefore, not intel
lectual; it is the bud of the rose slightly un
folded, just enough to let you see down into the
heart of it ; it is Paradise with its innocent,
beautiful unconscious beings — all is youth and
spring, both the world and its inhabitants. But
in Leonardo the bud has leaved out, the soul
has burst forth to its own sun; in his type the
mind sees itself in its own mirror, and therewith
the character no longer remains in a simple un
reflecting unity with itself, but becomes double,
knows itself. It is an old, very old distinction;

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 89
Eaphael lived with Eve in the Garden of Eden,
but Leonardo ran away with her after she had
eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
But, my friend, these generalizations are too
early, I am aware; wait then for Italy and
Eome, or perchance till I return to St. Louis.
Paris, Feb. 21st, 1878.
In comparison with London, Paris is literary.
Everywhere Literature is in evidence. Particu
larly if one passes over to the Latin Quarter,
there seems to be nothing but books of all sorts,
second-hand especially. Then cheap editions
of the best authors are always at the turn
of the next corner. Also the popular novels
swamp the city with printer's ink — Paul de
Kock seems uppermost. I bought one of his and
read it, to find out its readers more than its
writer. Not so bad; but of course a Parisian
love intrigue with all the brirabraraboriura. A
good time-killer, I think, and so I can read no
more of that sort.
If there is any such public utilization and mas
sive need for Literature in London, I did not
come upon it. Inthe realm of the printed page,
only the newspaper seems stronger there. In
the Parisian sense America has no use for Litera
ture. A writer of books has no business to be
in the land of liberty; already I have tasted of

90 PABIS.
that sour piece of bread, and am probably des
tined to nibble at it the rest of my life, for I feel
just here more than ever before, that the scrib
bling fiend has gotten hold of me and will not
easily be shaken off. You ought to see (not
read) the quantity of notes I have taken, par
ticularly at the Louvre. Many pencUlings I have
thrown into the fire, they being damned to such an
Inferno not for wickedness but for super
fluity. This reminds me that I have up-stairs
here a neighbor who is a little piece of a novelist,
and seems to get good pay for his stuff. Through
our comraon landlady, who is a Swiss speaking
Gerraan and French, and who had observed the
scribbled litter in both our rooms, we became
acquainted. He gave me one of his novelettes; I
read it and then flung it into the blaze on my
hearth, reducing it again to the smut which it
originally was. Tirae will avenge him on me, it
may be, though for a different cause, I hope.
Paris, Feb. 24th, 1878.
Again and again I have tried to probe down
to the ground of that literary supremacy over
Europe, which France has so long exercised.
Ofthe fact there can be little doubt. • A Eussian
novel has to go to Paris and to be put into a
French dress ere it can make the tour of Europe.
The same is largely true of the mental products

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 91
of other European nations, not excepting the
English and the German. France has been
hitherto the interpreter of intellectual Europe
to itself, the center of its literary distribution.
Yet the highest originality in Letters it lacks, it
has never produced a Literary Bible like Homer,
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe. For to such
lofty company Molifere and Hugo cannot be ele
vated, and they seem to be the chief competi
tors for the honor. The function of France is
rather that of a mediator between North and
South, between the Teutonic and Latin peoples,
lying as she lies on the Atlantic and the Medi- i
terranean, and being herself both North and
South, both Teutonic and Latin.
A people often tells ©n itself in its proverbs,
in which it declares to be universal that which is
true only of itself. A well-known proverbial
expression or apothegm which Frenchmen seera
to take for granted, is le style c'est I'homme.
That is, the form is the great thing, not the con
tent. Undoubtedly the style manifests the indi
vidual but it is not the individual. I hold that
the German people could not beget such a pro
verb. The stress with them is on the other side.
Hence the complaint so often heard about the
lack of style in German writers. One thinks
that the two opposite elements ought to be
united. But it is astonishing how rauch French
criticism dilates upon style. I have been reading

92 PABIS.
a good many literary biographies recently at the
Library, and the impression left upon me is that
in France the What is of sraall import compared
to the How. Such a trait in the individual or
in the nation develops at the expense of origi
nality, through the very excess of expression.
The French may well be deemed the stylists of
Europe, though hardly its greatest thinkers or
poets. So the rest of Europe goes to France for
style — style in dress, style in deportment
(politeness), style in conversation, style in litera
ture. Not without significance is the fact that
diplomacy employs French, which is also a kind
of lingua franca for Europe (note that yVanca is
not very far tvora frangais) . Style in itself is
meritorious, but when pursued for its own sake
has the tendency to drop into mere stylishness.
Who can deny such a tendency in the French
character ? It seeras to me I note it in the French
language, even in the Frenoh accent. Of certain
famous Frenoh artists and writers one cannot
help often thinking that they have nothing to
say, but they say it very beautifully br rather
very stylishly.
Two other questions flash up in the present
connection. The first is. How did this peculiar
position and character of France evolve out of
its original national elements? The second is,
will the French tongue and literature keep their

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 93
historic place as distributors of ideas through
Europe? Even a third question insists here
upon propounding itself: a linguistic distribu
tion of the race's thought over the total globe is
at hand — will its vehicle be French or English
or some other tongue? I shall soon leave Paris,
and you must wait till I come back for my
answer. Paris, Feb. 26th, 1878.
As in London, I have overstaid my time in
Paris. But that makes little difference, I am
deterrained to fight to the finish this battle of
Europe with rae, not only if it takes all next
suramer, but all next year. In fact at Paris
total Europe begins deluging down upon you
overwhelmingly. London is on an island, and
has the English insularity. But Paris is on a
continent, and you feel the need of a continental
adjustment. The soul is stretched alraost to the
point of bursting to take up the new impres
sions, which attack you on all sides. A vast
quaintity of things I have only been able to put
to soak, in the language of the washerwoman,
with the hope of taking them out of the froth
and suds when I come back — and corae back I
must, unless the Lord interferes in my affairs
with a strong hand.
I passed by the site of the Column Vendome
to-day, and was rerainded of our coraraon friend

94 PABIS.
Brockmeyer. He used to cite its destruction as
a striking instance of what he called the dialectic
of History. The Prussian arraies filed by it,
looked up at it, and left it standing, though it
was a monument of their former defeat. When
theywere gone, the Frenoh went to that sarae
raonuraent, looked up at it and said : You are a
lie, down with you! And down it came. Thus
Brockmeyer in a dramatic outburst, as we once .
sat philosophizing over the Franco-Prussian War,
so astonishing in its sudden colossal victories.
I often think of him here and wonder what he
would say to this French world. Teuton that he
is. Tell me the news about him. I hear that
he has been acting as Governor of the State a
good deal, and is busy ; otherwise I would write
to him myself. I did not see hira for quite a
while before I left St. Louis, I think he was out
of town. To you I may say that I deem his
greatness finds better expression in conversation
than in writing, which really obstructs the flow
of his originality. And even his spoken word in
English does not run as freely — so he has often
told rae — as inhis beloved Platt- Deutsch, which
dialect, I have heard hira declare with pride,
was spoken preferably by both Bismark and
Moi tke, and of course by Brockmeyer.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 95
Paris, Rue Vivienne, Feb. 27, 1878.
This is the last day I shall spend in Paris and
I think that there is no better way of bringing it
to an end than by writing to you. I hope this
letter will find you in the enjoyment of good health
and also participating in the grand overture to
the new Spring, which will have begun ere these
lines reach your hands. Here the weather has
been extremely fine for the last two weeks, and
it is with great unwillingness that I leave it be
hind. But to-raorrow — Providence smiling on
my purpose — I set out for the Eternal city, the
objective point of my travels.
I have been in Paris now a few days more than
a month — wil^h what results to myself I cannot
tell. I know that I have been pretty busy,
though I have not tried to see many things —
non multa sed multum — still I have scattered my
work too much. How hard it is to confine ray
self amidst such a multiplicity of objects ! The
chief scene of ray endeavors was the Louvre in
the Gallery of Ancient Sculpture ; there I sought
to get an inkling of the wonderful sense of form
which seeips to belong peculiarly to Ancient
Greece. With what success I do not know, but
I do know that some thoughts have dawned upon
me with the full blaze of the sun, but others and
indeed the most still remain far off in the indefi
nite twilight. Time may bring them nearer and

96 PABIS.
make thera more distinct; or perhaps when I
arrive at Eome, I shall be right in the midst of
them, and what I could not see at Paris I shall
be able to see there.
Also I have paid a good deal of attention to
Painting, particularly to the old Italian masters,
but I do not yet feel at home in this field and can
at most only distinguish two or three schools.
But it is strange ! The problem forces itself on
the raind for solution, when one sees the immense
araount of time and genius that have been spent on
the Madonna, Holy Family, and other classes of
pictures in which the Virgin and Child appear.
All the poetry and religion of the Italian people
seera to have poured itself into these representa
tions during centuries. Coming from a new
world, for me it is difficult to realize what this
strange product of the past means — not a little
of it, which is explicable, but the whole of it.
Of course I philosophize upon the raatter and
soon comprehend the pure logic of it — but this
is not satisfactory at all; one must be able to
take up a great historical phenemenon into his
feelings and not merely into his reason. I have
not therefore yet been able to realize to myself
and in myself the consciousness which lies at the
basis of modern Painting.
,Then the public edifices of Paris, many of
which are very noble and beautiful, I have seen
— thefinestof them a nuraberof tiraes. Onecan

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 97
behold e>xcellent specimens of both Gothic and
Classic Architecture, and fix in his mind the
leading types of both as well as study their
aesthetic effects. I confess that just now the
Gothic style lays hold of me with great ppwer,
and I should say that I have reached down into
its principles and purposes with my feelings
further than into any other form of Art. But
here too I am the merest schoolboy, and so rapid
are the changes that in a month hence I may have
an entirely new preference. You are aware,
that here at Paris men change their loves with
frequency. But for sorae days now I have kept away from
galleries and sight-seeing of every kind, as an
other impulse insists upon finding a vent in ex
pression. Somehow or other I have taken to
versifying again almost in spite of myself,
against my conscience, as it were, since it would
seem to be better to occupy the sacred moraents
here in viewing that which I can not see in
America. But Pegasus of old scouted the pre
cepts of cold reason, which demanded of him not
to fly at all but stick to the solid earth where
the danger of falling is not great, nor causes
much damage should the fall take place.
Indeed, the budding Spring,than which noth
ing can be more delightful, makes a person feel
aggressive and creative. So I take walks in the
Champs Elysees and occupy myself with my f an-
7

98 PARIS.
eies ; when I return to my room I read Victor
Hugo whose tendencies are the reverse of what
is classical. His poetry takes a strong hold upon
me and in my heart of hearts I start to feel
more kinship with him in his wild, tortuous, and
often chaotie imagination than with the cold ira-
passive marbles of the Louvre. It is a question
with myself — I am clearly pulled in two direc
tions by two powerful arms, and I am afraid that
one is the strongest which I do not want to be the
strongest. The Antique is calculated to allay
the fantastic delirium of which Victor Hugo is
the greatest stimulant; yet in his earlier lyrics
he too has a most exquisite form. Still I begin to
feel the liraits of this greatest French poet after
having met him in some of his best works,
vaguely the boundaries of his soul rise up, as it
were, in the foggy distance ; but his fascination
is still very great and wonderful.
I had yesterday the first hard fit of home
sickness during my journey. Feeling tired and
not in very good bodily condition, I lay down to
take a short sleep in the afternoon; before
closing my eyes my mind turned to those far
away. In a little while I woke up in the middle
of a dream and heard a child singing ; the voice
was so sweet, to me at least, that I resolved to
go at once and see the little singer; and some
moments elapsed before I could think of myself
being across the ocean. It was with difficulty

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 99
that I could submit to the thought of not being
able to see her ; then came a flood of memories
and anxieties, which kept my feelings in an eddy
for more than an hour, till I had to flee from
them to a promenade in the Champs Elysees.
But there every little girl — and thousands of
them are to be seen playing under the eyes of
their nurses — recalled her to my mind, and even
brought back similar scenes of h6r childhood.
My dear friend, you will have to endure these
outbreaks of mine, as you have endured them in
the past. They are a part of me, you well
know — so I shall not apologize any further. I
often think of the happy hours that I have spent
under your roof, and I imagine happy ones to
be still in store for us. I shall come back — if
it be the decree of fate that I do come back —
with many a new experience and perhaps some
new thoughts fermenting in my head; I can
think of nothing more delightful than the talk
ing them over with you. I must now close, the
hour is late and I must retire to rest, and then
in the morning begins the third act of my Euro
pean journey.

100 PABIS.
Turin, Italy, March 1st, 1878.
I ara compelled to stay over night here much
against ray will, and to alleviate my chagrin I
think I had better begin at least a letter to you,
if I do not conclude it here. Thus far the jour
ney from Paris has been a series of petty annoy
ances and swindles till I am just now half sick
with vexation. In the first place at Paris I took
the wrong train — the slow one — and the result
was that everywhere there was delay and slow
ness ; besides I had to change four times to a
different car, expecting every time that I might
go wrong. Why subject passengers to such
torture ! Araerican railroads are in many re
spects ahead of European — a statement which I
have spitefully repeated to rayself a hundred
tiraes to-day. But here I am, safe in a pretty
good inn, and perhaps I ought to be thankful.
Still in looking back at the last thirty hours I
have to scold, and then in pure malice to laugh
at my petty yet vexatious misfortunes. I was
swindled by the ticket seller out of five francs,
but I thought it better not to make any fuss
with him, as it requires a good knowledge of a
language to damn" a man well in it, and my com
mand of French I felt to be inadequate. Then
a restaurant overcharged for an indifferent meal
at least three francs — the money I could lose,
though not swallow the insult. I will not be

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 101
cheated out of a cent, for deception is a direct
contempt of the intelligence, and these fellows
imagine that they can treat a foreigner as they
please. In one of the changes on tbe rail
road, I left my opera glass behind — a very good
one which I had bought at Paris and with which
I was viewing the scenery through which we
were passing. Just now too I find that the
stopper has come out of my brandy bottle
which I had just replenished at Paris with sorae
excellent cognac, wetting my coat tail to a sop
and making me have the odor of an old toper.
I have had to wring out the precious fluid on the
floor from my garment, and the naughty bottle I
have flung out of the door, though as I looked at
it and read upon its label the name of St. Louis,
my heart almost relented. The next trip,
thought I, it is my fixed purpose to have a flask
with a stopper which screws on — no more corks
for me, they have in them too rauch of the tem
perance crusade, spilling liquor in that way.
Well, having written myself 'into a sort of
good huraor at your expense, I may tell you of
some of the pleasant experiences I met with —
for the whole journey was spun of two threads,
a dark and a bright. I had much amuseraent in
looking at the country which is tilled like a gar
den, and in observing the peasantry in their
peculiar costumes. The landscape was delight
fully varied with hill, dale, village, and even

102 PARIS.
ruins ; but the primeval forest of America is en
tirely wanting with its rough, irregular. Titanic
boldness. Here Nature is subdued and every
where shows the hand of cultivation, which is
both a gain and a loss; she is more graceful, but
is tame alongside of her American sister. At
last the Alps begin to appear, the grandeur in
creases as we ascend. At first we see the snow
above us, then we get up into it — the warra
breath of spring in the valleys changes to the
chilly temperature of winter. Snow drifts are
seen, the beginnings of the avalanche, threaten
ing the huts below whose inmates must live in
eternal terror; white-capped summits glittering
coldly in the sun fill the sky with the turrets of
this vast cathedral whose stones are the moun
tains. In fact I could not help thinking often
that the architects of the Gothic derived their in
spiration and perhaps their fundamental idea
frora the Alps or some other mountains. The
sides rising up steeply and grandly, often break
ing out into several pinnacles ; the mass spring
ing from the surfaces of the rock and giving to
it the brown and grey hue of age ; the curious
and fantastic shapes which easily form them
selves in outline against the sky or against more
reraote peaks ; the summits and sides often re
producing the pointed arch, the characteristic
of Gothic architecture; the fret-work of stone
common to both cathedral and mountain — those

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 103
and many other resemblances rise up before the
mind of the traveller as he passes from the
cities of the plain to these colossal edifices of
Nature. At least my imagination was busied
with tracing the comparison which may be in
deed forced, for I am just now filled with these
Gothic forms. But why write all this to you
who have never seen one of those old structures ?
It is to show you that upon this giant chagrin
I cast the mountains and buried it deep, deep, as
Jupiter served his giants in the old story. My
self comparing myself to Jupiter — that is enough
for this subject.
At Turin I have received an introduction to
Italy in the shape of an enormous flea which
popped into infinite space just as I was about to
nab it — let me say, I found the jumper comfort
ably snoozing in my bed, just as I turned over
the clothes for the purpose of crawling in my
self. From Turin I go to Genoa. I forgot
to say that the long tunnel through Mount
Cenis is, as far as I could see, dark — for I
could not see at all. As darkness is said to be
greatest just before day, so this passage may be
the infernal prelude to the bright paradise of
Italy. How gladly one descends into this warm
sunny plain after communing awhile with those
cold Alpine heights !

TRome. Rome, March 3, 1878.
And so it has fallen out that a dream has
come true — a dream which first began to hover
entrancingly before my eyes when I, a mere
stripling, read of Eome and her greatness in
Rollin's Ancient History, which I had borrowed
from an older boy at school ; then in my Col
lege days the Latin Historians — Caesar, Sal
lust, Livy — kept the fancy alive and ferment
ing ; especially the speeches of Cicero ittipFinted
the chief localities of this mighty City upon the
student's mind in a way which remained quite
indelible. Gibbon is not to be left out of these
early influences; nor must I forget that small
copy of Horace which I carried in the breast-
(104)

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 105
pocket of my blouse while a soldier of the Civil /
War, and which I often peeped into while
waiting cn the fire-line.
But let this thread of memories be snipped
off at once as we cross the bridge over the yel
low Tiber, approach the wall of Aurelian, beheld
the aqueducts running through the Campagna,
and enter the railroad station opposite the Baths
of Diocletian. In America the iron-horse seeras
perfectly natural and at home; but when he
runs into Rome and drops you down in the raidst
of its ruins, you hardly know at first whether
you are a ghost or a reality. The moral and
institutional world of which these ruins are a
kind of body is felt to be very different from
yours. A phantom you seem to yourself, sepa
rated so suddenly frora the institutions in which
you were born and reared, and whioh are your
second nature if not your first. And the prob
lem rises: Can you make your own that old
world so different yet in the line of your own
spiritual evolution? Can your ghost or soul
enter into this ruinous dead body and cause it to
live again for you at least? If so your own
existence will becorae a much larger part of your
race's existence than ever before; your time will
expand toward being all time, and the individual
raan will raake quite a little stride unto becoming
the universal man — really his ultimate end.
I ara now quite corafortably lodged at the inn

106 BOME.
called the Three Kings in the Eternal City,
which gives food enough for reflection. When
I arrived, I sauntered down the first street, the
first object I came upon was the famous Coluran
of Trajan. On all sides are aatiquities, ruins,
churches, works of art; one wishes for a dozen
lives wherein to accomplish a little labor. The
carnival is at its height, but it does not amount
to much this year; the recent death of the Pope
and also that of the King, Victor Emanuel, have
caused the papal and governmental authorities
to assume the show of raourning, for it is hardly
more than a show. Still there are many masques
in the streets, the people must have their festi
val; singing is heard everywhere, with dancing
on the paveraent to the guitar and tarabour
ine — in fact the Eoraan population both old and
young is just now trying to jurap out of its
skin.
Rome, March 6th, 1878.
By this heading you will see where I ara — I
have atlast arrived atthe grand destination of my
journey. My room is within a stone's throw of
the Column of Trajan, near the Mamertine Prison
which goes back to the time of the Eoraan
Kings, opposite to the Palazzo di Venezia — in
fact one can not walk five minutes in any direc
tion without stumbHng on remarkable antiquities
belonging to every period of Eome. Churches

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 107
and temples, Christianity and Heathendom, the
Middle Ages and the Ancient Ages are here
turabled together pellraell, and I feel that much
time will be required to disentangle the mass and
place its manifold and diverse parts into har
mony. The fii'fft impression is stupefying ; I
walked through thecity a man literally stunned —
which state is not favorable to thought. Only
yesterday I saw the Flavian Amphitheater — an
ordinary mortal can only keep silent in the pres
ence of such a stupendous structure. Its immense
mass of stone presses with its weight upon the
soul; spirit here feels gravitation. I positively
ran away from it, for it was a monster terrible
to behold merely on account of its magnitude,
and I was unwilling to trust rayself inside of its
jaws. Hereafter I shall try to banish ray fear
and if possible to knit a friendship with this
Titanic edifice, for it is certainly one of the raost
colossal syrabols by which a nation has yet under
taken to express itself. What can it mean?
Another structure which makes the soul split
with its bigness is the ruins of the so-called
Basilica of Constantine. The view of these
mighty arches produces positive pain, simply by
the way in which they stretch the mind trying to
surround them and to take them in. No sight
upon our earth, I iraagine, is equal to that which
is offered to the eye from the Eoman Forum to
the Flavian Amphitheater, a distance of not more

108 ROME.
than four or five squares. Here antiquity was
concentrated as it were in a point, here is its
most powerful, if not its most beautiful expres
sion. The massive masonry, everywhere forti
fied with open and concealed arches, gives the
best idea of Eoman Spirit, of the strength and
solidity of the Eoman Nation — a structure
which springs from the same inner principle as
Eoraan edifices.
Then the churches of Eorae — but I am not
going to write you a treatise on archaeology. I
must only say that I have not yet seen the inside of
St. Peter's. The three days that I have been here
I have spent in walking about the city in order
to fix its topography firmly in the mind. I begin
to have a faint apparition of old Eome seated on
her seven hills, an aged ghost in cerements still
haunting and refusing to quit the scene of her
ancient triumphs. My habitation lies in the
valley between the Esquiline and Capitoline, and
as I ascend these hills on either side of me re
flecting upon the cause of this stupendous ruin,
I fancy I can hear her drapery rustling in the
wind while her voice whispers in my ear:
Son of the last-born of nations, go tell fhy
countrymen that I perished because I fulfilled not
Justice — I am but repaid with my own — I de
stroyed the world and was destroyed myself —
love thy neighbor and thy neighboring nation
as thyself and thy nation.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE 109
Rome, March 7th, 1878.
Yes, Italian Literature must have a share of my
time — it is a Literature which I have been some
what acquainted with now for a good many years ;
Hove it CKceedingly and mu.st try here to absorb
some of its spirit into my soul. Already I have
purchased a copy of the " Jerusalem Deliv
ered," whose beauty haslong entranced rae, ata
distance however; I have never been able yet to
give it a complete reading. The drama in this
city does not look very prosperous — but I know
too little about it to say anything yet.
On my way from Turin hither I brushed
against the typical Italian woman ^ that 'is, the
type of a certain class. She was past middle
age and had once been beautiful; but every. line
on her faoe led back to one central trait of char
acter, namely pride. Her dress was careful but
not elegant — also showed cleanliness everywhere,
whioh is not an Italian virtue of the lower
classes. I took her to be of aristocratic faraily
but decayed in fortune; that iraraense reserve of
pride in which the very rauscles of her face
seemed to be set, could hardly be accounted for
otherwise. Pride must have existed first, and
then have been put to the test sorely to manifest
such a strong development. I dared try my
ItaUan upon her, and was surprised at her high
educational attainments.

110 ROME.
At one of the stations a flower-girl entered our
coach already pretty full ; she was laden with
flower-pots and nosegays with which she was
struggling while trying to get by the passengers.
I sprang forward and aided her, packed away her
bundles, made the people give room, and offered
the maid a seat beside myself. One of her un
lucky bundles however fell down upon my Italian
lady of decayed nobility — you ought to have
seen that face then ! The pride of three centuries
seemed to glare out of her countenance at once,
it was enough to make any man quake with the
fear of an explosion. The poor flower girl ex
cused herself humbly and the storm-eloud sul
lenly rolled away without coming to an outburst.
But that face !
Having now a maiden in the bloom of youth at
my side and sweet-scented flowers in front of me,
I was happy — 1 felt myself to be in .a kind of
Paradise, to be an Adam with his Eve in the
garden of Eden. I regarded myself at liberty to
begin a conversation with her on account of my
services rendered in her need; but alas! I could
not understand her dialect nor could she under
stand my Italian. So I had mainly to enjoy the
fragrance of my situation, araid the huraan and
the natural flowers. But after sorae time we
made out to communicate, creating a kind of
Lingua franca between us. She was of humble
class, though respectably dressed; she had an

A TOUR IN EUROPE. Ill
artless coquetry which amused me much, she did
not wish me to desist from the pursuit nor did
she want me to pursue too closely. She blew
hot and cold in a naive fashion ; as if to destroy
my hopes, she told me that she was married;
then as if to entice me more, she said that she
was only eighteen and that her husband had
been absent a good while in America; but as if to
keep me off again, she declared that she had a
boy two years and a half old, and she showed a
new hat for him in one of her bundles ; then, to
inspire my hopes, she said that she was fond of
dancing and had been at the ball the night be
fore. So she went on chattering, somewhat in
distinctly at first but quite plainly at last. Of
course I provoked her answers to a great extent,
telling her that I was from America, that
Americans like the Italians, especially the Italian
women, that many come to Italy for their
wives, that I might take back a spouse with me,
etc. Arrived at her destination she descended
from the coach, giving me the bow of the peas
ant girl, hearty but ungainly.
But my decayed Italian Countess who was sit
ting just opposite to me, was evidently somewhat
scandalized by my familiarity with such low
people — she could only look on them with dis
dain. Still she seemed to feel that I was in some
respects at least her peer, and we again knit to
gether the raveled edge of our conversation.

112 ROME.
This democratic spirit which can descend to the
humblest or raount to the highest rank, and still
always be itself, is perhaps of American growth
alone ; for the American hates the noble as little
as he despises the peasant; he is indeed, in his
true manifestation, a higher synthesis of these
two European classes of society, in which their
hostility is harmonized.
The governments here are expected to take care
of the people like babies ; man is not supposed to
know how to take care of himself except within
a very narrow circle. The passengers are shut
up in the coaches from which one has almost no
liberty of exit without the supervision of a guard.
I leaped on a train which was just beginning to
move, and the result was I received a good scold
ing from an official for my remarkable audacity,
though I had done the same thing a thousand
tiraes in Araerica, and had seen everybody do it
there without comment. The habit is not a
good one, I confess, but great Caesari what a
fuss over a little matter. The American presup
position is, you are an intelligent and rational
being; if you use an instrument, you must
know its danger — if you ride on the railroad , you
are to understand its limits ; your life is your own,
destroy it by stupidity if you will. Man must
live in Europe, man must live rational and free
in America.
Another fact in this coraparison of continents

A TOUR IN EUBOPE 113
has strongly impressed itself upon my mind ;
Europe has by no means as fully utilized those
two greatest implements of modern civilization,
the printing-press and the railroad, as America.
Perhaps the same thing may be said of the tele
graph, as intercontinental cables were first an
Araerican enterprise. The broadest and truest
application of forraer inventions as well as the
gift of new inventions seeras to belong to our
country — our destiny at present drives toward
the mastery over Nature through mechanical
appliances. To a lady that was jesting with me
about our being savages, I replied that her sex
had received the present of an" additional life at
least, in the labor saved by the American sewing
machine ; nay, at this moment, said I, we are
crossing the ocean on the brains of an Ameri
can inventor, Eobert Fulton. But in all that
concerns the Past with its immense heritage of
art and culture Europe is far, far ahead.
Your letter has just been put into my hands,
it comes to rae like a sunburst from across the
Atlantic ; I feel now full of light after an obscur
ation of more than two months. Everything
you said was welcome, but particularly gratify
ing was the news about the little girl for whom
my heart-strings have been quivering the past
few days.
Concerning the character you mention, I would
not judge harshly, but it seems to me that her
8

114 BOME.
leading trait is that she regards herself as too
good for the world and altogether too good for
any man. Such a spirit is capable of great de
votion and nobleness in certain directions, but is
incapable of the Family. In fact, - a person of
this nature ought to abjure the world and mar=
riage and enter a eloister, which was made just
for souls who can flnd on our earth no reality
for their ideal strivings. When the breach be=
tween the Eeal and the Ideal is declared to be
impassable, there results a state of permanent
unhappiness, indeed of mental sickness, for
which the future world promises a cure. The
only question is, can the person have faith m
that promise? If so, then to a nunnery, " get
thee to a nunnery, and be not a breeder of sin
ners." Yet at bottom such a spirit rests upon a
colossal egotism — lam too good for theworid,
too good for my species.
What you say about the reception of my book
at ray home, is pretty much what I expected, as
you will attest. I had myself observed in the
notices received from certain well-known indi
viduals that they were very guarded in their
written statements, though some of them had
already expressed to me personally, without the
least solicitation on my part, the warmest, ,in
fact extravagant, admiration. Not that they
have grown cold, or are hypocritical ; they do

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 115
not want to commit themselves in the presence
of the public.
Rome, March 10, 1878,
On the first of March I entered Italy by Mount
Cenis. I have been in the city now just one
week, and am already filled so full that it would
seem to require a year to digest what I have
taken into my cranium. History, particularly
ancient History assuraes a new face here, and
one feels that he must work over again all that
he has done in the past, as well as learn many
things now dreamed of at a distance. Already
I have thought of Latin Poets and Historians to
be read anew in the full blaze of the Eoraan
light — but the plan is impossible, too much is too
much. I never was very devoted to Latin Liter
ature ; but at present, seated amid these Eoman
monuments I have an intense desire to renew the
acquaintances of my college years. The ruins of
Eorae have a strange spell over the soul ; they
corapel a person to listen to their voice, while
they put urgent questions to his mind. What
can it all mean? What was the character of the
people who reared such structures, ahd what did
they raean thereby? Modern Italy does not yet
exist for me, though she too, fair lady, is not to
be slighted, but is to be courted and loved.
So Spring and Italy, twin daughters of the
Sun, have smiled upon me, both together. The

116 BOME.
one indeed was an absent friend, whose return
was expected, but the other was a dream which
lono- refused to settle down into hard reality.
The presence of the ruined Past in its mightiest
shapes throws over the whole city a dorae of
cloudland, beneath whioh life is at least half
made up of imagination. Can anybody walk
through the old Roraan Forum without restoring
all its temples and seeing the crowd which
surged through the streets or lounged about the
porticoes? A person without iraagination had
better go home where also a pile of rocks raay
be found.
Still there is a present here — I stepped into it
while walking around into a corner to view a beau
tiful Corinthian coluran. A very modern odor
often ascends into the nostrils from the earth as
the head is thrown up toward the clouds. Near,
if notover the temple .of Julius Caesar, the greatest
name which Rome has transmitted, is a stithy;
perhaps his statue lies down there in the cesspool,
befouled daily with the sewage of his modern
countrymen. Is not this a symbol? Along the
Forum where walked the proudest, bravest, and
richest raen that ever lived, the conquerors of
the world, now sit Eoraan beggars sunning them
selves — raen, women, and children I have met.
Indeed the sraaller they are, the closer they
stick, like verrain — a little girl chased me all
around the Forum and had a baby in her arms

A TOUB IN EUBOPS, 117
too ; it would have been cheaper to have bought
her off with a soldo, but I wanted to see what
she would do. Still I must say that begging
is at present not greater here than in some other
countries ; certainly it has not annoyed me very
much, rather I have gotten some amusement out
ofit. Friday I went out to the Colosseum — the sec
ond time since I have been here. What a host
of thoughts, all too big for utterance, were ex
cited by this structure ! Language has too
small moulds wherein to pour the swollen
eraotions at its grandeur. Still ideas must be
expressed, but I shall have to wait till I have
pared them down into some shape. So much
seems to be now worded within rae : The Colos
seum is the best visible symbol that we have of
the old Eoraan Iraperial Spirit. Its history, its
form, its size, even its present condition, are a
tongue which, rightly understood, utters the
principle and declares thc fate -of ancient Rome.
The Sybilline oracle is here — ¦ but to read it !
I am much bound to you for your very friendly
letter, though I could not make any use of its
suggestions, as I had taken quarters before re
ceiving it. Nor has my time permitted me to
see any of the agreeable people whom you men
tion; but there is no hurry, as my stay will be
protracted. This is Sunday afternoon, which I
always used to spend with you. How much

118 BOMB.
pleasure would it give me now to be under your
roof! Those visits form a happy part of my
life. I can never forget the glad reception
which I was sure to meet with at your threshold.
Rome, March llth, 1878.
I have had another small misfortune, more
vexatious than dangerous, which I want to tell
you about, and then get rid of it together with
the petty chagrin. Just as I was entering the
dining-room of ray hotel, I whirled around and
my hand struck a large pane of glass in the door,
the glass was shivered and my hand was cut in a
dozen places. It bled profusely so that I could
not use my knife and fork at dinner. I also paid
three francs for the window pane and had my own
pain for nothing. A room full of people were
aroused by the shattered glass, and their stare I
had to face down ; then my explanations had to be
given in bad Italian, rendered worse by embar
rassment. A pretty mess of vexatious circum
stances — an ice-bath to the red-hot ardor of the
traveler. So Fortune has been testing me ever
since I came across the boundaries of Italy, try
ing to worry me with petty spite. Shakespeare
somewhere calls her a strumpet, but I prefer to
call her a pole-eat, showering upon a man streams
which do not hurt, but do annoy. An American

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 119
reminiscence is this, you will say, in the clas=
sic land.
But I have just seen the Capitoline Venus
who gave me abundant consolation for my little
trouble. She occupies a small room in the fa
mous Capitoline Museum quite alone ; as she is
undressing for the bath, one sees the necessity
of her having things pretty much to herself. I
went into her chamber, the sole spectator of her
divine perfections ; she seemed to be aware of
my taking a peep at her undraped beauty, for
there was a slight coquettish smile on her lips
as she looked a little to the side of me; indeed,
she appeared not all averse to seeing a person of
so much gravity regard her so long and so in
tensely. She pretends to be modest, but it is
mere pretense ; she hides her charms but at heart
wants to be seen ; certainly she showed to me no
indignation for having dared to intrude upon her
privacy. Another man entered the room, I felt
distressed and desired to be alone ¦ — ¦ such a sight
is not for four eyes. But when a French woman
came in and burst into raptures over the beautiful
statue, I felt the dissonance go through me —
no woman ought to find pleasure in such a
theme and in such a treatment, and she is in
danger of writing herself down as a Venus if
she does. I was much amused at a man of about
fifty years and his wife; both came in together,
she glanced at the statue, and with true feminine

120 ROME-
instinct left the room, not without giving her
husband a twitch to follow ; but he stayed till
she came back and dragged him out. How dif=
ferent the parting look which each gave the
marble Goddess I The old fellow seemed to let
himself out of his eyes ; the wife, already Jeal
ous, glanced a eurse at the fascinating marble »
I have served my apprenticeship at eating mac=
aroni, and I like the dish, but I have now and
then found such a drawback that even my cast=
iron stomach refused to sympathize with th©
food. The general living is good and cheap
here, though it is said that prices bave much ad=
vanced within a few years. I have a long Eoman
bill of fare in my pocket, many of the names of
dishes on it cannot be found in the Italian Dic
tionary, but belong to the Roman dialect. I
have gone through the whele list, ordering things
of which I had not the remotest idea, just to see
what the people ate. Once or twice only have
1 been unable to clear the platter,
I mingle among the people frequently and try
to catch their way of looking at things, but their
dialect is a great obstruction. Here in the Hotel
I chatter with the servants at odd times, and
many a little characteristic comes to light in this
way. One of thera- — aman forty years old —=
always when he sees me expresses the wish to be
the possessor of 2,000 lire (less than 400 dol
lars), which sum appears to him a fortune,

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 121
"Well, what would you do if you had it?"
" Get married." There is the whole love story,
probably ; the fair one is refractory ahd refuses
to enter wedlock without a metallic basis to
stand on, whioh the poor devil of a cameriere
cannot provide. America they seera to regard
as a sort of moonland filled with fantastic won
ders. One of them asked rae if there were any
churches in America. I told hira there were.
Then he wanted to know if they were beautiful.
Italian isn't it? First a cEurch, then a beautiful
church are necessities. A church within himself,
a portable church he does not possess : his re
ligion he can get only through his senses. How
many illustrations of this fact do we not see in
this city ! The church is the great supporter of
Art; the intiraate connection between the two is
most remarkable, one can not realize this relation
in Protestant countries where Art is for the most
part mere dillettantism or even a fashion. But
here Religion and Art are connected by the um
bilical cord, nay more, they pass into each other
insensibly, like the Siamese twins. It becomes
clear that the Roman Church reaches devotion
through the sensuous nature of man, and is cal
culated for sensuous peoples; thus it furnishes a
great, a noble elevation from the sensual to the
spiritual. Its value can hardly be overestimated
in this direction, it is truly a popular religion..
But on the other side it is wanting. The devo-

122 BOME,
tion which comes from the rational nature of
man, the true piety of the intellect, it but par
tially fosters. The Religion which descends from
the Intellect is not the Catholic, which on the
contrary ascends from the senses. Here Art is
its handmaid, indispensible indeed, elevating the
passions into the realm of truth and universality.
Human love becomes divine love, thus Religion
makes the saintly character ; that is, it brings about
the complete purification of the senses. That
the Catholic Religion produces this effect upon
character, especially upon female character, has
doubtless corae under your observation. The
two whitest souls that I have known are Catholic
women, too white, one almost thinks, too little
color for health, not enough of life-blood which
is red. But they are beautiful to me. I always
thought that Goethe's Schone Seele ought to have
been a Catholic — mine certainly shall be, wheni
write her. Still Goethe's creation has a Protestant
developraent — frora the inner to the outer, from
a purely subjective religious emotion to Art and
Nature. The Catholic spirit develops in the re
verse way from Nature through Art to Religion.
Such at least are my present reflections upon
this subject.
It is curious to observe what a life of primitive
needs is found here, though on every side the
past gigantic instrumentalities of refined luxury
are lying unused or in ruins. Rome of all the

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 123
cities in the world is richest in water, but uses it
the least. The sewage is neglected, the streets
are dirty, the corners and alleys seem to be the
despositories of refuse ; of a rigid policing there is
little sign. In fact I saw children doing the un
sightly right in St. Peter's under the nose of an
old pope, with his two fingers raised, blessing
them in the act I suppose. Of course this is
by no means permitted, it was probably unusual,
but it shows the free breeding of those who
grow up in the shadows of the great cathedral
of the world. Yet behold the ancient aqueducts
and gigantic sewers ! Modern Eome is a small
living picture set in a frame of colossal ruins —
the picture has little or no idea of the frarae.
Still, even the people may often be designated
by the same image — the human body is fre
quently beautiful and indeed majestic, but the
soul which made it fled two thousand years ago.
There is a market girl — her face is perfect in its
proportions, but it is dirty like sorae antique
head of a Goddess dug out of the earth where it
has lain for centuries. I think I can see the forra
and the features of a Eoraan lady in her body —
but not the spirit. She sits or rather lies the^^
in the sun, unwashed, unkempt, unpatched, asK-
ing rae to buy a half penny's worth of chestnuts.
I purchase not so much her ware as a good long
look into her face. So too of men one beholds
large noble figures, but see what they have made

124 ROME.
of Eome and judge of their character. Not the
old Eoman, by Jupiter — still thus might Cato
have looked. Is this body then more enduring
than the soul? In. one sense it seems so — it
may be transmitted without the spirit. So the
body of ancient Eome is here yet, a torso to
be sure, but its features can still be made out.
Sly jests on priests, popes, saints, even on
religiop, peep out often, soraetiraes arausingly.
Many signs of wineshops read : Spaccio divino ;
that is a pun on divino and di vino. It occurs
so often that it must be intended, while other
signs have the di and the vino in different letters
on different lines. These are the clergy's resorts
possibly.
Rome, March 12th, 1878.
When I arrived here and found no letter from
you or frora anybody else — I began to think that
I was already forgotten in St. Louis. I know
how rapid the tirae-current is there, indeed it is
not a current but a raaelstrom compared to that
of easy-going Italy. Several letters have since
arrived, though by no means all which are due
me. Judge then of my pleasure when an en
velope with the postmark of St. Louis, was put
into my hands; but more than treble was my
delight when said envelope gave birth to three
letters instead of one — the happy mother of
triplets. I have read the letters through twice 

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 126
the first time with eager precipitation, the second
time with deliberate care, weighing every sen
tence, I do not know whether I shall be able to
give an answer to all that is said in them — but
I may say that they are written in a good sunny
humor which is delightful, and which can not be
answered — especially by a man.
Mention is made of a severe criticism on my
Shakespeare book in a New York newspaper.
This recalls to rae the fact alas I that I am an
author — a fact which I had almost forgotten
when I read that passage of your letter ; for be
tween the present and my past life a chasm is
opening — an Atlantic ocean is lying between
where I ara and where I was. This change, as
I may call it, begins to make me look with some
disfavor on things which I have written hitherto,
so that I feel more callous than ever to literary
defamation. Still, not without sympathy do I
look back from here on that poor book of mine
which I left behind — an infant abandoned by
the parent at its birth and exposed to death by
starvation on the Great American Desert. But
this is not all ; it must still further receive every
kind of blow, 'stab, cut — every manner of
pinching, pounding, gouging, from the secret
thrusts of its pretended friends to the open as
saults of avowed enemies. Eather ought its
condition to excite compassion than abuse; you,
I know, pity it from the bottom of your hearts.

126 BOME.
In regard to myself who am the unfeeling parent,
I can only say that I had never before so fully
pictured the situation, but now I see it vividly.
Still do not think for a moraent that I am going
to turn aside from my journey and hasten
home — I shall not leave Italy because my brat
happens to get a spanking in America — in fact
the squalling and kicking which it produces all
around itself is a good sign of vitality. So I
comfort rayself and think about other matters.
You all speak of a pleasant trip to Europe
raade in one evening by means of the stereopti-
can. You perhaps saw the very spot on whioh
I am lodged — some of the most notable antiq
uities of Eome are right around me — the column
of Trajan a few rods on one side, the Pantheon
a little further on the other side, the Eoman
Forum nearly behind me ; the Corso, the liveliest
street of modern Eorae, lies not far tb the front.
To be in the presence of these monuments of
ages long gone by is a new experience ; of course
no representation can adequately express the
works themselves. The question which I always
have to ask of them is — What mean ye here?
It is irapossible, for me at least, to think other
wise than that every product of man is an utter
ance — an utterance more or less distinct, of his
soul. A human being must utter what he is,
not what he is not ; ultimately to do one thing
and to be another is a contradiction, an impossi-

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 127
bility. The works of a man and especially the
monuments of a great people constitute a lan
guage which raust be deciphered before the life
and character can be understood. They write
down their deepest selves in these monuments;
the builders meant something — What is it?
asks the traveler amid the ruins and sits down on
a broken coluran to listen to the voices hovering
about in the air.
I ara free to confess that I can not at first un
derstand this language, and I have to learn it
alraost frora the very alphabet. Previous read
ing and study are doubtless helps, but they can
hardly do raore than tell you that such things
are not what they are. For the raonuments
themselves are the utterance, and the only ade
quate utterance ; just they and nothing else were
taken to express the spirit of an individual, of
an age, of a nation. Hence they must be read
and understood in their own native dialect; no
translatiod can possibly take their place. So you
can iraagine what I am doing these sunny days
in Eorae — I lounge through the Forum, or the
Palaces of the Caesars or the Colosseum, not
merely trying to rebuild these structures in the
imagination — which is also a very necessary,
but easier task — but asking the to me far' more
iraportant question. What did they mean when
built? Why construct this immense triumphal
Arch in which not a spark of utility can be

128 ROME.
struck out anywhere? Often I have to stand
before a fragment of sorae temple for hours — I
know that it says something, but what it is, I can
not understand ; so I wait and wait, my mind
often wandering off to absent ones in the mean
while, until I draw it back across the ocean and
again throw it at that piece of raarble ; the re
ward is usually a glimmer, seldom a sunburst,
not infrequently the mere consciousness of hav
ing done my duty to the monument.
When I first enter any one of these colossal
ruins, it seems to me that I am in the tower of
Babel — such a confusion of unintelligible
tongues ! Every object appears to be talking,
yet I can not understand what it says; it tries,
nay claraors to be heard — for why was it put
here, if not to tell its story? The first tirae I
went over the entire Palatine with its acres of
brick solitudes, the irapression left upon rae was
that of pain, ray head rung with the confused
arches, pillars, passages. The whole mountain
reserables a huge honeycomb whose cells are the
rooras and halls of imperial palaces. As one
wanders through these endless labyrinths in their
crossings and intertwinings, story above story,
he cannot help thinking that here is a symbol of
the infinite burrowings and gropings of that big
earth-worm called man. But I do not know even
what these letters of stone and brick spell, much
less do I understand their full speech ; and if I

A TOUB I.V EUBOPE, 129
did, I could not impart it to you, except possibly
in some very remote flashes, their language being
so different from English. My tirae has been
filled with effort — I have been here now one
week and raore — yet the result seeras small.
And no wonder, for the mass whioh thrusts itself
upon the mind iri this city exceeds belief. The
ancient, middle and modern ages are all here,
crowding against one another and demanding
attention. I walk down a street, here they come
brushing against me — old Eome, the Medieval
Church, and new-born Italy — all attractive,
divine, but pulling me till I do not know which
way to turn. I can only say — wait; I shall
give each of you a fair hearing before I leave the
city. Of course I wish you 'all were with me, you
would not be in the way, though you might not
want to follow me in all my extravagances. I
have often wished for good companions, though
I avoid the travelers here, for my opinion of
them as a body is not high. I notice them in
the galleries, museums and among the ruins —
tbey rush through, evidently trying to get over
as much space as possible in a given time — this
is their great problem. They come not to see
but to gape, for of any true vision in a single
glance at a great work it is absurd to speak.
The circulating libraries of foreign books tell the
story — they have hardly anything else but

130 BOME.
novels , regular time-killers . Most people seem to
flee here out of the busy world where they are
drones, for idleness — dolce far niente — is also
one of the Italian fine arts. Undoubtedly there
are many here traveling with a true aim and
noble industry — but certainly not the majority.
I am afraid our country furnishes not a few
people who are injured by a trip across the ocean,
as it swells their pretension without any increase
of knowledge. They rush through what tbey
find in their guide-book, and, then think they
have seen it all. Often have I met with such
folks in our St. Louis, who were in the habit of
putting down any argument or opinion of the un-
traveled with a contemptuous sneer, saying,
"Well, I have been in Europe and seen the
original, and I know." Once I heard a gentle
man praising a spectacular affair gotten up for a
benevolent object by some young ladies, when he
rounded off with the following statement, appar
ently in dead earnest : "I have traveled through
Europe and seen everything — this beats it all."
Poor fool, he would have been better off, had he
stayed at home ; he would have known just as
much without having gotten that enormous wen
of vanity. I recollect of having myself had a
discussion with a lady on the Laocoon, to which I
had given a good deal of study from what I now
know to have been an excellent photograph ; she
gave an answer which knocked me down: " But

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 131
I have seen the statue itself — what right to a
judgment have you, who have not seen it?"
Then I had no response, but now I would be able
to answer: " No, Madarae, you have not seen it,
you think you have, but in truth you have not.
What you saw was only a vain outward appear
ance hanging in the air — a mirage deluding the
eye with erapty show. You did not see the
divine conception putting on its garment of
marble, you did not commune with the thought
of the creative artist expressing itself in stone.
With far other eye than that of flesh must this
be seen, nor is it to be acquired by a feverish
haste. Doubtless the eye with its external vision
is very necessary, but it is merely the portal
where something raay enter through unto the
soul; the portal is not the teraple itself. To see
truly -is to be a seer, spirit sees spirit. Madarae,
you did not see Laocoon, you saw a stone."
That's enough transcendentalism for once, I hear
you all cry — so farewell.
Rome, March 14th, 1878.
I could not imagine why I received no letter
from you. To-day the mystery was cleared up ;
on going to the American Legation, I found that
the clerk had overlooked the letter or was un
able to read the address. Now I have it though
more than two weeks behind time, and I am very

132 BOME.
sorry that I did not receive it so as to send an
answer which would be in your hands by this
tirae. But very welcome it is though late, and
gives much gratifying news which I have re
ceived frora no other source. It shows that you
are all as active as ever this winter, and that
under no circumstances your striving after gen
uine culture and noble living will relax.
The news which allays most my disagreeable
feelings is the inference frora your letter that
ray book may possibly pay expenses to the pub
lisher. I suppose that I never believed, in the
bottom of ray heart, that it would sell, though
in moments of exaltation I may have thought
that I believed so. The matter does not often
pass through my mind, but when it does, I have
almost come to reproach myself for ever having
offered the book for publication.
To-day is the festival of St. Joseph ; I went to
mass at St. Peter's, during which I thought of
you and wished you were at my side to tell me
what all that elaborate ceremony signified. I
know that it has a meaning and a profound
meaning, otherwise it could not have held to
gether for so long a tirae so many genuine souls
as well as deep-thinking intellects. I could only
look upon the sc^e with' astonishment, but
without any edification, and I longed for some
person to teach me at least the alphabet of those
mysterious signs. I truly wished then that I

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 133
had the knowledge of the poor unlettered lab
orer who was kneeling, responding to the service
and repeating' his prayers at my side. Not com
prehending the dialect, of course I received no
communication; sol thought to myself: Here
is another great fact whioh is a mystery to thee,
and which thou, here in Eome, must take up
intb thy intellect and then let it descend into thy
feelings and even sympathies. For I felt ex
cluded from a great world of rich experience and
high culture ; here is the best opportunity not
only for understanding its expression but also
for realizing the worth of that expression. So
I suppose that before long I shall be looking into
the Roman Breviary and perhaps conning its
lessons ; at least I must do something to effect
an entrance into this religious world around me.
But do not iraagine by this language that I am
going to join your church ; indeed just now I am
far more a Pagan than a Catholic, for in the
temple of Paganism I can worship and sympa
thize, because I know it better. A harsh ex
pression in a christian age, you say? No, I
hope not — the utterance of the Divine every
where, in all forras and in all climes, one should
both study and feel. I do not oppose myself
here to anything ; all is to be received, and if
possible absorbed. To stand outside of the
great fact before his eyes and fight it or
despise it, is the very worst disposition in

134 BOME.
a traveler. Let him rather take it up into
his bosom and cherish and love it if he can;
above all let him ponder it without any partiality,
till it shall have revealed itself to him in the truth.
I take it that nothing in this world ever did or
ever will tell its deepest secret to an enemy.
Huraan Nature would at once reject any such
proposition, and the great monuraents and histori
cal facts of the Past raight not be so violent but
would be raore reticent. I am trying to tell you
in what spirit I seek to approach the study of
Rome ; I do not protest against anything, I am
least of all a Protestant in the narrow sense of
the word. Rome is an iramense colossus be
striding Tirae — it has one foot on antiquaity, the
other on the Present ; for twenty centuries the
whole world from every point of the compass
has turned to look at that gigantic shape in hope
and in terror ; why should I begin to pick a flaw
in the nail of its little toe?
A few days ago I saw the Dying Gladiator in
the Capitoline Museum — a very reraarkable piece
of sculpture, but chiefly celebrated for having
inspired what I deem the finest bit of poetry in
the works of Lord Byron beginning —
I see before me the Gladiator lie.
Great as the statue is, it is surpassed by the
poetry. What a sweep there is in these two
stanzas! They cii uch together the Roman Re-

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 135
public in its vigor and Roman Empire at its
death, showing the guilty deed coming home to
the nation after the lapse of centuries. It is a
grand Oceanic swell of poetry, yet pointed with
the keenest logic, and its thought is a great and
terrible one — national retribution.
But this Dying Gladiator is said to be a Gaul
who is not "butchered to make a Roman holi
day, "but commits suicide. So some of most recent
critics say — but I do not like the view, the inter-
pertation of the poet has sunk too deep into me.
That dying form must forever remain a symbol
of Heaven's vengence upon Rome, thus it repre
sents one of the deepest, most tragic facts of
History. It is not an ideal or even heroic figure;
everything indicates the coarse man of Nature
whose power is not mental but physical. The
central point in which to grasp the idea of
the work is the difference between the head
and body — the head droops, is dead, while
the body is still partially erect, refusing to
succumb. That is, the seat of physical power
is stronger and more tenacious than the seat of
mental power — brain dies before muscle. More
over the face is a great study — thc upper part
of it showing the most intense agony, while the
lower part is quite calra, manifesting but little
emotion. I should say that the whole effect is
physical with a .slight self -suppression ; the work
represents the pain of merely physical death

136 BOME.
with almost no spiritual self-control. It is the
agony of dying purely, and therefore the theme
cannot be praised however wonderful its treat
raent. But I have only seen the sculptured tor
ment once ; my judgment is really not worthy of
being heard now ; I hope I shall not fall into
that flippant treatment of great works at which
I have been so often indignant when seen in
other people. I shall to-morrow go again and
give it a good long study.
The hand of reality often thrusts itself rudely
between my thoughts, prying them wide open
and not allowing them to weld together again,
indeed tearing them till they bleed. As I was
looking at this statue, doubtless with feelings
softened by the view of so much pain, three little
girls, of English parentage I should judge, came
in accompanied by the nurse. They were all
gracious creatures, but dressed in mourning;
my eye turned away from the statue and contin
ued to rest upon the youngest, a pretty red-
cheeked little maid. Of course my mind rapidly
flew across the seas, and I felt my heart melt
ing within. The nurse pointing to the statue,
said: " That man is dying." The. little thing
turned around from a group with her sisters and
looked with a long gaze as if to probe the mean
ing of death — then said: "My mamma died
too." The water gushed from my eyes but not
on account of the Dying Gladiator •, the conteni-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 137
plation of Art ended for that day, I hurried out
and took a long walk beyond the walls of the
city that I might kill sorrow with physical wear
iness. I had a glorious view of an Italian landscape,
it is remarkable how such a prospect soothes
and heals. In the distance were the Alban
hills with the long sunny plain lying between;
like a dreamy wayfarer, the eye travels over a
broad surface of green fields and sunlight till a
white mountainous barrier arrests its course,
while the blue skies are suspended above. The
whole is a grand pavilion of Nature, decorated
with many colors, but all are mild and soothing.
The soul feeding on itself is drawn outward by
the beautiful vision, and ceases to consume its
own vitals. Human life, I exclaimed to my
self, ought to take pattern from this landscape,
and learn from Nature a lesson in true happi
ness. After a long journey of years, wandering
through a sunlit plain in which passion can
raake no unevenness, in which the grass is al
ways green with delight, over which the skies
are blue with hope, we come at last to the white
hills on which perchance the eye may behold
angels and behind which we are to disappear.
Our deep Northern brooding is here gently reined
in and turned outward by the tender and even
caressing hand of Art and Nature ; they sing an
eternal chant for the repose of the living who

138 BOME.
are often more in need of it than the dead. It
is deep in the night and we must part.
Rome, March 15th, 1878.
Do not be astonished if you find fragments of
letters with different dates in one envelope. I
often feel that I must express myself to you,
though I have to do all the talking. I always
imagine you to be present when I ara writing a
letter and figure to myself that look of yours
when you are weighing a proposition. Even
your image in my mind raakes rae feel at home,
and inspires me with a certain unreservedness
which I cannot possibly entertain for anybody
else. This you must have felt yourself, and
therefore I shall not say anything more about it-
To-day I had a new sensation, the more in
tense because wholly, unexpected. I loitered out
by accident to the Lateran and suddenly came
upon the Santa Scala or Sacred Stair, which peo
ple were ascending on their knees by the hun
dreds, rhad never read or heard of anything of
the kind in Eome, or if I had, the cirsumstance
had been entirely forgotten ; but notices pasted
on the walls soon informed me of the nature of
the ceremony. This Sacred Stair belonged to
the House of Pilate and is said to have been
pressed with the feet, and indeed stained with the
blood of Christ. The steps were brought from

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 139
Jerusalem to Eome by St. Helen about the year
326, since which time they have been a great resort
for the faithful. Many centuries ago they were
incased in wood, as the stone was being rapidly
worn out by the crowd of supplicants. Great
are the advantages offered for performing this
holy duty — one Pope gave indulgence for nine
years, which Pius the Ninth made perpetual. On
each side was built an additional flight of steps,
for ascending which on the knees and repeating
a prayer certain privileges were granted.
The spectacle made a strong impression upon
me. At first, true to my Protestant education,
I was inclined to regard it as a piece of Eomish
superstition, but then I recollected my resolution
to quit that perverted way of looking at things.
Here is a grave fact — many honest and intelli
gent people for ages have performed this cere
mony with deep devotion and therein found con
solation. What does it mean? For it must mean
something to some souls at least ; it must be a
symbol, superstition and chicanery cannot vita
lize for so long a period such a fact.
Then I began thinking to myself :'. If it is
productive of spiritual regeneration, even the
least, thou, too, shouldst ascend on thy knees,
nay on thy face, the Sacred Stair. Deepest rev
erence for the Divine is the most important les
son of existence, prostration of the body may
well typify it outwardly — down on thy knees

140 BOME.
then if that will inspire thee with reverence for
the great and holy men of the past. Blood too
has reddened the stair — a matter trivial in it
self — but it was the heart-blood spilled because
of adherence to the deepest conviction of truth ;
take that too as a symbol, and suffer thy body
to be gashed into a fountain of gory jets, rather
than stain thy conscience with cowardly yielding.
Then, too, that troublesome ascent on the knees
endured with patience and prayer — may it not
be taken as the toilsome passage of human life
whose steep and rugged declivity is to be mounted
with a serene and patient hopefulness till we
reach the sumrait where our labor is over? Im
portunately I demand of myself — shall I join
the suppliants in the ascent?
But I could not bring myself to do it ; I well
knew that I had not Faith, such as the Church
requires — I did not believe in the historical
reality of the Sacred Stair, of the blood, of the
true image of Christ at the top of the steps. If
they would only let me interpret these things — but
then I would have no need of them, the interpre
tation would be my expression of these spiritual
virtues, and the outward ceremony becomes no
longer a need, perhaps a clog to the soul. Still
this ascent of the Sacred Stair is a genuine ex
pression for some people, possibly the best ex
pression of hallowed truth. I seek to sympa
thize with it, to throw myself into it as one of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 141
those abiding forms into which the human soul
has poured its essence.
I looked on aud witnessed the populace eagerly
pressing forward to a feast frora which I felt my
self excluded, though I too must ascend the red
ladder of suffering with patience if not with
prayer. I was curious to see what kind of a
transformation was wrought in people through this
ceremony, so I went to the passage by which
they descend and glanced into their faces. One
visage indeed did seem to me to look quite trans
figured, to have a light within which illuminated
the whole body ; particularly that mask of flesh
called the face was translucent with a divine
radiance. I wanted very rauch to converse and
find out the state of mind which caused such an
unusual glow, but of course did not speak to the
person. But on the other hand a young girl
came down as she went up — with a head full of
gossip about her lover, which she was imparting
in a lively fashion to her companions ; so at least
I judged from the fragments of speech which I
caught, as well as by the fact of her quick
approach towards a young fellow evidently wait
ing for her. The great majority of those who
were ascending the Sacred Stair were women —
well known to be far more religious than their
masculine associates. One poor woman indeed
enlisted in me th'e liveliest pity, so that I almost
felt like going up to her and dissuading her from

142 BOME.
the attempt ; she was in the last stages of preg
nancy, and might have been overtaken with the
labor of child-birth right on the stair ; still she
bravely began the ascent of the twenty-eight
steps on her knees, repeating quite a long prayer
on every step. Doubtless her heart was full of
that new being about to be brought into the
world by her, and she wished it to begin its
earthly career under the special protection of
Supreme Power. Truly it was the devotion of a
mother — willing to risk her own life for her
unborn offspring — since it is not hard to imagine
that she might neyer corae down those steps
alive. Shall I not say that this act awakened
quite as much religion in me and much more
emotion than the sight of the Sacred Stair?
The martyrdom of the mother is as divine a
thing as any martyrdom — not excepting the
martyrdom of the Lord.
But when I came home, I had a touch of the
other extreme in that wonderful sex. I re
counted my scruples as well as my strong desire
to ascend the stair to a woman traveler I met at
the inn ; but she^ laughed at me, saying that
[she, though not a Catholic nor anything else, had
¦gone to the top of the Sacred Stair twice ou
her knees, and had repeated a prayer too at
every step — that not only she but all the Eng
lish women of her acquaintance had done the
same thing. She however confessed to some

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 143
rehgious feeling in the act, but the main mo
tive was to see the pictures at the top of the
Sacred Stair. I am free to say that I am in
clined to believe that I have a right to the as
cent, for certainly I would not do it in a spirit
of mockery or even of adventure, but still I
would have to translate, as I went up, every sym
bol into my own expression.
Rome, March 19, 1878.
Sorae days ago I was at another ceremony, with
which, however, I cannot possibly find in my
self any sympathy. It was the festival of St.
Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary. Husband
of the Virgin — already the contradiction be
gins to show its horns. It is a difficulty which
is peculiar to both the Protestant and Catholic
Churches, so that my sectarian education can
not be the cause of the trouble now. But Pro
testants as a rule, I think, leave the matter
pretty well in the background, which is at
least prudent conduct. In Eome, however, St.
Joseph is celebrated with high honors — with a
special holiday, ringing of bells, music and pro
cessions. So we are corapelled to ask: What
did he do — what was his character^ what his
greatness? A little reflection on these questions ,
lands the raind into a kind of aversion, or possibly
into a state of amuseraent.

144 BOME.
I cannot help thinking that many of the old
painters — good Catholics to be sure, but better
artists — had the same conception of his char
acter and slyly expressed it in their Art. In pic
tures of the Holy Family I have often no
ticed him — there he stands in the background
utterly insignificant, with a patient mien, along
side of his patient ass, from whioh he can iu
spirit hardly be distinguished. He does not
seem to know what has happened or to have the
least notion of the importance of that Child
Jesus, while the mother shows a deep presenti
ment of its destiny which appears to flash
through centuries. Therein his paternity is de
nied, nay he is. positively laughed at — is a comic
figure. Well, I went to a service in his honor at St.
Peter's — it was celebrated in a little chapel
called La Pieta from the well-known group of
this same name by Michel Angelo — the Mother
holding in her lap the dead Christ. After the
service the railing was thrown open and the
crowd rushed in ; I followed and in a little side
room there was displayed a picture of Joseph
holding the infant Jesus in his arms, the
Mother not being present. The coloring ,was
beautiful, but the theme was particulariy painful
to me ; I leave you to tell the reason why. But
I now felt what I never felt before : how the
presence of Mary harmonizes, to a large extent.

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 145
this terrific note of discord by putting Joseph as
it were out of sight. But when he is thrust
into the foreground as here, it becomes a rasp
ing, a grating of the nerves beyond endurance.
My dear friend, I have more in mind, but I
can well imagine that these lucubrations can be
come tiresome to you. As I read them over, it
seems almost as if I was talking to myself and
not to a person living thousands of miles away
on a different continent. Still I can only write
what is moving within me, here I am the child of
impressions. I have now received three letters
from you, all of which, I need not assure you,
were very welcome. My health is perfect, my
labor unreraitting, an Italian sky is always over
my head, with only an occasional storm or cloud.
My sole regret is that Time will insist upon cut
ting off the day at the 24th hour's end.
Rome, April 1st., 1878.
Your letter came to-day ; I must thank you for
your promptitude, as it dispelled a cloud of dis
appointment which has been hanging over me
for a week. You do not know how satisfactory
it is to receive a bit of news from home in a for
eign land, and how melancholy it makes a per
son to go to the Post Office day after day and
receive for an answer the same monotonous
"Nothing for you." Some of my correspond-
10

146 BOME.
ents have proved unfaithful, others are very
slow ; you deserve the crown both for fidelty and
promptitude. And who, do you think, has crossed my path
here in Eome? A person who used to work
with us in the High School — Mr. Thomas
Davidson. Two or three days ago I found a
card on my table with his address ; he had oome
to see me but I was out. Next morning I went
to pay him a visit, stayed till noon, and had a
delightful time. We walked together to the
Capitoline where I left him at the Prussian
Archaeological Institute whieh overhangs the
Tarpeian Eock. He was full of hig experiences
in Greece, which are the more interesting to me
as I begin to hope to make a trip there myself.
How little space means in these days 1 It seems
almost as if we had met in some town adjoining
St. Louis. And indeed the strings which brought
us together were worked from St. Louis by
the unwearied cunning hand of Harris. Knowing
the whereabouts of both of us, he sent to each a
postal-card informing us of the situation ; other
wise we might have remained in the city for
months without seeing each ether. But who
would have thought of or executed such a feat
except him? Davidson intends to remain in
Eome about six weeks, then to go to Paris where
he will stay some time at the Exposition, but his

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 147
purpose is to be in America by the 4th of July
next. I have now been in Eome four weeks, which
time has been chiefly spent upon Ancient Sculp
ture, with some attention to Architecture. Just
now I feel pretty full, indeed' a little sated, and
I must turn to something else for relief. My soli
tary life too is telling on my disposition. As I go
nowhere and shun making acquaintances, I some
times feel lonely and depressed. A man can not
entirely dispense with society ; if he does, society
will take its own revenge. Of course I chat with
Italians of all degrees ; also there is one Ameri
can woman in the Hotel where I am lodged, and
with her I converse once in a while out of pure
necessity of uttering myself. She stares at me
with a kind of wonder on account of my strange
ideas and expressions ; she is probably bored by
my talk, but I go ahead never minding her rather
unsympathetic manner. The weather, to which I
am very susceptible, has been recently cloudy
and rainy ; here the clouds seem to muffle my
spirits in black quite as much as they drape the
heavens. The coming month I am going to change my
programme somewhat. Painting is now to be
taken up, from the study or contemplation of
which I have hitherto abstained on purpose. It
has seemed to me to be better to confine the at
tention to one Art at a time and to the best ex-

148 BOME.
araples of that Art, than to look at too much,
for the amount of material offered to the sense
of vision is so enormous and varied that one
loses all power of distinction in the attempt to
grasp everything at once. I hold that the most
successful traveler is he who refuses to see more
objects than he can reflect upon and thereby
penetrate their meaning. " Eome in six days "
is the title of some guide-book, which ought
rather to be " How to go through Eome with
eyes wide open and not see it at all." I am
asharaed to say that I have not yet presented
any of ray letters of introduction — which is a
sort of incivility to those who took the trouble
of giving them to me ; but soon I hope to rectify
this part of ray conduct.
The most delightful sensation that I have yet
received from statuary came from two well-
known figures in the Capitoline Museum — the
Faun and Antinous. They stand side by side
with only a beautiful column between them in
the room where Hawthorne lays the scene of his
first chapter of Transformation; and one of
them — the Faun — the author of this romance
has attempted to win from its shape of marble
and caste into a form of flesh and blood. I
stood looking at the Faun a long time ; it leans
against the stem of a tree and holds in its hand
a shepherd's pipe ; such an image of the happi
ness of Nature I never beheld before. For it

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 149
is not the happiness of victory or of repose after
struggle, not at all the happiness of the happy
Gods, but it is the happiness of Nature, of the
natural man sunk in an unconscious serenity,
.without want, without conflict, without spiritual
cravings of any kind. It is the most perfect em
bodiment of idyllic life — it is marble sunshine
lying on the grassy banks of the brook that
skirts field and wood. This is not the Eoman
conception of the Faun, but the Greek — not
sensuality, but sensuousness. The Eoman Faun
is a brute, the Grecian is a human being, though
not yet risen into a self-conscious spiritual life.
The essence of all the idyls of Theocritus
breathes from this fresh forra, which has no
large muscles, no strength — since it has no
struggle, nor can we think of it as laboring in the
fields. The pipe in its hand shows to what sim
ple harmony its soul is attuned ; the flowing hair
speaks of the luxuriant growth of the natural
man; head and body are in the most perfect
unison. Nature has two grand opposing
phases — she begets day and night, the butter
fly andthe reptile, sweet love and fierce passion;
this statue is the utterance of Nature in all her
brightness and cheerfulness.
But time is passing ; we raight be glad to re
main and dreara away eternity with the Faun,
but the inexorable Hours carry us a pace further
to Antinous. You recollect his story: he was a

150 BOME.
beautiful youth, the favorite of the Emperor
Hadrian, by whom he was deified after an early
and mysterious death. The artist poured into
his features the deep questioning soul-sorrow of
the imperial epoch — and made it without doubt
the most original product of a degenerate age
of Art ; it is indeed a type of Eome under the
Erapire, but what a terrible change from the
Fauni The body of Antinous is perfect; it
shows health, vigor, activity; in fine it is the
body of the man of action — not of massive
Herculean strength are the muscles, but they are
supple, alraost transparent instruraents of intel
ligence. Now on this body of which every fiber
means action, is placed a head which signifies
wholly reflection ; and as the result of this re
flection there looks out of the face the very soul
of melancholy, a divine, mysterious sorrow; as
into a well deep and dark, so one casts a glance
into that face, seeing depth and darkness but no
bottom. A Eoman head upon a Greek body,
mortal man linked to the happy God — from the
serene Apollo has sprung world-worn Antinous.
What is the matter with thee, unhappy youth?
To any deeply sympathizing friend he will
answer : 1 have no hope ; the future life is to
me a dark fathomless cavern in which my soul is
condemned to search and wander even now in
this present existence without beholding the fitful
ray of a single star. I have no hope ; I know

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 161
this beautiful body of mine will melt into noth
ingness, this bright magnificent Eoman world
will sink into dust, these delightful senses will
vanish like a dream — all is transitory except the
Hereafter. I have no hope — Eome which wor
ships me has no hope. Yes there is hope, An
tinous (let me reply to that speaking statue).
Already is the soul born into the flesh who will
redeem the Eoman world and might redeem
thee. Eeconciliation is again possible and man
will once more be happy. So the Greek,
Eoman, and Christian ages rush before the mind
in this wonderful city.
Rome, April 4th, 1878.
At last a letter from you ! But my wrath has
been wholly disarmed by the pleasure which its
perusal excited, and still more by the regret
which I now feel after having learned the cause
of the delay. I hope that your recovery may
be speedy and that you may be able to make a
trip to Europe this year. But let me give you a
little advice : do not aggravate your trouble by
reading the " System of Shakespeare's Dramas ;"
you cannot hold ouf under such an accumulation of
ills. That most tedious town. Hot Springs, com
bined with such a book would fill a healthy body
with neuralgic pain. Let me tell you a story of
this classic land ; Guicciardini is a famous his-

152 BOME.
torian of Italy, chiefly distinguished for his long,
labyrinthine, deeply ramified sentences, so that
his whole work seems to lie together in one in
separable mass of plaited vinesj leaves, and
tendrils. Eeading this history is like eating a
certain kind of fine Macaroni, you either have to
take the whole plateful into the mouth at onee, or
have the little threads of pastry streaming down
ybur chin into your bosom till the ends dangle in
your lap ; for you can neither disintangle nor bite
off the innumerable fibres running in every
direction. Well, to the story. A man con
demned to punishment for some crime was given
his choice : read Guicciardini or go to the gal
leys. He chose the Historian and tried the
latter's pages for a few days; thenhe recalled
his choice and deliberately went to the galleys
rather than endure the torture of reading the
book. So the lively Italians have fabled, for it
hardly is a fact; but I tremble sometimes when
I think of what a rack I have constructed for some
of my poor innocent critics. Already I have
heard across the Atlantic shouts of torment and
cursings rend the skies. "What a dark, myste
rious Tartarean book ' ' cries the newspaper
critic, " a book which will not let itself be read
without thinking. Do not we, in our glorious
journalistic profession, write over whole acres of
foolscap, and print the same ¦ — to peruse which
requires not a single thought from the reader and

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 153
to produce which requires not a single thought
frora the writer? Eeading made easy, is the
grand attainment of the nineteenth century, so
easy as to demand not the faintest spark of
reflection, and we, the newspapers have solved
the problem. For is it not clear as the glance of
the day-god, that if no sense be put into writing,
it will require no sense to understand the same.
But here is a book which insists upon being
looked at with some attention or shutting its lids
under our very nose. What an insult to the in
telligence of a reader? Eash author, to imagine
that he can make us think !"
I see, however, that you are not deterred by
such cries ; let me thank you for the friendly
interest which you have taken in my book. I
hope to stay here in Europe till it, along with
myself, is forgotten; then I shall return and
begin life_ over again, as if I had been born a
second time. Perhaps, however, this way of
speaking is too strong. I mean only that it will
be forever impossible for me to write another
such a book. Also in response to your request
let me say that at some later period I shall try to
give you an outline of ray thoughts upon Wil
helm Meister, but just now too many other things
are dancing through my brain.
I have been reading a novel recently. Haw
thorn's Transfortnation so naraed here, or
Marble Faun, as it is usually called in Amer-

164 BOME.
ica. Some words upon this book will sup
ply, for the present, the place of my remarks
upon Meister. I suppose that you have read
it; if not, do so, for the perusal will well
repay the trouble. The scene of its action
is chiefly located in Eome, and I find that
the book is much read here — a fact which is
very gratifying to my national pride. Many of
the details of the book are exceedingly fine, in
deed wonderful ; the author has in general suc
ceeded most happily in making the surroundings
reflect the spiritual character of the persons
placed in these surroundings ; in fact, he some
times betrays too much his conscious effort in
this direction . The best part is the description
of the faun-nature : man in his primitive state of
idyllic innocence and simplicity, reposing in the
eternal sunshine of Paradise. Then there falls
upon this happy spirit, sin ; he cpmmits a crime,
the result is, happiness departs forever but intel
ligence dawns. It is a Yankee Puritan writing
over again almost literally the Fall of Man and
the expulsion from the Garden of Eden; nay,
here is» also the Eve who seduces man to evil,
for Donatello does this wicked deed through
love; then too, there is a very dark uncertain
Hebrew sort of a Satan always hovering in the
background. So far, so good ; the two stages
portrayed are without doubt correct psychologi
cally and belong both to the general development

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 155
of the whole human race and at the same time
to the life of every individual. These two
stages are first the state of innocence which
dwells in the light yet does not know it ; secondly,
the state of unhappiness whioh has distinguished
light from darkness, and knows that it dwells in
darkness. But we ask eagerly after the third stage — the
return out of darkness to light, the form of sal
vation, redemption, or whatever else it may be
called. Alas, here the book breaks down, the
complete transformation of man is not given, but
only the wretched transformation from innocence
to sin. True, the author speaks of many high
things, as repentance, confession, works of pen
ance and prayer; but all this is external, for it
does not enter into and bring about the solution of
his story. He is raanifestly in this state hiraself,
for him there is no solution, that of Christianity
can not have meant anything. Strange yet
highly characteristic of New England; indeed
for New England it seems that Christ has not
yet died; the Puritans are old Hebrews, or partly
Hindoos, showing a pronounced lapse to the
Orient. The book is not therefore a world-book, but
many of its details are most exquisite. The
atmosphere of Art which the author has thrown
around his characters, and made the means of
mirroring their spiritual faces, is delightful, par-

156 . BOME,
ticularly here in Italy where a few steps will
bripg us to the actual scenes ; but doubly de
lightful all these things must be in the meraory,
when read far away from the localities. One
regrets that the author is sometimes a little
peevish over very small matters and uses un
justly harsh language towards Eome and its citi
zens; in regard to the Catholic Church he is
hide-bound and full of narrow prejudice. He
must show that he is a provincial New Englander
inheriting the bitter sectarian strifes of centuries
past. A similar partiality has ruined his Hilda,
who is not the keen bold Yankee Girl, the
Amazonian conqueror of worlds. Her too I
have seen here at Eome — but enough — I forgot
that you are from Massachusetts. Lay it all to
my prejudice and scan gently my weakness.
But I was going to tell you something about
Eome — well, I am not to blame, the demon
drives my pen, not I.
Rome, April 5th, 1878.
A month I have been in Eome, and I have
certainly not lacked occupation. As I feel in a
retrospective mood to-night, I shall send you a
brief survey. You recollect that I wrote to you
from London and from Paris, stating that my chief
bent was toward the antique, that the sculp
turesque world of old Hellas seemed to attract

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 157
me more than anything else amid all the modern
allurements of those two great cities. The sarae
fact has repeated itself here in Eorae. I have
spent the most of ray days in the two large gal
leries of sculpture, the Capitoline and Vatican
Museums, trying my best to win the secret of
ancient Art. At the sarae time other matters
have not been neglected. With ray faithful
guide in hand, whose name, Gsell-Fels, seems a
kind of torso, I have traversed every street and
located the most important places in the ancient
and modern city. Painting and Architecture I
have scanned, but not studied furiously as yet:
I shall attack both of them later. Literature
appears to be a weakling here at present ; cer
tainly it does not force itself upon the attention
everywhere as at Paris.
You, my friend, have known me a long time;
did you ever notice any such tendency in me
before? I confess I am a kind of mystery to
myself in this matter ; such a bent, so persistent
and exclusive, I was not conscio-as of possessing
iu times past, though I had read a good deal
about Art in general, and had studied copies of
some of the great masterpieces. This inner im
pulse appeared to burst out strongly at the view
of the Elgin Marbles in London, with a longing
to get back to their creative source in Greece
itself. But to what practical purpose all this
drives forward, I cannot divine. Certainly I

168 BOME.
have not the remotest notion of turning sculptor
or artist. I have laughed at Goethe, who,
when at Eome, humbugged himself with the
delusion of becoming a painter. Still I feel that
I must let myself slide. I am getting interested
in seeing where this hitherto sleeping instinct
will wake up. Thus in a kind of somnarabulistic
frame of mind I ramble through these Eoman
halls of statuary.
«
Rome, April 6th, 1878.
A long, reflective stroll outside of the walls
on the Appian Way, the first of those world
roads built by Eome, which show her getting
her grip upon Italy and then upon all the rest
of the Mediterranean lands. No other work
gives such a glimpse into her spirit at this early
date (312 B. C). This primal tentacle of hers
reaches out from the central body southwards,
making ready to grasp the Greek cities of
Southern Italy, then Sicily; after which comes
the mighty grapple with Carthage for domina
tion directly, but really for the control of the
World's History. The time has arrived when
the scattered peoples lying around the great
Midland Sea must be organized into a political
unity; these roads may be deemed the nerves
of the vast organism centering in the brain of
the world. I strike with my staff a square stone

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 159
block laid down twenty -two centuries ago, and
rattled over to-day by the passing wagon. That
is certainly a touch of the Eternal.
On the other hand the Appian Way is lined
with ancient torabs of Eomans. That of Ce
cilia Metella has won a great name. The work
lasts, the individual passes on. Here one sinks
back into the Past in a kind of reflective swoon,
out of which however there is betimes a sucjden
shaking and waking.
For what is that object yonder crossing the
Appian Stone-Way with its ' own road ? It is an
Iron- Way (^Ferrovia), most modern of all Ways.
Napoleon still took for getting into Italy sub
stantially the same roads that Caesar used more
than eighteen centuries before him arid marched
pretty much in the same manner. What way
would he take now, less than a hundred years
after his own time? Here it comes, the huge
new-born horse which he would employ — a horse
pulling a long train of wagons at a marvelous
speed. Contemplate it, the work of art ; listen
to it — the shrillest anachronism in Eome is
that railroad whistle on the Campagna. Gun
powder gives here not such a discordant sound;
we can never forget the use of it in the castle of
St. Angelo by Benvenuto Cellini when defend
ing Eome against the troops of the Constable of
Bourbon more than three centuries and a half

160 BOME.
ago. So we may say that gunpowder too is get-
ing old with Eorae, while the railroad is to-day's.
In such a fiame of mind I wander toward the
Station and walk slowly down into the City. I
cannot help toying at times with another thought :
what would the ancient Eoman multitude say to
yonder locomotive steaming and puffing through
the walls toward them as if to run them down?
Julius Caesar, greatest soldier of Eome, would not
stand his ground, but would take to his heels, mak
ing for some temple near by and crying : That God
is surely after me. I amuse myself with meeting
the old atheist Lucretius in a promenade up this
street, and seeing him catch his first glimpse of the
spark-blowing monster just from Orcus : he would
fall on his knees with pious incantations, and
at once make himself a complete illustration of
his own apothegm : Timor fecit Peos. Again let
us drop through many centuries and come into
Eome as it was about nine decades ago in this
same locality, and imagine Johann Wolfgang
Goethe just stepping out the entrance of the
Baths of Diocletian, where he had been saturating
himself with heathen Art, and seeing for the first
time that raighiy terror corae roaring up his way?
Could he hold out, especially if it gave one of
its awful snorts ? I have to think that he would
not show fight, but would run, undignified
though it raight be, run for dear life along with
a vast throng of ecclesiastics, priests, monks.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 161
cardinals , and pos&ibly the Pope himself, the
whole mass rushing pell mell into the Great
Christian Church yonder, the Basilica Santa
Maria Maggiore, for supplication and protection.
I venture to say that he too would there join in
the universal chant with fervent prayer : Domine,
Salvator Mundi, parcife vestris. Sorae such
thing ' ' the old heathen ' ' did later at Weimar,
when very sick, according to the report of his
wife Christiane.'
In such fashion the ancient, the modern and
the middle get mixed up at Eome as nowhere
else, producing at times a grotesque hodgepodge
of the world's ages, not only in fancy but also
in reality. That, my friend, is a part of my
experience at least, and so I give it to you.

Rome, April 7th, 1878.
I felt to-day an electric shock from the Latin,
when I read on the walls of a little church :
Venio Romam iterum crucifigi. The legend
runs that on this spot Christ bearing the cross
met Peter who was fleeing from his own similar
death at the hands of persecutors. He asked
the ghost: "Lord, whither goest thou? " The
answer fell like a thunderbolt: "I come to
Rome to be again crucified." Whereat it may
be supposed that the specter vanished, having
given its warning to Peter, and to all time, yea
11

162 BOME.
even to me. One thing is certain: that Latin
sentence — Venio Romam iterum crucifigi — has
been running in and out of my brain all day, re
appearing every time with a new significance.
Some years ago I heard a rather sensational
preacher take as his text: What would Christ do
were He now to corae to St. Louis? Many
things the speaker mentioned and dilated upon
according to the wont of his class ; but he never
uttered the grand fact: Venio iterum crucifigi.
I could not help thinking that the priest might
again take part in the crucifixion as he did of
old. Was not the admonition addressed to the
apostle who was head of the Church? I notice
that this was one of the few Christian things
which made a strong impression upon Goethe,
even m his heathen mood.
The little church on whose wall the legend is
inscribed, is called from Peter's question,
Domine, quo vadis {Lord, whither goest thou?)
It is the best legend I have yet found in Eome,
which is full of them, as it persists in staying
and singing in the soul long after the words have
vanished from the eye. In this way it shows
itself naturally poetic, creating song through its
own native power, and reproducing itself in hun
dreds of images, some of which I tried to catch
on the wing and to thrall into words and even
meter when I came home.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 163
Rome, April 9th, 1878.
Your favorite, Goethe, I have been reading
for two or three days, with no small eagerness.
His Italian Journey, I have been pouring over in
order to catch his line of experience here in Eome.
It is a great privilege to see Goethe seeing the
antique and puzzling himself over its signifi
cance : he too becomes in the act a kind of puz
zle, and I cannot yet discover quite what he gets
out of it. But give hira and me time, and we
may yet find it and ourselves. Another little
coincidence has entertained me, even if mean
ingless : he was just about my age when he first
got into Eorae sorae ninety years ago.
Judge my surprise when a former pupil of
mine in the St. Louis High School, walked up
to me some days since, and saluted rae as I stood
in the Vatican Museum before the Laocoon.
What! I cried, another ghost in this world of
ghosts, but now from over the ocean ! The
stout shake of his hand as well as his peculiar
drawl heard often in recitation, convinced me of
his reality. He had taken a course in a German
School of Architecture, and was now paying a
visit to seethe works of his art in Eome, as well
as to have a pleasant outing before his return to
America. He had two companions with hira, an
Englishmen frora Australia, and a Eussian who
could not talk English but spoke German. A

164 BOME.
cosmopolitan group surely, but entirely con
genial ; very agreeable were the hours we spent
together, and especially profitable to me who
had been too muoh alone. For the sake of our
Eussian companion, we usually conversed in
German, though English was the familiar tongue
of three of us. I traversed with them the city
again, listening to their architectural remarks
especially. Nor did we fail to enter a German
pot-house (kneipe) which we ran across in our
wanderings, and to honor" Fatherland and also
St. Louis with an offering to Gambrinus, who
was there enthroned in his temple araid the
classic Gods of old Eorae.
Our chief exploit together was a day's tramp
in the Alban Mountains from Frascati, to which
we went by rail. It seemed to me that in some
of the villages which we passed through, I got
a peep into primitive Eorae, whose early people
came from these hills according to legend. The
site of Alba Longa, the Latin mother of Eome,
is still traceable. But I shall tell you at once
my chief experience, whioh certainly hit me
hard. I was standing on the height above one
of the villages called Eocca di Papa, from which
I could look across the Campagna and see Eome,
especially the Dome of St. Peter's, less than
twenty miles distant. It was a noble view, into
which crowded a throng of associations with the
Past; in fact, more of the World's History

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 165
centered upon that spot than upon any other cm
the globe. So I was thinking when a na
tive approached me and begged for a penny.
Something put it into my head to ask hira :
" What place is that yonder? " He answered :
"Roma." I looked at him and asked another
question: "Were you ever there?" Imag
ine his reply: "No." I was thunderstruck.
"What! all your life in sight of Eome and
never once in it? " Said he: "I have enough
to do to live here. Give me" a baijocco, Sig
nore." •¦'¦Ecco" '¦'¦Grazia." And I have
come across continents and oceans to see Eorae !
But the fellow was off, having enough of me.
Such a human vegetable, growing generation
after generation for thousands of years, possibly
upon the same little plot of ground 1 never saw
before. Did you? He is probably a direct de
scendant of one of those old pre-historic ante-
Eoraan Latins whom history finds already
settled on these hills before its dawn. Yet
the Latins were Aryan immigrants, and hence
could and did migrate; I have concluded
that this specimen raust be a relic of some
older race, perchance the cave-dwellers, still
afloat on the streara of time. I explained the
talk to my associates, who were weak in Italian,
and we all passed to a neighboring wine-shop
and there wondered at ourselves under the in
fluence of a gentle stimulant; in mutual admira-

166 BOME.
tion, we again noted that one of us was from
Australia, one from Eussia, and two from
America. Surely it could not be said of us that
we were vegetating on our native hills.

Rome, April 17th, 1878.
Galleries have been abandoned for a week
and more. I have not even taken the time to
write a letter. A new influence has seemed to
swoop down upon me with a demonic power,
which I would not and could not resist. Poetry
has driven off everything else, and that too a
kind of poetry whioh I never before had aught
to do with, as far as I can recollect. The raa
terial must have been ready but the spark which
kindled the blaze was that collection of short
Greek verses called epigraras or inscriptions,
and known under the general name of Anthol
ogia Palatina. The meter is a peculiar an
tique one, made up of alternating hexameters
and pentameters of which I shall fling at you my
first specimen describing the new experience :
With a handful of flowers a form fleets in at my
window.
Shrinking in size to my room, stretching my
room to the world.
Goddess, I know thee — in tiraes gone by thou
hast given rae solace,

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 167
With thy beautiful strain singing the music of
Hope
Out of the Heavens. — Eose-strewing Poesy,
now I have need of thee.
Smooth down the furrows once more, touching
my lips with thy kiss.
Such is the metrical movement which has been
attuning my thoughts and even my gait, I would
believe, for a number of days, and which I
have been transfusing into English. The curious
fact is that I never before really knew this
meter; I must have met it, but I never entered
into it with the least appreciation or enjoyment.
Yet at present I can read no other kind of verse
but this, devouring it wherever I can find it in
Greek, Latin, and German. For English has
none of it worth mentioning, and seemingly will
none of it, since that everlasting Iambic shuffle
appears to satisfy the Anglo-Saxon metrical
sense. But now begins, in my soul at least a
play of rhythm like the flow of the folds on a
Greek statue, or the gentle plies over the body
of Apollo Belvedere; even the ripples of the
ocean are brought back to me at times in sportive
wavelets of words.
I have somehow come to believe that I have
begun to find my expression of this classic world,
which I have pursued, or which has pursued me
ever since I ran upon the Elgin Marbles at Lon-

168 ROME.
don. Of course it is too early to say much, and
is always dangerous to prophesy, but the thought
haunts me that one main purpose, perhaps the
main purpose of this European journey has
started to dawn within, or to pop up its head
above the surface of the dark inner sea of un
conscious life. At any rate the fit is on me and
will not let go its hold. When I take a walk
outside the walls and view the surrounding hills,
these seem to rise and fall in a metrical cadence,
and to be making classic epigrams, which of
course I try to catch and copy down in my note
book. What a peculiar experience ! Little rock
ing rhythms come pouring around me out of
every object in the landscape, from the river
Tiber to the Sabine Mountains. Eeally I deem
myself a kind of sculptor, moulding playful
little statuettes, called epigrams, out of words
measured and ordered into shapes, which to me
at least, speak with a classic accent. I have as
yet tried them upon nobody, and naturally am
infatuated; you are the first person to see them,
and if you were here you would have no peace
from these tiny teasing sprites, which seem to
dart out of the air every whence. Perhaps you
would fight them off as if they were an army of
hornets, or possibly you would take to your heels.
It is well that you are protected by ocean and
continent. Still I am going to speed at you across the

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 169
mighty waters one more epigrammatic dart, or
perchance two more, bearing a little note about
my present mood in reference to this Eoman
world and the longing whioh it produces.
Rome, I have fed with peaceful delight on thy
honey delicious.
Daily I open new hives built in the ages of
yore;
Dead long since are the bees that gathered these
stores of enjoyment,
Heliconian swarm, reared on the flowers of
Greece.
Still the sweet structure of cunning instinctive is
not as they left it.
Broken and scattered and stained are all the
fragments so fair.
The result is a mighty desire comes over the
soul to get back to the creative source of this
ruined and estranged Art. All the galleries of
Rome with all their statuary leave at last the im
pression of a Greek torso, yea of a Greek exile
or captive. Can we not complete the fragment
and set free the prisoner, in our mind at least?
Back beyond Eome the spirit waves us, which
also voices itself in the undulating roll of an
epigram.
List ! there is aught in these marbles that hints
of an ancient estrangement.

170 BOME,
A low sigh may be heard out of the heart of
the stones :
We are but captives taken to grace a conquerors
triumph.
Out of a beautiful world which we had made
for ourselves ;
Here our lot is to seem and to serve in the house
of a master;
O for our Hellas once more, O for our freedom
and horae!
Thus, my friend, I sigh sympathetically with
the stones which are held in a kind of captivity
in a foreign land even at Eome. What I already
felt at London and also at Paris, comes over me
again here, to my surprise. What does it mean?
No end of this journey without seeing Hellas
herself.
Rome, April 20th, 1878.
To-day is Saturday of Holy Week and the
priest has just sprinkled holy water in my room,
so that I ara hopeful of beginning this letter to
you under good influences ; no evil spirit ought to
be lurking anywhere around. Every room in
the house has received the same sacred visitation,
and every house in the city, so that the demons,
I doubt not, have been pretty well driven out of
Eome. Usually it is said that eggs are given to the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 171
priest on this occasion, but now something else
is substituted. The people take this ceremony
with light-hearted humor, chatting, gesticulat
ing, laughing during its performance, and once
in awhile breaking a jest at the expense of some
good old saint. Places of business are also
visited, and I hope that the subtle arch-flend
called swindler, who seeras to have a special
emissary in many shops in the city, has been
banished forever with all his satellites'.
Ceremony is indeed a wonderful power here,
and the taste for it seems almost unaccountable
to our Northern natures. Just now the Italian
women of the house are chatting in the sitting
room, all speaking together with every variety of
gesture, movements of the shoulders, contortions
of the face; they are complaining, the com
plaint being that the priest had abridged the ex
ercises, that is, there was not enough ceremony.
I envy their light-hearted dispositions, it is indeed
a great thing in this world to be able to trick
the dark powers with a rite. My devils are far
more obstinate, in fact they seem often to be
made worse by ceremony. My chambermaid, a
simple old Italian woman, told me that she
needed only to make the sign of the cross on
her breast to put to flight all evil spirits. I have
no doubt but that she told the truth, and in my
opinion it would be doing her the greatest in
jury possible to take away frora her, or in the

172 BOME.
least impair the power of such an instrument.
But alas, in my hands it will not work, it only
enrages the demons the more;- and, however
much I may sigh for it at times, I know that it
is beyond my reach.
Doubtless the reconciliation of the soul with
itself is the supreme practical object of religion,
and any religion that is able to do that work for
man may be pronounced good and holy. There
is a strong propagandism going on here now, es
pecially on the part of the American Protes
tant missionaries. I say it not so much to you
as to myself, a change of faith would only work
evil. The people find reconciliation in the present
religious forms, hence are happy — why so much
worry to give them that which they have al
ready, if indeed they would have anything
equally good by changing thera? To cloud this
bright Italian nature, so joyous and unburdened,
with the dark questionings of the Teutonic
race, would be like spreading over the sunny
skies of Italy the fogs of the German Ocean.
Do we not flee out of the North to this clear
atmosphere to get rid of Chaos and old Night a
little while? For my part here I have been com
pelled to say even to Philosophy, my sweet mis
tress, "stand out of my sunshine." I do not
want a shadow cast over me ; I would hate even
the mighty shape of Alexander, if it should place

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 173
itself now between rae living in my happy tub
and this Italian luminary.
I go through with these ceremonies sometimes,
when I can with respect due to the Church
and my own conscience ; often I witness them.
But there is always a demon whispering in my
ear, what does it all mean? And unless I can
give sorae account of the cereraony to my intel
ligence, I get no benefit. For, think I to my
self, this rite must be an expression to human
spirit, and hence must possess some inner spir
itual significance. It is therefore a symbol; but
a symbol of what? It raanifestly has spoken
gently, yet deeply, to thousands of hearts for
thousands of years — but what has it said? All
honest huraan utterance should coraraand re
spect, but here is a divine utterance command
ing my obedience, yet its dialect I have still to
learn. All this is doubtless the work of one of the
aforesaid demons who plague me, by not per
mitting me to take these things on Faith. So
these ceremonies, instead of spreading their
sweet influences over ray emotions iraraediately,
have first to pass through my understand
ing where they often get entangled and lost.
To reach the heart they have to go by way
of the head — a circuitous and often perilous
route. Still there are some things that I un
derstand and enjoy in these religious rites;

174 BOME.
time and patience, I • hope, will open their
meaning more fully and bring them to speak
more directly to the feelings. Herein I am
aided by an Italian raaid who tells me the
legends of the virgins and the saints with a
Bimple grace and natural delight, revealing how
the unpreoccupied heart receives without ques
tion these things and is transformed by them.
Also to Art the same principle applies ; it must
be felt immediately, it must be seen to be an
utterance which is to be read at once in its own
native letters and not by the roundabout way of
the understanding. This is the eternal healing
influence of an Italian journey — it throws you,
feverish as you are, into the fountain of nature,
and compels you to feel her freshness just as she
bubbles out of the veins of the maternal Earth.
What better cure for the over-cultivation and
excessive speculative tendency of certain individ
uals, nations, ages, races ! Art, however, speaks
now more winningly and more clearly to rae
than Eeligion — whereof the fault is ray own. But
this letter threatens to run off into invisible
space, even here in the transparent skies of
Italy — so let it be reined-in to a sudden stop.
Tell your lady friend that Don Gregorio Pal
mieri, to whom she gave me a letter of intro
duction, sends her his kindest regards. I have
been in his cell at San Paolo fuori le Mura,
where I saw her autograph among those of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 175
cardinals and many dignitaries of the Church —
some being written in Armenian and other
Oriental tongues.
Rome, April 21st, 1878.
I find that it is five weeks since the date of my
last letter to you, and in that tirae I have heard
nothing from you. I have received your first
three letters, and when I am lonely, I take them
out of my drawer and read them over again, at
the same time recalling a lively image of your
self in some friendly conversation. Now I have
giv6n you a lengthy respite from' letter- writing,
but to-day I am going to trouble you again. In
the long run friendship has to be paid for, in one
kind of treasure or another; your payment at
present, in epistolary paper, is doubtless sorae
what burdensorae and in excess of the value of
the articles received ; but I know that you will
meet the demand.
I have changed my quarters from the indiffer
ent inn where I was lodged at first and where I
stayed more than a month, to a private house.
The improveraent in corafort is considerable, still
more, there is a cozy home-like feeling here which
is refreshing. There are no other lodgers — a
great blessing; besides, many little details of the
housewife meet the eye, which are entirely want
ing in a Hotel, such as brackets, neat curtains
for the window, pleasing pictures on the wall

176 ROME.
and chiefly the bed with its various appurte
nances. Nor should I for get the image of the
thorn-crowned Christ, carved in high relief,
which is hung over my bed ; while painted on
the head-board of the bed is the image
of the Dove with out-spread wings — symbol
of the Holy Ghost. These images are potent in
driving away the evil spirits, in the opinion of the
good hostess; so they are in truth, for I never
look at them without thinking of her solicitude
for my welfare ; in such an atraosphere no bad
spirit like unhappiness ought to find anything to
breathe , since all that the eye rests on utters a
prayer for my well-being.
My economical affairs are also satisfactory now
for the first time since my arrival. I have suc
ceeded in reducing my iraraediate expenses, by
which I mean board and lodging, to something
less than sixty cents a day. To be sure other
outlays have to be made, the greatest one being
for books — as herein I do not stint myself of
any work really necessary. One has to learn the
art of living cheaply and well ; I certainly feel
the want of no kind of food ; I dine for about
eighteen to twenty cents, four courses, wine
included. But just the proper restaurant must be
found, whioh requires some search.
To be sure, I do not like to pinch so close, I
would prefer apartments, and elegant dinners
at the best hotels of the city ; but so I cannot

A TOUR IN EUROPE. m
live and accomplish ray purpose at the sarae
tirae. It grows daily more probable that I shall
prolong my stay in Europe till next year, unless
something very urgent calls me horae to
America. This will require a careful husband
ing of all the resources which I possess. It is
my boast that I always attain my end by forcing
the means, however weak it may be, to do its
duty. So I intend to make the same sum of
money last ten months or twenty, according to
my purpose. Most people get into entangle
ment with their instruments ana so never reach
their end ; I hope that I may always keep myself
out of that company.
In the last month I have been doing a variety
of things, some of which would doubtless seem
ridiculous to you. Anything to give practice to
my eye and to drill into me the sense of form,
be it puerile or laborious or undignified, I hunt
for and work at. I trace lines, try to draw,
making pictures which my little Alice would
laugh at. These last few days I have stayed at
home and read poetry — and raade some too.
Did you ever really dive into Goethe's Eoman
Elegies? They are very fine, especially with the
delicious fragrance of Eoman Art to breathe in.
I even went back and read the old Eoman poet,
whom he imitated, Propertius. Many new
ideas about poetry dawned upon me, partic
ularly the relation of the old classic Poets
13

178 ROME.
to the world of Art amid which they were
placed. It is clear that they often described
merely the beautiful works of Statuary and
Painting before their eyes daily, hence often the
distinctness of the former. Still Poetry ought
to go before Plastic Art and give to it the shapes
which it employs. So Homer is really the cre
ator of Sculpture in Greece, as of nearly every
thing else. In fact the more you study these
statues here at Eome, the more you are driven
backwards to the Greek originals, till finally you
are compelled to take your Homer into your
hand and read him again. New delight and new
thoughts attend you, for now you see his Gods
.springing, as it were, into white raarble, yoti pass
through thousands of galleries filled with beauti
ful forms on lofty pedestals. His legends you
now read as so many reliefs placed in the frieze
of some ancient temple. Homer turns into a
gallery of sculpture; we pass, just as ancient
Greece did, from poetical to plastic shapes, the
epoch of actual historj' 2,500 years ago becomes
a part of our history, is an epoch in our soul-
life. So in truth ought all history to be taken
up within us ; the struggle of culture is just this :
to resume in ourselves as individuals the entire
spiritual treasures of mankind — each person is
to be all that his race has been. So the old Bard
has again taken strong hold of me — he now
produces a more creative impression than auy

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 179
other poet. Eecently I read the last book ol the
Iliad — Shakespeare never stirred me as deeply.
Homer isa ideal Greek Temple of the finest Greek
Architecture, filled with statues of the Gods and
Heroes, with walls decorated in relief and with
paintings which portray the great deeds of the
Greek race.
Rome, April 28th,, 1878.
Your excuses for delay are good, I accept them
in full for all past delinquency. How can I help
acquitting you when you plead your case so
well? Truly Minos would relent from his sever
ity, and he, you know, was an Infernal Judge.
Nor is it without pleasure for me to have young
ladies walk up to my tribunal and ask for mercy.
Still, don't commit the offense again, for it is
a still greater pleasure to receive your letters
than your excuses. Besides, your delay causes
me to reproach myself ; I thought perhaps that
two or three somewhat free expressions which
my pen suffered to run out along with the mk,
may have given a little too strong a shock for.
comfort. Now my fears are dispelled, and I
shall try to keep a double-bitted bridle on my
goose quill hereafter.
I am sorry to lose one contribution to the
letter ; still more sorry to hear that the cause is
illness. Send the young lady to Eome — that
will cure her, and the raedicine is pleasant to

180 ROME,
take. Indeed young ladies have been known to
take it without being sick at all. Send her to
Eorae — I shall receive her with open arms (fig
uratively I mean). Think of it — in a fortnight
with good luck she can be here. Perhaps she
will be able to write a line in the next letter —
just a line, telling me how she does. But it
pains me to think of that sunbeam darkened by
disease. Just at this moment a peculiar problem is
vexing me : it is, what is raaking that noise on
the floor over my head? One o'clock at night it
is and after; nobody is said to occupy the room
up there; absolute stillness reigns everywhere
but in that corner — rap, rap, rap, at intervals of
a few moments, then it stops entirely for an hour
or so. Animals I have imagined of every kind —
mice, rats, cats, dogs — but there is too muoh
method in it for any such theory. I would like
to go up there and investigate, but this would
rouse two families from their repose. There it
is again; rap, rap, rap, sometimes very quick and
loud, sometimes slow and indistinct. What can
it bei' Some disembodied spirit that has fol
lowed me from America and wants to communi
cate to me important news? It is the witching
time of night when ghosts are let out of their
tombs; I wish I could get a little nearer to it>
and find out whetherithas a natural cause (which
IS the case, I strongly suspect) or a supernatural

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 181
origin. When I am writing at my desk, it is
over my head; when I lie down on my bed, it
still seems to be over my head, following me
around; this may be a delusion, however. It
often wakes me up in the night with its rappings ;
if it be a spirit, it is very iraportunate. I spoke
to my landlady about it, jocosely suggesting the
theory of disembodied spirits — this led rae to
give her a long account of the spiritual rappings
of America; since then she has complained of
her dreams. But the old domestic has the best
way of getting rid of the demons — when she
enters on the threshold of my room, she makes
the sign of the cross upon her body; so, she
says, the devil him.self will be put to flight with
a growl and gnashing of teeth. — Rap, rap, rap,
again! What, returned so soon, old Flibberti
gibbet? Well, I shall go to bed, I am too tired
to begin a new page, to-morrow I shall finish this
letter with something else. But what can be the
cause of that rapping?
The chief object of ray admiration araong the
many kinds of visitors at Rome, is my country
women. Two classes of them appear here: the
rich, who are the best dressers in the world; and
the poorer, distinguished by their energy and in
telligence. Oh, the inevitable Yankee woman!
here will you meet her, red guide-book in hand,
dress tucked up, delight and appreciation in her
face; in the streets, in the churches, in the gal-

182 ROME,
leries, among the ruins, she is everywhere, an in
defatigable, untameable woman, never before seen
on this planet, I believe. Mo.?it of them I take
to be schoolmams, having earned their money by
their own industry ; after hoarding it for years,
now they are spending it in the realization
of a long-cherished dream. Look at her — she
seeras to fly along the Corso toward the
Forum, victory laughing in every feature ; two
or three generally togeth er, no man visible or
wanted. To-day they are the most enthusiastic
and appreciative visitors of Eome ; for have they
not studied up every point in Art, History and
even Topography far off in Yankeeland, in pre
paration for the journey here? The European
woman sinks into insigniflcance beside her, none
are to be found like her, excepting a few English
imitators and still fewer German imitators.
Alas ! says my Italian landlady, I would like to
do so too, but it would cost an Italian woman
her fair name. I know it would; the Yankee
woman alone dares undertake such an adventure ;
yet nobody breathes a suspicion against her, for
she would take your fine ladies' man and hang
hira upon a peg as Chrimheld did Siegfried. Yet
the women here would all like to do so, and they
see often with envy, in the Yankee schoolmam,
the realization of their own secret aspiration.
But also in the educatioii of women, Italy
claims historical precedence. I was lately read-

A TOUR IN EUROPE, 183
ing an article on the famous literary women of
Bologna, in whose University women were ad
mitted both as students and professors far back
in the Middle Ages. In the 14th century was
the young lady, Novella d'Andrea, Professor of
the Civil Law, equally famous for her learning
and beauty. It is said that she had to teach
with a curtain before her face, to shield her
youthful listeners frora the distraction caused
by her personal appearance. Is not some such
thing needed in the High School? But the most
famous of these female professors at Bologna was
Laura Bassi, who belonged only to the last cen
tury. This was certainly the most wonderful
woman that I ever read of, if the aforesaid
article tells me the truth : " she publicly discussed
philosophy in the Latin tongue without prepara
tion, she won victories over the most erainent pro
fessors at the age of twenty, she was one of the
most eminent teachers in Europe, was a great
poetess, sewed, wove and embroidered beauti
fully, as well as attended to her household, and
besides giving her daily instructions in the Uni
versity for twenty-eight years, she found time
to have a husband and twelve sons." That
beats the Yankee schoolniam, for this last
accomplishment, it must be confessed with
humiliation, she does not possess.
Yesterday I went to the first social gathering
since my arrival in Europe. Davidson who has

184 ROME.
been here some weeks and is very friendly, con
ducted me to the reception of an American lady,
whose apartraents are quite a resort for all
American visitors, I find. She has delightful
rooms, lives in a luxurious, dreamy way, sur
rounded by works of Art, and takes pleasure in
receiving friends and strangers from her native
country. She must be an interesting character
but I do not know her yet well enough to tell
you about her. She is somewhat advanced in
years — no danger.
Rome, May 8th, 1878.
Can you re-make the face for this torso of
Hercules? This I ask myself sitting before the
famous piece of a statute so named in the Vati
can Museum. It is headless, armless, alraost leg
less ; the larger part of two huge thighs reraaining.
Yet it has received the highest admiration from
Winckelmann down to the present. But the ques
tion how it shall be completed, has had very
different answers. The problera runs : given the
trunk arid two thighs, in what way is the entire
form of the hero called Hercules to be recon
structed? Thus it calls up a very suggestive
exercise in creative sculpture ; from a part one is
to re-make in idea the whole ; out of this frag
ment one is to see growing as it were the legs
arms, head, face with its look, and then the

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 185
significant attitude of the entirety. I have tested
myself a good deal in the presence of this torso,
and have drearaed away hours generating it anew
from its original conception. Such a practice
has its value, if one seeks to recover the creative
center of this art of the statuary and also of this
sculpturesque world.
But, my friend, I do not propose to serve up
in this letter an essay upon the torso of Her
cules, but rather, in accord with my promise to
you, to let you see what I am about and the way
in which I go at it. You raay not care to see
the statue, but I know that you do care to see
Snider seeing the statue. Well, I have given
you now a little glimpse of myself doing my
chief task here at Eome as far as I can judge of
it myself. Still there is another point connected with this
subject in which I think you will be interested
for its own sake. The Greeks in their Myth
ology represented three kinds or conditions of
Hercules: the mortal Hero full of labors on
earth; the imraortal Hero in Hades, still with his
bow and arrowsfor slaying monsters — Hercules as
supersensible form {eidolon) ; finally the Olym
pian Hercules who has been taken to the gods
and dwells araong thera on Olympus in happy
repose. All three stages of this greatest of
Greek Heroes (often called a demi-god) are dis
tinctly indicated by Homer toward the end of

186 ROME.
the Eleventh Book of the Odyssey. It is my
decided opinion that the present torso represents
the third Hercules. Moreover I would fain be
lieve that the probable time of its origin, the
first century B. C. at Athens, is hinted in the
statue — the Greek world is no longer alive and
free, but has been, as it were, transferred and
transfigured into an Olyrapian peace and con
templation. Now for another thought upon the present
theme. The statue of Hercules has drawn me
to his legend, out which so many works of art,
epic, dramatic, plastic, graphic, sprang in the
prime of Hellas. The fact of his double
parentage — a divine father, Zeus, and a mortal
mother, Alcmena — entices the raind to query
what this occurrence, oft repeated in the mythus
of peoples, means. The result was I scratched
down in the presence of the torso the following
little epigram, in Greek style and measure :
Hercules had two fathers, a mortal and an im
mortal ;
So had Theseus bold, Attica's pride and de
fense ;
So has every Hero, filled with mighty endeavor;
He is the child of some God stealthily gliding
to Earth.
The Greek Anthology, which I am now read
ing, has many such epigrams, or inscriptions

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 187
upon famous statues. The mortal husband of
Alcmena was also regarded as the father of Her
cules, though legend emphasizes the divine
element in hira as . coming from the Supreme
God. The grand mystery of genius born of the
humblest parents, and in turn begetting the
humblest children, long ago attracted the atten
tion of the myth-making fancy, which sought to
account for it by a miraculous supernal relation.
Out of this therae, too, I have spun a little epi
gram, which I am going to send you. Here it
is:
Why is the father of Heroes often the weakest
of mortals?
Why so seldom the sons have the endowment
divine?
Some invisible strand winds througli our domes
tic relation ;
Which reaching up to the Gods, draws a
Promethean spark.
Two are the households of man, and his kinship
ever is double.
To an Olympian hearth, though here below,
he belongs.
In this way I am trying to view the sculptur
esque world with the eye and mind of a Greek,
throwing off my shreds of thoughts into little
bits of verse after the antique pattern. The
consciousness which generated this people of

188 BOME.
multitudinous statues, as the expression of an
actual people, is what I would gladly experience
and appropriate, in order to carry it with me to
my home across the ocean, and then show it to
you. Already in the Louvre at Paris before the
Venus of Milo I began to propound to myself
the question: Can you coraplete her? Have you
developed the creative thought of her to the
point of seeing it reproduce her missing arms?
In like manner the Apollo Belvedere which is a
restored statue, compels the mind to a new res
toration of the work. You will easily understand
whither this re-creation of statues leads. It
does not stop till one is able to re-create in him
self the consciousness from which they all
sprang; in fine through sculpture he must reach
back to and commune with that original Greek
spirit out of whioh arose Art, Poetry, Litera
ture, Science, out of which indeed Europe itself
was born into civilization. The problem with
me now is. Can I get back to that genetic source,
to that primordial fountain-head, and take a dip
there? Then a European journey raay mean to
return from America to our starting-point not
merely in European Space, but also in European
Time, and thus to travel through our total Euro
pean origin.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 189
Rome, May 9th, 1878.
You, whom I have never seen, were the first
man outside my own little circle at St. Louis, to
recognize my Shakespeare work, years ago,
when it first began to appear in the Journal of
Speculative Philosophy. Now when these ef
forts of mine have been gathered into a book,
it is very gratifying to find you, who have de
voted your life to Shakespeare, and, on many
sides know more of the subject than I do, cora
ing forward with even a greater appreciation
than before. I have often wondered how so
much knowledge and interest could spring up in
Zanesville. I received your very cordial letter some time
ago, but through a variety of distractions I have
been unable to answer it till now. This is a
world wholly new to me, and I had to get some
what settled in it before attending much to other
things. Two months, however, make me feel
quite at home ; th-e streets are getting as familiar
as those of my own St. Louis, and even the ruins
which at first kept pulling rae in every direc
tion, are now beginning to relax their grip upon
my attention. I am lodged not far from the Fon
tana di Trevi, well known in history and romance ;
but the same thing can be said of nearly
everything that you brush against. Judge of my
situation : I am suddenly transferred from the

190 BOME.
newest part of the newest country of the world |
to the very old city of Eome; at once its
entire past springs up before the mind and.
insists upon being recognized and understood.
Three centres of interest group themselves
around you : Ancient Eome, Papal Eorae of the
Middle Ages, and Modern Eome, the capital of
new-born Italy. Each of these is further sub
divided into a thousand lesser parts, all of which
have some special look of enticement for the
student. As for me, I have as yet been able
to pay attention only to some galleries of an
cient sculpture — a very small fragment of an
cient Eome. You will, perhaps, be surprised at
what I am doing, and ask, "Why dost thou,
barbarian from the backwoods of America,
spend thy time in studying Sculpture, an Art
hardly belonging to the modern world?" I
would answer, because I conceive it to mani
fest Form better than any other fine Art, bet
ter than all other fine Arts put together. It is
wholly Forra, Forra indeed, in its one-sidedness,
since it is defective in the internal or subjective
element. I do not want to fall into philoso
phizing here in this friendly letter ; but you will
understand me when I tell you that I have been
driven to Eome to cultivate and possibly to
gratify my sense of Form — this is as near as I
can give expression to my object. During many
years I have felt great longing to come here —

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 191
behold its fulfillment. Whether I shall derive
that profit which I hope for is a question be
longing to the future.
Let me state another ground. The funda
mental principle of Sculpture is Eepose — divine
Eepose ; thus it is in the most direct contradiction
to our American life. Eternal Hurry is rather our
principle, rushing, dashing, crushing if you don't
get out of my way — so we go. What a blessed
thing in such a raging fever is a little Eepose !
or to look at it embodied in a God ! The best
medicine that I know of for the American people
would be a. dose of Greek Heathendom with its
sunshine and rest. Great is energy and by no
means to be cast away, but it must not be fev
erish or crazy. Look at that face of Olympian
Jove, the cloud-compeller; let it sink into your
soul and transform you, for it can regenerate
you ; it has an absolute serenity, yet behind this
serenity there is felt to be absolute power.
Serene power — if one could only get that boon,
it is worth all others put together.
But the trouble is, this spirit cannot be ac
quired in a few days or even in a few months.
It is a g^eat transformation ; as it takes the body
seven years to change completely, in a like man
ner we may suppose the soul to proceed slowly
in'its mutations, t have not come to Eome
merely to load my memory with facts or to stare
at the ruins for a short time ; I may be utterly

192 ROME.
foolish in my purpose, but it is my effort at
least to bring everything home to my feelings,
to hear what the spirit of a monument or of an
artistic product says. Failing the first time I have
often to repeat my visits, and as it were to caress
the secret out of the refractory Goddess.
What do you think? I have some interpreta
tions of statues and some of structures which
proceed somewhat like the interpretation of a
play of Shakespeare. The thought, the organi
zation, the arrangement are all to be considered.
But since the form of such a work is very differ
ent from that of a play, its laws and limits are
different. Yet a Greek teraple hangs together
by as strict a procedure as any poem.
Perhaps now I have given you a general idea
of my pursuits, of which for the present I shall
spare you further details. Hereafter I may be
able to tell you something more and better.
Doubtless you think that I have become a rene
gade to your great idol, Shakespeare. I hope
not. But I do feel that for the present I have
done my best for Shakespeare, and he has done
his best for me. Later I shall without question
resume the study of his works with new pleasure,
and I hope with new insight ; but the time had
come for me to take a fresh and different draught,
and to look into forms of Art to which his works
stand in emphatic contrast. He is still to me
the greatest name among writers ; Homer alone

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 193
stands a chanoe of sharing the palm equally
with him. When one comes into these South
ern countries, Horaer increases in significance,
while Shakespeare dwindles to smaller propor
tions. The English poet is still not naturalized
among the Latin nations; here at Eome he is
hardly more then a portentous Northern shadow.
On the other hand. Homer is certainly natural
ized among the Teutonic races ; so he is at pres
ent the raore universal poet, and universality is
assuredly one of the chief tests of greatness. I
have hardly spoken of Shakespeare since I have
been in Eorae, though the city is full of Araeri
cans and Enghsh. They, however, are either
absorbed in pleasure or in acquiring the peculiar
culture whioh is to be found only here.
Also I have tried to forget that I am the
author of a book; I raean that I have tried not
to think of it, and not to worry myself about its
success or failure. I have heard not a word from
the publisher concerning its prospects. I have not
read a single criticism upon it, except a few para
graphs incidentally sent rae by friends. I am in
total ignorance concerning its reception, but I
judge that it has created little stir by the silence
of my letters from home, which would be apt to
say something if there was anything to say. So
you see I cannot answer your friendly inquiry
after its success. I have no doubt you know
more about that than I do. If you have pub
is

194 BOME.
lished anything upon the book, I would like to
see the same. I need not tell you that I think
you have penetrated my views and studied them
more thoroughly and more sympathetically than
any other person that I know of, not excepting
my St. Louis friends. I look upon you as one
of the godfathers of the work — a relation per
haps which you will disown, but which I intend
to foist upon you. I am glad that you are so
pleased with the mechanical execution of the
book — the publisher made a name by this one
effort, which is about the only pay, I ara afraid,
that he will get for his care and expense.
To-day is our day for visiting the Palatine in
company with Commendatore Eosa under whose
directions its excavations were made. You are
aware that this was the hill upon which the
Palaces of the Caesars stood, besides many other
ancient monuments. The impression left by this
honeycomb of structures is not pleasant, it must
have been gloomy and forbidding with its sub
terranean passages, dark chambers, and very
small rooms. Yet it is characteristic : You feel
that it was constructed by tyrants who fled from
the face of the sun and of their fellow-men, who
burrowed in their own dark thoughts as they
have here burrowed with their buildings under
the earth. They bear among other names those
of Tiberius, Caligula, Domitian, and even
Nero — monsters into whose paws this world had

A lOUB IN EUBOPE. 196
been handed over as a plaything. The question
comes up with terrific energy on this Palatine
Hill, What was the guilt of our poor race that
brought upon it such a fate? For Eome was
then the world and our terrestrial ball was hardly
more than a foot-ball, kicked about capriciously
by imperial madmen, profligates, and wild beasts.
But the view from the Palatine is wonderful —
yet now I shall have to shut it off frora the eye
with a good-night, and bid you corae soon again
with a letter.

Rome, May llth, 1878,.
So you are interested in Davidson, and ask
me to tell you more about him. Well, he is a
very interesting man, and has shown hiraself
such here at Eorae, giving new proofs of his
wonderful erudition and brilliancy. These are,
to my mind, his two leading mental traits. I
have seen a good deal of hira during his six
weeks' stay in Eorae, we have often dined to
gether and had very pleasant reviews of old as
sociations at St. Louis. He devotes himself
largely to society and has taken me with him on
several occasions to social gatherings, where
nearly all nations were represented and all
tongues spoken. He does not seem to be
studying much ; I tried in vain to get him to go
with me to the galleries of sculpture, which art

196 BOME.
I know that he studied a good deal while in St.
Louis. His present bent, however, appears not
'to run in that direction, but rather toward
society, in which he certainly shows off to good
advantage, with his linguistic and other erudite
acquirements. Then his social initiative is
superb ; his winning, personal manner and his
melodious voice undertoned with a slight whiz of
the Scotch burr take hold from the start; in
deed, I have always thought that as a rule his
first address was better than his second, and
much better than his third. I should add that
he is not by any means in good health ; this may
account for his tendency to take things easy.
He has been exceedingly friendly, has even gone
out of his way to show me courtesies, all of
which I have tried to reciprocate.
Still the old difference between us remains,
and has risen to the surface two or three times
in little tilts,' which, however, at once passed
away, for both of us suppressed ourselves with
a kind of tacit agreement between us to keep
aloof from former grcmnds of antagonism. For
he knew as well as I that nature had made us
antithetic, in fact antipathetic, differing from
the bottom up in thought as well as in tempera
ment. As he was a teacher with me in the High
School for nearly five years, and as I was during
the latter part of this period his superior in au
thority, and was forced repeatedly to set him to

A TOUB IN EUROPE 197
rights practically and theoretically, I had to
study his character and specially to probe to the
ground of the serious shortcoraings in his voca
tion. I think I have stated to you my formu
lation of this fact as follows : Davidson lacks
the institutional sense. His was the most disor
derly room in the building, and consequently
he had no small amount of trouble, which would
sometimes overflow out of his door and involve
the whole school. At the same time he was
the most learned raan of the entire body of
teachers, and personally the most interesting;
he had also won greater distinction than any of
us. A remarkable versatility he showed both
mental and raorai ; he could whirl about in his
views and take a new and indeed opposite po
sition with great dexterity. But when his ver
satility turned to fickleness, which, I have
thought, at times reached down to his convic
tion, it certainly went beyond the limit at which
it could be called admirable.
Yet I must confess that his very amicable
spirit as well as many a little remark have caused
me to change in my feeling toward him and to
think that he may have begun that New Life of
which he has dropped me some hints. Evidently
Dante, of whom he raade fun at St. Louis, has
taken a great hold of hira and is possibly work^
ing his transformation. He still adheres to Aris
totle, but has turned away from the new German

198 BOME.
interpretation of this philosopher and is e-vi
dently seeking the medieval scholastic view of
the " raaster of tho.se who know. " In fact he
has reacted strongly, I raight say violently,
from Gerraans and especially frora German
scholarship. He saw ray Overbeck on the table where I was
writing and studying and immediately attacked it
with a rancour which seemed to rae almost
personal. Yet back soraewhere about 1868 or
1869 I know that he read Overbeck ( Geschichte
der Plastik), and frora it obtained really his
earliest adequate knowledge of Greek Sculpture.
In fact it was I who first pointed out to hira the
existence of the book which was on sale at
Witter's Gerraan Book . Store, where he pur
chased it. I had not read the book then, as I
was not ready for such a task. I cannot help
thinking that something happened on one of his
visits to Germany — what it was I cannot quite
make out. Also he assailed the whole sphere of
Gerraan Classic Philology with a considerable
outpour of vituperation. We were walking past
the store of a Gerraan bookseller at Eorae
(Loescher, I believe) when I pointed out the
Leipzig editions of the Latin Classics displayed in
the window. "Look at that", says I, "the
books which were written on this spot by the
old Roraans raany centuries ago are coraing back
to the same spot, edited by German scholars.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 199
printed by German workmen, and sent forth by
German publishers."
Then he did launch an invective at whose ex
travagance I simply laughed. He declared that
he much preferred the French editions of the
Classics, for instance Didot's. I could not help
adding that Didot certainly drew largely upon
German erudition, and some of his editors had
names suspiciously Teutonic. In fine his vehe
ment reaction against all Germandora is the most
striking change I have noticed in him. You
know that in St. Louis he went just in the other
direction: he lived with Germans (after quitting
Harris), he spoke German chiefly outside ofthe
school; he adopted German customs, notably
among other things drinking his quota of beer;
he contrasted the American unf avorably with the
German. No person of my acquaintance ever
Teutonized himself so corapletely as Davidson
did during his St. Louis period; Bernays called
him in print a Scotch- German.
Now, understand me, I am not criticising
this. Every man has a right to his own individ
ual development in his, own way — it would al
most seem to be his first right at present.
Moreover I did something quite similar myself,
for whioh sorae of my own blood reproached
me. When I first carae to St. Louis in 1864, it
was substantially a Gerraan city ruled by Ger
mans — a situation which arose from the Civil

200 BOME.
War then raging. I savv ray opportunity to get
acquainted with Deutschthum at first hand, and
I sailed in. The city at present hardly fur
nishes any such opportunity. With rae it was
an attempt to push back to my origin in speech,
custom and world-view; it was an instinct to
recover and renew my diraraed, if not quite lost
ancestral line. I doubt if Davidson had any
such native instinct in him ; his deepest racial
strand seeraed always to me to be Celtic rather
than Teutonic, in spite of claims whioh I have
heard him make. Far down in the bed-rock of
character he is a poetic Scotch Celt with an
Ossianic tinge. Hence it was not so difficult for
him to fling away in disgust his Teutonic cul
ture; at the bottom it was an outside matter
anyhow — somewhat as we see the genuine old
Eoman stripping off his Greek culture and
throwing it to the winds in the pinch of destiny.
By the way Shakespeare saw this very dis
tinctly, his Eoraan play of Julius Caesar is full
of it ; in fact he could find it already suggested
in his Plutarch. So I construe this astonishing
change in Davidson, which came to me with a
kind of shock. I thought at first that it might
be merely some of his banter or a passing mood,
but he has now persisted in this attitude for
weeks. This letter has spun itself out to a greater
length than I thought possible, but the matter

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 201
has taken such a strong hold of me that I have
repeatedly turned aside from the antique to study
Davidson. And now I must hint to you another
change which I think I have detected in him,
quite concealed as yet, and only ferraenting per
chance dreamily in his soul. It is this: David
son seeras to be Catholicising. What do you
say to that? Just about the last thing one would
imagine of him frora his St. Louis career. The
German free-thinker and the Greek heathen
(so I have heard him designate himself) gives
signs of undergoing a remarkable religious trans
formation. My own astonishraent may be ex
pressed by one of Brockraeyer's exclamations:
That beats the Devil and his grandmother. But
this letter raust corae to an end, else you may
deem it another bantling of the Infinite. I need
add, however, that this last act of the Davidsonian
drama I do not pretend to fathom ; I do not
know how sincere, how permanent it is ; some
times I say to myself in explanation, it is only
another changeful whim of a soul changeful by
nature. But it seems soraething more ; if I get
light myself , I shall let it shine on you. Stop,
insatiable pen ! not another word.

202 BOME.
Rome, May 13th, 1878.
I have been for a long time wondering why I
received no letter from you ; indeed I was a little
alarmed lest your aged arm might be palsied
by sickness. But to-day a happy notion struck
rae while I was rurainating the raatter ; I thought
that perhaps I had not duly notified 3'Ou of my
change of address. I went at once to the office
of the Araerican Legation and there found
three letters from you, dating as far back as
March. How vexed I felt at my own careless
ness ! But the mystery is now fully cleared up
and I hope that no such break will again occur
in our correspondence. Eecollect hereafter to
send to my address, Eome, Poste Eestante, and
not the American Legation.
Of course I read your letters with great de
light ; I ara rauch obliged to you for your bits of
news about the relatives. Such little points of
inforraation are more pleasant than anything
else you can write; they senci the agreeable
aroma of home across the Atlantic. Tell me
about the children, their progress, their prospects,
their wonderful doings, for children alone can
perform miracles in these late days. But the most
surprising fact is the two failures which you
mention. Is it possible that those men, who
have grown gray in the sole endeavor to make
money, have been swept out of all their posses-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 203
sions in advanced life? What a text to preach
from ! I would like to hear you dilate upon it,
nailing your ideas tight with apposite quotations
from Scripture, as: " Lay not up treasures on
earth where moth and rust doth corrupt," etc.
Yet I pity them ; it must be very hard to see the
whole effort of a lifetime crumble to ashes, and
to involve raany innocent people in ruin. Nor is
the narae of a bankrupt very savory, guiltless
though he may be. Now I am glad that I have
no raoney and that I have spent my time in
writing impossible books which do not hurt any
body. To see some product of your will survive
your flesh is a sweet revenge against crabbed old
Death. Tell rae more about the circumstances
of these failures if you have any further infor
mation. Died of two much land, is the coroner's
verdict. I too have found Eeal Estate very un
safe to stand on ; but, thanked be Heaven, I do
not owe anything. Yet when the very ground
gives way, whither can a person flee? I hope
the commercial strd^ss will soon relax, and if it
will only change the whole raethod of doing
business, it will yet be a blessing.
Certainly the length and violence of the
financial crisis in America are appalling. Nearly
every kind of security has been either annihilated
or seriously affected, and still the fever continues
its ravages. I do hope it may stop before at
tacking the national credit, which with that of

?204 BOME.
most of the States is yet quite intact. One thing
I regard as certain: it cannot long stand, if the
present depression continues, and even now it
stands amid the ruins of the manufacturing,
commercial and agricultural industries of the
country. Eeal Estate, the primal basis of all
monied security, has financially sunk out of
sight, like some islands of the sea ; it simply has
no value. The buyer gives pretty much wh.it he
chooses, it is like the merchandise in sorae Italian
town where fixed prices are unknown, and where
one often buys an article for one-fourth of the
money first deraanded. I speak of the property
which for sorae reason is thrown upon the mar
ket ; it brings nothing. The inference is plain : a
secure fixed investment, one upon which a raan
can rely, is hardly to be found to-day in Araerica,
for there is nothing to secure it. This convic
tion, when it reaches the minds of the people, '
must work very badly, for where is the motive
to economize? If they get any money, they will
spend it rather than lose it ; sorae will get rid of
it like rayself in a trip to Europe ; raany others
will waste it in extravagance or debauchery.
I have repeatedly heard here in Eome from
Americans expressions like the following : ' ' How
glad I am that I have received at last some
pleasure from my small earnings by this Euro
pean tour! There is my relative or my friend,
who, after denying himself in every way in order

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 205
to scrape together a little money, has lost it all
by the failure of a bank." Indeed I feel the
same thing myself ; I pray my bank shall not
break till I shall have spent my balance. The
sum total of these sraall savings is immense ; but
at present they are utterly lost to the business
of the country by being hoarded or spent. The
chief financial problem for the business man and
legislator seems to me to be this: to devise
some means which will give security to fixed in
vestments — then confidence will return.
I did not intend to devote this letter to finance
or social ecomoray, but soraehow or other it has
got started in that direction and cannot stop.
I do not ordinarily think of these matters, Eorae
is not in the business-world ; but the crash of
American credit has been so loud that the echoes
are heard even here. Sorae unexpected failures
in St. Louis also have set me to thinking what
all this stupendous ruin means — a ruin whioh,
though very different in kind, threatens to rival
what I see around me here in Eome. What can
be the cause o{ it? So I demand of myself,
turning my face away from sorae statue. There
must have been deep daraning guilt somewhere,
of which this visitation is the inexorable penalty.
I tell you retribution is the most certain if not
the deepest law of the universe ; man always has
that which he has done paiid back to him ; the
sweep may be a wide one, but return it will with

206 BOME.
time. What then has the commercial world
of America done to merit such a chastisement?
People will differ about the offense and the
degree of it; but I have my opinion which I am
going to tell you, though it may sound more like
the analysis of tragedy than a commercial dis
cussion. But then is not this crisis a financial
tragedy ?
The whole tendency of our habits of business
is well illustrated by one of its phases, the so-
called credit system. This seeks to put as much
time as possible between the day of purchase
and the day of payraent, thus always weakening
and undermining the day of payment. In other
words it places a barrier between the deed and
its consequence, it teaches men not to expect to
reap what they have sown. It is a curious fact
of human nature that people will buy if they
do not have to pay at once. Now what is the
secret motive of such conduct? Only one
motive can be assigned ; they think they may
not have to pay at all, if the tirae of payment be
long deferred ; they are ready to run the chances
of escaping the day of reckoning, and if they
succeed, it is somuch clear gain. The moral
effect of such a belief is manifest; dishonesty
spreads like a flash of powder the moment men
think that they will not be held accountable for
their actions. Now it is just this belief in

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. , 207
accountability which the habits and practices
of Araerican business have undermined.
I have often asked commercial men to show
me the valid grounds for the credit system. The
only answer that I have ever received is, it pro
motes business. But how does it promote busi
ness? By long credits, by putting off the day
of payment, by raaking dishonesty more easy
it buys men with its temptations. Poor human
nature will take a thing which it does not have
to pay for, and in like mannfer it will coramit a
sin which it is not punished for. True business
demands that the day of purchase and the day
of payment be brought together as nearly
as possible; true morality demands that the
day of guilt and the day of punishraent be
conjoined as nearly as possible ; the act must
not be separated from its consequences.
Since the war America has done nothing but
buy on credit ; the farmer of the retailer, the re
tailer of the wholesaler, the wholesaler of the im
porter, the importer ofthe European dealer — an-
endless chain of debts always deferred yet alwaysi
increasing — a labyrinthine net-work which has
entangled every man, woman and child in the
land. " Pay as you go " is the good old watch
word of the buyer; " make everybody pay as he
goes ' ' should be the watchword of the seller. Ee-
tribution has come upon business for weakening

208 , BOME.
its own basis, its own act has come home to
itself, its punishment shows poetic justice.
I shall not say anything further about the
crisis of which you doubtless hear more than
enough at home ; but I had to express a few of
the thoughts which have been surging through
my head for a good while upon this subject.
Eome fills me with the problems of the past,
that which stares at me on every side is ruin,
colossal ruin ; one continually asks why should
so much greatness perish. My faith is that it
was in consequence of wrong, of crime, of viola
tion; every ruin is a hand-writing which, when
it is deciphered, reads punishraent, and punish
ment always means guilt. I have just come
from a long saunter through Hadrian's Villa,
the magnitude and splendor of which defy the
imagination ; it was the country seat of a Eoman
Emperor, yet it looks like the remains of a rich
and populous city, being several miles in extent.
Why does it now lie there buried in rubbish,
with lizzards sunning themselves on its broken
arches, with the olive tree growing on its very
roofs and sending down roots into the imperial
charabers? Spell out the huge letters as they
lie scattered along the ground, and you will read
the doom of unforgetting Nemesis: "Here is
given back to you that which you have done."
This is the spot from which the History of the
World is to be read with the greatest profit ; for

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 209
here the siraple narrative is accompanied with a
most impressive commentary in the ruins and
monuments of the city. These speak in the most
emphatic raanner, raaking the past a reality
which drives horae .to the senses and feelings.
Still greater than the physical is the spiritual
ruin; the proudest human being that ever
lived — the ancient Eoman — has become the
Italian beggar; the eternal city herself lives
largely from the charity of the foreigner. See
ing on every side such results, we are driven to
investigate the causes; a new life begins or
ought to begin for the person who settles here
for a time with the determination of tracing
things back to their sources.
I have not yet made up my mind about the
time of ray return ; it will be governed largely
by the circumstances in America. I want to
stay another year, though a year is a long time
and I may get tired. But it is my purpose to
pay a visit to Greece, my trip to Europe will be
incomplete without seeing that old classic land.
This summer I cannot well go there on account
of the intense heat, so this journey will have to
be put off till next fall.
Nor have I yet determined whether I shall
stay in Eome during the hot season. I have
made many inquiries, opinions are very diverse;
sorae people say that the summers are dangerous,
others that they are healthy. If I can remain
U

210 BOME,
and work, the question is settled ; besides I feel
that I am accustomed to the rage of the St. Louis
dog-star, and he is probably not much worse
here. I am now at the central point of my
travels, every other place is of subordinate in
terest. I would like to stay till I have slaked
my thirst somewhat, for I raay never have an
other opportunity.
Do not send off to outsiders any more of my
letters, though I expect all the family living in
Cincinnati to see them. You know they are
soraetiraes pretty free. I would not write so to
everybody. Eecollect that I am no longer your
bumptious boy of sixteen ; recollect that a few
more turns of the yearly wheel will bring me to
forty. I hear from the little girl quite fre
quently ; she always writes me a short prattling
letter, which excites in me the keen longing to
see her again.

Rome, May 17th, 1878.
FiBst of all let me say that I am much obliged
for the letter of introduction which you have
obtained for me from your priest. I shall make
use of it next fall if not this summer, provided
I stay till that time. It is my desire to form
the acquaintance of sorae ecclesiastics when I
begin to cast a few glances into Papal Eome ; at
present I am wholly occupied with Heathendom,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 211
and am trying to worship in the teniples of the
old Gods. The good priest did not know, I am
afraid, to what an unsaintly soul he was giving
a letter ; but the advantage is mine and I owe it
to you. When I have traveled or rather evolved
down to the Middle Ages, it is my purpose to
become a good churchman, and sincerely to try
to understand and feel what Catholicism has
meant and still means in the world.
, Davidson has left the city and gone to Naples
where he intends to remain a few days and then
go to Paris. We made an excursion together
to Tivoli, a town about eighteen miles from
Eome, celebrated for its romantic situation and
its antiquities. It lies on the slope of a moun
tain, down which cascades are leaping; the
mountain streams fall into deep grots, in one of
which the Sybil was said to reside. The vol
canic rocks are wound and twisted and curled in
every possible manner, producing a natural ara
besque which sometimes takes the form of huge
monsters. I saw a Triton and a Dolphin ; the
grot of Neptune is one of the names very appro
priately given to a subterranean chamber here.
It is not hard to transport yourself into the
time of the primitive inhabitants and behold a
mythology springing up around this fascinating
scenery ; indeed if I staid in the locality for a
long period, I would make a mytholo'gy of my
own,and people these abodes with invisible shapes.

212 BOME.
Wandering along the deep valley, peering into
the weird caverns, observing the thousandfold
jets of the water, forms ofthe vegetation, twists
of the rock, one feels the rayth-raaking spirit —
the original necessity of accounting for these
wonderful processes by the agency of supernat
ural beings.
The village though in the most picturesque
situation, has a dingy appearance; seen from
a distance, it is in the most striking contrast
with bright and beautiful Nature who embraces
it on all sides. Indeed this atmosphere is very
trying to the works of raan ; they raust be made
of raarble and kept in the cleanest and most
polished condition, if they will rival the clear
skies, the translucent air, and the graceful out
lines of the raountains. Every where along these
slopes stood the immense villas of theold Eomans,
built from the spoils of the world and without
any regard to expense ; still many of the' ruins
are visible with a substructure of brick and mor
tar more durable than Eome herself. With a
little aid from the imagination we can still see
scattered on the sides of the mountains white
edifices of Greek architecture, shining through
the groves — partially hid, yet partially re
vealed by the rich foliage. In the morning be
fore breakfast we clirabed to the surarait of
Mount Catillo which overlooks the town and the
valley of the river Teverone; most beautiful

A TOUR IN EUROPE 213
was the ancient temple of Vesta overhanging the
gorge of the roaring streara ; in shape it is round
and still has raany of its Corinthian columns
standing which encircle it in the forra of a col
onnade. How the town raust have shone in
the raorning sun, filled with its temples, its
villas, its public buildings ! Now it is a dirty
spot on the landscape. Why did not the people
remain Heathens, says my heathenized part to
myself, and preserve their beauty? In antiquity
they lived in simple harraony with nature, they
adjusted theraselves to her as in a mirror ; their
works only sought to express her more truly than
she herself is; their life was a continuous enjoy
ment, an eternal rapture of the senses. They
lived, they never died a hundred tiraes in life —
existence was not to thera a Death-in-Life.
Why surrender theraselves to the dreara of what
is to be, and dwell in everlasting discord and
struggle with their kind and most beautiful
mother, Nature? Alas, they could not help it —
a baby cannot help growing to manhood.
The streets are narrow and filthy ; indeed it is
hard to get used to an Italian street; I always
think that I am in an alley of an Araerican vil
lage. Stables for cows and horses front the
leading thoroughfare, while the house adjoining
may contain a store for dry goods or groceries.
You look into the lower stories, often without
windows ; dark and disraal must be the life there.

214 ROME.
though the mild climate entices man into the
open air away from his own wretched works.
Beggars assail you on every corner, sometimes
leaving manly toil_to ask for a cent. Oh this
Italian beggary — it is the despair of the well-
wisher of Italy. How can a people be resur
rected that has lost its spirit of independence?
So many attempts to excite compassion I have
never seen — so many lame, blind, sore, sick,
ragged and dirty persons, striking an attitude of
prayer before the stranger and invoking the
blessings of all the saints — for a single penny,
which they do not generally get."
Do you know that I blame the Church largely
for this condition of things, on account of its
doctrine of charity? Indiscrirainate alms-giving
is a curse to any society, but when it is made a prime
article of religious duty, it elevates the mendi
cant into the most important instrumentality for
attaining eternal bliss. He becomes even inso
lent and thinks that he is conferring upon you a
great favor by giving you such a good and fre
quent opportunity of gaining the favor of Heaven.
The connection between beggary and charity be
comes manifest in Italy, and one almost grows
hard-hearted toward real misfortune on account
of being iraposed upon by its counterfeit. Then
too what a harvest of lies grows up in the charac
ter ; it seeras as if half the people you see shuf
fle lamely along or assume some eleemosynary

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 215
attitude — dissimulation it is in nearly every case.
Charity should be taken away from the cliurch
and from the individual ; it belongs to the State
or Municipality to organize charity into institu
tions protecting the unfortunate, driving off the
impostor, relieving the citizen from care and
from alms. Do I seem to you to assert these
things too harshly?
I have heard that you intend paying a visit to
Europe this summer — why not come to Eome?
You could be here by the first of July, if not be
fore ; this would give you several weeks in the
city before the hottest season, or at least before
the unhealthy season, which is said to be worst in
September. Besides, from all that I can learn,
Rome is not more sicklj' or hotter than St. Louis
in sumraer. I have not yet compared the tables
of temperature — but judging by this preliminary
month of May, it is not so difficult to stay in the
city during the warm season ; certainly I have not
yet felt the lassitude which I always feel at St.
Louis in the spring. I shall probably reraain
here, at least my movements will not depend on
the season. I need hardly assure you that I am
at your service for any arrangements you might
wish to make. Living, too, is very cheap and
good in Eome, if you but look for it with care.
By the time this letter reaches you, another
scholastic year will be at its close, and all ofyou,
my old associates, will be busy preparing for the

216 BOME:
grand termination in Mercantile Library Hall.
Tell me in a confidential sort of way, how mat
ters have turned out? Cast the horoscope ofthe
future of eur circle for me, so far away here in
Eome. Give me a little resurad of the literary
activity of the winter — what you have gained,
what you have not? Do not consider anything
too trivial ; I know that you have much to tell,
if you would only think so. But if you fetch
the news yourself to Eome, you need not write
it, only let me hear from you at once, lest I may
pull up stakes and depart. I am expecting now
some St. Louis friends — Germans whom I sup
pose you did not know — to-morrow they will
probably arrive. So time rolls on rapidly, in
tending evidently to whirl me back in his current
to St. Louis some day — but he has not borne
me half way there yet I hope.

Rome, May 23rd, 1878.
So you have at length written. My theory
was that a letter of yours had been lost, and I
had caused the Post Office Clerk to rummage
through his packages in search of it. Soraetiraes
too my imagination began to play in a lively
manner, picturing sickness, absence, even aliena
tion as the ground of the delay. But the arrival
of your letter has cleared away all doubts, and
left behind the same old pleasant image of your-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 217
self — friendly, healthy, of aldermanic em
bonpoint. I wish that I could spend with you a
week or two of your recess ; or, what would be
better, that you could spend the whole ofit with
me here in Eome.
I am muoh obliged for your interest in the
little girl ; she always considers a visit at your
house as the very sumrait of conceivable pleasure.
Many an unwilhng act have I purchased from
her by the promise of such a visit. She has already
written several letters to me, short but precious,
confined chiefly to sending me a kiss. When
I wish to indulge in a pleasant dreara, I imagine
her and myself ten years hence to have come
to Rome and to be going the rounds which I now
make alone ; she being a young lady not without
some sprightliness (it is only a dream you know)
and I, what? A man past middle age, with en
vious silver streaking the shock of my hair. But
to look over into that bottomless abyss called the
Future, and to keep a steady eye on its Stygian
darkness for even a few moments — it makes me
shudder. If the imagination did not throw its
golden light into that chasm, man would destroy
himself rather than enter -it alive.
This I know is not the spirit of a Christian,
who always looks to the Future for his happi
ness ; the present life is the trial, the dark exist
ence. But I ara trying to work out the
heathen consciousness that the Present alone is

218 ROME.
>
the bright, clear world ; that is , if it be relieved
of its grossness and cast into the pure forms of
Art. Enjoyment in its true sense is the best
doctrine which antiquity has taught us; this,
I have come to believe, is its greatest contribu
tion to the culture of the race. For true enjoy
ment has the eternal element in it ; it is not a
debauch, a frenzy, but a perennial fountain
sending forth waters of happiness. It is the
eternal sensuous (ewig sinnlich) realized in Art.
For the first question of culture, is» What shall
I do with these senses of mine? To this ques
tion the Ancients, especially the old Greeks,
gave an adequate answer. Eigid Morality with
its abstract principle has tried to solve the same
problem ; I do not think that it has been very
successful, though I would not in the least dis
parage its efforts. But Morality must stop
carrying on a war of extermination against the
senses, and find some common ground of recon
ciliation. I have just come from a German tavern here,
where one sees all the Germans, artists and trav
elers. A jolly company it was, ranged on both
sides of a long table. Distinguished men were
there, women too, but they all threw off their
dignity in a merry carousal. Odd characters from
every part of the old Fatherland frequent this
place — students, making the tour of Italy on
foot, professional wanderers, schoolmasters.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 219
even professors. I see old men who have saved
a little money realizing the dream of their life
by a pedestrian trip to the classic land. I ven
ture to say that these men as a class are the most
intelligent visitors of Eorae; they know the
ancient authors, have studied antiquities from
youth; and now they look at the objects which
they have read of so much with a sort of
ecstasy. One man whom I often see on the
Pincio I can never look at without enthusiasm ;
seedy are his garments, old-fashioned, ill-fitting;
his shoes are covered with the dust of the day's
perambulation, what is to be obtained in Eome,
he is getting, for not a man in the city equals
his industry and endurance. How he enjoys the
music, the view from the hill, the statuary —
a heathen spirit that has wandered from some
German village, whither it has been banished in
the flesh, has at last found. its own joyous
world. Three or four days ago the expected St.
Louis friends arrived, whom yoa are acquainted
with. They have already rented a suite of
rooms and intend to remain a mbnth. It is ex
tremely pleasant to see these familiar faces here
so far away from our old home ; now I shall not
lack company of the most agreeable kind.
Davidson, too, is in the city just now, but will
leave it in a day or so. I dined with him to
day and had a very friendly chat about old times

220 BOME.
and common acquaintances. He has just re
turned from Naples and Monte Cassino, of which
he gives a very glowing account.
Eumors of socialistic outbreaks in America are
sometimes published in the Eoman newspapers ;
do you expect any danger at St. Louis? The
Devil has literally broken loose in Europe and is
slashing about in a fearful manner. I do not
care to touch politics, as the whole subject is
just now a very dark one, and I do not like
either side. Most of the Germans whora I meet
are very ardent supporters and admirers of the
Bismarkian cast-iron despotisra, which is better,
if one must choose, than anarchy.
I do not think that I shall go to the Paris Ex
position. It would deflect me too much aside from
ray course. My purpose is to hold out as long
as I can at Eome during the sumraer, and then go
to the neighboring seashore. Here is the place
to work in; till my task is done, I cannot possi
bly be as well off anywhere else. My surround
ings are pleasant and inexpensive, the objects of
study are mostly here, books lean get and other
aids ; it would be foolish to leave these advant
ages at present.
The only drawback which I have yet experi
enced is that the climate or the food and drink of
Eome has a tendency to make me nervous. One
cup of tea last evening caused me to lie awake
till broad daylight — at St. Louis it would re-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 221
quire several cups to produce such an effect. I
suppose however that I may have been excited
also from other causes. There is sometimes a
low rapping on the floor above my head ; this
little noise will not let me go to sleep, not on
account of the loudness of the sound, but simply
because I get into a worry by trying not to let it
disturb me ; my struggle to tranquillize myself
makes me very untranquil. So too insects
trouble me more in iraagination than in reality ;
it all comes from pure nervousness which I know
to be the cause, but still I cannot help the diffi
culty. I have not seen a copy of the Western since it
passed into new hands, nor have I heard much
about literary matters in St. Louis. I am glad
to see that you are still pegging away at your
novel, I hope to have the pleasure of hearing it
as a complete work by the time of my return.
Our friend Brockmeyer is still going to write his
great work — going, going, but never gone.
Would that he could be brought to convert a few
of his gigantic possibilities into realities I

222 BOME.
Rome, May 25th, 1878.
Yours was an unexpected pleasure to me which
I hope you will continue to repeat. Sometimes
I become a little depressed, and need a good word
to revive my spirits. I cannot always study,
cannot always be looking at things, nor is the
friend just at hand always, to whom I can betake
myself. Your letter imparted to me its own de
lightful buoyancy.
Just now I was interrupted by the attack of
an enemy who has to be chased down before
any other work can be performed. I felt him
enter my domain just where my drawers and my
socks form a junction, that is a little above the
ankle; his presence was announced by an un
comfortable crawl, as well as by two or three
savage gouges into the flesh. It is the flea, the
arch foe of the stranger who tarries at Eome
during the summer, infecting his room, his
clothes, his Bed ; he cannot go out on the street,
nor can he stay at home without a visit.
Personal cleanliness will not keep off the mon
ster; eternal vigilance alone is the price of lib
erty from the domination of this tyrant. You
must forever be standing on your guard, ready
to rush into battle the moment an enemy ap
pears. Parts of my body are covered with
wounds where he, having caught me in the
night, has stabbed me. The flea is a regular

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 223
devil, with complete outfit ; he has cloven feet,
grabbers and horns; pick hira up and look
at him; a raagnifying glass is hardly needed
here, for nature has raagnified him enough
already — both the nuraber and variety of his in
struments will astonish you. Nasty little de
mon he is who thrusts you into a Hell of
torment, if you do not watch and fight.
But I have becorae somewhat accustomed to
his presence and rather take pleasure in the
exciteraent of chasing him down. Besides he
possesses infinite cunning — another quality of old
Satan's; at first he beat all my strategy and never
failed to escape till I learned the art of war
from him. Then that gigantic world-defying
leap — seven league boots were baby shoes in
comparison. Some naturalists have calculated
how many lengths of his own body the flea
can jump. I have forgotteri the measur-
ments, but I feel certain that if I possessed
relatively the sarae capacity as the Eoraan flea,
at a single leap I could pass over continents and
oceans and be with you in Pincinnati . to-night.
Here however comes a mystery which I have not
yet been able to solve ; stated in the form of a
question it is this : Where does the flea light
when he leaps? On this point my experiments
have been manifold ; I have spread the floor of my
room with the sheets of my bed in order that I
might more easily observe his dark large body on

224 BOME.
the white material ; then I have let him loose in
the middle of it, but never raore did I catch a
glimpse of that flea, he leaped into the invisible
legions of space beyond the puny vision of mor
tals. He too furnishes me some sport ; but a
few hours ago I saw a very grave majestic-look
ing Eoman matron, while sitting in a parlor
with corapany, clap her hands to her thigh and
suspiciously scratch — Honi soit qui mal y pense.
But what could I help thinking of? I only
transferred to her my own thousandfold ex
perience. This is doubtless enough and more than
enough about the entomology of the situation,
though the subject is by no means exhausted ;
but I am aware that you at home are not without
opportunities of studying it and not without
experience. Let me then give a leap, not unlike
that of the above-mentioned insect, to a new
subject. You have often heard of the Italian skies ;
they deserve all their fame. The atmosphere is
very transparant. On a fine day it seems almost
as if you could reach out your hand and touch
the villages on the Alban Hills though they are
from fifteen to twenty miles distant. Still I doubt
whether this beautiful clearness is greater than
that which we could see at Cincinnati or St.
Louis, if the air were not filled with such im
mense quantities of coal-smoke. Eome has no

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 225
manufactures ; I can now recollect of seeing only
two of those high chiraneys wliose summits belch
forth such thick black fumes from every part of
an American city. The industries of South St.
Louis alone would fill up the basin of the Eoraan
Campagna with a smoke which would veil all
the beauty of the classic land. The praise of
clearness is just, but it comes mainly from the
English whose country is almost without that
quality on account of its fog and its soot.
This clear sunny atmosphere is therefore
nothing uncommon for an American eye; but
that which is uncommon and very beautiful is the
outlines of the landscape. Looking at the hills
against the transparent sky, we can see them
move in gentle swells, like the waves of the sea;
yet the curve of beauty is never lost, the contour
never becomes rough or exaggerated. They re
mind the beholder of sculpture, as nature so
often does in this land; there is repose, yet it is
full of life ; these lines that run so gracefully
along the horizon must sink deep into the souls
of those who look at them every day. So inti
mately connected with Art is Nature, who always
furnishes the primary but indispensable instruc-
tioH. One almost thinks that he can point out
the lines which trained the eye of the old sculp
tors, as they in youth gazed upon these Southern
hills. In like manner Nature has furnished the models
15

226 BOME.
for the painter, who has often but to look into the
faoe of the fair maid living next door to him in
order to be filled with a vision of beauty. On the
whole I think that it may be said of the Eoman
women that they are the most beautiful in the
world, that is, the women of the people, of the
middle and lower classes. You will often see
the finest Madonna faces in the streets, or at the
churches in the act of devotion. I saw a serv
ant buying vegetables at the market; I stood
and looked at her as long as she stood still, and
when she moved off, I "followed in the distance
casting unobserved glances — certainly she had
more beautiful features than I ever beheld in
a picture. They go without bonnets ; their hair
is often carefully dressed, so that the face is
well set off, but the rest of their attire is negli
gent, even dirty not infrequently. Disgusting
is the sight of soiled linen sticking out at the
breast or at the wrists, or when the skirt draggles
in the street; it suggests filthy underclothes —
horrible, unpermissible thought, yet too often
forced upon your mind by the personal appear
ance of the Eoman woman. Yet she is a beau
tiful being, only rivaled by her Parisian sister
who has not so fine features but far excels in
dressing. Even the market girls at Paris are a
dehght to look upon on account of their clean
white aprons and tidy appearance. But Eome is
the converse.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 227
Rome, June 1st 1878. ,
Would you ever have thought it? In the
heart of Eome a kind of a German festival. It
would have done your Teutonic soul good to have
been with us. A company of German-speaking
people from every quarter of the globe nearly,
got together — men and women, artists, soldiers,
travelers. First a dinner at the Goldkneipe, with
song, story, mandolin and of course, drink; one
ardent patriot, a lame artist, kept throwing into
the entertainment some political seasoning which
might be called Bismarckian pepper. But the
real tussle was over the merits of the two famous
German guide-books of Eome — Baedeker and
Gsell-Fels — I supporting and voting for the
latter. After settling this problem or rather agreeing
to leave it unsettled, we concluded that we must
do something worthy of the old Fatherland and
of ourselves. What shall it be? After the
usual national difference of opinion (you know
the proverb — two Germans, three opinions),
universal applause followed the suggestion of
one of the corapany that we all go to the wine
shop of Est, Est, Est, and there celebrate the
memory of the old Augsburger prelate Johannes
Fugger, who drank himself to death on the good
wine of Monte Fiascone, that is Mount Bottle —
an actual place out by Viterbo, in spite of its

228 ROME.
suspicious though very characteristic name. I
cried : Ach Himrael ! Another banquet, and at
this time of night! But the enthusiasm carried
me along, and like a whirlwind we swept into the
tap-room on Via Palombella waking up the old
woman in charge.
Now I must tell you the story of the person
we celebrated, drinking the same kind of wine
that sent him to bliss. It is, I should say, the
most faraous Gerraan story in Eorae ; at least I
heard it told by Germans oftener than any
other. The said Fugger taking a trip from Ger
many to Eome on some ecclesiastical duty, sent
his servant ahead to test the wine of the various
places he was to pass through, and, where it was
good, to write on the door of the wine shop Est
(it is). At Monte Fiascone the servant wrote
thrice for emphasis Pst, Est, Est, and to this day
the wine there is so named. But the German
ecclesiastic never reached Eome, never, indeed,
got beyond Monte Fiascone. In its church, San
Flaviano, is an inscription on a tomb by the ser
vant in very broken Latin which tells the story :
'^ Est, Est, Est. On account of too much is
(est) here Johannes Fugger, my master is (est)
dead." The story was again told in the wine shop
with many a merry decoration between the sips.
In fact, Fugger becarae a kind of heroic theme
played with numberless whimsical variations by

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 229
the whole company. Finally a song broke out
which I have heard you intone at St. Louis :
Per Papst lebt herrlich in der Welt. Then I
sneaked off and went home to bed.
What a Gothic festival in this classic land !
As I lay thinking of the strange Teutonic freaks
of the evening, Goethe's Walpurgis-Night
came into my head, portraying a scene on the
Blocksberg, one of his wildest, most fantastic
pieces of Northern witch-work'. And yet he
wrote it here at Eorae, in a kind of inner Ger
man reaction against this ever-harmonious classic
art. His suppressed Gothie nature broke loose
and welled forth in that poetic outburst of weird
grotesquery. So it was with his countrymen
to-night. But to-morrow we shall all be hasten
ing to the galleries to view and appropriate the
serenity and happy proportion of that Greek
statuesque world, which we have somehow to get
inside of us, or remain barbarians. German
Faust must wed Greek Helen, even if now and
then he slips away from his beautiful spouse,
and has a regular Walhalla night of it on
Brocken.

230 BOME.
Rome, June 14th, 1878.
Your description has made rae live over again
many an agreeable hour passed in your house. I
would like to see> your company before it dis
perses for the suraraer and learn what progress
you all have made; but it is doubtful whether I
shall have this pleasure even next summer, not
to speak of this sumraer. Europa still holds rae
with a tight grip, or rather I still cling to her
with all the desperation of a lover, and as long
as I take such interest in her society and conver
sation, I cannot forsake her. I do not wonder
that even old Father Jupiter fell in love with
her, and carried her off across the sea; I intend
to do the same thing myself, if I can only get
her on ray back, or rather into my head. But
it will take at least another year's coaxing with
doubtful results even then. One thing is cer
tain : I ara going to bring away some of her
dresses — fair silken garments I hope, and not a
handful of old rags long since worn out and
thrown aside.
The difficulty here as elsewhere in this world
is to separate the Permanent from the Transi
tory. Around every great work, particularly in
Eome, is heaped a mass of intellectual rubbish —
the accumulation of ages — which often hides it
more effectually than the dirt now being carted
away from the Eoman Forum. The Laocoon,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 231
standing up so clearly in the Vatican, to many
eyes is growing invisible, nay is buried quite as
deep as it lay four centuries ago under the soil
of the Esquiline. A good word upon it is always
good and in season ; but it is made the basis of
endless conjecture, disputation, doubt, until the
hard white marble begins to dissolve into an in
distinct impalpable fog that is everywhere and
nowhere all at once. Such worthless toggery
Europa must leave behind, together with all her
band-boxes, when she crosses the ocean with rae.
The truth is, I suppose, that I have becorae so
infatuated with the undraped, that I want either
no clothes at all or only those which reveal the
true shape within.
Italy is indeed the land of the undraped, not
merely in Art, but also in the customs of the
people. My landlady, a beautiful young woraan
of nineteen, throws off all outer garraents during
these hot days, and flits through her rooms in
those snowy robes whioh always bring to mind
the repose of night. I would be a little embar
rassed, but her husband is often present and
seems not to know the difference. Her jet-
black hair and sparkling eyes with red cheeks
shading into a light brown, are splendidly set off
against her white flowing garment, whose free
folds show, in an easy negligent way, the full
ness and beauty of every member of the body.
Who could help drinking in artistic inspiration

232 BOME.
when such shapes are continually hovering
before his eyes?
Were I not too old, I would turn sculptor in
order to try to put some of them into everlasting
marble. I imagine that many custoras of the
present Italian life are transraitted directly from
ancient Eoman times ; it often happens that some
small circurastance recalls and explains a clas
sical author or event. So the draped as well as
the undraped statue becoraes endowed with life
here and has its place araid the people. On the
streets of Eome, Painting and even Sculpture can
easily be accounted for ; there walks the model,
look at her, a Madonna, or perchance a Venus;
examine a little further and you will find the
social conditions, under which alone Art can
thrive. Although the Italians do not drape the
body as much as Northern peoples, they
make up the deficiency by draping the
character. Actions are too often hidden im
penetrably deep in dissimulation; that clear
transparency of soul called candor is a virtue
unknown in Eome. There is little downright
stealing; but cheating is the first principle of
commerce. The stories told by the resident for
eigners chime to one key-note : universal trick
ery and small remedy from law. For the first
month I believe that I was swindled in nearly
every purchase I made — still I ought not to

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 233
complain, for certainly everything is cheap
enough. This Italian foxiness is indeed a great
historical study — it is the mother of modern
diplomacy, of papal domination, of "Machiavelli.
Yet what wonderfully sweet appellations do they
not heap upon you — their language turns into a
perfect garden of the most fi-agrant flattery,
particularly when you threaten to leave your
lodgings. All the incense, however, is thrown
under the nose chiefly in order to benumb the
judgment. You must never make a literal
translation of these endearing expressions into
homely blunt English, else awful is your decep
tion. Be like Ulysses in the grot of the en
chantress — drink off the sweet beverage to the
bottom of the cup, but always have by you an
immortal plant which keeps the head level.
But in spite of their perversities, you cannot
help liking these beautiful beings. Italy is a
maid whom the world woos ; her very naughtiness
becomes attractive after a little tirae. You love
to lie under her light blue skies and have her
scatter rose-leaves over you, although you know
that the little witch is raerely seeking to lull you
into a dream while she intends to abstract some
coin from your pocket. But her presence is well
worth the money whioh she gets by both fair and
unfair means, especially from me. Enchantment
and instruction go strangely hand in hand ; in
your room you read of the greatest events of the

234 BOME.
world's history while under your window rise the
strains of the most deliciously effeminate instru
ment, the mandolin ; the Great and the Small
blend together in the feelings, producing the
strangest harmony. Full of the greatness of the
Imperial Caesars, you set out for the Palatine,
their residence — what a change comes over you
when you peer into the face of that flower-girl
who stands in your path ! Do not laugh at my
susceptibility, it is the crowning glory of the
traveler to raake a roraantic adventure out of the
common-place fact.
A few days ago I went to the Barberini Palace
in order to look at Guido's faraous picture of
Beatrice Cenci, which you have doubtless seen.
I stood before it a long tirae and assuredly the
impression which it makes is very powerful.
That pale face turns around and looks at you out
of its frame, it tries to smile and even coquette
a little with you, who are gazing on it; the at
tempt, however, is very difficult; there is a dark
sorrow overshadowing these features, unfathom
able and horrible as Erebus. The two elements so
happily blended in the picture are,. the desire of
pleasing and attracting the world on the one
hand, while on-^the other hand this quality is
overwhelraed by sorae dread calamity of soul.
Leave ciut of mind the supposed history of
Beatrice, which merely confuses and misleads;
take the face and that which it says, and that

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 235
alone ; thus the work may be understood in its
deepest purport.
What is the ground of the universal fascina
tion produced by this picture? For, to tell the
bold truth, it is the most popular work of Art
in Eome, raore enthusiastically admired and
more deeply treasured in the hearts of women
particularly, than any product of even Eaphael's
pencil. Beatrice is a woman, she has a female
pecuharity — she turns aside frora her calamity,
casts a glance upon the spectator and smiles.
What woman has not done the same thing, in
one way or another? A lady Of beauty and
fashion, used to the adrairation bf the world,
now under some torment, the exact nature of
which it would be rash to declare — she cannot
lay aside her own character, the ocean of sor
row cannot drown her desire of pleasing. So
she turns her head around and smiles, going to
the scaffold perhaps — nay going to Hell itself
in her own opinion, possibly.
Perhaps you would like to hear my impression
of a celebrated work of Sculpture, Michel An
gelo's Moses, which I saw yesterday for the first
time, though I have often looked at copies of it
in America. Powerful beyond utterance is the
statue taken as a whole, when the details are all
toned down in the general effect. But with sorae
of these details I cannot reconcile rayself; es
pecially the two horns rising out of the head are

236 BOME.
repugnant ; I have thought of many grounds to
justify this strange proceeding of the artist, but
I have given up the attempt, it must remain a
raystery to me. To call them rays of light —
just two rays of light — that will not do. But
other details are the most perfect of their kind ;
that beard was neyer equalled on Olympus.
The best part is the left arm — what mortal
man does not trerable at the sight of it, though
lying in repose there across the body? It con
tains the possibility of infinite strength ; one
asks involuntarily where did the artist get that
arm? But alas ! the face will not speak to me,
or only mutters discordant unintelligible sounds.
How gladly would I hear the great lawgiver
converse a little ! Perhaps if I cultivate more
sedulously his acquaintace, his lips which are now
only stone will begin to move with life and utter
something. Michel Angelo is the greatest, most universal
artist that the world has ever seen ; the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel is the- supreme work of
Art. His genius still dominates over Eome like
a God ; everybody grows pitiably little beside
him. He has filled me so full that I cannof say
anything about him, cannot raeasure him at all.
Many little insights into his works I think I
have, but my categories are as yet insufficient to
embrace his enormous entirety. For his sake

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 237
chiefly I shall have to return to Rome in the fall
and try. to surround him once more.
The tirae has now arrived for me to load my
self with my gathered stores — very inadequate
they are indeed — and set out for a less burning
climate. It is quite impossible to work here in
the summer, otherwise I would stay at all hazards.
To leave behind so much in Eome is painful,
though the separation be not lengthy. Passing
through a number of the more important Italian
towns, I shall gradually creep over the Alps
into Gerraany and hold up at Wiesbaden where
I may stay for some weeks.
Rome, June 15th, 1878.
The presence of my St. Louis friends has
done me rauch good. They are in every way
congenial to me, and I pass happy hours in then-
society. Before they came, 1 was a little too
solitary, and too intent upon my pursuit. Now
they call me out of myself, and compel rae to
tell thera what I have seen and thought. I have
visited the galleries with thera and explained in
little talks ray views upon various masterpieces.
This, I hope, has been profitable to thera, but it
has been raore profitable to rae. It has com
pelled me to look back and put together my
scattered ideas — a thing which I would probably
not have done unless they had appeared and

238 ROME.
given the incentive. Thus 1 have been led to take
a good deal of delightful and advantageous
recreation .
Eecently I have met two sculptors who inter
ested me. One is a Jew — a strange fact, since
it has been l<^lUaUy supposed that the Semitic,
and especially the Hebrew inind was hostile to,
if not incapable of, plastic art. Certainly the
Old Testaraent worthies did not take to graven
iraages, nor did Mahoraet, The other sculptor
was a very old raan, originally a peasant from
Northern Gerraany, who did not find his artistic
vocation till he was nearly forty years old. At
last he discovered himself and reached- the center
of his aspiration in Eome. He has the reputa
tion of being the most pious, if not the only
pious artist m the city; him alone of all his craft
the late Pope Pius IX, visited at his workshop.
A halve piety and reverence shone out of his
face as he told how he was raaking a Piet^, a
religious image of the raother holding the dead
Christ. Verily he seemed there a kind of incar
nation of his theme.
As you have a bent toward philosophy, let rae
say that I resolved one day to dig a little for it in
the ruins of Eome, since it was no where apparent
on the surface. I found some excuse to call on
Count Terenzio Mamiani, a distinguished phil
osopher and politician of whom I had read a
notice in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 239
He met me cordially, asserted his Platonism
with zeal, and then launched oft' into an attack on
the priests . He inquired about the philosophi-
eal movement in St. Louis and gave it a nice
little corapliraent, of which I took ray share, of
course. Several times I have sauntered to the
University of Eome aud dropped into lectures.
Once I heard the noted professor of philosophy
Luigi Ferri. Also at a talk on Dante I was
present — philological chiefly. Twenty Eoraan
boys I heard construing Livy, rather drearily I
thought. I was with ray Italian friend Giovanni
and I asked hira: How did you like it? Non mi
piace, said he. Latin ought not to be quite so
dead as that in Rorae.
From these and other experiences I have con
cluded that ray mood here is not philosophical.
Perhaps the unconscious object of my journey is
to wean me from a one-sided devotion to abstract
speculation in which my good genius deemed
me indulging to excess at St. Louis. Certainly
a new interest or new hne of interests has taken
possession of rae.
Still in all my judgments about Art I feel two
philosophic influences strongly at work. One is
Brockmeyer, whose flashes and lucubrations scat
tered through years roused ray latent bent. The
second I hold to be Hegel and especially Hegel's
Aesthetic, which has given such a complete and
in its way beautiful organization of the total art-

240 BOME,
world of man. With it also I communed for
years. To be sure I already see that in some
places it must be changed. Still these two in
fluences I can recognize as often coloring and
even determining my native tendency.
On the other hand, it is quite probable that I
am transforming them quite as muoh as they are
transforming me. Certainly that ought to be
the case.
Outside of Art and Religion, Rome seeras to
me to furnish the greatest incitementto delve into
the World's History, to corapel, as it were, a
Philosophy of History. The Last Judgment of
Nations is best seen and felt in these colossal
ruins. That Rome represents a grand drama of
retribution, is an impression which all receive
who look at it with any degree of sympathy.
This is what renders the work of Gibbon so great
and so lasting: it occupies the center of the
World's History, and portrays the judgment of
the Tribunal of the Ages, in this case a negative
judgment which is executed by the Destroyer.
One seeks to penetrate the grounds of this long
and terrible destruction. But the tempting
theme I have to shun at present, only casting
now and then a glimpse into its depths. I often
feel, however, that I would like again to take
my Gibbon in hand, and read the colossal
Tragedy of Rorae, which he has set forth so
magnificently, and I think poetically, in spite of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 241
his tendency toward abstract reflection. Here
upon the very stage of the tragic action, with its
actual scenery of ruins, is the place to realize
fully the mighty pathos of a world going to
pieces through its own act, yea through its own
guilt, being judged and condemned by the Su
preme Tribunal of History, whose presence still
is more powerfully felt and whose hand more dis
tinctly seen just here at Rome than on any other
spot of the globe.

Rome, June 17th, 1878.
Both your letters have been received, the
cause of the trouble is not the Post Office, but
myself. I failed to notify you of ray change of
address. The weather is growing extremely hot ;
I find that I cannot work to good advantage
here during the summer and I shall soon leave
for the North. When the wind called the
scirocco blows, I am utterly worthless, I cannot
even digest my dinner. I am, however, very
well, and during my whole stay here only once
or twice have I been somewhat indisposed. Of
the so-called Romanfeverl have not felt a trace.
It is with unwillingness that I break in upon
my pleasant routine and quit my quarters. I
feel almost settled in this city, it is hard to move
me. When one becomes accustomed to a cer
tain place, every object wears the face of a

242 BOME.
farailiar friend, from whom separation is not
easy. But when we consider that in no other
country of the world these objects can be re
placed, the farewell becomes tender. But I am
a little tired of looking at so many things —
several months absence will do me good. It is
at present my intention to return to Eome in the
Fall, if nothing argent from America calls me
back; I might as well finish the enterprise while
I am about it ; besides it were a pity to break off
now, when ray thoughts are just beginning to
take a definite form, and all the Fine Arts cora
raence to join themselves to History. Much
reraains to be done, but the previous chaos in
my mind is slowly growing into order.
I shall be unable to be with you this summer,
but I have by no means forgotten the sport that
we had last summer in the Alleghenies. There
is an Italian woraan tall and fine-looking, whc^
has furnished rae muoh merriment in various
ways, chiefly on account of her fear of water.
She will not cross the Tiber in a skiff, and the
sea she imagines to be a huge monster ready to
swallow her, " What, madame, would you not
cross the ocean? " I asked her. " No, not for
the world," she replied. " Not even with a
husband?" After some hesitation she said,
"Ah, yes, if I had one," But do not be
alarmed, she is a grandmother, though younger
than I and of course a widow.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 243
I have ju^t returned from a walk through the
streets, whicb I tpok to wear off a dark humor
which was -haunting me. In one of the nar
row alleys I saw the people dancing the famous
Tarentella, on the rough hard paveraent- An old
woman with grey hair was one of the liveliest of
the whole company — there is only eternal youth
in this happy clime. But one fellow was the
most elastic dancer I ever saw — he pulled off
his shoes and capered about in his socks ; he
seemed to be made of India Eubber, his
muscles quivered with suppleness, and he bounded
to and fro like a ball — he was man turned into
motion. The gay picture cleared up jny spirits
quickly — these wretched people, even when old,
have in their possession this boon of boons, en
joyraent. It is alraost irapossible to becorae a
brooder here where both raan and nature call the
mind outwards and color it with their own clear
happy tints. Every object seems born of sun
shine. How healthy for the soul is it to get out
of the industrial coal -smoke of America and
cleanse itself once at least in life !
Some German friends offered me an oppor
tunity to see the Pope, as they were going to
have an audience. At first I thought I might
go; but as a ceremonial dressing is required, and
the etiquette of the Papal Court somewhat rigid,
I concluded to decline. Besides, I felt inwardly
that I had no business there, that my distance

244 BOME.
from his faith and from his purposes ought to
exclude rae from his presence. I believe him to
be a sincere man, but sincerity is the right arm
which has always battled for fatahties. Paul
the persecutor was as sincere as Paul the
Apostle. The people who went were much edi
fied according to their report, though all but two
were heretics. Their praise of the kind and gentle
nature of the Pope was very warm and earnest.
A few days ago, while walking with a friend in
the grounds of the Villa Borghese, I saw Queen
Margherita ride along in her carriage. She has
not what you would call beauty, but her face is
very mteresting, frora its kmdly sympathetic
look. Her dress was very plain, and I can well
understand why she is so popular with the
masses — on her faoe and in her actions they
read: this is raother of the people. Also the
King I have seen on two different occasions. A
well-intentioned but probably not a very strong
raan, he will hardly be the ruler fhat his father
was, indeed there will hardly be the opportunity.
Politically Italy ought to be satisfied, she has now
enough work on hand if §he develops her indus
trial and commercial resources. Yet then she
would be ruined for many purposes — factories
at Eorae would soon drive away the tourist, I am
afraid. There has just been held an election; the
issue was the everlasting conflict between Church

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 245
and State. It is impossible for me to take much
interest in such a political struggle; neither
party ought to be triumphant; both are ready
to violate the rights of their opponents. How
immensely in advance of Europe is America on
this question! With us it is settled, and settled
without wrong to either party; though some
sectaries insist upon dragging it into our politics,
it is really but a European reminiscence. In
deed Europe, though much older than America
in other respects, is politically a child compared
to the United States. Look at Berlin to-day;
the great Gerraan Empire is undertaking to
suppress opinion by wholesale imprisonment;
men's looks are punished, for a tailor who is
said to have looked satisfied on hearing a rumor
of the Eraperor's death, was conderaned to
several years confineraent. As if the history of
the world had not proved that each drop of raar
tyr' s blood springs up into an avenger. Politi
cal instrumentalities are rude to barbarism ; po
litical experience seems wanting even to states
men at the helm. Learning they raay have, but
not sagacity — in fact I have become disgusted
with the practical effects of excessive erudition,
it reduces men to a second childhood. The
American backwoodsman has ten times more
political sense, and is ten tiraes more fit to be
the free citizen of a free state than a learned
German Professor. Strange, is it not, that the

246 BOME.
most cultivated people in the world are nearest
the condition of political children?
Day after to-morrow I shall begin my travels
again, passing up through Italy across the Alps
into Germany which I desire to inspect close at
hand and see if I can more definitely find out
for myself what is the matter with that coimtry.
Sorae deep-seated trouble it seeras to have.
Rome, June 17th, 1878. '
Three months and a half in Eome ! I am
naturally in a retrospective mood this evening,
trying to bundle together not only ray things but
also my thoughts before taking a new spring in
this European journey. Something of a change
within I vaguely feel ; I shall be silent about it,
however, as it may be only a passing mood.
I have fluctuated a good deal about what I
should do this summer. No doubt Eorae is still
the center of attraction for ray world, though I
feel this to be shifting toward Greece. At first
I thought I would not leave the city during the
hot weather; then I contemplated a brief stay at
sorae place on the sea shore. Also I entertained
the idea of what is here called the villegiatura, a
summering in the mountain villas and towns
around Eorae, especially those of .the Alban
range. Frascati is famous as a resort of this
kind, and can be reached by rail in a few min-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 247
utes. But I have been persuaded by my German
friends to go North for the season, and see the old
Fatherland at first hand, instead of being satisfied
with that reflection of it visible in St. Louis.
This trip northward I regard as kind of deflection
from my main object, still it will not hurt to let
the large and somewhat turbid mass of new im
pressions settle into a little order and clearness.
Naturally I have laid out some plans for the
summer. I shall see the river Ehine and its
lands, the scene of so much Teutonic story.
Perhaps I shall realize more fully its character
when it is viewed in its own setting of Nature,
and shall feel raore keenly its contrast with
Southern legend. Thus I may be able to bring
home to heart as well as to head that distinction
between Classic and Eoraantic so much insisted
on by French and German writers, especially by
my two chief instructors, Goethe and Hegel.
You see my mind turns instinctively to literature,
which is indeed its ultimate expression, and
which has alraost dropped out at Eorae, since
little or no incentive to it exists here, as far as I
have been able to find.
It is midnight, but I am going to send you
another little echo of my mood whioh has been
floating around rae all day, and which I have
caught and thrust into words, after considerable
pursuit. If it starts in you a brief roll and re-

248 BOME.
verberation of myself as I feel at present, it will
have attained its purpose.
Now I must leave thee, O Eome ; there is a loud
clock in the city
Tolling the limit of time when the sad guest
must depart;
Louder still I can hear the stroke of the clock in
my bosom.
Smiting with hammer of steel: now I must
leave thee, O Eome.
Rome, June 18th, 1878.
Everything indicates the break-up as I jurap
out of bed at daylight and take a sweeping glance
around my room. In one corner stands my
valise packed full and ready to be picked up and
taken to the station. On my table lies a pile of
books, sorae of which I shall give to my Italian
friend Giovanni, but the most of them I shall
store away till I return. For return I must after
taking a kind of side tour or loup extending
through Northern Italy to Germany and back
again. Such little loups I have already made
from Rome to Frascati, to Tivoli, and also to
Fiuraicino on the sea-shore, where I stayed a
whole day looking at the Mediterranean, for there
was little else. to behold. As usual, the view of
the sea started in me the epigrammatic mood, and

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 249
the billowy movement of the waters gradually
rocked itself into a correspbnding movement of
words, which seized for imaginative expression
the mythical shapes of old Hellas. What do you
say to this :
Festive processions of Nereids drawn by silver-
reined dolphins
Wind in the curls of the sea, curled by soft
Zephyrus' hand;
Shell-blowing Tritons rise up and announce the
approach of Poseidon,
Then sink under the tide to the hoarse note of
their shells ;
Look o'er waves to the line of yon blue, 'tis a
festival splendid.
Thousands of deities hoar float round Posei
don's moist car.
. So I toyed the hours away rehabilitating the
marine deities of Greece and harnessing thera in
my new English verse (the elegiac it is called).
Here a comparison of myself with myself
strikes me and I shall impart it secretly to you.
When I was crossing the Atlantic, not yet six
months ago, the sight of the ocean stirred in me
this sarae irapulse, the struggle to rehabilitate
for myself the sea-gods of Greek mythology.
Then it was the Odyssey which came up to my
mind with its shapes. But really I had no ex
pression of my own for the Greek world at that

250 BOME.
time ; I siraply sported with its iraages and made
no attempt to catch them and flx them in words.
I had no poetic form for doing so. But I begin
to believe that I am getting such a form, one that
is yery congenial and, as I think, native to me.
This, of course, may be wholly delusion. But for
weeks these rolling and rollicking versicles have
bubbled out of rae at the view of land and sea,
as well as of objects of art. In fact I find my
chief pleasure now in catching their elusive shapes
and voicing them in lines which trip to this
classic rhythm. Here let me wind up by trans
cribing from ray note book another little whiff :
Thou must behold in the sea not merely the sea
but the iraage
Mirrored down inthe deep, changing to forms
of the Gods ;
Water as water is always insipid without its
reflection —
The fair Nyraph in the brook, Nereid under
the sea;
But if no deity thou canst behold in the rill or
the ocean.
Peer once more in its glass, there thou be
holdest thyself.

tlbe (Berman Xoup.
Orvieto, June 20th, 1878.
Rome lies behind me, and before me, too, for
I intend to return. The Roman fever is a reality,
and can be cured only by drinking of the Foun
tain of Trevi. Now I am on a railroad train,
which is creeping up the valley of the Tiber
through many a classic scene. Most prorainent
is Mount Soracte — high, chalky, hanging out of
the clouds down to the earth, one imagines. On
the summits of the hills lie the villages, sur
rounded by old walls in sunshine and rich color.
The railroad stops at the foot of the precipice,
and leaves the traveller to climb up into the city.
So we go bird-nesting around these beautiful
Tuscan hill-tops softly blending with the Italian
skies. (251)

262 THP GEBMAN LOUP.
The Middle Ages have written one word over
the faoe of all this country — that word is inse
curity. Gunpowderle.ss ages they were, thank
heaven! otherwise walls had been no protection.
Up, up, under the hot sun; past an immense
bastion, through a huge stone gate — now I am in
the narrow, well-shaded streets of Orvieto,
famous for the excellence of its wine, the beauty
of its women, and the splendor of its cathedral,
all of which virtues are to be tested by the honest
traveller before leaving.
Good luck is in my company, for to-day is the
festival of Corpus Pomini, as well as the anni
versary of the departure of the Papal troops
from Orvieto, if an old countryman has correctly
inforraed me. Already the streets are alive with
peasants and citizens. What falls into the eye
first, last, and all the time is the play of color —
color everywhere. The crowd forms dancing
waves of red, blue, green and yellow, moving
among themselves and blending into one another.
It is as if the parts of the rainbow began to
whirl, change places, intertwine, and then vanish.
Every countrywoman is tricked out gaudily in
colored fragments ; each different portion of her
dress has to be of a different hue. She shows
an inborn delight in color; her taste is rude,
yet sincere ; she is not the creature of her mil
liner. The countryman has more sober tints,
yet varied. His chief ornament is a peacock's

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 253
feather stuck in his hat; or, if this extravagance
be too great, he has the dark, golden-shimmer
ing quill of a cook's tail.
A multitude of people on the square have
formed a circle. From the center comes a shrill
but not unpleasing raelody, intended for the
open air, and not for a room enclosed on all
sides. I worm through the crowd and behold
the minstrels. The man is playing a harp.
The woraan sings "like a cicada." At tiraes
she tries to put too much operatic color into her
untrained voice. I look around to see if the by
standers are not laughing, but they seera to en
joy just that color, however rude. A more
plaintive air succeeds much better, and still I
remember with pleasure the refrain: —
" Soave albergo di goija e d'amor
Teco abandono la pace del cor."
The country poet has sorae printed ballads, of
which I purchase a selection. Strong colors
again — blood-curdling story of a murderer,
rhymed chronicle of a famous brigand, desperate
deeds of two desperate lovers whose union is
opposed by the parents. They are truly
Italian stories, not yet refined into art, but
showing the very bedrock of Italian literature.
I have to think of our country people, with
little or no love of color, with a very slight
poetical strand in their character. Imagine the

254 THE OEBMAN LOUP
Illinois farmer coraing to the city with a pea
cock's feather in his hat; think of him singing
his strains on the streets, or even listening to
" mincing poetry," which to him is worse than
" the forced gait of a shuffling nag." Patched,
unshaven, with channels oftobacco juice running
full from the corners of his mouth, he is not an
sesthetic being. Dressed in butternut or blue
jeans from shoulder to foot, he shows little feel
ing for color. But he has other and sterner
virtues not so well known here ; he will not beg
or rob ; industry he possesses ; and in political
intelligence he leads the peoples of the world.
Imagination cannot upset him; his head is on
the same dead level as his own prairie.
In the meantirae we have sauntered into an
other street. It is tirae to look up ; here is the
Cathedral. What can raortal tongue utter now
in the presence of this architectural face looking
suddenly down upon you? Imagine all the
commonplaces, of the English language com
pressed into one word of admiration — that word
read on this page. Nearly every great creation
of art must be worked into before its secret is
reached, but here the beholder is snatched up
into the third heaven of wonder and enjoyment
at the first glance. I can truly say that nothing
which I have yet seen in Europe has produced
so strong, and, at the sarae tirae, so immediate
an impression. From the whole the eye passes

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 255
slowly to details, and finds everywhere an almost
microscopic care and perfection. The very first
minute one feels bound to the edifice with cords
which seem to be made of his very soul.
Here again the effect comes from the mystery
of color, for all the flat surfaces are filled with
mosaics of the most brilliant hues, except the
lower compartments, which have sculptured re
liefs. But why trouble you with a description
which must reraain a dead letter to your iraagin
ation? I have a horror of a description of a
work of art which is intended for the eye. But
so muoh try to bring before your mind's vision:
The whole facade is one immense picture thrown
open to sunlight; its frarae is of most beauti
fully carved and diversely inlaid Gothic work.
This frame is divided into compartments by
smaller Gothic frames running crosswise and
lengthwise; in these compartments the gallery
of pictures is placed above and below. Archi
tecture, therefore, furnishes the setting; sculp
ture and painting, each in its own manner, fur
nish the contents; all the spatial arts thus unite
to celebr&te their triumph in a common supreme
unity. The harraony of the three arts fills you
of itself. You can hardly bring yourself to look
into the detailed treatment of the various sub
jects there represented. The church is dedi
cated to the Virgin; so these fraraes contain
mainly her history, written in brilliant coloring

256 THE &ERMAN LOUP.
for the eye and not for the mind. Let, then,
no descriptidn of it be further attempted.
When I have looked myself nearly blind in
the glare of this fierce Italian summer sun, I
enter the cathedral. As before said, there is a
festival and religious service. Now to the three
arts of vision the fourth one, that of hearing, is
added, which sets all of these fixed plastic forms
into vibration — music. Shall I not say that
the same tendency to color, to rich and changeful
variety of melody, is observable in this art too?
Corpus Pomini — the Body of our Lord! How
the therae was wrought into a radiant warbUng
chain of modulations, linking together sorrow,
joy, despair, and heavenly ecstacyl
An inner chapel of the cathedral is thrown
open. There is the heart of the edifice and
of the faith which built it, again uttered in color.
Above is a pyramid of faces by Fra Angelico.
Never has heavenly serenity found such supreme
expression. The countenances of the old pro
phets there have suns in them, and they look
sunshine into you forever. Below this .celestial
group is the other side of the universe, — hell
with its agonies and contortions, — painted by
Luca Signorelli with a wild demoniac energy as
if he were there himself. This is the prophecy
of Michael Angelo aud his "Last Judgment."
Look and pass, — guarda e passa, — for we are
in the nether world with old Dante. So near

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 257
then, are heaven and hell together and to us!
But glance upward once more ; that pyramid of
seraphic faces looking down upon you will draw
you out and up to itself; color is now beatified.
Thus one looks till his senses get transformed if
not transfigured.
Frora the cathedral I pass to the town walls
not far off, in order to catch a breath of the cool
breeze and to take a refreshing look over the
country now reposing in the rays of the setting
sun. Behold, another picture with every variety
of outline, color, and perspective ! Here is the
true background to this Italian life and art, to
this very cathedral and all that it contains. The
eye looks forth into the deep blue distance till it
rests on other summits crowned with villages.
Between lies the many-hued land-scape, which
also furnishes brilliantly varied yet harraonious
details, if it be carefully studied. Here is the
school which nature opens for her children over
shadowy vales and sunlit heights. Art repeats
the lesson, but condenses it into the one glowing
surface, like the facade outside or the faces of
the saints inside the cathedral. Italy is indeed
the prisni of nature held aloft in the sunbeams
and changing the world into a paradise of dan
cing iridescence.
But is it not time to go to my inn and give a
little repose to the eyes inebriated as it were with
color? Yes; moreover it is dark or growing so.
17

258 TEE GEBMAN LOUP.
Nature has closed her gallery ; nothing more can
be seen to-day. Yet what is this? I come to
the public square, in which a vast multitude is
assembled; behold another exhibtion of color,
now set off by night — fireworks. These again
are of every hue, variety, and capricious form —
writhing tortuosities of flame representing build
ings, portraits, even gleams of huraan action.
This is the climax. Color is now intensified in
to fire. I can now go to bed and dream — dream
of an eternity arched over with rainbows or
girdled by the walls of infernal red-hot Tophet.

Orvieto, June 22nd.
Your letter reached me just as I had made up
my mind to leave Rome for the sumraer.
I am sorry to say that I did not succeed in
obtaining the Discorso whioh you so highly re
commended, though I went to Loescher, and
even to Propaganda Fide to get it. I shall have
to defer its perusal till ray return. Also your
further orders in regard to the Thomas
Aquinas, or in regard to any other matter I
shall take pleasure in attending to. Your friend
and I have consulted a little about your Aquinas,
and have deferred acting till fall, when you must
send word from America. In the meantirae we
shall watch sales and catalogues and see what
can be done.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 259
I am now on my way to the North. I found
that I would almost lose my summer as regards
work and recuperation, if I remained in Rome.
So a couple of days ago I set out for Orvieto,
with the intention of visiting the smaller cities of
Tuscany, on my way to Florence.
I had a little tilt with our lady friend, as I
took an opposite view on Italy to see her ma
neuvres. Of course it can not be expected that
we should always agree ; we are too far apart
both in religion and in occupation ; Catholicism
is not my faith, and newspaperisra is not my
literary calling. But these points we did not,
nor should ever discuss; they are to© personal.
Although " a good Catholic," she is far more of
a skeptic than I ara, (in the larger sense of the
word). But these differences added zest to the
conversation. At my departure I gave her a
cepy of my book on Shakespeare ; as a token it
was the most suitable object I could think of,
but at the same time I rather wished that she
would not undertake its perusal, though I did
not say so.
As to Giovanni, I saw him quite often and
became attached to hira, gentle and affectionate
soul that he is. Through a raisunderstanding I
did not see him at the station when I left. He
is soon going to Naples to study - Pompeii and
the Museum, but chiefly (if I understood him

260 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
aright) to throw himself on the tomb of
Leopardi.
Perugia, June 23rd, 1878.
Plenty of time this raorning I had, and it is
not too warm, so I conclude to walk up to the
city, and view the ever-changing Italian land
scape at my leisure. Wagons pass hauling
huge stones from the Station, I suppose, and
the country people are bringing their truck to
the raarket. The city lies on a high hill, to
which the railroad refuses to clirab, but stays
down in the valley two miles away. I can see the
buildings as I approach, in which 20,000 people
are said to dwell at present. Perugia is an old
Etruscan city, plays quite apart in Roman his
tory, and is famous for its art, especially its
painting. Very picturesque it reposes on its
lofty hill-top, and asks to be painted.
But another mood has gotten hold of me, pro
voked, I imagine, by the passing teams and men,
as they toil up this road slowly toward the city.
Perugia has just built a new Town-Hall and made
other expensive improvements, (among them of
course a Piazza Vittorio Emanuele), inspired by
the new united Italy. The traveler will cer
tainly sympathize with such a sentiraent. But
when he learns that the community is not equal
to paying its debt, he begins to look into matters.
The provisions for the inhabitants have to be

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 261
carted up this long steep road or a similar one
elsewhere. What a tax upon the city just in
this! No wonder it is poor. • Yonder wagon of
stone painfully pulled around the slope by jaded
teams becomes very expensive, though labor be
very cheap. In America the city would corae
down into the plain, or the railroad would climb
up into the city. Here they stay miles apart.
So Perugia pays dearly for its lofty site ancl its
picturesque outlook. Long ago security and
probably health deraanded the high situation.
But that tirae is past. Orvieto is also built on a
hill-top, and raust give a heavy toll on what is
carried up to its highness.
Beautiful it is and princely, still it leaves the
impression of decayed gentility. See these
laborers sweating in the field, they think they
are working, but are they really? I saw 100
men in the Roman Campagna cutting wheat with
the old Aryan sickle. An American reaping-
machine could have done the work of them all.
Here we reach down to the chief reason why
Italy is so poor, and a beggar- becomes her
economic symbol. She cannot quit the old
order and adjust herself to the new. Impossible
is it for her to give up her hilly nests thousands
of years old. — Well, it is not in my heart to
blame her though she has to pay the penalty.
Now I enter the city through an Etruscan
gateway and find raany foreigners here for the

262 THE GERMAN LOUP.
¦summer. They pay- a good price to Italy for
her beauty, but Italy herself pays more for it.
" O that she were less fair or more strong," is
a famous sigh of one of her poets.

Perugia, June 24th, 1878.
The artistic interest of this place centers in
Raphael, who was a pupil here of Pietro Perugino
(iu 1495 says my guide-book). I am trying to
trace his genesis, and think I have come upon
one or two lines of it in his master who is well
represented in the art-gallery (Pinacoteca), and
especially in the frescoes of the Exchange
(Carabio). These frescoes I saw some German
artists copying for an illustrated work. The so-
called Umbrian School of Painting was chiefly
located in Perugia, and developed a certain soft
ness and sentimentality, yea even tearfulness.
" Eome raves when Perugia weeps" is a pro
verb ofthe land. No wonder that Michel Angelo,
the Titan, blackguarded tender-souled Perugian
Peter as " un goffo." The early form of
Eaphael's typical Madonna-face can be seen here
better than 'any where else — seen as it were in
its budding. That face is found in all the im
portant picture galleries of the world. I first
came upon it in London, then I saw it at Paris in
several of its best examples ; in Eorae are raany
painted images of it, indeed the latest and most

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 263
mature. Very suggestive is it to catch its germi
nal serablance here in Perugia, and even to trace
some lines of it back to the artist's master.
Eaphael, you know, has his one type or ideal in
all of his various corapositions ; like every artist,
he has his one ultiraate soul-forra reflected in his
his pictured visages.
When I carae out of the Art-gallery, I wan
dered around, thinking of these raatters, and
entered a side-street where I met a little girl who
asked rae for a penny. She was five or six years
old and chatted artlessly about her papa, even
catching hold of my hand and walking with me.
Memory rose and started withia me the tear
ful Perugian mood; she got her coin, in spite of
my resolution not to give to beggars, and skipped
off into an alley. She touched my tender chord
moreideeply than sentimental Peter.

Assisi, June 25th, 1878.
I have come to this littte town, which has a
very important place in the history of your
church. Holy Saint Francis belongs here, and
from this spot has raoved kindred spirits through
out the world for six centuries and raore. He
has profoundly touched the souls of great poets,
artists, even thinkers. He has left the strongest
kind of a mark on Dante ; he was the inspiration
of Giotto, the true father of modern painting;

264 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
nor did Aquinas by any means neglect him in the
vast theological organization of the Summa.
You see I have become enthusiastic about the
enthusiast Saint Francis, though I have passed
only a day here, having corae over frora Perugia.
The medieval religious feeling still overflows like
a fountain frora the hill of Assisi, and I have
been taking a dip in it, with a peculiar delight.
Can I give you a brief outline of what this
sraall place contains? Near the railroad station
is the huge church called Santa Maria degli
Angeli, erected on a spot connected by legend
with Saint Francis. It is in the style of the
Eenaissance, which you know was a revival of
Greco-Eoman Architecture, and in general of
heathen culture. My first feeling questioned,
does that accord with Saint Francis? I enter
the structure and then stand before the faraous
picture of Overbeck dealing with one of the
miracles of Saint Francis. I confess that I
utterly failed to get into sympathy with the edi
fice or the picture.
After a walk of an hour I reach the second
great church of this locality, the genuine Santo
Francesco, a Gothic cathedral of wonderful
power. How different and even sudden is the
change is the attunement of soul ! There I looked
and felt for hours, first staying in the upper
church, then in the lower, finally descending
still deeper, down into the underground chapel.

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 265
which corlBHns the tomb of Saint. Do you
know that all this was a new and peculiar exper
ience, like that of an initiation into some deep
and dark mystery? Three churches we may call
them, upper, middle and lower, stages of man's
spiritual descent. Then comes the ascent, the
rise and return to the outer world with its sun
light. One cannot help thinking of Dante,
making him along with the Gothic Architecture
a kind of expression or interpretation of Saint
Francis, who is about the best religious incarna
tion of the Middle Ages, with a love of God not
only flaming but at tiines furious. Of course I
did not neglect the ecstatic frescoes by Giotto
called " the Franciscan painter ; " irapressive but
rude was the forra of a colossal Virgin by Ciraa-
bue, teacher of Giotto. Eecollect that Saint
Francis, the Gothic Church, Dante, Giotto, all
belong, to that pivotal century, the thirteenth.
I had rayself becorae a kind of Franciscan
monk after passing through the discipline of
that church and its art. When I carae out, the
sun was declining, and I felt its transitoriness
and mine, and the vanity of all terrestrial things.
Still I had enough mortality left to feel hunger
after nearly a day's fasting; so I went into the
village for a bite, about which I did think much.
Then I took a little saunter, when behold a new
phenomenon ! Nothing less than an old heathen
temple of Minerva with fluted Corinthian

266 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
columns supposed to belong to the age of Augus
tus. What a jerk through the centuries, from
one world to another wholly different ! It had
the effect of tearing off my Franciscan cowl and
of making me feel again the breath of classic art,
which has the reconciliation of man with earth
and its sunshine.
Saint Francis must have often seen this teraple,
from whose spirit he was perhaps the extreme
medieval reaction. But another genius saw it
not very long ago, who was in the strangest and
strongest reaction against this reaction of Saint
Francis, in a mighty swing back toward classic
heathendom — Gerraan Goethe. He passed
through Assisi in his Italian Journey, and hag
left a soraewhat lengthy account of his visit
All his thoughts and all his praises were heaped
upon that small heathen temple, whose view was
to him "so full ofrepose and beauty as to satisfy
both eye and mind." And still more emphati
cally : "the irapression which this edifice has left
upon rae is not to be expressed and will bring
forth imperishable fruits." But for the Gothic
pile of Saint Francis he has only two or three
contemptuous expressions ; he never entered it,
raerely looked at "the heavy thing" from a dis
tance, and ' then turned away. O universal
Goethe, that is not universal, but quite one-sided !
This very Italian Journey will, we think, give thee
a great lift toward universality, ere it is done.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 267
But he will not in his present mood even deign
to look at the other large church of Saint Francis,
to whom as the anti-heathen monk he feels so
deeply antipathetic.
Meanwhile I have reached the station and
take another view of the Eenascence structure.
I cannot like it, an utter discord it makes with
Gothic Saint Francis, who at present has become
my Saint. When you travel to Europe, you
must make a pilgrimage to this spot and get
baptised afresh in the fountain-head of your
faith. Eome with all its Popes and Cardinals is
not half as religious as is 'Assisi with its Saint
Francis : such at least is my feeling. This has
been the longest, strongest and most sympathetic
dip in the medieval spirit I have taken since I
came to Europe.
Undoubtedly the Gothic church with its art is
the overwhelming presence on this little spot of
earth. Still it is not all even of diminutive
Assisi. We may observe here the ancient, medi
eval, and raodern epochs uttered in their artistic
representatives, the three architectural edifices,
the Greco-Eoraan teraple, the Gothic cathedral
and the Eenascence church. Now for your next
club write an essay upon Assisi, or you might
make it a poem, having that epoch-making genius
Saint Francis as the hero, and taking as the text
Dante's rapturous account of him in the
Paradiso. •

268 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
Chiusi, June 27th., 1878.
Go back now with -me, my friend, to about 500
B.C. — only a leap of twenty-four centuries
alraost. At that tirae the town from which I
write had its one efflorescence, and has never
flowered since. It was an old Etruscan city, the
chief one seemingly, and the capital of that
enigmatic people, the Etruscans. It carries us
back to Tarquin the Proud, and early Eome.
You, as a young orator, must have heard or
declaimed at school Macaulay's ballad:
Lars Porsena of Clusium,
By the nine Gods he swore.
That the great House of Tarquin,
Should suffer wrong no more.
And so it runs on for many verses with a dog-
grelish jingle, rather meagre in poetry but de
lighting (crede experto) the school boy's heart
by its passages suitable for roaring declamation :
Shame on the false Etruscan,
Who lingers in his home.
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the raarch for Eorae.
The small town (of hardly more than two
thousand people) lies on a considerable eminence
and is a chief center of Etruscan antiquities, of
which there is quite a large museum in the place.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 269
The inhabitants still take pride in their Etruscan
origin, and are reported as equally ready to fab
ricate a fable or an antique of their ancestors.
Already at Perugia I went into some Etruscan
tombs. Chiusi is hardly more than one Etruscan
tomb in whioh the living have a share. The hill
is honey-combed with ancient cemeteries. It
becomes a problem why that old people
should place such enorraous stress upon the
habitations of their dead. The supra-terranean
city here seeras of little import compared
to the subterranean. Again I think of Tuscan
Dante with his single emphasis upon the future
world, and his vast organization of the Beyond.
Chiusi has its own individuality, being still an
old Etruscan town with a kind of ghostly ap
pearance in the present. The type of the forras
and faces painted in the torabs I fancy I can
trace inthe folk passing before rae on the streets.
That raay be only my whim. Still to me there
is a kind of spectral element here dominating
the real. Lars Porsena was its greatest man,
and he certainly has become a dim phantom. I
gazed often at the Etruscan inscriptions, which
nobody has been able to decipher fully, though
the Egyptian hieroglyphics have yielded up their
secret to our prying century. But the Etruscan
mystery lies deeper. Nobody can tell who they
were, whence they came, what were their racial
affinities — Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, or some-

270 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
thing else? I hear that Corsen'sbig book about
them — which I saw at St. Louis before leaving —
is regarded by the experts as a failure. Ayouug
German professor passing through,' claimed
to read their words, but I could not tell whether
he was deceiving or self-deceived. At any rate
the Chiusans have their unique character among
these Italian burghers, and seem to reach down
to a deeply submerged vein of humanity, which
they tap and bring up to the surface to-day in a
little rill. Of course I drink of it, and go away,
perchance intoxicated somewhat with my im
aginings of old Etruria.

Florence, July 2nd, 1878.
I have been trying for five days to encompass
intellectually the considerable city of Florence.
I have hardly succeeded in doing more than com
pleting a first survey, and it has worn me out.
Besides, I must be off, if I am going to get to
Gerraany this suraraer.
Let rae briefly tell you what impresses me in
Florence. Itproduced one suprerae world-histori
cal man, a poet, whose presence I cannot get rid
of here — Dante. How this city winds through
his poem and through his life ! It exiled him, he
tried to hate it, cursed it, but still could not
help loving it with an intensity which tore his
very soul in twain. Going up pud down these

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 271
streets, crossing the bridges and looking at the
Arno, one has to think of hira and bring hira
back again with that face of his which has cer
tainly been in Hell.
Another colossal figure rises up at. Florence in
the first outburst of youthful genius — this is
the late-born Titan, Michel Angelo, whose chief
works, however, are found at Eorae. I have
been trying to trace the lines of his genesis, but
am as yet uncertain. Let him pass for the
present. The raost attractive visible thing for me in
Florence is its Palazzos, which herald the archi
tecture of the Eenascence in its most original
manifestation. To be sure there was for it the
classic model, which, however, is baptized in a
new institutional order, and is thereby trans
formed, yea regenerated. One feels in these
structures the fresh breath of originality, in
spite of Eoman reminders. I must here pay my
respects to my printed guide, Burckhardt's
Cicerone, which becomes not only instructive,
but a most genial and inspiring companion in the
strolls araong these Florentine structures. Get
that book with good illustrations, and you can
go through Florence in St. Louis with a sym
pathising friend who will give the most suggest
ive insight into its art.
Then you know that Florence had a great
political career, the more interesting to the

272 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
American because it called itself a republic.
Now it is rather a dead city, in spite of its
170,000 living inhabitants. Its latest disap
pointment was that it did not remain the capital
of new united Italy, which it was from 1865 till
1871, when the seat of governraent passed to
Eome, leaving behind in Florence a colossal hope
blasted. Still to-day Florence probably stands
next to Eome among the great Italian cities.
I shall now have to leave Florence with the
strong wish to see it again. I have not yet
caught its distinct individuality as an Italian
city, there is too much of it, past and present.
What strikes horae to me now specially is that
each of these cities of Italy, eventhe lesser ones,
has its own separate character, which comes of
a long evolution through the Ages. Perugia,
Assisi, Chiusi, smaller but strongly individualized
towns, I have visited, and as it were, conversed
with; methinks I have seen their typical man,
and know him in outhne. But I can hardly yet
say that of Florence. Still I raust be off — auf
Wiedersehen, bella Firenze.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 273

Venice, July 1st, 1878.
Eiding down the Grand Canal in a gondola,
and looking up at the Venitian Palazzos which rise
out of the water one after the other, like so many
sea-nymphs — would you not like to be in my
place? Indeed the whole city emerges from the
wavelets as a real Aphrodite born of the sea. My
head being full of the Florentine Palazzos, I found
myself trying to evolve or metamorphose them into
those of Venice, which historically came some
what later. I cannot tell you ray thoughts now ;
besides, I think they ought to be put to soak for
a little while. I caught a glirapse of the Eialto,
and what could it recall but the Merchant of
Venice, of course Shakespeare's? Finally we
landed at the little hotel on the Eiva dei Schia
voni, where I heard nothing but Gerraan with an
accompaniment of the Tyrolean Jodel.
On ray way I stopped awhile in faraous
Bologna, but got nothing out of it, not even a
sausage. And yet there raust be something in
it — music, learning, art. I could not even con
firm the Italian proverb which calls it grassa, fat
Bologna. By the by I heard on the train a kind
of Italian improvisatore, who made everybody
laugh with his broad comedy of the two Popes,
the lean and the 'fat oue — representing the
present Leone XIII, and the last one, Pio Nono,
18

274 THE GERMAN LOUP.
who was so good because p'ra.sso, combining piety
and fatness. And yet I doubt if it was an anti-
papal crowd, in spite of their merriment over the
Popes. Venice, July 3rd.
I have just witnessed that grand illumination
of nature known as Venice by moonlight. Dur
ing a lengthy walk along the quay in the evening
I watched it, and still from my window I can
see the colors playing through the sky, in the
air, and over the waters. Of course it is im
possible to give you a picture of this scene in
words, for language is not and never has been
the true utterance of Venice; painting claims
that honor. Still I may help you to imagine
little fragments of its glory.
The raoon rises over the lagoons, beaming
through a moist atraosphere ; this spreads over
everything a silvery bluish tint which at once
captures the eye with its mystery. There are
clouds in the heavens varying from the thinnest
fleece to dense folds. With these clouds Luna
begins to play, coquettishly hiding her face
beneath thera, one after another, as they fly past
her; sometinies the thin flock scarcely screens
her laugh, at other times she is quite concealed.
But mark! with each change of the veil, the
color of the entire scene changes; the blue be
comes deeper, verging into dark, often tiuged

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 275
with a faint green. Thus sea and city are
wrapped in an atmosphere of dim, weird colors,
always slightly shifting. Palaces, domes, spires,
as well as the sparkle of the waves, take part in
this play of tints ; seen through them, every object
turns to a dream. Look at San Giorgio, with
her island yonder across the waters ; it is fairy
land, and the huge church dimly rises up into
the skies by enchantraent, capping itself amid
the clouds with its lofty dome. Thus Luna
continues to play hide-and-seek in the heavens
above and on the sea beneath till she drops under
the horizon, with a faint new tinge of blue and
green always following her motions. A celestial
kaleidoscope perpetually shifting, yet without
rude changes of flashy colors ; it is the strangest
sight in Venice, and gives the prime suggestion
in regard to her art and character.
Under such a light flits the gondola whose
movement you can see, but at a little distance
from it you can hear naught of its propelling
power. At most a dull thud of the oar and a slight
splash of the water reach the ear; silent, sombre
mysterious, it raoves along over tho dira surface
like a spectre. The gondola is painted black,
and its box is covered with crape ; in the daytime
I cannot look upon one without thinking of a
a coffin. It is a raelancholy vehicle, in spite of
all the poetry which has been lavished uponit;
to me it seems to be in eternal mourning for the

276 THE GERMAN LOUP.
lost glory of Venice. But under the light of this
raoon it becoraes a ghost — a dark water-sprite.
The mood which such a scene excites in the
stranger cannot be called cheerful, yet it is not
unpleasant. He has too much wonder at the
spectacle, and wonder does not admit of gloomi
ness to any great extent. It is a picture which
nature offers, and which the artist has but to
copy faithfully in order to produce his mood in
the beholder. I do not think that I have ever
seen nature so much like a painted picture and
so full of moods ; usually one must be in har
mony with her in order to feel what she subtly
suggests, but here she forces her spirit upon you
and attunes you overpoweringly to her own key
note. In all the shops on the Place of St. Mark
are to be seen photographs of views of Venice
by moonlight; they are good, but altogether too
exaggerated, and of course the main thing, the
ceaseless change and interplay of colors, is not and
cannot be reproduced. But what a contrast be
tween the old and the new — photography now
instead of the living brush, the machine instead
of the spirit breaking forth into many-hued
utterance! This nature is still before'the eye of
Venice, but is no longer concentrated and inten
sified into soul.
Passing to the human centre of the picture, we
note the Venetian woman, who can hardly be
called beautiful now; she is too lank in form.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 277
too peaked in face. But above all, her com
plexion seems to have little adumbration of Ve
netian nature ; it is sallow, often passing into a
a jaundiced yellow, which is not a color of
beauty in the human face. Morbid they call it
themselves, and attribute it to the moist climate.
In general she has, with this raorbid coraplexion,
an air of decayed beauty, like her native city.
The garraents of a high-born darae whom you
see with her maid in the streets, have a very
ancient look ; possibly they are the heirloom of
her wealthy ancestors. Thus the past is the
only interesting part of Venice. To rae it is a
most melancholy city — a dead city, whose pallor
has sunk into the cheeks of its fairest women.
You can often see the blonde of the old Venetian
painters on the streets, walking alongside of her
raven-haired sister. Titian's golden locks are
hardly to be seen anywhere except in his pictures.
There never was such a head ot hair as flows
down the bosom of his Magdalen. Ho also paints
dark hair, particularly in the Madonna. It raay
be an irapious thought, but give rae in her stead
the artist's golden Venus, in whom alone all his
glories are centered. Titian is emphatically the
most ideal, and, therefore, the greatest painter
that Venice has produced. I cannot endure Tin
toretto, and am but partially reconciled to Paul
Veronese. Tintoretto has colored what seeras
to be almost an acre in the Doge's palace. I

278 THE GERMAN LOUP.
confess that I cannot bring myself to study out
his iraraense paintings. But so rauch one clearly
sees : he has lost the ideal concentration of the
early Venetian school. One face by Titian is
worth thousands by hira, because Titian's is a
a type, and creative in itself. It is the old story
of decline ; Art is lost in a one-sided pursuit of
Nature, in her infinite multiplicity; it becoraes
realistic, debased, dreadfully tedious. So I turn
away from color; for what is color but a means
of portraying that which is eternal? But Titian's
Venus is his supreme work, nay, at bottom, his
only work, for what are those other works of
his — called by various naraes: Magdalen, Danae,
Bella — but variations of the same fundamental
ideal vision in the artist's soul? They are all
one, his one work ; Venice's supreme work of art,
too. Therein the city of the sea culrainates.
Still I confess to another Venetian love;
Bellini's Madonna. When you stand before her
face and gaze into it, you feel that it too is a
true utterance, not an artificial thing. She is
not the holy mother, — not a mother at all, I
should say ; her look is that of absolute virgin
innocence, unconscious of maternity; she has not
even that far-off presentiment of her lot which
lurks in the glance of Eaphael's Madonnas. A
child herself, just beginning to unfold, you in
voluntarily ask. What is she doing with that in
fant in her arms? Still she has it, and it is

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 279
hers; nay, the centre of all that she is to be.
A coy, wondering look she has, wondering what
it all means — such is the glance into that un
conscious world of sweet virginal innocence
which old Giovanni Bellini gives us. Think of
him painting such a face at eighty years of age ;
the vision of eternal youth which the artist must
not only have, but must live in as his own proper
element. Bellini's Madonna, I must confess
to you privately, has an additional claim upon
my heart; she is the type of fair Thusnelda, a
young lady who once gave muoh trouble to ray
youthful imagination. When I first saw the
best one of these Bellini faces .some time ago in
the Academy, I was stunned at the sight; the
old pain darted back through nearly a quarter of
a century. Even now I seem to have renewed
a former broken tie, looking upon that picture.
So Venice has given me her jewel ; it is the best
present she has for me, I know; therefore, to
morrow I am off with my fond possession.

280 THE GERMAN LOUP.
Riva, Jidy 7th., 1878.
You never heard of this town I dare say.
Take down your large map of Italy and hunt up
Lake Guarda; at the head of it lies Eiva, to
which I have just corae by a little boat from
Peschiera, which is on the south end of the lake.
To-morrow we are to strike across the mountains.
in an oranibus to Mori, where we take the rail
road which is to swing us over the Alps to
Innspruck. I had my last sail in the lagoons of Venice on
the Fourth of July, thus celebrating our national
holiday, after seeing myself alraost to death on
Venetian color. I stopped a little while at Padua
a town of the past; also I reraained a full day
at Verona where there is a good deal to be seen.
Of course I was in company with both Dante and
Shakespeare in that city and saw their houses, that
is, the places connected with their names. In the
huge Eoman amphitheater was a theatrical piece
in which the love catastrophe called up that of
Eomeo and Juliet of course, whose tragedy has
colored Verona for every Anglo-Saxon traveler.
An inscription on a prorainent house designates
the actual locality of the lovers, where I thought
I saw two girls, supposedly English, gazing up
ward to see the real balcony. Thus youthful
William Shakespeare has created an emotional
world and put us all into it, even at Verona.

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 281
To-morrow, then, we cross the Alpine water
shed which so long divided Europe into civilized
and barbarous, and which is still the separating
line between two different civilizations, Latin
and Teuton, whose strife seems not yet over. I
am now to make a sudden dive from one into the
other, and I wonder how I, not native to either,
but sympathetic with both (if I know myself in
such big things), shall take the Teutonic dip.
Will the backstroke from the classic world be too
strong for me ? Innspruck July 8th, 1878.
In crossing the mountains a great variety of
Alpine landscape was unrolled before us, some
what like a panorama. Besides a shifting line
of high mountains, we had clouds, showers,
winds, snow in the distance with the sunshine
playing peek-a-boo at us through storms and
over suraraits.
I kept trying all my day's ride to construe
these Alps and their people. Has Switzerland
or Tyrol ever produced a great man of the first
class? Hardy and excellent characters they have
nurtured, the inhabitants are all of that sort,
and nearly of the sarae even grade. The Alps
seem to be levelers of men, in spite of their
lofty altitudes; they naturally bring forth re
publicans ancl republics. These towering
heights appear to weigh do.vn towering Individ-

282 THE GERMAN LOUP.
uals; this picturesque Alpine scenery has pro
duced no great painter, no great poet. Yet
poetry and painting seem to lie here waiting to
be picked up by the way. This Nature's most
imposing architecture and sculpture appear to
have found no adequate response in her own
children, though she has not failed to inspire
foreigners. Switzerland has indeed produced a
hero, William Tell, but he is now pronounced a
myth. And even as mythical he has had to go
to other lands for artistic embodiment ; German
Schiller has written his draraa, and Italian
Eossini his music. It would seem that Nature's
immediate impression is not artistically creative,
so that the Alps have to leave Switzerland in
order to be reproduced in art ancl literature.
How unlike that other faraous cluster of repub
lics in mountainous Greece! The Swiss canton
makes a different republic frora the Greek city,
which certainly had the power of producing
great individuals.
There is another striking contrast which I find
here between Nature and Man : the works and
forras of the one are colossal, of the other di
minutive. The Swiss bent is to make little
things, watches, carvings, jewelry, often ex
quisite. Great individuals, greatness of all
human kinds seera absent from these great
mountains. Are my statements too broad?

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 283
Pare them down, and I think you will find in
what is left the same truth.
Yet who does not adraire the Swiss and take
delight in Sempach and Morgarten? The con
trast, however, between Nature and Man is what
strikes an American of the West in this free
land. That the human being should be leveled
and a leveler on the level prairie of Illinois is in
accord with the environment, in which sprang up
Abraham Lincoln, rather the greatest leveler in
the World's History, ironing out into a kind of
political equality, even two diverse races, white
and black. One might expect sorae individuals
born in tho Alps to tower aloft not raerely over
their own land but over Europe like Matterhorn
and Jungfrau; but where are they? But let us
note the good thing also : very evenly distributed
among the people are seeraingly the huraan ex
cellences, and equahty becomes the spiritual
trait of the most unequal country in Europe.

Munich July llth, 1878.
For two days and more I have been trying to
see and to comprehend Munich on that side which
has rendered it famous. It is an art-city made
largely to order, determined beforehand to be
artistic. I cannot help thinking that this char
acter runs through all its products : intention
dominates spontaneity, not suppressing it, how-

284 THE GERMAN LOUP.
ever. I have had to repeat to myself a hundred
times that favorite line in German, which I
have often heard you quote — in fact I learned it
frora you :
Man merkt die Absicht und so wird verstimmt.
Pinakothek and Glyptothek I went through
with sorae -diligence, but of course too rapidly.
I stayed longest with the Eginetan sculptures,
studying their place in the evolution of Plastic
Art. This soraehow is the chief attraction since
it always points nie ahead to Greece whither my
thoughts and iny longings now tend. You must
take this fact into account if you would under
stand my judgments, which I express so freely
to you on the spot; Germany, your old home,
is not my end, but a kind of resting-place on
the way to Hellas.
That whioh I like most here is the Greek
Eenascence, quite different from the Eoman one,
which prevails in Italy. Munich has gone back
to the monuments of ancient Greece and has re
produced thera rather than the Eoraan reproduc
tion. Hence it comes that the artistic atraos
phere is different from the Italian, though both
the Bavarian and the Italian Eenascences reach
back to Hellas for their original inspiration. A
Bavarian prince was chosen for the throne of
New Hellas, and thus a stream of influence flowed
between the two lands. Leo von Klenze's
Propylaia I liked much, and I believe it to be a

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 285
good deal more than a mere mechanical copy ;
still its strongest effect was to make me dream
of seeing its ptototype on the Athenian Acro
polis. Germany seeks and has always sought to
appropriate, or, in Goethe's symbol, to woo ancl
marry Helen. Prodigeous is and has been the
German fervor in this regard (like mine, I may
whisper to you parenthetically); still our Faust
remains quite different from Helen, who indeed
dies in his hands.
Now I am going to state to you, a German,
the opinion which has been dawning upon me
here : Formative Art is not and never has been
and probably never will be the truest and deepest
expression of the German Spirit. I believe its
native, profoundly instinctive utterance is to be
found in its Music, in its Poetry, and in its
Philosophy. In each of these spheres it has pro
duced a supreme universal genius, Beethoven,
Goethe, Hegel (or Kant if you will), along with
lesser lights who would be the greatest else
where. But who is the painter or sculptor to
be compared with these three? They are the
genuine, unforced, unborrowed outburst of the
German Folk-Soul, welling up from its pro
foundest depths. But when it comes to German
painting, and German sculpture, there remains
something alien, acquired, imported, really un-
German in it to the last, with all its care, and
learning and attention to details. Did you ever

286 THE GERMAN LOUP.
hear of that Maximilian Street in which a
Bavarian king undertook to produce a new
architectural style by erudite combination?
That was here in Munich, and has something
typical in it to me.
Glory enough for old Deutschland it is to be
supreme musician, poet and philosopher to our
modern world. Let me add that the Anglo-Saxon
has to give up supremacy in two of these forms of
expression; he is no musician, but he is a poet,
and he is, I maintain, no philosopher in spite
Locke and Bacon who are more the negation of
philosophy than its positive assertion. But the
Anglo-Saxon (English and American) is su
premely the builder of institutions, particularly
of the State ; this really has been his grand his
toric task, which he has perforraed not only for
himself but seeraingly for the rest of the world.
I find every European nation (the chief excep
tion is Eussia) trying to introduce and to work
English constitutional government.
So much for Munich and its art, into which I
have been plunged directly from Italy, and I
confess the dip has made me shiver a little —
which indeed may be the fault of the baby and
not of the bath.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 287
Wiesbaden, July 12th, 1878.
Arrived to-day. I drop this line to let you
know that I shall be here some six weeks or
more, and that if you write at once, j'our letter
will easily reach me before I leave. Indeed you
can write a long one, telling me specially about
our coraraon friend Brockmeyer, into whose land
I have now come. This may be deemed
Goethe's early stamping-ground, as not far off
lies Frankfort where he was born. Somehow
Brockmeyer and Goethe have become intergrown
in my mind. Also the Ehine flows distant only
a pleasant promenade. But best of all, sorae old
congenial friends frora St. Louis are temporarily
located here, in whose society delightful weeks
will soon wing themselves away. And then —
but none of that now.

Wiesbaden, Aug. 2nd, 1878.
What is the matter with you in St. Louis?
The whole city seems to be sunstruck. As yet
I have not seen that any of our friends have
fallen, though it is not likely that all the cases
are reported in the newspapers. I begin to feel
anxious about you all, for it seems frora this dis
tance that you are or were going literally to the
Infernal Eegions. Your last letter gave rae some

288 THE GERMAN LOUP.
though by no means complete relief in regard to
Alice, in as_ much as you state that she is at your
house and not in the city. We get the Republi
can here, and in the reading-room of the Cur-
saal are some New York papers ; but of course
there is nothing definite. My mood, which is in
a delightful repose in this cool climate, has been
seriously disturbed for sorae days by anxiety.
To be sure, it is not going to be in any respect
better if I were to return to St. Louis ; still I
cannot help thinking of the absent. Also our
little St. Louis colony here is in no small degree
troubled by your burning Western prairies.
Something always happens while I am out of
the city during the sumraer; last year my
journey was first disturbed by the bank crisis
and finally interrupted by the strike.
You will see that I have anticipated your
advice and have left Eorae for the summer. It
was well that I did, for I am recuperating
finely and doing a little work besides. The
atmosphere is never hot, though sometimes
sultry ; I wear my winter clothes without discom
fort. Then the environs of the city are certainly
very delightful; the rolling country and the
beechwoods remind me not a little of my native
Ohio. Nature here and nature in America are
very different ; the hand of man coaxing and
stroking her is seen everywhere in this land,
which fact has its good and beautiful side ; but

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 289
she never shows the wild untamed freedom which
is her trait in America. The attitude of the
people toward Nature is also different; the Ger
man bubbles over with sentimentality, while' the
American looks upon her gigantic power with
something of a hostile feeling. For Nature,
especially the forest, is yet to be subjugated in
America, while here she is a plaything in the
hands of man. The company usually votes me
to be without a love of Nature because I don't
overflow at the prospect of a little piece of woods
which cannot for a moraent bear comparison with
the American primeval forest. A really big tree
is not to be seen, a western woodchopper would
scorn the whole country for its petty saplings.
So I give you a little account of our discussions
in our daily rambles in the vicinity of Wies
baden — for it is our custom to take along stroll
every evening. I must confess that here Nature
seems rather tame and one sighs for a little more
wild vigor. Human Nature has somewhat of
the same character, but I do not want to begin
that subject now.
I am spending a few weeks with friends whom
I knew in St. Louis. They intend to return to
America in September. Already they are pack
ing and making other preparations, and soon
we shall all be scattered to the four winds.
I shall give you a short outline of my plan for
the future, subject of course to changes accord-
19

290 THE GERMAN LOUP.
ing to the circumstances. First a trip to
Cologne on a steamer; this will show me what
most people say is the most beautiful part of
the Ehine, as well as give me a sight of the
most famous of all cathedrals, that of Cologne.
Eeturn to Wiesbaden till ray friends take their
departure, when I shall go to Weimar to get a
little sniff of the air of old Goethe. Then to
Leipzig and Berlin, where my plan grows some
what indefinite; but I shall probably pass from
thence to Vienna and re-enter Italy by way of
Venice if I do not conclude to take the Austrian
steamship at Trieste for Greece. A visit to the
latter country is now my main object; it would
cost me a good deal of regret to give up that part
of the programrae. Another stay at Eome with
Naples included, and possibly Sicily, belong to
the next season. This seems a good deal but
with ordinary luck I shall be able to accomplish
it in a few months — but the dates I can not give.
Germany has just passed through a general
election for members of the Eeichstag, but I gave
very little attention to the matter. Politics I let
alone with all my might, for two reasons : the
whole political fabric of the Gerraan Empire is
not congenial to me, and in the second place it
is none of my business. Nor is it without danger
to expi-ess one's opinion with freedom. Besides,
it is an act of very questionable decency to abuse
the nation where you are received and protected

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 291
as a guest. Somehow or other I cannot feel
attached to the old Fatherlandin its present condi
tion, so taany ugly , and what is wor-se, weak traits
have developed theraselves araid.all its splendor.
For instance, the recent trials in which the in-
forraer flourished with a glory unknown in mod
ern 'Europe, furnish the most disagreeable spec
tacle of the kind since the foulest days of
the Eoman Erapire. Who could have imagined
that the old system of delation would again
shoot up among "the most enlightened people
on earth?" Friend betrays friend; the poor
laborer for a doubtful innuendo is dragged from
his family to pass years in prison ; no protection
is to be found in the courts ; in fact, I should
say that the German Judiciary seems the most
subservient impleraent of civil persecution to be
found at this moment on the civilized globe. O
for an Anglo-Saxon jury and an Anglo-Saxon
Judge to put a curb upon arbitrary power ! But
I have violated my own principle in writing so
warraly, so I shall shut my eyes and take a
walk. I do not like national detraction, I have
kept myself free from it so far ; so let me stop
here with the statement that I still believe in
Germany's recovery from her present obscura
tion.

292 THE GEBMAN LOUP,
Wiesbaden, Aug. Srd, 1878.
Your letter has at last been received;comingby
way of Eome ; I suppose that I did not inform
you of my contemplated change of residence for
the sumraer. When I learned that you had
abandoned your intended trip to Europe, I con
cluded that you could hardly pay a visit to Eome;
so I packed up and crawled slowly and circuit-
ously toward the North. Now I am, as you see, in
Wiesbaden, a faraous watering place, always full
of strangers; in fact nobody seeras to live here
except hotel-keepers. But I have friends here, ¦
and I feel raore at home than at any time since
my arrival in Europe. The Cursaal is well sup
plied with newspapers, a few being American;
every afternoon and every evening there is music
by a very fine orchestra. The people stroll
through the beautiful park, finely-dressed ladies
are scattered along paths or are sitting under the
trees, men lounge around engaged in idle gossip-
or still idler dreams. Nobody has anything to
do — no business, no hurry, no struggle; disport
yourself in the shade or in the sun if you wish ;
spend a goodly time in eating your dinner and the
rest of your afternoon in digesting it, accom
panied by music, dreams, and looking at the
beautiful ladies (not very beautiful, I should say,
the most of them). Man has become a ground
hog, and woraan is changed to a butterfly.

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 293
Every day I go with my friend to the park, we
takea seat ona bench when I drawf rom my pocket
a book of poetry, which soon hoists both of us
into fairy land. Dinner drags us down, gently,
pleasantly however ; then the afternoon nap, after
which comes a walk into the suburbs.
The Ehineflows but a short distance from Wies
baden ; I have already paid the old patriarch sev
eral visits, and twice have flung myself into his
embraces ; may I not say that he received me
coolly? Sitting alongside of his current in a
beer garden, sipping the amber-colored drink of
Gambrinus, you will see the water-witches rising
out of the stream — that is, if you drink long
enough ; indeed Sigfrid and Crimhild with the
Nibelungen Hoard will begin to dance through
your brain to the music of Wagner. But at
present I am not on good terms with these
Northern Ghosts ; I have recently been too rauch
in the company of Classical Spirits who still
hover over Italy.
As regards Art, I am now in a state of repose.
After seeing so much in so short a time, I began
to suffer frora nausea, and when I carae to Wies
baden I resolved to see nothing and have so far
succeeded. Beautiful visions of the South still
float before me at odd seasons, but just now they
refuse to appear, so you raust do without thera
inthis letter. Hence I have no artistic report to

294 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
make at present ; I am in a condition of hiberna
tion, though it be suramer.
I have heard of the broiling which you have
received in St. Louis — I confess, with no small
anxiety ; you will now be better prepared to
appreciate Dante's Inferno, if that is any conso
lation ; nay sorae St. Louis poet may write the
new Inferno.
I hear nothing from the young lady of Chicago
about whom you inquiie. Why? Canyoutellme
anything? Your record of marriages is interesting
— I feel much encouraged, there is still some
chance for me, for
There swims no gander so gray but soon or late
He will find some silly young goose for his
mate. Wiesbaden, August, 3rd, 1878.
Think of it ! The Frau Stadtrath made a little
party, to which I was invited because somebody
told her that I had written a book on Shakes
peare. I was also informed that Herr Prof.
Friedrich Bodenstedt would be a member of
the same party, which was to meet in a su
burban beer-garden. Everything took place
without a hitch, and so in the afternoon I
found myself sitting opposite to the most
distinguished man whom I have met personally

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 295
in Europe — poet, critic, translator frora raany
tongues. I knew a little of some of Bodenstedt' s books.
As a student of Shakespeare I had looked
through his translation into German of Shakes
peare's sonnets, and had read a few of his criti
cisms. But the chief work of his in my estima
tion was Mirza Schafy, which had become in
its way a kind of household book in my faraily,
and whose brief, witty, pithy verses were familiar
to us all. After being introduced, each sat down
with a glass of wine before him ; I raised mine
to my lips, but before sipping I recited a refrain
from one of his best known drinking-songs :
Er i.st nicht des Weines loerth.
Per ihn wie Wasser trinkt.
At once the old poet broke loose and began re
citing his own verses, intermingling now and then
some lines in English from Byron, whom he
seems to know well (much better than I). His
own German snatches were in the mood and
measure of Mirza Schaffy. He clairaed that they
were translations frora a Persian poet whora he
named ; but they certainly sounded like Boden
stedt. At any rate I did not trouble him about
his disguise, though he once alluded to it hira
self. We walked horae together and he continued
his recitations interspersed vvith reraarks, often

296 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
in response to questions of mine. We reached
his door, and at his invitation I promised to pay
him a visit soon at his rooms. During this talk
he was full of his own things, I did not inter
rupt him with any of my lucubrations. But I
confess to you f«-ankly, my friend, that I wanted
to try on him one or two of my epigrams, a
couple of which I sent you in a letter not long
ago. As he puts great stress upon versification,
I desired to hear his opinion of classic meters in
modern tongues, especially in German and
English. I do not think that he has used them,
arid I rather iraagine that he does not favor them.
So I held aloof from the main point in which I
was interested. He is occupied with putting the
Oriental poetic manner into German ; his greatest
success, Mirza Schaffy, is of that kind. Well,
the Greek and the Oriental are quite diverse, even
antagonistic. I suppose' I felt soraething of this
kind, for it was on my tongue's end several times
to blurt out at him one of my hexameters, but I
always backed down at the first onset.
In fact there was soraething coraic in the situa
tion. The old poet could not help reciting his
rhymes by the hour; this personal yanity the
Muses do impart, so expect a downpour when you
meet a person whom they have inspired to versify.
Goethe himself, though an Olympian, confesses
to the same weakness, and seemingly never
tried to get over it. Of course I was charmed

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 297
and instructed by Bodenstedt. Still I could
not help laughing with ray friend at the coraedy
of the two poets, the well-known and the
unknown, the older and the younger, when
I came home. Each was bursting with his own
conceptions, but only the one could come to
utterance ; the second fellow, while being burnt by
his own inner fire, was scorched at the same time
by an outer one, and he did not dare shoot back.
The first poet seemingly never suspected the ex
plosive powder-barrel around which he was
playing off his pyrotechnics so effulgently.
You raust not think that I did not appreciate
him. But my part was a kind of fizzle. Now I
intend to try again, for I shall see him at least
once more and perhaps oftener. There are two
things which I would like to get out of him : as
he is quite a critic and has worked with Shakes
peare a good deal, I would gladly find out what
he thinks of a certain kind of Shakesperian
criticism ; and as he is certainly a poet of metrical
skill and delicacy, I desire to hear his view of
the old elegiac measure so much eraployed in
German by Goethe, Schiller, Platen and others,
and in English hardly touched by anybody except
one unknown — you must guess who he is.

298 THE GEBMAN LOUP
Wiesbaden, Aug. 4th, 1878.
This tirae I shall write you a shorter epistle
than usual, for I have nothing to write about,
and I am too indolent to rack my brain for any
fancies. I have the health of an ox, never miss
a meal, and devote myself pretty much to doing
nothing. To write a long or a good letter under
such circurastances would be a serious violation
of my principle, which is to rest. I shall be
much disappointed, therefore, if I should happen
to fire off any little jest or other cerebral scin
tillation. This town is not a town of citizens
but of strangers, who are met with everywhere.
I stroll up and down the streets and through the
large park, trying to dreara what I shall dream
about ; very frequently 'a vision in flesh passes
before my eye leaving its glance behind to keep
me company. Digestion is excellent, hence my
dreams are rainbow-colored, except when I read
of the awful heat you are experiencing in
America; then the image of Tartarus with dense
black clouds of smoke intermingled with red
flarae-bursts rises up before ray iraagination. In
your next, give rae a description of your Inferno
through which you have passed, adding a Miltonic
touch. According to all accounts, it raust have
been a veritable foretaste — yet I ought not to
speak lightly, for some of you may have never
got through.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 299
First of all, convey my profoundest regards to
the little stranger on Walnut Hills who has just
made his appearance in the world, doubtless with
no small ado. His uncle promises him many a
little story of travel and adventure when he gets
big enough to wear his first pair of trousers. To
the happy parents what can be said which will do
justice to the event? But the hoary-headed
grandfather — he has probably dyed his hair in
honor of the occasion and transformed himself
into a second fresh-blown youth.
I have received Fred Allen's letter proposing a
trip to Greece along with me. It is not iraprob
able that we shall raake the journey together.
It looks very rauch as if the university situation
were dubious. I hope that none of you will press
my narae, but leave it to fhe board to give me a
call or not, as they choose. A scramble for the
place I cannot enter into. I feel certain that the
board either know or can find out all that they
desire about me, so that they can easily determine
whether they want such a raan as I ara. Eeally
I care little for the position.
My future is soraewhat uncertain, but I think
that I shall stay in Europe a goodly part of the
next twelve raonths. I raight as well finish the
job while I am at it, for this may be the last
chance. I often have a longing for horae, but I
soon ara able to sink it i'n other things. I hope
that you will come out of the hot season uniiu-

300 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
paired in health . I cannot help thinking that it is
imprudent for you to stay down in that blazing
breezeless basin of a city during the summer.

On the Rhine Aug. 6th, 1878.
I am going to begin a letter to all of you now,
just while I am floating on the back of old Father
Ehine, though I do not know where it will- be
finished or copied out of this uncertain hand
writing. On board of a steamer, gazing at the
hills, castles, vineyards along the banks of the
stream; noting the great variety of travelers of
whom three-fourths are English and Araerican ;
chatting with chance acquaintances — such is the
occupation of the trip. Yes, I ara on ray way to
see the Cologne Cathedral, hitherto but a dream ;
that edifice now coraes up before rae as thegran,d
destination of my present voyage, surrounded by
a frarae work of very indifinite clouds, I confess.
While I ara sitting and talking with a ponder
ous Pennsylvania Judge, a well dressed lady
passes before rae — it is a face which I have
certainly seen before. But where or when? I
begin to go backwards in meraory to St. Louis,
to Cincinnati, to the war, to college; I can not
place her or name her. Let rae see whether or
not I ara mistaken — so I leisurely stroll toward
the end of the boat where she is sitting ; I give
her a good stare which she for a moraent returns :

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 301
itis clear that she does not recognize me, but I am
only more certain of my first surraise. I take my
seat; stillfurtherdown into the dark cells of mem
ory I grope, on all fours as it were — now I have
caught the fugitive, dim, insubstantial shadow,
and hold it tight in my grip. Come out into
light — she was an acquaintance of my boyhood
in the little town of Ohio where I .was born and
passed my youth; her name darts through my
head and I at once go up and address her. "You
have the advantage of rae." "What, have you
forgotten me ! WeU I shall let you think a little
while and then return." Therewith I pass to
my seat a second tirae. When I went back to
her, she had recalled my name, not from any
recollections of me personally, but from my
family resemblance. Conversation sprang up, I
asked after her husband whom I knew — she has
been for some years a widow. Ah indeed — ro
mance begins to look out the eye of Father
Rhine. But who is that beautiful young lady —
decidedly the most beautiful on board of the
vessel — that is in her company? It must be her
daughter, I thought — though the mother herself
cannot be far from my age. What an excellent
thing is eternal youth ! Once I was young with
the latter, now I am young again with the
former. I need not tell you the rest — look into
that novel there at your elbow. The Ehine is
indeed a romantic stream, bringing together

302 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
those separated by thousands of miles of space,
and by a quarter of a century of tirae — can
any romance do more? But you must not
think I shall return to St. Louis mated, I was
just spinning a little fact into fancy.
Yet the Ehine is in other regards somewhat
disappointing. Perhaps the stranger expects
too much ; for the German it must always be
a center of blessed memories. His people have
fought for it, trying always to keep it in their
bosom as the very river of their heart's blood.
But above all, it is the stream of Northern
Eoraance reaching back to the grey ages of
fable ; it flows through the old Mythology,
through the legends of the great migrations,
through the tales of Medieval Chivalry. Modern
German Poetry is largely watered by it, has
indeed become a little too watery in some cases
by excessive draughts from this source. The
main charm must lie in associations which are
somewhat remote from the stranger, however
honestly he may try to work into them.
Also I must confess that my mood is not
wholly favorable, for Italy has filled me with
classical forms which here find their emphatic
contradiction. I can not sympathize with these
sombre shapes of towns and castles, of fierce
chaotic struggle, whilst I am filled to overflow
ing with the light, cheerful visions of the
South. I suppose that I shall change in the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 303
course of tirae, but at present the Eoraantic is
quite extinguished by the Classical. This is a
one-sidedness I know; but man can only be
what he is. A shudder runs through me when
I look upon some of these dark edifices, and I
really long to get back into the sunlight. So
I feel satisfied that the water-sprites of the
Ehine will not appear to me during this visit at
least; the Nixes will not show themselves in the
company of the Graces. For soraething like
the old Grecian grace and instinct of form
is what I always am seeking after now; and
these qualities do not belong to this region of
the world. In this sense the Ehine is still what
Propertius, the old Eoraan poet, called it nearly
two thousand years ago — "a barbarous streara."
But there is still another association belonging
to the Ehine which must not be passed over —
the wine. The vineyards are lying so calraly on
the banks every where in the sun, that one can
hardly imagine that they conceal so much fire
and rage in their bosoms. Forthe wine-drinker
the meraory of the Ehine is a Paradise, it is con
nected with all the happiest hours of his life.
All these naraes whioh he hears while passing
down the stream — as Johannisberg, Assraanns-
hauser, Eiidesheim — recall to his mind many a
glorious jamboree. The Ehine thus becomes a
source of inspiration frora which I ara partially at
least excluded. On the vessel I looked through a

304 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
bottle of the golden Ehenish, hoping to see Sigfrid
with his delectable Chrirahild, or to hear the
Valkyrs flying to the rausic of Wagner ; but the
roraance will not corae out, let rae do ray best; I
shill have to wait ten years and then return to
the Ehine with increased youth, for in ten years
more I hope to be much younger and more im
pressionable. Along the river and on the tops of hills are
situated the castles, now in decay or temporarily
restored for the benefit of the tourist. Their
age has departed ; in spite of modern sentimen
tality, the stones will insist upon falling asunder
and speaking in mournful voice : Alas, I have no
business here. Knight and lady, minstrel and
clown, hawk and hound have fled; their poetical
life has vanished into the dreamland of the novel.
But the old barons were robbers, and the castle
was a den of thieves ; their struggle was to pos
sess this navigable stream and to lay a toll on
Industry; hence so many castles. But Industry
has corapletely conquered ; she it was who rushed
up these suraraits and disraantled the fastnesses.
Look, here she comes in her very latest new
dress of iron, puffing and blowing up the valley.
A railroad now is seen on each side of the
Ehine, running along in the very shadow of the
old falHng walls of the baronial castle. Shall I
help you guess this riddle? That castle on the

A TOUB IN EUBOBE. 305
Rhine is old Europe going to pieces under the
hammer of Industry.
The croakers say that Art, Poetry, Ideal Life
are also going to pieces in the sarae process of
disintegration. I do not believe it. Look at the
people on this boat — at least one-half of them
are pilgriming to Cologne with one raahi purpose :
to see the Cathedral. The dozen persons whora
I have spoken to say so at least. There never
was so ranch study and appreciation of Art,
though the highest originality does indeed seem
just now to be soraewhat wanting. It is true
that there is much affectation in this love of Art,
but affectation is the mere excrescence of some
thing very substantial — affectation is the homage
which shallowness pays to worth. It would
astonish you to see the number of Americans
engaged in this pilgrimage — hard-headed prac
ticality actually going to the shrine of the Muses
and seeraing to worship there, oftenest only
seeming, I ara afraid.
Aug. 9th. Eeturned to Wiesbaden and thus
have seen the Ehine twice. I feel just now par
ticularly proud of my country-women, as the
most beautiful lady on board both in going and
returning was an Araerican. She was brought
into direct corapetition with her English sister
and carried off the palm with ease. Do you know
that the American ladies are also the best
dressers in the world, as they appear in public
20

306 THE GERMAN LOUP.
places? The Parisian may surpass them in the
drawing-room or ball-room ; in these situations I
have no opportunity for comparison ; but on the
street, in the galleries, at the theater, theAmeri-
can will always win the eye for the grace of her
form and the taste of her costume. Subtract a
little for my national bias, and there will still
remain enough for her glory. But the fact is
acknowledged here in Wiesbaden where there are
so many foreigners.
You must not think the Ehine to be a clear
stream though it is not quite as muddy as our
Mississippi. Nor raust you imagine its banks to
be lined with beautiful modern residences, like
the Hudson. All the buildings are old or have
that appearance, of course with some exceptions;
everything looks mossy, m'edieval, Gothic.
Lorelei is a steep rock with layers twisted and
broken and slanting in every direction, giving to
it a face fantastic as its legend. But the most
characteristic of these Ehenish summits is Drach
enfels; here Nature becoraes Gothic in the
wildest fashion. The hill itself is a deliriura, a
drunken Titan frozen into stone in the very
height of his contortions. That old Teutonic
imagination could draw from these tortuous lines
many of its fantastic pictures. But the final
spasm belonged to the ancient grim baron who
erected a castle on this suramit — a fancy worthy
of Cerberus, the dark, iuferual three-headed

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 307
watch-dog. There the wall stands, right in a
line with the steep precipice sinking downwards ;
as I look at it against the clear sky, it seems to
move in frantic convulsion, and from being pros
trate to rise up toward heaven.
On the whole I have not been in the true mood
to make the tour of the Ehine a success ; the
fault is my own. You must be sympathetic,
otherwise the most beautiful objects may only
excite aversion. Wait for your mood in prayer
ful silence ; most detestable is the snarling trav
eler, snarling, snarling, eternally snarling at
great things which have been the adrairation of
ages. But I must stop, else I shall get into a
snarl rayself. You must love old Father Ehine,
descend into his waters, hug hira, kiss hira, hold
him tight till like Protons, he will reveal his own
true shape. But the Greek maiden has my heart
now, and I cannot resist her eyes or quiet her
jealousy. I was highly elated by your compliraents of
my last letter. I resolved to make this a good
one too, but something has blighted my exertion;
perhaps it is just this exertion which has blighted
exertion. Expect sorae leaves and flowers in a
few days. I hope you enjoyed your New York
visit. I shall gratify your curiosity — I hear
nothing from the young lady you mention ; now
gratify my curiosity by telling me something
about her. I have had a splendid time here at

308 THE GERMAN LOUP.
Wiesbaden, during the hot weeks, with my
friends. I dare not tell you what I have been
writing, you would laugh at me.
I assure you I feel very grateful for your
letters; they chase away the devils both blue
and black, who soraetiraes shake their wings
over ray head and even give mea flap in the face-
The next letj.er you may address to me at Eome
whither I shall now soon return.

Wiesbaden, Aug. 12th, 1878.
I have now beheld the reality of the Cologne
Cathedral, whose large picture you have seen
suspended in my home, and which we have often
scanned together. But somehow or other I can
not bring rayself into the mood to describe it to
you. I hung, around it for the better part of two
days, inspecting it inside and outside with duti
ful industry, and jotting down raany notes. But
I shall have to confess to you that my knowledge
of it will not get fusible. I seem not to have the
white heat of conception to make its stoney
icicles fluid to the idea, and without that there
is little use of writing. The mere facts about it
you can get better from the Encyclopedia. The
Gothic style had becorae fairly familiar to
me not only frora distant studies in St. Louis,
but frora the actual autopsy of Westrainster
Abbey at London, and of Notre Dame at Paris.
Thus the novelty was not that of fhe first sur-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 309
prise. I shall have to say that the Gothic style,
wandering from its Northern horae to Italy, im
pressed me more deeply at Orvieto and at
Assisi, in both of which, however, the artistic
accompaniments are very different. How could I
help remembering the Painting and Sculpture of
the South, for which these Gothic forms were
hardly more than a frame-work and receptacle !
At Cologne I went also to see some old German
pictures which at once produced such a war in
me upon Eaphael and Fra Angelico, that I took
to my heels. In fact the Gothic becomes Gol-
gothic in that Cologne religious edifice where are
stored long rows of skulls, huge piles of vertebra,
bushels of teeth and not a false one in the lot —
the bones of 11,000 virgins, my guide book says.
Sorae of these osseous relics were arranged in
the form of an arch under which a priest was
saj'ing mass. Pious faces were there, but I also
overheard the scoffer Mephistopheles, who
stood not far from me and to whom the sight
furnished a delicious morsel.
Cologne so far away in the North drove me
into a reactionary spell, in which I had a longing
almost painful for the South. On the boat
homewards I looked at the rolling Ehine with its
ripples, and becarae myself billowy inwardly,
with many a splash of emotion, echoing
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiss was Ich leide.

310 THE GERMAN LOUP.
Landing at Biebrich, I hurried across the coun
try to Wiesbaden, and burst into my room.
There I Snatched up my photographs of the sunny
shapes of Italy, which soon put to flight the
Teutonic spooks pursuing me from Cologne.
And I shall tell you something else which I did.
I took out of its little corner a manuscript from
which I read for consolation :
All the Muses are dancing a measure around
Hippocrene,
Whose clear waters return ever their shapes
to the eye ;
All the fair forras are divinely set free from
the prison of garments.
With a light veil round the loins, gently they
sway to the wind.
And so the manuscript runs on, recalling for me
at least a serene transparent world with fair
divinities appearing to and comraingling with
mortals. Now before me the world rises up as when
ruled from Olympus,
And to the beautiful halls each happy deity
goes;
All of the Gods are marching along in the
fragrance of movement
While the Goddesses' forms echo the music
of folds.

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 311
This will hint to you the deepest vein of what
I have been thinking, doing, and feeling these
unruffled days. It is an intense one-sided bent
which has to work itself out to fulfillment, what
ever that raay be.
Auturanal days begin to intercalate themselves
already in the weather of this latitude. Little
whirlwinds catch up the scattered leaves and
spin them into brief eddies before me through the
streets — a sign that this Wiesbaden season is
drawing to a close.

Wiesbaden, Aug. 15th, 1878.
I did not fail to respond to Bodenstedt's in
vitation, and to visit him in his apartments,
where he is keeping house and doing sorae lit
erary work. As I took what he called a frugal
meal with hira, I saw his wife at home. He
showed me sorae quartos of the old Elizabethan
dramatists gathered during a residence in Eng
land. A love-poera written by hiraself in Eng
lish he read to rae — I rather thought he was
proud of it. Then he handed me a German
drama of his own, whose theme was one of the
Eussian emperors. Said he with a sorrowful
look': " this drama is forbidden in the Gerraan
Empire." "Then literature has its censorship
among you still," I replied. "Yes; all these
royal families are connected, you know." I had

312 THE GERMAN LOUP.
before noticed his depressed spirits ; I tried to
turn the talk to his books and asked something
about his work on the Elizabethan dramatists.
His answer was that it did not sell. Bodenstedt
was not to-day in his Mirza Schaffy mood.
Finally some stateraent of his iraplied the dark
political situation of the country. I remarked:
" Your forecast of the future of united Gerraany
is not bright, then." " Very dark," he said
with a look out of his eyes which betokened not
only sorrow but anguish. It was for a moment
the saddest face I have seen in Europe, and in
dicated how the best spirits of the land are
weighed down with the political difficulties of
the time. Already at Munich I had run into
the German cloud ; the unity of the Empire was
bringing its reaction and questionings. A people
disappointed and disillusioned was the Germany
which I was seeing; that was what could be
felt and heard on every side. Poor Bodenstedt,
sympathetic soul, had a severe attack of the
blues that day.
I could understand hira for I had gone through
the same experience in regard to my own country
after our civil war. What a time it had in get
ting back to order! Who did not often despair
of its restoration? I could say to him truthfully
that I believed the cloud would pass over and
that all would turn out well. After even a vic
torious war the backstroke must come. I rose

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 313
to go, but we both agreed to take a walk to
gether through the Park.
When in the open air I asked him to repeat
some verses of his translation from the Persian.
This he did with increasing zest, and gradually
recovered his Mirza Schaffy mood, which I be
lieve to be native to hira. Everything was again
in full flow, and I thought my time had come.
An elegiac couplet of my own had just started
to throbbing on my tongue, when this wayward
organ switched off into a question as a kind of
feeler: "Herr Professor, what do you think
of Goethe's Eoman Elegies? " He at once di
lated upon their poetic merit, and showed his
bent by citing what was for him the favorite
distich in the whole collection :
Eine Welt zwar bist du, O Rom, doch ohne die
Liebe
Ware die Welt nicht die Welt, ware denn Rom
auch nicht Rom.
Of course I was delighted, for these very
hnes I had endeavored to translate and to inter
weave into an English epigram after the old
Greek pattern. But the poet of Mirza Schaffy
at once shot off in a new direction, giving rein
to his anti-classical tendency: " Yet the meter
is bad, there is a continual violence clone to the
laws of prosody." This was enough, my lines
which were pushing for utterance on my tongue's

314 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
tip suddenly wheeled about and then sank down
hopeless to the very bottora of my conscious
ness, whence they could not be coaxed to rise
again. So I did not have the courage to try even a
single elegiac distich on Bodenstedt, though I
was dying to do it. Of course I thought him
rather liraited in his poetic world-view, and
cramped by his notions of versification. He had
never gotten into the old classical world and
transforraed its suprerae expression, which is its
poetry, into his own modern language and life.
Soraehow I could not think that he fully appre
ciated the work of his greatest countryman,
Goethe, in bringing Hellas bodily to Teutonia,
and in, transfiguring German speech with the
Greek spirit. Unfortunately we have never had
in Anglo-Saxondom a Goethe to make En
glish move to Greek rhythm and break up
our desperately monotonous Iambic clog-dance.
This is the chief reason for the decay of Greek
studies, which the classicists are so loudly lament
ing. But it is their own fault. The Univer
sity professor is usually the most vociferous
declaimer against the English hexameter and
pentaraeter. The result is that the classical forra
which is thegreat charra, reraains alien to Anglo-
Saxon life and speech, both in England and
Araerica. Hence the practical English-speaking
man flings it away with good reason. The Heilen-

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 315
ists themselves have dug the chasm which they are
faUing into, generally with great outcry against
somebody else, for instance the scientist, as the
mischief-maker. Who can transfuse that beau
tiful Greek world into our modern life, preserv
ing its Greek form of beauty? Without this, its
better half is quite lost. Goethe chiefly has done
the task for German and Germany, and in this
respect, as well as in others, claims our study.
Not Voss, as some say ; for Voss is in his depths
a formalist; he has many excellences, but not
the capital one, while Goethe has many faults,
but in spite of them the capital excellence. His
classical measures are alive, run of themselves,
and even limp and break to pieces with an over
flowing poetic spontaneity.
Dear me ! I am writing a kind of a treatise in
this letter. Well, the subject is raost interesting
to me, and so it will splash out of me into ink.
Indeed it touches the deepest hope of my whole
European trip. Is it possible for me to appro
priate this classic life and to make it talk, for me
at least, in my own native tongue? I have tried
Bodenstedt, he certainly has had no such aim,
and does not understand it even in Goethe, who
had it supremely.
But I must wind up with the conclusion of our
promenade. Eather mechanically I at any rate
walked on, with some indifferent chat, for I had
reached tbe end of my string, and I imagine that

316 THE GERMAN LOUP.
he felt the gap. Suddenly we met a fine lady
whom he knew. He stopped and repeated ta
her one of his bright, witty quatrains, to which
she responded by an exceedingly hearty, but
well-bred laugh, calling for another. This was
my opportunity, and I excused myself. That
was the last I saw of Bodenstedt, and shall not
see him again, I suppose, as I leave Wiesbaden in
a few days. — ^Editor's Note. Sorae years after
wards at St. Louis I saw Bodenstedt once more,
and spoke with him very briefly at the Germania
Club, where there was a great crush to meet
him. He was making the tour of America,
which, I told him at Wiesbaden, he ought to
visit, as he would find many friends, and would,
I thought, make some money by lecturing. He
replied that such a tour had often been suggested
to him, but his excuse was that he had " no
organ" for speaking in large public halls.]

Wiesbaden, Aug. 21st, 1878.
To-morrow is the day set for departure from
Wiesbaden, where I have passed six very pleas
ant weeks, delightfully restful and recuperative,
with my friends. At the sarae time I have been
doing a little speck of work in the line of least
resistance. As I have had a room down town
to myself, and many hours of leisure, I let my
present bent have free rein, in order to find out

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 317
what it really was and what it wanted to say. If
I were with you I would let you guess which one
of the nuraerous interests awakened in me by
Europe rose to the surface, and persisted in as
serting itself through all my quiet days at Wies
baden. From what I already wrote you in a
couple .of later letters at Eome, you might be
able to divine the deepest and strongest current
in me was the poetic one, seeking to utter in clas
sical measure the antique world-view with its
upper and lower realms of Gods and Men, in
their peculiar inter-action, of which we catch
the earliest and perhaps best glirapse in Horaer.
All ancient art, especiaUy the statue, is in its
creative purpose a means of bringing the Olympi
ans down to the Terrestrials, of making the di
vine appear in form to the human. The soul
longs at some tirae to recover that part of its
spiritual inheritance which actually embodied
God in adequate shape, and thus raade manifest
on our earth the Beautiful. Thereof the grand
epiphany was the Greek world, which was
through and through artistic, creatively so, and
could not be anything else. Zeus the Highest
appeared, and appeared worthily, from the hand
of the artist Phidias, whose character, therefore,
was mediatorial, mediating the Greek man with
the Greek God through his art.
Now can I realize and make live within rae
this conception of ancient art with its corre-

318 THE GERMAN LOUP.
spending world? Such I believe to be the main
scope and hope of this European journey, which
cannot end till it has brought me to the fountain-
head of all noble antiquity on its spiritual side,
namely Hellas. To be sure the modern Greek
from all accounts is not the ancient one, still he
speaks the Greek tongue and lives in the old set
ting of Nature, which certainly had its part in
shaping that antique art-world along with its
institutions. Such is the purpose which, seething previously
rather in the dark and at random, has become
settled and clarified here at Wiesbaden. This
separation and stay in the North were needed
seeraingly to drive me back southward with re
newed resolution and enthusiasm. Certainly the
design of getting to Greece is now fixed, limited
of course by human contingencies. Somewhat
dreamlike still the whole scheme remains.
Originally in America it was all a dream, noth
ing but a dreara, and a tinge of that character it
persists in retaining, and I suppose, will, until it
harden into reality on the soil of Greece itself.
The result is that I have been making, off and
on as tirae would allow, sorae studies in modern
Greek as it is called. The structure of this lan
guage is quite the sarae as the old one, and words
are usually just the sarae, with some changes and
omissions in the inflected parts. The chief diffi
culty for me is to learn to pronounce it by the

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 319
accents and not by quantity — the latter way I have
to unlearn, and that is harder than to learn at first
hand. Davidson, a good Greek scholar, had the
same difficulty, so he told me at Eorae.
And I wish to tell you another little secret :
I have succeeded in getting a poetie form for -my
Roman experiences. I mean now not simply the
meter, of which I have already imparted to you
some specimens, but a kind of poetic organism,
into which I can put a totality of life. Many
fragments of experience, many images and even
expressions, which came showering down sep
arately upon rae at Eome, have shown a ten
dency in this reposeful spot to come together
and to coalesce into wholes, which are no longer
short epigrams (with which I first started) but
completed themes. This movement of radiant
Eoman atoms into larger living shapes has tickled
me imraensely, and has probably swollen my
vanity so that you will have to prick it a little
when I get back to prosaic, unclassic St. Louis
lying smoky and careless on the banks of her
tu-rbid Mississippi.
Already about a dozen of these pieces have
marched themselves together from single dis
tichs or quatrains into good-sized battalions,
which begin to maneuver as one body, though I
am stUl drilling them to greater harmony and
order. Nothing of the kind I ever did before in
my life or thought of doing, or knew of anybody

320 THE GEBMAN LOUT.
else who dared such tricks, though I do not for
a moment imagine that I am the flrst in the
business. To-morrow, then, I shall start to complete my
Teutonic round or loup, but with multitudinous
classical brain-cells exploding and coruscating in
my head.
Weimar, Aug. 24th, 1878.
The two greatest heroes of German Spirit tower
massively over this piece of Saxon territory, not
far apart — Luther and Goethe.
Of course I clirabed up to the Wartburg, with
which so much history and fable are connected.
The famous Lutherian blotch of ink was duly
inspected with wonder, and indeed with faith, if
I could be allowed to interpret the phenomenon
out of my own experience. For I have fully
persuaded myself, if nobody else, that I have
been throwing inkstands at the devil all my life;
I believe that in a small way I am doing so just
now. Indeed, my faith goes still further: I be
lieve that the old Father of Lies through his
representative has repeatedly thrown an inkstand
at rae and bespattered rae with its diabolic fluid,
not doing much harra, however.
But for me in my present mood, the Teutonic
hero is not Sigfried, not Luther, but Goethe, in
whose main terrestrial environment I am now
trying to construe his work, or some small part

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 321
of it perchance. I have long regarded his lifei
as a greater poem than any or all of his poetical
works, which are indeed only fragments of it,
and require to be put together into a grand total
ity. This will be very different from what we
get out of the biography written by Mr. Lewes,
who makes himself altogether too much his own
hero, instead of Goethe. Not Faust nor Meister
is by any means the sum of Goethe, but at most
a moment, or several moments, of him; to build
this sum we have to add even the 10,000 letters
of his which, an editor has computed, are still
in existence, many of them unpublished. Then
his published works specially must be biographed,
showing the many stages and activities trans
formed into the one life.
Two days I have spent in the little city of
Weimar, long enough to impress upon the mind
the outward scenic setting of the poet's life. The,
Gartenhaus is localized, and the valley of thei
little lira is repeatedly promenaded, in which I in
my present mood particularly note the inscrip
tion upon a tablet of stone to the nymphs of the
trees and rocks, written in my favorite classic
measure and breathing the very spirit of the
Greek epigram (which siraply means an inscrip
tion hke this). Here is a sample of a true trans
lation, not merely of this or that old poem, but
of the Greek world itself into modern speech
and life. Let it be a creative model. Of course
21

322 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
I have seen the Museum, whose gem is the
Odyssey pictures of Preller, painted in a peculiar
subtle harmony with Goethe's classicism. And
the two houses of the two poets on the PubUc
Square with the double statue of the poetic
Dioscuri of Germany, are diligently looked at
with varying emotions. But Schiller somehow I
cannot coraraune with intimately even here in
Weimar, where he is on every side in evidence —
my limitation again.
The one great presence for me in this whole
region is, accordingly, the most universal of all
our modern poets. And even in his life there
are portions which drop into the background.
That whioh sezies hold of me most strongly now
is his classical period and its message. He also
had to take flight to Italy for self -redemption,
and to bring that ancient art-world back to his
countryraen ina new gospel. They were indeed
already learned in Greek and Latin, and certainly
very industrious, still they needed regeneration.
Mere philology, very necessary as a help, cannot
conduct us to the soul of the masterpiece. The
erudite professor at the German University
Goethe has set forth in Homunculus (Second
Part of Faust) with deep significant touches of
satiric huraor.
Of the modern German Eenascence I seem to
myself to have felt tne heart-beat here at Wei
mar. This is the Teutonic element of culture

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 323
which appeals to me most strongly at present,
and Goethe is its greatest and most original rep
resentative. Hence his Italian Journey becomes
typical for the Northerner who is seeking to make
himself integral by finding and appropriating
from the South what he lacks of a wholeness of
human development.

Perlin, Sept. 1st, 1878.
The capital of the German Empire : — you will
be asking me, I know, what I think of it. Verily
a many-sided phenomenon it is, not to be
grasped in a half-dozen days. But I can give my
first impression, gotten after a long meandering
walk on the first day, and still abiding with rae
after many a turn and tour. Berlin raore than
any large city that was ever built, I believe, is
the product of reflective intelligence, I raean that
self-determined growth is hardly felt here ;
everything seems laid out, directed, supervised
from above according to sorae category of the
understanding. I raight call it the abstract city
distinctively, or the city of the abstract idea,
which is here always beforehand, and may be
seen materializing itself in the vast area of new
buildings which are now going up everywhere. I
came upon something of the sarae kind in
Munich, under whose formative art — architec
ture, sculpture, painting — always ran a basic

324 THE GERMAN LOUP.
substrate of intention versus spontaneity. But
Munich, as it seems to rae, never categorized
itself in its productions so definitely and so over-
whelraingly as Berlin. I recollect of reading in
sorae book by a native that Prussia is supremely
the intellectual State, and has to be so in order
to exist, being founded upon its Public School
Systera with many educational layers between till
the University. The Prussian State according
to its great Philosopher, must be self-conscious,
is that "whioh knows itself and wiUs what it
knows." This citation you will recognize as
Hegel's. By the way I have often had to think of Hegel
in perambulating this city. I maintain that he
is still its philosopher, though he is said to be
dethroned at the University. And I still further
maintain that Berlin was Hegelian before Hegel,
that the philosopher only formulated its real
character from the beginning. To be sure, he
came to Berlin from Southern Germany, but each
was really born for the other, and each at last
formed the other. No philosopher since his
time, it is said, has been in sueh vogue here, and
with good reason. Hegel found his true actuality
in Berlin, and Berlin found its true ideality in
Hegel. He was for a tirae the State philosopher,
and Plato's dream came nearer to being realized
than ever before or since.
I must tell you that I went to call on Prof. C.

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 325
L. Michelet, oue of the editors of Hegel's
works, and one of the last survivors of the old
set of Hegel's apostles. The History of Phil
osophy in the coraplete Works of Hegel came
from his editorial hand. He was friendly, chatty,
reminiscential, and showed eagerness to hear
about our American Hegelian raoveraent at St.
Louis. I could not help thinking that he mani
fested once or twice in his judgraents a streak of
the old jealousies which helped destroy the
Hegelian school from within, for it went to
pieces not merely by blows given from without.
Fortunately we in St. Louis know little of .this
disintegrating element. He gave a dig at Eos-
enkranz and seemed to think Strauss was still
the genuine Hegelian article.
You are aware that Brockmeyer came from
Prussia, of which he often speaks " as my
country," especially when he wishes to give point
to sorae -national excellence. I have frequently
thought of him here, and tried to identify hira
with his State. I think I raay say that both
have a tendency to absoluteness, if not to abso
lutism. Still I like him better than Prussia, who
is powerful, conscientious, intelligent but not
loveable, certainly not at first sight.
To be sure I see Berlin and the German Em
pire under very unfavorable circurastances. The
old emperor is during these days lying danger
ously wounded by an assassin who at once com-

326 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
mitted suicide. And this was the second attempt
upon his life within less than a month. A deep
religious unrest prevails in the land on account
of the conflict between Church and State, which
see-ras to have started afresh the old animosities
of the Thirty Years' War between Catholics
and Protestants. But the chief political shock
coraes frora the struggle with the Socialists who
are a decided raajority of the inhabitants of
Berlin. I cannot help feeling that a volcano
underlies this city. The newspaper which I read
yesterday is suppressed to-day. I recollect the
article which caused the suppression, it cer
tainly was raoderate in tone. But such is the
tense poli lical situation that any trifle irritates
and may start the outbreak. Every person who
enters the city is subject to police surveillance.
I was careful to have my papers in order, but
two ladies who had come to see the old Father
land from St. Louis, and whom I knew, were
not so fortunate. I went with them to the
police station and had quite a little brush with
an overbearing official befbre I could secure theiri
release, with permission to see the city. At this
center of the Empire the nervousness seems
greatest, and the shadow of the political situa
tion, which I saw and felt already at Munich, is
deepest. Still I believe in Germany. The peo
ple are sound to the core, and are not yet going
to die ; in fact they are not going to lose their

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 327
hard-won unity, and to relapse into their former
divided condition.
Berlin in spite of all these troubles is growing
at a prodigeous r.ate, and I spent many hours in
looking at its manifold new structures, to see if
they were really saying anything new in archi
tecture, which is here in great popular demand.
Certainly this is the opportunity of the German
architect. But it seemed to me that I could
trace every important structural motive to Italy
or to Greece. The style of the Eenascence is
the all-dominating one, which undoubtedly fits
the New Birth of a people. But you would
almost think that it was the New Birth of the
Italian people, quite as this occurred some
centuries ago, so close is the imitation. I
hunted in vain for sorae distinctive architectonic
signs of the New Birth of Germany which has
taken place. Schihkel seems here to be re
garded as the great constructive genius of recent
times. He is a close follower of Greek forms,
but I could not feel as much spontaneity in these
Berlin edifices of his as in the Bavarian, though
both are reproductions inspired by Hellas.
Again one perceives the erudition of art rather
than its originality. I believe that the most
typical object here is the University with its large
body of learned professors; really all Berlin is
one vast University, which is by no means the
worst thing inthe world, on the contrary is some-

328 THE GERMAN LOUP.
thing very good in its due limits. To be sure
the soldier is everywhere in evidence, and I am
often reminded of our own country during the
Civil War, when the blue-coats were to be seen
on all sides, I wearing one myself. But how
quickly they vanished at the word of peace ! It is
more than seven years since the Peace of Frank
fort, and still allthis militarism. But this is not
exclusively a German, bu-t a European malady, of
which Europe will die some day unless it can
somehow change its regimen.
A bodeful prophecy, you raay think, for clos
ing a letter ; but I may add ray strong belief that
Europe is going to change its regiraen. Enough
of the part of Isaiah for the present.

Vienna, Sept. 3rd, 1878.
The train frora Berlin on which I was riding
stopped long enough at Dresden to let me run
out to the Picture Gallery and take a look at the
two faraous Madonnas, Northern and Southern,
Teutonic and Italian, that of Holbein and that of
Eaphael (the Sistine Madonna). They stand in
a certain rivalry, one thinks, yea opposition, but
the latter is the universal favorite. It was of
course soraething to see the originals, but there
are such good engravings of these masterpieces
that one is familiar with them already. At any
rate I was rather surprised at my want of sur-

A TO UB IN E UB OPE. 329
prise on beholding them. When the train sped
onward, and I had tirae to reflect, I concluded
that I did not get much that was new. Still the
two pictures brought up again that dualism which
runs so deep in European art, and which finds a
loud echo in rae at the present tirae.
The difference between Vienna and Berlin is
felt at once. The Austrian capital has been sup
planted as the head of the Gerraan world, and
ehows it in a certain public lassitude, and per
haps also in its surrender to gayety. On the
surface it seeras very dissolute ; enormous, indeed, ;
abnormal is its pleasure-seeking. No wonder that
the scepter passed to sterner Berlin. There is
more sensuous resignation here than lever found'
in Italy. And there is more here to titiUate
bodily desire than appeared to me in Paris,
usually deeraed the queen of scarlet-women.
Yet Vienna is amiable, which Berlin is not, and
does not try to be. Moreover one now gets ®ut
of the German political shadow, which hovers so
ominously over the whole new Empire, though
Austria is not without her problems.
Vienna has also the craze for extensive build
ing, though in a different way from Berlin, where
it springs directly froiri the needs of the growing
city. Vienna has removed her old walls and
fortifications, and is putting in their stead fine
edifices, which still have their scaffolding around
them.

330 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
The grand creative excellence of Vienna has
been in music, which is not so easy to be picked
up in a brief stay. Beethoven and Mozart,
Hayden and Schubert belong here, with other
composers of almost equal distinction. We
have the right to think that Vienna is or was
once spontaneously m usical , and that is something
into whose upbursting fountain on this spot I
would like to penetrate, if I could. In rausic
Gerraan genius has expressed itself far more
deeply and naturally than in the arts of outer
spatial forra. But these are the arts which I ara
desperately seeking, and to whose birth-place in
the sunlit South I feel myself drawn irresistibly
by the chords of destiny itself. I listened, how
ever, at Vienna to some public orchestras, and
went twice to the Grand Opera, whose season has
just opened with Armida and the Prophet, both
of which I heard, or rather saw, for the scenic
effect soraewhat overbalanced the song.
Good-by, musical Vienna! The next time may
I hear thy soul uttering itself creatively in
music — which has not been my lot this time.
Doubtless my fault again ; I ara not in the right
attunement myself. My two art-senses, sight and
hearing, have had a treraendous war and the
former has literally crushed the latter for the
present; I was once ear-souled too, but now I
seem to have become wholly eye-souled. So I

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 331
sing to myself : begone, off to the limit-illumi
nating South ! Trieste, Sept. 8th, 1878.
Another day spent in whirling around and over
lofty mountains and through Alpine valleys,
till we sweep across the watershed and run
down hill to the sea on which lies this city !
Trieste has its peculiar character; it is a center
in which several nationalities meet at a point,
from different directions. The German (Aus
trian) is in control; the urban masses are
Italian; the Greek is strongly represented in
commerce ; the surrounding rural population is
said to be chiefly Slavic. There is a fine Greek
church in a prominent place. I went into it
and heard the service for the first tirae inray life
and looked at the people, especially at the woraen,
among whom I already sought to pick out fair
Helen. Also I tried my first spoken Greek
(which I bave been studying from books) on a
Greek shopkeeper, who easily understood me but
corrected my accent in his reply. So I have
actually begun talking the language of the Gods!
Trieste is claimed as a part of the so-called unre
deemed Italy (Italia irredenta), over which
there is some political agitation. Eeally it is a
sort of trilingual point in the transition from the
Teutonic world into the two Southern Peninsulas,
Greek and Italian .

332 THE GERMAN LOUP.
Accordingly at this city I find myself passing
out of Germany, where I have been lingering
sorae two months. Naturally I look back as I
cross the border. I have felt the contrast be
tween the two civilizations of Europe, the transal
pine and the cisalpine or the Mediterranean, both
of which have expresssd theraselves quite fully
in their respective Fine Arts. It is this expres
sion which attracts rae now. Indeed I feel my
chief interest at present quite confined to one
phase of this expression, namely, the visible
Arts, those which embody themselves to sight in
spatial forras — Architecture, Sculpture, and
Painting. It is soraewhat of a mystery to my
self why I should seek so violently to behold and
to coraraune with nature transforraed into shapes
of beauty. You my friend, as you know me well,
can think it over and out, and tell me. Some
times I say to myself that this strong inclination
to the externail forms of Art is a rebound from
an equally one-sided pursuit of internal forms
of spirit, that is, a reaction from my previous
study of philosophy, and even of poetry. For
philosophy deals with the abstract concepts of
mind, and poetry deals with its inner iraages.
But at present I seem not really happy unless
the image rushes into body, and by the same
psychology the imageless category must be
come incorporate. You know that I have never
seen Art in its originative home before, and

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. "38
never felt it in its priraal act of creation. I
have only heard echoes and seen copies, often
copies of copies. But in Europe one comes
into coraraunion with artistic genesis itself,
provided that he really needs such an experi
ence and is ready for it. Thus I cannot help
feeling that a great void in my soul, a hitherto
undeveloped part of me, is getting its own, yea
is demanding its right and place in the totality of
human life. Perhaps every person feels or
ought to feel himself only a fragment of a soul
without the discipline of Art.
It has beconie deeply irapressed upon me that
around this Mediterranean Sea, over which I am
now looking beyond and beyond, lies the genera
tive fatherland of the seen Arts and of all their
typical forms. The North has at bottom merely
imitated them, undoubtedly with a good deal of
skill and diversity. On the other hand, Teutonia
is born rausical, poetic, and philosophic. These
' three ways of expression are native to her,
bursting up spontaneously from the deepest
depths of her Folk-Soul, and speaking to her
and to all the world as no other Art.
Soraehow without my intending it or even
thinking of it at the time, I have visited in suc
cession the three German homesteads of Poetry,
Philosophy and Music — Weimar (Goethe and
SchiUer), Prussia (Hegel and Kant), Vienna
(Beethoven and Mozart). You are aware that

334 THE GERMAN LOUP,
in St. Louis I gave years to these forms of ex
pression. Often you have been in my home and
know that we had a household devoted to music
as our most congenial pastime. In my vocation
I taught poetry (Shakespeare especially) and
philosophy at the High School for many years.
Quite internal and subjective are all these Teu
tonic raodes of expression, from which I have
now turned away to their external counterpart,
to the outer forras of Art in the South. I am
trying to find my other lacking half of culture,
and I have glimpsed it and its dwelling-place, I
think. So you see I am_ in a manner reacting
against what I have been and done before.
Another difference between these two sorts of
artistic utterance, the Northern and the South
ern, has corae horae to rae with a good deal of
stress: the one is transferrible, the other not, or
only partially so. I can get the creative Shakes
peare in St. Louis, if I read him creatively, as
well as I can at Stratford ; likewise I can com
mune with the genetic soul of the philosopher
immediately through the printed page. The
sarae is true of the musical composer, though by
the nature of his art he has an interpreter as
intermediary between his soul and that of his
hearer. But these Southern arts are fixed in
space and confined to a locality. Their original
creative impulse can hardly be transferred to a
copy and carried away. In this sense they can-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 335
not go to St. Louis, but St. Louis must come to
them. Moreover they have no inner process in
Time, as have Music ancl Poetry and Philosophy ;
at most they stand crystallized in a given
moment, and cannot march forward. On this
side they are still external matter, though matter
transfigured and endowed with soul and self.
Here I must break off this retrospect and leave
you to supply the rest as you may choose. I ara
stepping over the boundary-line between Teu
tonia and Italia, which, though fluctuating some
what, has existed frotn old Eoraan days and still
exists, making Europe two-fold and rendering
her history and art dualistio.
Venice, Sept. 10th, 1878.
I reraeraber addressing a letter to you from
this city sorae days raore than two raonths ago,
for it was about the Fourth of July. At that
tirae I started from here ancl wheeled westward
and northward till I touched the Ehine. Then
followed a sweep eastward to Berlin and south
ward through Vienna, till I have gotten back to
my Italian starting-point. This round embraces
almost the whole body of Gerraany — I call it
the German loup of my European journey, the
latter being by no raeans yet complete. From
the .loup at Venice I conceiVe a string to be hang
ing down to Eome, namely the railroad by which

336 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
I came and by which I shall return. Enclosed is
a small map on whioh I have traced by a pencil-
line this German loup, which without ray intend
ing it, insists upon being an integral part of my
experience in Europe.
I have again begun to make dives into this
Venetian sea of color both in nature and art. I
tackled Tintoretto once more in that enormous
picture of his called Paradiso with its vast popu
lation of faces, which looked down from the wall
upon me standing alone before them. But I
shall have to let Euskin keep his Tintoretto, so
much praised by hira. I turned away and began
to muse upon the lonely grandeur of this Doge's
Palace, and indeed of the whole city. What is
the source of the fall of Venice? It is not yet a
ruin like ancient Eome but it is a shell colossal,
a many-colored sea-shell quite abandoned, though
still entire. We feel that the life which once
dwelt here and built for itself this fair abode,
has fled. In the medieval tirae Venice succeeded
in making herself the chief commercial middle
man between East and West. Other Italian
cities sought the same prize and hence their wars
with one another. But when the Cape of Good
Hope was rounded, Venice and all Italy, yea the
Mediterranean itself was flanked, and thus they
all lost their function in the world's coramerce,
whereby they lapsed slowly into the poverty of
to-day. My gondolier even could say : Venice is

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 337
dead, and new Italy has not brought her to life.
The contrast rises before the traveler every
where : present indigence and past magnificence.
Once the money of Europe flowed through Italy,
a great deal of it through Venice, whioh kept
enough of it to build for itself this iridescent
sea-shell peering above the waves.
Well, here comes the little boat which is to
carry rae to the Lido, where Venice, or rather
the strangers in it, are taking a summer-bath in
the waters of the Adriatic.

Venice, Sept. llth, 1878.
Scarcely is the excessive heat past when a new
scourge makes its appearance among you ; now
it is that horrible pestilence, the yellow fever,
whioh racks rae with anxiety. Truly St. Louis
and the Mississippi Valley are laboring under a
divine judgment ; the wrath of the Gods ceases
for a moraent, only to reappear under a new
forra. What sins have you committed in my
absence? For you are certainly cursed in the
eye of Heaven, if infernal torraents are any
signs of angry punishraent from above. No
news has yet reached me that the plague has
really entered the city, and I hope it may be kept
out. My thoughts often turn to you and I
wonder how you raay be doing; the little girl,
22

.*?-3^ THE GEBMAN LOUP.
that well-spring of solicitude, sends an anxious
rill through my waking hours, and then in per
son enters my dreams. This morning I rose
heavy from a night's wrestling with the un
chained demons of Care.
But let forebodings be now dismissed in the
presence of the merry world which capers and
chatters through this city. I ara lodged on the
fifth floor overlooking the Riva dei Schiavoni ;
ray window entices the eye far seaward, through
islands, lagoons, edifices of stately magnificence.
In this net work spun by Nature and improved by
the cunning hand of man, lies the Venetian
spider, once the greatest of the species, but now
very feeble, if not quite dead. I seethe monster
arachnoid issuing frora her labyrinthine web and
smiting her prey, dragging it into her inextric
able toils, till she becomes the wealthiest and
most hated city in the world. There is much
that is great and noble inthe history of Venice,
but its fundamental political principle — secret
murder by the State — is most revolting. There
is still something spider-like here ; a sullenness,
a silence, a secretness — rio streets hardly, no
wheeled vehicles, no rumble and roar of a city.
The spider sits gloomy and solitary, till she
makes a dart and skims swiftly over the surface
of the sea and returns with her spoils, out of
which she built these palaces — such is the
image which I can not get rid of here.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 339
Still the people can not be raelancholy ; they
are Italians, the lightest-hearted nation on the
globe. Urider my window stretches the long
quay, upon which the population are assembled ;
the sun has just gone down and the breeze is blow
ing freshly from the sea. A band of minstrels
is singing in chorus; very good is their song, I
think, given with a natural sense of rhythm and
melody. As it grows dark, a Bengal light
changes the color of this scene for a few
moments, since without a change of coloring,
the Italian here can not exist. He seems, as I
have observed him, to be least able to endure
monotony of color: he tires quickly, unless new
tints arrest his vision and gratify his keen
pleasure in the sense of sight. Fire works are
most perfect in Italy, and perhaps most intensely
enjoyed. Sailors of all nations. Oriental cos
tumes, well-dressed foreigners with dignified
English miens, beggars in rags, sallow Venetian
women make up the display.
But there is another character here who has
probably reached the lowest tier of the lowest
species of our genus — the pimp. As I recline on
a bridge and look at the sparkle of the waters,
this human reptile approaches me, and recog
nizing my nationality speaks in broken English.
What he said need not be told, but he gave a
new glance into a very old vice of this^ Mediter
ranean world.

340 THE GERMAN LOUP.
While writing this letter late at night, I have
many reminders of St. Louis buzzing round my
ears — mosquitoes. Here he is, the indefatigu-
able serenader aud blood-sucker; I confess that I
am inclined to entertain him as an old acquaint
ance. There is no protection in my room againgt
hira; such a thing as a mosquito net does not
belong to the poetry of Venice. Comfort any
how is prose, to be uncorafortable is to be ro
raantic; hence I cry, away with all comfort.
This is one reason why Italy is so full of attrac
tion; everywhere you have poetical adventures
outside ofthe conveniences of horae.
The Palace of the Poges which I pass many
tiraes every day is not unlike the political edifice
of Venice ; the structure is indeed an iraage of
the spirit by which it was erected and inhabited.
The architecture of the Eenaissance has in gen
eral the tendency to become more open and free
as it rises toward the sun ; but this edifice grows
darker and more close as it ascends. The upper
story seems to refuse light ; it is a secret to the
beholder below; gloomy and forbidding is
its look. The Head of the State must be a
mystery , its workings are not to be looked upon
by human eyes. Tirae even has not been able to
throw light into these obscure dungeons of His
tory; only vague forras of victims writhing in
the dark may be seen there. But the lowest
story is an open arcade where the whole people

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 341
may enter under the protection of those above;
the middle story is more enclosed, yet broken
through' with a curious Gothic tracery suggesting
dim riddles inside.
Who now has possession of the building? Not
Doge, hardly Venice; it is the tourist who is
seen traversing these stately halls, where kings
and emperors appeared before the proud mistress
of the Adriatic. What does it all mean? I can
read only one inscription here : God's justice. I
walked alone through the chamber of the famous
Senate; the echoes of my solitary footsteps
sounded like the chuckles of old Satan.
Another highly characteristic monuraent I saw
to-day : the equestrian statue of the famous
Condottiere, Pariollomeo Colleoni. On the
whole this is the best work of the kind that I
have seen anywhere ; it is best because it is the
most perfect representation of the man, the
country and the age. It is the bold robber, not
as an outlaw, but in the pay of the State; proudly
he raises himself in his stirrups, with a look of
self-conscious importance, such as belongs to the
first man of the land. Though the mighty
leader ofthe armies of the State, still he is but a
robber and hireling ; these are the contradictory
traits which the artist has made to interpenetrate
so subtly ; Venice herself can find her historical
character adumbrated to no small degree in
that statue. Such is a true work of art, re-

342 THE GERMAN LOUP.
fleeting in the individual forra the spirit of nations
and epochs. There is indeed more history to be
read in this statue than in mountains of official
records. Notice too that he stands in a sacred
place, before a church as a pattern for the peo
ple. Good bye, old Colleoni, I confess I like
you and I shall not soon forget you, and I ought
to keep in mind the artist who made you, Andrea
dal Verocchio.
1 am getting a little tired of traveling, I have
lately swept around too much. But I have still
one task tb perforra, which being done, I shall
be ready to return horae at any raoraent. I must
yet see Greece and breathe its atmosphere ; for
in it there is or was some subtle exhiliration
not elsewhere known upon our earth. Still
more, I have a very strong desire to learn the
modern Hellenic : to be able to speak it a little
and to understand it a little when spoken. I
have always wished to bring to higher perfection
my knowledge of ancient Greek ; to make it live
within me, if possible — to make it an instinct and
not a reflective process of translation. But this
feeling of language can only be attained, I am
satisfied, through the tongue and the ear ; that is,
by being able to speak the language and to under
stand it when spoken. As long as I live I shall
read Greek nore or less : it will be a saving of tirae
to finish the matter now as far as possible. The
modern Hellenic offers the only means, not a

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 343
perfect one perhaps, to attain this end. So my
thoughts now daily go out towards the extreme
limit of my journey — Athens. I bought a mod
ern Greek conversation book to-day, and I begin
to talk with myself about my dinner, about my
clothes, and haggle about prices in the language
of the Gods.
Moreover I feel that I am laden with as much
material as I can work over in many years. In
deed most of it I shall probably never touch
again. I have learned a great many of my limits,
and there is no use of trying to do what can never
be accomplished. A sense of satiety fills the
mind when you simply shovel in food without
(^igestion. I desire to return home and put this
European trip to sleep for a time ; then we may
see into what sort of a thing it wakes up after its
repose, if indeed it ever wakes up.

Venice, Sept. 14th, 1878.
Before I leave this city, I feel as if I must sit
down and tell you my chief delights. In Archi
tecture of course the church of San Marco comes
first into tbe eye and then sinks deep into the
iraagination. Its name is splendor, to which we
may add a surname, calling it Oriental splendor.
The gorgeous details inside and outside possess
you frora the first ; decoration is heaped on deco
ration without internal connection ; acres of gilt

344 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
and richly-colored mosaic, forests of the most
precious marbles, sculptured reliefs of every
variety press upon you for study and recognition
till the mind is stunned and refuses to look at
anything. San Marco thus is a little like the
array of iraportunate guides and . venders who
loiter before its doors, and waylay the tourist
with so much iraportunity that he will not em
ploy any of them or buy their wares.
What inspired all this luxury of ornamenta
tion ? The thought will for ce itself upon you that
much of it is without any inherent necessity, that
is, without any true principle of life. At least I
could not find any reasonable thread to connect
it together after many hours' conteraplation.
Taken by itself, a great deal of it is very fine, and
all of it curious; but I am smothered in this
tropical jungle. San Marco is not therefore a
work of the creative iraagination in the highest
sense ; its range lies in the reiilni of the capricious
fancy, and hence is Oriental. But what a history
of the Venetian State and of the Venetian relig
ion does not this church* write? Pomp is the
God worshipped here, whatever other titles he
may have.
So one grows bewildered and perhaps a little
impatient with the details, for they lead nuwhere,
for they do not take our soul by the hand as it
were and conduct us deeper and deeper towards
the central thought, to the veritable Holy of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 345
Holies in a work of art. Next I occupy a seat
inside of the church and banish all this endless
ornament ; I see only the grand proportions of
the edifice. Now its secret coraes to light, the
truly noble and very simple architectural prin
ciple furnishes a perpetual enjoyment to the
mind. You see the central dorae surrounding
itself on each side with four lesser doraes — the
mother with her four daughters clinging around
her body at every significant point. This gives
the square shape as fundaraental which now rises
before the eye in many repetitions, furnishing
the proportion for the height, length and breadth
of the edifice. The round arch, when we cast
our eye upwards, is seen joining these square
forms; the square passes geometrically in the
round. Still further we must see this arch
evolving into the half -dome, finally into the full
dome which is an infinitude of arches held from
one point, from one key-stone. So the archi
tecture begins to hang together, and becomes
great, noble, inspiring. Now I cannot see the
diffuse decoration ; only the true grandeur of the
edifice falls into my eye; whenever I catch up a
thread now, it leads rae upwards into the heart of
the whole. So I think, but let rae add, I feel
certain that not one of the fifty visitors who in
spected San Marco to-day, would agree with me.
It is the ornaraent which seduces the eye.
After fixing the architectural proportions in

346 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
the mind, we turn to the enormous surface of
Mosaic on the ceiling — a perfect heaven of gold,
filled with radiant angels. Forty thousand square
feet, it is said; every part shines with gilding or
with colored figures. Here the old Byzantine
style can be studied along with the raethods of
paintirig — for these Mosaics were executed at
very different tiraes. Soon the eye becomes
trained and finds a new dialect for the expression
of a new era ; Painting too is an utterance which
like language is transformed by each succeeding
new age. The Mosaic in the South seems to be
a kind of parallel to the painted Gothic window
of the North; I am inclined to prefer the latter,
for the light of heaven shining through the saint
or angel painted on the glass fills the church with
a new illumination which can only be received
through these sacred sources.
I have taken up so much space in talking about
San Marco that I can only indicate to you my
favorite secular edifice — the so-called Bibliotheca
of Sansovino. It too suffers from excessive
ornament — the great vice of Venetian Art ; but
what delightful proportions ! The eye at once
catche's thera, revels in thera and can not be
seduced from them by the superficial decoration.
There is no building whioh I have seen that so
perfectly expresses happiness; it makes one
happy to look at it. No struggle, no contorsion,
indeed no effort can be seen ; satisfied vvith the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 347
earth, with the beholder, above all with itself, it
does not want to be any better off than it is.
What a graceful and luxuriant play of classical
forms! Such work throws more sunshine into
the huraan heart than Phoebus Apollo hiraself ;
I feel a kind of spontaneous gladness every tirae I
look at it when I pass in the Piazza.
I ara sorry to say that after repeated effort I
can not arouse in myself any enthusiasm for the
Venetian school of painting as a whole. The
fault is my own, it lies in my present mood
whioh refuses enjoyment in anything but classi
cal clearness and severity ; play ofcolorforitsown
sake I can not delight in. I ara asharaed to say
that only one picture of the great Paul Veronese
has attracted rae ; it is the Eape of Europa in
the. Doge's Palace. The grading of that picture
is very fine, but one raotive in it is inthe highest
degree both humorous and true: the bull licks
the beautiful naked foot of his fair rider — what
a kiss ! As I was standing before it, laughing at
the conceits of the artist, a pretty English girl
who had lost her way in the maze of rooras came
up and asked for inforraation. I set her aright,
and then she wanted to know what there was
which was so funny in that picture. I asked her
if she knew of the story of Jupiter and Europa ;
she said no ; ancl of course, I could not tell it to
her — that rather free old love-story. So Icon-
tinned; "That animal is an American lover who

348 THE GEBMAN LOUP.
is going to carry on his back a beautiful English
girl across the ocean to his horae; you see her
first with raaids preparing her toilet; next she is
on tie way to the shore in the distance; thirdly
you see her now in the raiddle of the ocean
still on the back of her lover, but with hands
upraised in terror and eyes anxiously turned
back toward old England. She wants to re
turn, but her sturdy lover, well knowing the
worth of his prize paws and paddles ahead for
for the new world." She reddened a little and
answered. . "If I had an Araerican in that situa
tion, I would never turn round." Doubtless
she perceived my nationality, then that EngUsh
blush was the finest painting Ihave seen in Europe.
To bring before you a total picture of Venice,
just imagine a huge tank of eels. Did you ever
see a large trough full of these beasts, winding,
squirming, darting in every direction? Take a
map of the city, which, you are aware, is cut
through by an indefinite nuraber of irregular
crooked canals. First you will behold an im
mense eel running through the centre of it, and
making two big curves in the passage, just like
'the bend of an eel's body you will say; this is
the Canal Grande. Then from this big eel the
little eels run out towards all points of the com
pass with every possible variety of twist, flexure
and tortuousity; these are the small canals which
take the place of the streets of other cities.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 349
Through them the gondola moves, the Venetian
carriage. Into one of these boats the traveler at
once throws himself, and goes winding, winding,
winding, through and through, between lofty
palaces, under low bridges — "bobbing for
eels." The head begins to swim, as we say
wrongly ; for it is Venice which begins to swim —
tank, eels and all.
Here I am reminded of the markets of cities
on the sea ; they are always worth a visit. What
monsters do not these people devour? Generally
too I try to make a repast of sorae of the raost
curious and repulsive of these monsters, cooked
in the native fashion ; but I ara a little shy since
I got sick over a dish of sorae unknown species
of cuttle-fish, selected only for its devilish
shape. My two Venetian loves, for I have two, are
Titian's Venus and Bellini's Madonna. Both are
glorious types of woraen ; each, is different yet
ideal in the highest degree. Most of these fair
shapes, which the artist has often repeated, have
wandered far frora Venice; Titian is perhaps
seen better in Florence than here. His Venus is
to rae of a higher nature than his Madonna ; she
is no raere Goddess of sensuality though she be
undraped. You can see in herface what painting
can do, and how it becomes an utterance peculiar,
noble, unapproachable by any other Art. I feel
that Titian found in Painting the sole possible

350 , THE GEBMAN LOUP.
expression of the ideal within him ; he did not
want poetry, nor sculpture, nor any other artistic
method; he, like every real genius, was complete
and happy in the Umits of his Art. What im
presses me is his absolute ease and serenity; I
hate to hear anybody speak of his skill in color,
his management of light and shade, or his merely
technical dexterities. Why talk so rauch about
his tools, and so little about the thing he has
done? Sorae tirae, if I can find the difficult
word, I shall try to hint to you from afar what
he has wrought ; now I cannot do it, I have not
the word. Nor must one forget that his true
utterance is there, in the picture, of which lan
guage must always be a very bare, inadequate
translation. Titian, I hold to be the greatest of
all Venetians, in whatsoever sphere of activity
you may take them ; for his sake I love Venice
more than for her own sake; the mother which
brought forth such a man is adorable, as the
raother of a divine genius.
The time has now arrived when I must leave
Venice the second time, for I was hereon my way
to the North during the past sumraer. Of course
I have not exhausted a tithe of its glories; but I
have done enough for a short study. A lively
but melancholy picture it leaves in my mind —
poverty, lack of energy, filth. How can a great
people become so utterly emasculated? The
loudest complaints about the taxation of the gov-

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 351
ernment are heard, yet the city does nothing for
itself. It allows the commerce of the Adriatic
to settle at Trieste in the hands of Austria;
yet Italy now wants Trieste. But political mat
ters I have abjured, so I must break off this
strain. This afternoon I went out .to the Lido or Coast
where the open sea bounds the tract of lagoons.
The view was delightful, the air invigorating, and
many a stately structure seeraed to spring up out
of the sea in every direction — one would say they
were floating on the surface of the water. After
enjoying the sight for a tirae, I entered the large
bathing establishment where the wealthier Vene
tians and also many strangers cool themselves off
during the hot season. I purchased a ticket and
entered the water; Lord, what an indiscriminate
crowd of raen and woraen in the strangest cos
tumes — some in almost no costume at all. I, dia
pered only around my loins, felt at first a little
ashamed to go into the corapany of ladies ; but
as nobody paid any attention to me, I plunged
in. Of course I had lots of fun, particularly in
diving for the feet of a young Italian Miss, who
screamed like Andromeda at the touch of the
sea-monster.

352 THE GEBMAN LOUP.

Bologna, Sept. 15th.
I rode through the morning twilight in a gon
dola to the railroad station ; I felt a shudder in
passing through these narrow canals with lofty
palaces built straight out of the water on both
sides. What chance of escape in case of acci
dents ! No friendly land, no open entrance to
any house; a'perpendicular wall and deep water
confront you. Your* gondolier breaks the silence
by a shout of warning whenever he turns a bend
or corner; it sounds something like "ahoy,"
— otherwise there is nought but the muffled
splash of his oar, always a boding, funereal
sound. Once on a train, I arrive in a few hours
at Bologna, where I have just inspected the
gallery. You know the school of Bologna has a very
prominent place in the History of Painting. It
made the desperate attempt to resuscitate an Art
which was sinking — sinking for a good reason ;
it had uttered itself and had really nothing more
to say. Such I take to be the state of Painting
after Eaphael, Michel Angelo, and Titian. The
consequence is that this school everywhere bears
the mark of struggle, of effort to do more than
its Art can do, a restless unhappy school. In
this city it can be seen perhaps at its best ; I tell
you my impression: everywhere is written on

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 353
these works — Christian Painting is dead beyond
resurrection. This was about 300 years ago —
has not the death sentence been confirmed? Men
of very high gifts — the Caracci, Guido, Domen
ichino — were here, and they were deterrained,
desperately determined to paint great things.
Alas, we see chiefly their desperation. The sub
jects were mostly horrible — dead Christs, slaugh
ters, raartyrdoms — and they were treated in the
most horrible manner. But here I must break
the current, which has perhaps shocked you
enough for once. 23

IRome nil.
Rome, Sept. 16th, 1878.
Back in Eome the second time ! and lodged in
my old room within a stone's throw of the
Fountain of Trevi, whose roaring waterfall I can
hear! I thought of stopping at Florence for
sorae days, in order to give a raore thorough
study to the art of that city, but the irapulse to
reach Eome was too headstrong. Still during
the delay of a couple of hours I saw again the
finest Florentine Palazzos of the Eenascence,
which are probably the most original achieve
ment of Florence in the line of art. They are
indeed a rejuvenescence of ancient Eoman archi
tecture, but with a spirit of their own, in which
one may read that the modern world has dawned.
(354)

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 355
They glorify the secular Family, which the
medieval Church with its celibacy could not
specially celebrate in its art. So I had another
view of Florence in her highest creative expres
sion. My room already begins to look like a work
shop. The books which I left behind are piled
on ray table, my helps for grasping this old
world are at hand ; I prize specially a picture of
the human body, with all its parts duly measured
and proportioned — a great aid in the study of
sculpture. Indeed anatomy is very necessary
for the right appreciation of art. Especially the
statue reproduces man's organism, whioh in its
spatial fullness must be the bearer of the sculptur
esque ideal. Do you know that I once actually
entered the dissecting-room at the old McDowell
Medical ®ollege, and there cut up my man? I
was not at the time a student of medicine there,
but of universal Nature, whose whole domain I
wished to compass. I find the knowledge then
obtained to be useful now in the study of Sculp
ture. Very significant is the fact that these
sculpturesque shapes are not literal copies, are not
simply reproductions of some individual body.
You feel that they are not portraits of a living
model. What are they then^ Aye, just therein
lies the crucial question of the entire realm of
art. The very organism is not alorie particular,
but strangely exalted into universality ; this

356 ROME II.
statue is not merely an image of the huraan but
of the divine too. Such is indeed the contradic
tion whioh all true Art reconciles : the mortal
appearance is eternized, the huraan divinized.
The old artist possessed the secret power of mak
ing the God appear as raan to man, and still
remain the God. That is verily the open secret
of this beautiful classical world: the transfigura
tion of Nature into Art, by inaking that Nature
reveal and incorporate its original source, its
Creator. How often have we together pondered
over the abstract stateraent of the philosopher
who says that the universal must individualize
itself in order to be universal. Socrates has the
thought as well as Hegel. I believe that I am
getting to see with my eyes just that thought in
the statues before me. What are they but the
thousandfold incarnations of the God to huraan
vision? My call is, then, to behold a divine
epiphany in each of these shapes sculptured with
the faith of the old Greek.
After such an abstract dissertation, you may
think it strange when I confess to you that I am
growing impatient of abstractions, especially in
this real unabstract world where I can actually
see — see the unseen becoming the seen, for in
stance in the face of Juno Ludovisi.
I went to-day to the Vatican Gallery of Sculp
ture in which I had not been for three months.
What a pleasure to look upon these old friends,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 357
all of vvhora I knew from raany forraer visits, and
sorae of whom seeraed to recognize me! I had
a curious, perchance whimsical experience. The
whole Gallery somehow turned to an Olympus
of all the Gods sliding deftly into their white
shapes, and welcoming rae back to Eorae,
Well, that is enough, I hear you cry. I think
so myself, and so I shall stop, hoping that I may
yet be able to tell you, after Homer's way, what
the Gods said to one another and to me in their
assembly.
Rome, Sept. 20th, 1878.
I have been expecting a bit of news from you
but none comes ; so I shall sit down and send
you a few words about myself. It is quite prob
able that sorae of ray mail matter has gone
astray, in trying to follow me through my per
ambulations. These within the last few weeks
have been quite varied — I have gone zigzag
through Europe, like a streak of lightning which
breaks, twists and writhes in every direction.
Now I am safely lodged once more in old Eome
which seeras alraost like a second home.
I found my room ready to receive rae, look
ing quite as I left it last June, almost three
months ago. The bed had its white cover, which
the traveler seldom sees in the ordinary inns;
on the headboard was still the dove with out
stretched wings, symbol of the Holy Ghost; and

358 ROME IL
over me, as I lie in slumber, is a sinall relief of
the thosn-orowned Christ which the piety of my
landlady has placed there for my nightly pro
tection. Faith in these things I may not pos
sess, but I do have the fullest faith in the good
will which put them there for my sake; this is a
solace whioh adds not a little to my repose. I
am always more affected by these siraple raarks
of attention than by the most ceremonious dis
play of hospitable phraseology.
But she, poor woraan, has changed, yet in a
perfectly natural and not unexpected way. She
isa bride of not quite a year's duration; the
three raonths of ray absence have brought her
within a few weeks of her tirae. I congratu
lated her in all sincerity upon her good appear
ance : but she turned my congratulations into a
laugh, which, however, was soon foUowed by a
sigh. Her husband came in and I then found
out that she was laboring under a strong presenti
ment of death ; she imagined that she would not
survive her trial. To this is added another
terror; she is afraid she may have twins. Not
long since it seems she read of a case of triplets,
and that possibility is haunting her also.
I have one more grand lurch to make from
Eome before I can think of turning ray face
towards Araerica : I raust p.ay a visit to Greece.
Athens is my objective point; I think daily of
the fairest bride of antiquity, now rather old but

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 359
still alive there on the Ilissus. I, too, want to go
into her presence once in ray life, and behold her,
though she be wrinkled and haggard. If I ac
complish this final part of my journey with suc
cess, I can truly say : "Novv I have seen the day
ofthe Lord." After that, there is no telling with
what rapidity I shall return home, for I shall re
gard my chief task as done. Nor shall I feel
like delaying in Northern Europe, lest I raay
have all the Attic honey brushed off my thighs
in its fog and underbrush. I ara now busy study
ing modern Greek ; is it possible that I shall ever
compel these words, nearly all of them old Hei--
lenic, to order me a dinner? or shall I ever be
able to raake love in thera — the hardest test of a
language? Somehow or other the Greek tongue
has about it the aroma of eternal youth ; it was
spoken in the youth of the world, after infancy
yet before manhood; the Greek people were
youths, as long as they were a people; Greece
opens with the heroic youth of fable — AchiUes,
and ends with the heroic youth of history — Alex
ander (so 'says Hegel, you know). Then we
study the language in our youth ; to me it recalls
school-days, youthful aspiration, the period of
young undeceived Hope. Of course I am going
to that land of promise, to me now more of a
Holy Land than Palestine, I ara afraid.
I have just returned frora Piazza Colonna,
where the Post Office is situated, with your letter.

360 BOME II.
which has thus come to hand. In this Piazza or
Public Square Eome is celebrating to-night the
anniversary of its liberation from the Pope's
authority. The place is jammed with many peo
ple, who cheer and shout and clap in order to
rid theraselves of their superabundant patriotism.
The best thing of the evening was a chorus for
male voices, rendered with a color and spirit and
at the same tirae harmony, that placed it above
any male chorus that I ever heard. As I lis
tened to it in the seething multitude, it seemed
impossible for music to chime into and control so
many diverse sounds. Yet it did most success
fully ; the chorus seemed to attune and absorb
into itself the murmurs and noises of the popu
lace, so that they added to the vigor and depth
of the music. After all, the Italians are natur
ally the most artistic people, and the most sus
ceptible to the influences of Art. Music here
appeared not merely to tarae the eleraents but to
incorporate and to assiraulate their power into
itself. I noticed that a nuraber of palaces were
not illuminated; their owners probably sympa
thized with the Pope. The Vatican I did not
see, but it was reported to be dark, darker than
usual — which many people think is pretty dark.
I was reminded of the festivities in St. Louis at
the close of the Civil War, when the incorrigible
rebels in many houses still refused to hang out
the flag.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 361
It is almost impossible to conceive of the
hatred existing between the clerical and national
parties here in Italy. The priests are really
despised and often insulted in the streets, to my
strong disapprobation, I must say. In the
Corso, the great thoroughfare of Eorae, I saw a
line of students for the priesthood who were
marching quietly along, hooted at and called-
vagabonds. This is to me a violation of the
right of personal liberty. "But" said a well-
edueated young lawyer to rae, "they are t«he
enemies of Italy, therefore my enemies." I
answered, "yes, still you must not destroy your
freedom in mairitaining it." He replied: "but
the clergy are employing the present freedom of
speech and opinion in Italy, to destroy it."
"Well, let thera, if they can; but don't you de
stroy it ; for it seems to be a struggle between
you both which one shall get the first chance."
For my part I talk to the priests and monks on the
railroad and elsewhere at every opportunity.
Sometimes I find them ignorant beyond belief,
yet always honest and simple-hearted — that is,
when they are ignorant. Near Ferrara several
monks entered the car where I was ; I began a
conversation with two of them — I told thera that
I carae frora the banks of the Mississippi — where
that river was, they did not know. They had
heard of Araerica, but of its distance frora Italy
they had no conception. Even of Eorae, whither

362 ROME II.
I told them I was going, their ideas were not
very perspicuous.
Rome, Sept. 22nd, 1878.
I recollect of hinting to you in a letter from
Wiesbaden that I believe I have gotten hold of a
poetic forra in which I may be able to express
this classic world of art and its significance for
me in my present state of mind. I go among
the people of statues asserabled in the gaUeries '
of this city, and listen to their utterance, when
many a scene and expression rise vividly before
me.
Stones with voices, columns with music, temples
with language.
Open your lips once more speake me your
spirit's still word!
Threading your ancient piles, I always come
back to the modern,
Hunting for aught far away, I have discov
ered myself.
Such a self -discovery one must make at Eome
if he discovers anything. I confess to you that
the trial and development of the before-
mentioned poetic form is what occupies the most
and the best of my hours at Eome during this new
stay so far. The antique shapes of marble
which I before sought to penetrate with thinking,
I marshal now into some sort action and make

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 363
them speak with mortals and moderns. Can I
even remotely, reproduce the faith and life
which lie behind and create this art-world,
anciently so universal, and cause it to sing a
Uttle? The measure I have found, and have
sent you several specimens.
The narae of this kind of poetry in English
gives me some trouble. The meter was invented
and employed by the old Greeks for a variety of
poetic themes and called elegiac. The name and
thing passed to the Eoman poets, who used this
verse chiefly for amatory subjects. From the
latter it came into modern German poetry
and found its culmination in Goethe,
who calls his chief pieces in this style Elegies,
which are certainly keyed to the opposite of a
mournful strain. Now it so happens that we
have elegies in English, but almost no elegiacs,
the meter having never been naturalized in our
literature. Gray's faraous poem has coupled
the name of elegy with the pensive melancholy
mood, very different frora its classic and Ger
man character. Then the Elegy in a Country
Church-yard is not written in the elegiac meas
ure at all, but in the tyrannical larabic penta
meter, used to satiety so often in the rhymed
couplets and quatrains as well as in th* blank-
verse of English poetry. Its rhythmic monotomy
has made me desperate and I ara trying to break
it up, for my little self at least, by introducing

364 BOME II.
classic measures. I have even tried some
Horatian meters here at Eome, making the
refractory English outwardly keep step to the
Latin. So you must understand me when I say that I
am in an elegiac mood ; I do not mean that I am
melancholy, rather the reverse. The classical
serenity finds its best utterance, according to my
judgraent, in the rhythraical flow of the elegiac
distich. I ara not brooding after the fashion of
the well-known couplet :
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest.
Some Crorawell guiltless of his country's blood.
However there is one point in coraraon : I am,
like Gray, in a graveyard, in the colossal ceme
tery of a past civilization, and everywhere about
me I see its ruins. But strangely it does not
make me sad, because even in death the old
Greek was not sad, his very tombstone and coffin
he decorated with life and the festal dance.
Here again Goethe has hit the mark for rae :
Sarcophagen und Urnen verzierte der Heide mit
Leben,
Fatmen tanzen umher, mit der Bacchantinnen
Chor
Machen sie bunte Reihe.
That is the true elegiac mood expressed in the
elegiac stanza, reflecting ancient Ufe and art, as

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 365
we see them still portrayed on the old monu
ments, whioh are themselves decaying. But in
spite of all this death life is triumphant.
So uberwdltiget Fiille den Tod ; und die Asche
da drinnen,
Scheint im stillen Pezirk noch sich des Lebens
zufreuen.
Yes, eventhe human ashes still seem to rejoice
in life. And so " the old heathen of Weimar "
begs that his sarcophagus, too, be engarlanded
with his elegiac verses celebrating the joy of
living. Now that is the genuine elegiac mood
even in this vast sepulcre of antiquity, which I
am traversing, attuned to a different key-note
from that struck in the most repeated line of
the English language :
The curfew tolls, the knell of par-ting day.

Rome, Sept. 23, 1878.
I have just received your last letter in which
you express a desire to have some news from me
at a shorter interval than previously ; here is the
fulfillment of your wish, I hope. Do not be
surprised at this scribble, beginning nowhere
aud going everywhere ; circumstances control my
pen if not me. You cannot iraagine the pleas
ure that I feel in dwelling once more in the
shadow of St. Peter's; and if I, a heretic, pos-

866 BOME II,
/sibly a heathen, have such emotions, what must
be. the ecstasy of the true believer? I hope you
will not consider it wickedness or affectation
that I am inclined at present to deera myself a
heathen ; I mean only that I live in antiquity
and have not yet got down to the Birth of
Christ. Indeed I seem to be going backwards
further and further in those hoary epochs ; my
trip to Gerraany, very pleasant in its friend
ships, gave me a treraendous disgust as regards
the modern political fabric, and also, to a certain
extent, as regards the modern intellectual ten
dencies. I swore to myself: No more of the
latest news, no more of recent publications, no
more newspapers, chiefly devoted to noting the
infinitesimal gyrations of the diplomatic weather
cock of Europe, the most capricious bird since
time began, hourly flopping around all the points
of the corapass; anathema, if I watch hira any
longer. No raore new editions, no more new
books of any kind ; I am resolved, when I ara well
settled again under Eoraan skies, to read no book
which is not 2,000 years old at least. Further
more I pledge the Olympians, if they be pro
pitious to my hopes, to make a pilgrimage to
their most ancient noble shrine — Athens, to me
now the holiest spot on earth.
If you wish to know about Bologna, I would
say that in some respects it makes the best im
pression of any Italian city that I have yet seen.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 367
There is less beggary, poverty and wretcnedness ;
everybody too, seems to have something to do;
commerce is very active, and the intellectual
energy keeps pace with material progress. In
other words it is a flourishing Italian city, which
is a rarity ; it reminds me of an American city.
Then too it is clean, very clean; people and
houses are not in a state of dingy interesting
ruin ; it is a refreshing wonder placed between
those two beautiful piles of decadence, Venice and
Florence. What pleases me particularly is the
system of arcades extending over the side-walks
through the entire city and protecting the busy
people from sun and rain. Business thus goes
on, being wholly independent of the capricious
weather-god. It rained while I was there but
nobody seeraed to know anything about it. No
other city in the world as far as I know, has
adopted such a system ; there it has been in
vogue apparently for centuries, and still it has
been kept up in the new structures. I must say
that it is the best solution of a grave problem
for all Southern cities ; much better it is than to
make the streets so narrow as in Eome and else
where. Think of St. Louis having covered ar
cades for the side-walks on Fourth street only,
not to speak of the entire city, instead of the
wretched awnings which the shop-keeper uses as
a temporary and wholly inadequate protection

368 BOME II.
against sun and storm. Adopt it, thou hard-
headed, practical American.
I wrote this letter backward's, and in order to
understand it you must read it in that way. I
have now been in Eome over a week, very busy
in writing letters and studying modern Greek. I
have barely begun to look at the monuments
with care for the second time, I am a little cu
rious to hear what they will say now, and to dis
cover whether I understand their language better
than before.
I suppose that you are now busily engaged in
the old routine after a summer's repose. How
does the High School begin? What is the true
inwardness of its condition anyhow? I have
received the School Eeport; there must be some
enemies where there is so much cannonading.
In regard to Mrs.  , who is coming to Eome
you say, I am but slightly acquainted with her,
and of course shall not disturb the pleasure of
her Eoman visit by any attentions of mine, un
less at her own request.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 369

Rome, Sept. 30th, 1878.
I have just returned from a trip on foot aniong
the Alban Hillp, in which I sought to get a few
draughts frora the bosom of good mother
Nature. It is here the turning point of autumn,
the leaves are just beginning to change color,
and a stray one sometimes falls, but this is a
premature death. The chestnut trees are loaded
with their peculiar fruit, and low down the
mountain sorae of the burs are beginning to crack
and the brown nuts take a sly peep out of their
prickly nest. I pass under one of these trees,
find a good-sized club and fling it up at an open
burr, the prize falls to the ground, and I ara not
slow to test its excellence. But the Italian
chestnut is not as good as the American chest
nut, though much larger ; it is coarser in grain
and flavor. Still the abundance of the yield is
astonishing; everywhere down the sides of
the mountains, in all uncultivated places these
chestnut saplings shoot up, for they are not
large forest trees. Under their shade yesterday
I wandered many a mile ; they becarae at last
friends whose kindly protection was never looked
for in vain.
The vineyards, for which this part of the
country is faraous, are now closed to keep out
thieves and intruders. The grapes are mostly
24

370 BOME 11.
ripe and in a week or two the vintage begins.
Still I succeeded in getting into a vineyard where
I took great delight in observing this branch of
industry, as here it has a peculiar phase. I had
a taste of the grapes fresh from the vines, out
of which the famous Frascati wine is raade.
Passing through a patch of woods I suddenly
carae upon a vineyard without the necessity of
leaping over a high wall or a hedge-fence. Not
without the danger of a little personal inconven
ience was ray adventure. I strolled out of the
vineyard into a lane where I raet a peasant and
inquired of hira the nearest way to the next vil
lage. Says he: "There is a private road through
this vineyard, but you had better go round by
the highway, for if you are seen here, you may
geta bastonading." Then looking at me frora
head to foot he continued : "No, I do not think
they would whip you." But I preferred not to
take the risk and struck for the raain road. The
peasants seera to be much annoyed by the petty
thievery of boys and others — the truth is, I
really deserved the castigation, for I had plucked
two fine bunches of grapes. When the vintage
arrives, I am going to see the process, if possi
ble ; connected with it are many curious customs
and no little poetry.
So after considerable wandering I come to a
curious old town called Rocca di Papa, or Rock
of the Pope, named, it is is said, from having

A TOUB IN EUROPE. ' 371
been a fortress of the Popes in early tiraes.
Tedious is the winding ascent, on foot at least,
and there is a pretty hot fall sun. Strangely de
ceptive too is the approach ; you look up at the
town nestled in the rocks, it seems almost as if
you could reach out your hand and touch it;
still you go on and on and on, but it never grows
nearer, till at last you begin to think that the
whole town is a mirage lying along the top of
the mountain. But at last you do arrive, entering
one of the alleys, as you think, so you try to get
into a street, which, when found, is worse than
the alley. On the whole, this is the most primi
tive town that I have ever been in. The people
here lead a life of Nature indeed; raules,
chickens, cows, and swine live on the raost
friendly and intimate terms with the human
species ; there seems to be a sort of democratic
equality among all animals, man included. As
the faoe of the stranger enters one of these
alleys, the whole brood comprising the young of
the population, namely calves, pups, kittens,
pigs and children rise from their play and run
like the young of wild animals, each to his own
dark hole where they disappear. I shall not soon
forget the scamper at ray appearance, a little
two-legged creature leading the panic-stricken
herd. The streets are filthy beyond descrip
tion, making virulent assaults upon all the five
senses at once. Oh for the mud of an Illinois

372 BOME.
town, where at least the nose is spared from cruel
persecution ! Passing through the place to the
other side, I saw some hogs wallowing in
the mire ; it was a refreshing sight; indeed I take
it that they had come out of the town to get a
decent place to live in. Yet mark! I have to
eat in that town ; it is long after dinner-time, I
have traveled on foot since early morning with
out food — I am ravenous. So I find one pretty
fair street in which there is a tavern. I shall
not describe any further — but I did eat, eat
heartily, washing down morsels with wine. Now
I consider my internal arrangements to be copper-
lined, through' and through, beginning with the
nostrils. The most pleasing sight in the town is an old
temple, now turned into a church, but it stUlhas
its Doric frieze, as if to remind the beholder of
what it once was. But really the town carries
the mind back still further; I Can not help
thinking that this was one of the ancient Latin
villages existing long before Rorae, and perched
upon these heights for safety. Here are people
who have never left their native village, as I
found by a Uttle conversation ; doubtless their
ancestors never left their native village ; you can
behold the direct descendants of the men who
talked with Romulus and Remus. The air of
perdurable antiquity rests over everything. The
people live a granite Ufe, unchanged and un-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 373
changeable by the modern world. When I went
out of the town and viewed it from an adjoining
height, it seemed to grow out of the rock, some
of the houses are indeed hewn out of the living
stone if my eyes did not deceive me. Where the
rock passes into the house built out of it and
upon it, nobody can tell, the transition is so
gradual. Man is thus seen springing from the
earth, his priraitive raother, and his habitation
is seen growing out of the rock whose caves were
his priraitive dwelling. A sort of a stone axe,
still used for sorae purpose which I do not know,
makes me believe that these people yet belong to
the stone age. But one thing raust be praised:
the wine — under whose influence I ara 7iot writ
ing this letter. But it did strike a delightful
chord in me, one which no other drink ever quite
reached — in fact I did not know before that I
had any such chord in my body or soul.
But the main objective point of ray trip is not
yet reached— which is to ascend to the surarait
of Monte Cavo where stood an ancient teraple of
Jupiter, to which the Roraan generals ascended
after obtaining the honors of a triumph. I am
going to follow in their path without the
triumph. The view from the top I recollect
frora last spring when I was there : it is on the
whole the raost satisfactory and healing of all the
views that I know of. Here corae a gentleraan
and five ladies who are just returning from the

374 BOME II.
summit; they are mounted on mules with easy
side-saddles for the ladies ; the young people are
laughing, chatting, enjoying the sport and the
romance, but there is one olderwoman, fat, tiraid,
with face as red as fire and perspiring in streams ;
for her the trip is torture, as she comes down the
steep side of the mountain, leaning rather than
sitting on her mule. A little further on is
a country woman, also mounted and going to
town; she has a much more independent look,
and is, I dare say, far more firm in her seat, for
she rides a-straddle. This peculiar new style of
ladies' horsemanship I have seen only in Italy,
here quite frequently. At first it excited great
curiosity in rae, and I looked, rather iraraodestly
I confess, to see how the matter could be man
aged in feraale costume. I can only report, very
skillfully and properly, but somewhat oddly.
Now I come into the old Eoraan road, built of
huge flat stones, still as perfect as on the day of
its construction, except where the rain-storms of
two thousand years have undermined it in
patches. On the summit is now a raonastery, built of
the ruins of the ancient teraple by Cardinal
Yorke, the last of the royal Stuarts, an act of
Christian vandalisra perpetrated as late as the last
century. It is indeed a place to worship from,
I could have joined those old heathens in their
clovotions. The air is more invigorating, the eye

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 375
broadens out into immensity, if not quite into
eternity, the heavens become clearer, raore open,
and you would say, more accessible. There is a
natural religion in the spot, which, however, is
to my mind, disturbed by the presence of these
monastic black-robed shadows who are now tak
ing a walk after vespers — shadows in this other
wise perfectly clear light ; often they do not wor
ship God, but an earthly thing called the Church.
In one direction is the Mediterranean, lying
calmly in the sun and laughing with a thousand
fold sparkle, which you can just see in the dis
tance ; atthe foot of mountain are two small lakes,
Nemi and Albano, not far apart — both blue-
eyed, very blue-eyed, and looking up, like a
Madonna in prayer, I should say, into the skies.
But in the opposite direction are the mountains,
chalky and gray ; as they ascend toward Heaven,
they gradually whiten and rarify theraselves into
clouds. So ancient life tipped itself off with the
Ideal. Scattered along the valleys and hillsides
are the villages looking white — they seera like
marble colonnades of ancient Halls and Temples.
Then those mountains, rude, irregular, with
many ups and downs, but always sunny, defi
antly sunny — they are indeed a classic tale. But
why shall I undertake to describe Nature to you
when everybody knows that the so-called descrip
tions of scenery are the dullest, eniptie.'it, most
insuperable reading extant; who does not skip

876 BOME IL
them in a novel of which they are merely the
padding? But let me add one word more : Yon
der by the Tiber lies Eorae — what was in that
little hamlet which gave to it the power to absorb
the whole world, first politically, then religiously
— what could it be, what could it be?

Rome, Oct. 1st, 1878.
I shall tell you by an instance how I am using
every little incident which turns up for the pur
pose of furthering my main design. I was talk
ing to a young lady visiting my hostess about
the Eoman Galleries of Sculpture and their con
tents, of which she knew, though born here,
very little, except that they contained heathen
Gods. She was a good Catholic of course, and
naively asked me, if the people of my country
believed in such deities. Something put it into
my head to say, I do. She was a little shocked,
for she had heard that the Pope had once taken
them all prisoners in war, and had changed them
into stones. "Do you say mass there?" she
asked. " Would you like to go and see?" was
my answer. She reflected a raoment and con
cluded that she might if she could take her
rosary along " in order to put the Devil to
flight" ( per fare scappare il Diavolo). I re
plied: " Perhaps it will put me to flight." She
innocently responded that she did not think it

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 377
would hurt me. " Very well, then, I think we
shall be able to get through, if you will be sure
to keep the old Sinner off." At these words
of mine she professed her ability to make the
whole cohort of demons take to their heels by a
single act: whereat in very animated gestures
she drew a full cross upon herself from head to
foot, and struck an attitude of downright com
bat against the infesnal hosts. " That will do,"
I cried, " you can protect us." So off we
started for the Vatican Museum, which is a kind
of Homeric assembly of all the Greek Gods. I
pointed out Zeus, the suprerae God, she turned
up her nose at him, and at the other Olympians ;
the Apollo Belvedere did not have his hair done
up aright ; in the Laocoon it was the snakes that
, caught and held her eye, and she seemed to
glory in them " punishing one of those heathen
Gods." We came to the reclining Ariadne,
whose story I told, dwelling on her unhappy lot
deserted by her lover Theseus. This drew her
interest; she loojied at the statue again and
dropped a sympathetic sigh ending with pover-
etta. Soon she turned to rae with a question:
" Tell me, did these Gods and Goddesses lovef "
" That is just what they did," I answered,
"there is even a God of Love — and here he
is." We stepped a few paces and found hira,
who is never far off.
There is no doubt that her interest in the

378 BOME II.
Heathen Gods increased enormously ifi a minute.
She was teUing on herself, I thought I could
read a little bit of private history in her looks
and actions. She had at least found something
whioh she had never possessed before, and which
filled perchance a void in her life, for " our
church has no Love-God." And yet she recog
nized the deity then and there, and could not
help herself, as it probably was the deepest fact
of her past existence. On the way home even
more pressingly she wanted to know if I was not
" a follower of the old Gods," and whether I
actually did not believe that " the little baby
(bambino) there was the God of Love." She
thought his raother ought to be there, near-by,
and then he raight pass for the Christ-child
with the Madonna. And so the Christian and
Heathen iraages began dancing in a strange
medley through her brain.
But the chief point whioh I wish to tell you
is that in my own brain the whole occurrence
began turning into a poem, in which the old
Gods, the modern Eoraan girl and myself were
the characters of a little drama to be written in
elegiacs, whioh are now swallowing every other
interest. I told you of my epigrammatic mood
when I was here before; now I cannot rest till
all these floating shreds organize theraselves into
something like a poetic whole which metamor
phoses the old into the new, interweaving and

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 379
reconciling two diverse worlds in a common
harmony. If the thing ever gets itself into possible shape,
I shall send it to you, who have always listened
so patiently to my various lucubrations. Some
thirty or forty lines — hexameters ancl penta
meters — have spun themselves out, but muoh
remains to be done, and I cannot tell you at
present how much. But you will catch from this
what is and has been my central interest during
this second residence at Eome. [Editorial Note
The poem reraained a long tirae unfinished and
unfinishable, not less than thirteen or fourteen
years, meanwhile going through many hammer
ings and additions and atterapts at improvement.
It grew gradually to 182 lines, and it first saw
the light in 1892, being printed inthe book called
Prorsus Retrorsus pp. 32—45, which book con
tains the Eoman poems, or Elegies previously
alluded to].
Rome, Oct. 6th, 1878.
I am much obliged for your very full and ex.
cellent letter, it removes as rauch of ray anxiety
as can be removed by any process. Since your
letter arrived I have received additional particu
lars concerning the little girl; it seems that she
has had an unusually healthy and happy
summer. Also that all the friends have hitherto
escaped the plagues of heaven vvhich have re-

380 BOME II.
cently been sent upon the West. Now I feel
very much rejoiced, and no note of discord enters
my orchestra of happiness to which I am listen
ing under these Italian skies.
The truth is that I now enjoy Italy and Eome
more than I did last spring; because, I suppose,
that I am more capable of enjoyment. I have
learned much, I find, much that I cannot tell you
of, because it is soraething which does not admit
of expression, or only of my inadequate expres
sion. How can I describe to you the sharpening
of my vision which has resulted frora viewing so
many great works of art, particularly those of
the ancients who at least had eyes — whatever
else they may not have had. Motives whioh I
at first stumbled overhalf-blindly or without see
ing at all, now stand out with the clearness of
noonday; attitudes, gestures, looks, in general
form begins to have a meaning for me. I
always look into it now as into a mirror which
reflects the whole work; so that each part to my
eye and not to my abstract reflection, begins to
have significance as that which reveals the
totality. This vision is not by any means the
mere external sense of sight, for the latter I had
before. The great object is to look at these works
through the eyes of the ancients to whom they
were addressed, and for whora they were an utter
ance — utterance of the Highest and Noblest as

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 381
well as of the Trivial and even of the Bestial.
What an irapulse they had to form ! Like the bee,
they wrought and built, putting outside of them
selves that which lay inside — here is its expres
sion. Now, to reach this eye of theirs and still
further to reach the f orraative instinct which lay
behind the sarae, is one of the hardest tasks of
the modern mind. Something has gone from us ;
in one of its phases at least we have lost true
vision. A slight perusal of the criticisms on the
great works of sculpture will show how cross-eyed,
wall-eyed, blear-eyed even, we have becorae, look
ing in all directions save the right one, and when
happening to look in the right direction, not see
ing anything. Learned archeologists who have
spent all their lives upon these subjects, and who
ought to arrive at a faint gliraraer of vision,
usually see the worst, even if their historical
labors be valuable. All is outside, trivial, acci
dental, with rare exceptions ; you are made to
look around, never at or into the thing.
I believe that my distrust of and disgust at
mere erudition and merely erudite men have in
creased since my stay in Europe. You know that
previously they were not sraall; I found frora my
Shakespearian experience how great a part of
erudition is utterly erapty and worthless ; indeed
I was well aware that often it was very harmful,
on account of its making people believe that it
was the suprerae and only thing worthy of at-

382 BOME IL
tainment or having any real esistence. I some
times wonder what the world is going to do with
all this learned lumber — will burn it up, I sup
pose, in some grand conflagration, as actually
happened to the old erudition massed in the
Alexandrian Library.
But I do not intend to destroy my classical
serenity by growing petulant over the follies of
the learned and of learning. Enjoyraent was
the old Greek raood; what you cannot enjoy,
throw aside. This artistic enjoyment does not
by any means signify raere aniraal pleasure, it is
God in the Senses, the Divine in the Feelings.
But these words are mere abstractions and will
persist in remaining so, until language becomes
a stone from which the sculptor hews a form.
To-day is Sunday, and I took-a long walk out
of the Porta Pia to one of the earliest Christian
Basilicas of Eome — the church of St. Agnese.
The- curiosity about it is that nearly the whole
structure is underground and you descend by a
long stairs into the aisle. To the faithful it is
a sacred spot on account of its martyrology ; for
me it was soul-stirring chiefly on account of hav
ing many beautiful reminiscences of the Pagan
world. The columns of the aisle were most at
tractive, being coraposed of different colored
raarbles; sorae of Ihem were finished with a love
and sympathy in the sraallest detail ; thus even
a coluran becoraes warm with feeling. These col-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 383
umns doubtless were the plunder of some ancient
temple — and were transferred to this church
where they do not belong, for they show Pagan
hands and Pagan senses. With all respect for
Christianity and the good whioh it has done the
world, one begins to find certain limits of it
here, to see what it did not accomplish, nay, to
feel that it sometimes destroyed what was better
than itself. I tell you, its asceticism is not the
solution of the world-problem, though that asceti
cism buried autiquity in ruins. These joyous
fluted Corinthian columns, sighing for sunlight
do not belong in this dark cell of the raonks, in
this catacorab of martyrs.
I confined my walk to the faraous Mons Sacer
where the plebeians are said to have established
theraselves when they seceded frora the patri
cians of Eorae. It is no mountain at all, simply
a knoll at the foot of which flows the Tever
one : it was selected doubtless because of sorae
religious sanctuary there, if indeed theold narra
tive be not a fable. But if it be a fable, it is
better than history ; this event always has been
and still is a type of the organism of society,
coraposed of classes which are necessary to one
another. History cannot do more than furnish
in its occu>rrences such endueing types; too
often it fails just in this.
The landscape by itself repaid all the trouble
of the trip ; one never tires of looking at the Sa-

384 BOME II.
bine and Alban Mountains from Eome or from
the Campagna. The clear atmosphcFe, the de
ception which it practices of placing objects
miles away right under your nose, the outlines of
the hills, the repose of everything, put you in a
mood which may be called classical, since it is
sirailar to the mood of classical Poetry and
Sculpture. So intimately are Art and Nature
connected here; you have but to go into the
fields in order to find the primitiye inspiration of
the artist.
But there is a reraarkable contrast also, a dis
sonance it may be called. The Italian has not
the repose of this landscape, not the pure sense
of form which all these classical surroundings in
spire. He is intensely emotional, sentimental; a
chaos of formless, or extravagant feelings. I have
with me a young ItaUan poet, it is not serene
enjoyraent with hira but wild ebullience ; he utters
the very frenzy of human speech in his admira
tion of scenery, and then bursts to go farther,
after having exhausted the subject. He is full
too of citations frora modern Italian poets;
nought is it all but vague, amorphous struggling,
often with Titanic flashes to be sure ; to me it
is the chaotic night of poetry, or rather the night
mare. Long ago the rising Olympians under
the lead of Jupiter flung the Titan down into
Tartarus, and the result was a Grecian world;
but here they are again, those sooty divinities,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 385
belching forth brimstone odors and thick smoke
into classical skies.
However, you must not think that I am en
tirely devoid of modern sympathies. Outside of
the Porta Pia, is a tablet in the Eoman WaU
which contains the names of the soldiers who fell
near the spot in the conflict with the Papal troops
for the possession of the Eoraan capitol; seal
ing with their blood (suggellando col sangue)
their love of country. The reading of this list
of obscure names brought strong heart throbs ;
what hero has ever been able to do more than
give his life for his principle? Santa Agnese
yonder with her crown of martyrdom possesses
no such power, at least not now ; fatherland in
Italy is stirring deeper than religion, or rather
these are desperately fighting each other — not a
happy condition.
My study of modern Greek continues ; I find
it difficult for the ear but not so difficult for the
tongue. I have a teacher who teaches all the
modern and ancient languages, a veritable poly
glot. He wants to go to America, but what
could he do there where the people have only one
tongue, and do not like too much of that? He
had better stay in this Eoman Babel where all
languages are in use and abuse. So I hinted to
him. In about a week it is my intention to set out
for Athens, going first to Naples, as it is said
25

386 BOME II.
that Vesuvious is giving signs of an eruption. I
would like to see the old Titan right sick and
giving sorae of his heaviest belches. Of course
there are many other attractive things in Naples
and its neighborhood, of which one is always
hearing. But I shall not stay there long, for
my eagerness to reach Athens, the Eastern limit
of ray journey is growing painful.
When I first came to Eome about the middle
of September, I was somewhat afraid of the
malarial fever, which is said to be most prevalent
in that month. But I have found the city very
healthy and pleasant, indeed it is more comfort
able than Venice at this season of the year. Cer
tainly my health has never been better ; the only
troubleis,I sometimes work too long with the brain
without sufficient bodily exercise ; then I become
a little nervous, and sleepless. I have been try
ing to prepare myself for the Greek trip, by
reading sorae Greek authors, and by reviewing
my studies in Art; I work continuously, but not
always according to programme. Last week I
felt an intense thirst for Pindar which had to be
satisfied, though I ought to have been studying
Pausanias. The demon will control ; perhaps he
knows best, so I let him run. It is a Greek demon
which now has possession of me, he tunes my
feelings, fills my thoughts, creates my world,
surrounding rae with the very air which I
breathe. If I would tell you how he affects me

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 387
at times, you would laugh at rae. I worship the
Goddesses, dance and sing with the Muses, and
woo the Graces.
Rome, Oct. 10th, 1878.
I hardly know when I have felt so well as I
do now. The weather is delightful, neither too
warra nor too cold, neither too wet nor too dry.
The Eoraan auturan, if this be a speciraen, is
truly the golden crown of the year, not merely
on account of its harvests and fruits, but also
for the delightful color which it infuses into the
soul. I ara veritably happy, both in the reality
and in my dreams, except that a troubled vision
sometimes arises up from across the Atlantic.
The dream which fills not a few of my waking
hours just now is Greece.
I have just been talking with a raan, who I
think would please you in particular ; for he is
above all things the self-sufficient man, uncon-
quered by what he calls the comforts of life,
free of the law of demand and supply which has
our raodern world by the throat, a man who has
reduced want to the very last pinch of leanness ;
yet he is happy, healthy, serene as a God on
Olympus. I mean, he lives here at Eome, in
the 19th century, on about seven cents a day —
the hero untamed by civilization. Yet he is not
wild, or uncouth, or even ill-dressed, though as

388 BOME II.
he tells rae, he eschews underclothing, and wears
no stockings.
He is a Gerraan frora Magdeburg, about fifty-
five years of age, I should judge; his wife being
dead and his children all married, he concluded
to get a slight glirapse of this world, before he
passed into the next. He has too in that rough-
haired pate of his an idea: this idea is that raan
through excessive needs becoraes a slave and that
he for one will be free. With the pair of legs
bestowed on hira by Mother Nature, he sets out
from his native Magdeburg, crosses the Alps,
and passing through the cities of Northern Italy,
has reached Eome without having ridden a mile
on the railroad or employed a vehicle of any
kind. He has been in Eome several months; he
stayed all sumraer here and found the weather
excellent. He has seen everything, is a lover of
the Fine Arts and of antiquities, all for less than
half a lira a-day, paper money. Still it is not
penuriousness which actuates him ; he could earn
money here, but will not — giving instruction
in German free. Besides he hints to me that he
is well-off, if not rich. No, he is determined to
prove in his own person that man should not be
the victira of needs, and to offer in his own ex
araple a cure of social wretchedness and individ
ual unhappiness.
And whora do you think to be his great pat-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 389
tern — the light by which he sees the things of
of this universe? Pythagoras — an old Greek
Heathen, living more than five centuries before
the birth of Jesus Christ. He told me that he
was a Pythagorean, and that he lived by the pre
cepts of that old philosopher, not indulging in
meat or wine, doing his Dwn cooking and wash
ing; he is a physician to himself, an J also a
great lover of rausic. Always the self-sufficient
man, unenslaved by his wants ; next he proposes
to go on foot to Naples, then to Southern Italy,
the home of Pythagoras. Nay, he spoke of
visiting Sicily and even Athens, but the difficulty
was he would have to ride, since he could not
well swim the distances.
The idea which he has in that shaggy pate,
still drives hira on ; he is a wanderer in search of
knowledge also ; he will realize the life of Pyth
agoras in hiraself; indeed it is likely, though he
did not tell me so, that he believes that the
ancient philosopher has transmigrated into his
body, after some 2,400 years, there at Magde
burg. But is it not strange that the old Greek
should still work so potent a spell, that in these
days his idea should actually transmigrate into a
soul and take possesion thereof? This is the true
transmigration of souls, unlimited by Space or
Time; so I felt like greeting the heathen sage in
the shaggy-haired Gerraan from Magdeburg. He
is not a Christian but a Heathen ; Christ was

390 BOME II.
born 500 years too late for him. What irapulse
has pushed hira out of cold foggy North Ger
many and guided hira hither into these sunny
Greek lands — what irapulse but the desire of
hearing the music of the spheres in that part of
the universe where it originated, and where it
still may be heard raost melodiously attuning the
spirit? I confess, I feel a strong sympathy with him
in several ways. 1 like the idea which he has in
his head, preaching by life and by word that
man raust have dorainion over needs and not
needs over raan. Then as to transraigration —
shall I declare it? — I am almqst disposed to think
that some Greek has passed into me ; I coax and
caress his spirit and beghimto be at home within
rae. I tell him that shortly I shall visit his
fatherland, that he with my eyes shall behold, I
hope, all the ancient glory of his country, that I
want to see by the aid of his vision the Gods on
Olympus, and the Fauns in Arcadia, and above
all to get a glimpse of the Graces and Muses.
Don't take me to be crazy on account of these
rhapsodic utterances of mine; I am simply
enjoying myself in a sort of Hellenic day-dream.
Then who can help becoming hilarious in this
weather and amid this people? Below my win
dow a ragged youth goes singing and springing;
he stops to sneeze, sneezes five times and counts
them off — oue, two, three, four, five; then on

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 391
he goes resuming his song. Capricious overflow
of spirits raarks this autumnal season, sometimes
the overflow turns in the wrong direction. For
instance, yesterday I saw a street-fight in the
market between six woraen, venders of vegetables
— fierce hair-pulling there was with some awk-
waid blows, while all around the arena were
strown potatoes, tomatoes and grapes from their
upset baskets. About a. hundred men forraed
around them an amphitheater and witnessed the
gladiatorial combats as in the olden tirae.
I have just been studying ray guide-books for
the trip to Naples and perhaps Sicily, on the way
to Greece. I can not fix all the points as yet, so
I need not tell you anything but the outline just
mentioned. Fred Allen, it seeras, has given up
the trip, so he intiraates in a postal card written
from Geneva. I shall of course go on alone,
which perhaps is the best way for me, though I
often like a corapanion. Still my habits are so
different from those of raost people — habits both
of living and of studying — that I ara a little
afraid everi of the best associate. So far I have
traveled entirely alone, with pleasure and I hope
with profit. A solitary bird I ara anyhow, seek
ing a peculiar prey — which when I have in my
talons I shall sorae day drop down upon you in
Cincinnati. I shall add another sheet to what I have al
ready written, for it-'will not trouble you much.

392 BOME II.
since it takes much more time to write than to
read. I have been expecting a letter from you
during the last few days, but it does not come,
and so I shall send this one away without hear
ing from you. Old as you are I wish ypu were
here with me to enjoy sorae of these things ; you
would still be my best companion. But you had
better put off this journey at present till the next
world, when you can make it unencumbered with
baggage, even with flesh. I am glad that I have
made my trip here on this side of the Beyond,
as I am uncertain about my travels in the Here
after. I have just returned from a morning walk on
tbe Pincio which is the eighth hill of Eome,
from which the beholder sees the eternal city in
all its glory. The air is fresh and bracing; you
rest in the shade of classical trees, the ilex and
the laurel ; the red flowers of autumn seem to
burn with a modest secret passion. Very often
you meet a rosy-cheeked English girl, beautiful
for her blushes far more than for her grace of
person. You stand above the mass of churches
and palaces till you cast your eye across the
Tiber, — there inthe distance before you rises
St. Peter's, the grand world-cathedral; it seems
to be above the roofs with its colossal propor
tions ; Eome and everything else including your
self dwindle beside it. Yet it is not haughty or
pretentious in its grandeur, I should say it in-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 393
spires a friendly, sunny feeling in the soul.
There is nothing austere or dark about its ap
pearance; indeed it laughs, looking downward
toward the earth rather than striving upward
toward the skies. On the whole you can best
see St. Peter's from the Pincio, which is not far
from a mile distant; near by the church is so
huge that you cannot take it in, you lose every
criterion of comparison, you no longer compare it
with a building but with the universe. Walking
away frora it a raile and getting on top of hill,
you begin to be able to see the immense structure
and to place it alongside of other edifices. Still
it is not the magnitude of it which delights most
in viewing it frora the Pincio, but its good-
natured smile as it looks down upon its neigh
bors. At first I hardly knew what to do with
the monster, but now I have become much at
tached to him, knowing how to take hira. He
stands up yonder like a huge Newfoundland dog
amid a litter of pups ; the latter scarcely hide his
feet, while he with a good-natured look regards
their puny pretentious barkings.
I have now passed nearly another month in
Eome, employed not so much in seeing as in
studying. This is a pity but cannot be helped.
You should use your eyes in Eome, for nowhere
else in the world can they be invited to such a
banquet. Still I had to make sorae preparation

394 BOME II.
for Greece, and I have only done what I would
do over again if I had the choice.

Rome, Oct. 16th, 1878.
Your letter has raade such a happy irapression
upon rae that I feel like devoting some lines toyou
specially. I rejoice exceedingly at your recover
ing from a state of illness and despondency;
your letter gives every indication of the full re
turn of the sun. I should judge that you are
now happy, enjoying something like a classic
serenity of mind. Keep it as the divinest of
boons, for I tell you raany people travel over the
whole world in search of it without finding it;
the nearest most Christians corae to its attainment
is to hope for it in the next world. But hope is
merely the shadow of realization; happiness
should be found here below, if even hope has
any meaning. Those happy expressions of yours
lie in ray memory alongside of the Tuscan hills
which I saw not long ago ; they will be a part of
my journey here, interwoven among many other
sunny recollections of these Italian days.
Doubtless I feel the stronger sympathy with
the bright spirit of your letter because I was sick
myself when I left America, sick, not so much in
body as in soul. To confess the matter openly,
the world refused to me its delight, and I would
much rather have left it than have stayed in it,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 395
I had been driven out of the Heaven in which I
once dwelt, not on account of any Satanic sin
that I know of — not by any wrong of my own,
but by the rude hand of external fate smiting
me without cause. I could not see through my
tears the justice in such a government of the u«ii-
. verse, and at the sarae time my emotions were so
broken that they of ten refused all control. I fre
quently woke up in the morning with such a weight
resting upon my soul that I could not keep myself
from tears ; and if waking cost so muoh pain, my
wish was to sleep forever. The Soul's Journey,
written to relieve myself of these feelings by
some faint utterance, does not tell half the story.
At last the tirae carae and the circumstances con
spired to bring about this new and health-giving
journey to classic lands. It too is a Soul's Jour
ney, but in what sense I have not time to tell
you now, nor do I think I could tell you if I were
to try. It is not yet terminated, at the end of it
there will be time enough to look back. But so
much Imay say of rayself at present : I never have
lived in a happier raood than during this last
month here at Eorae. I feel cured; in the morn
ing I rise without any spiritual qualms, go out
into the fresh air, stroll along under the ilexes of
the Pincio, looking at the sunshine and St.
Peter's. Indeed I am often up in time to seethe
day-god raise aloft his glorious head from his
couch somewhere behind tbe Sabine raountains,

396 BOME II.
and start on his heaven-attaining journey. Every
thing which I touch in this happy climate sends
out a heaUng influence upon me — at least such is
my fancy. Just now too I am drinking huge
potations of divine nectar — the hope of seeing
Greece — to rae the most exhilirating of all
draughts. I talk to myself in modern Greek,
renting a roora, ordering a dinner, bickering with
a hack-driver, doing all sorts of prosaic raodern
things in a language not very dissimilar to that
of Homer. Then I cut loose from grararaar and
conversation book, and start to playing with a
Pindaric ode. I hear the ancient chant accom
panied by flute and lyre, with processions and
festivals and dances of beautiful youths in the
Public Place — what a joyous world !
I do not expect the Greece of to-day to realize
this picture, nor on the other hand to destroy
it; I only want a sniff of the air, a look at the
islands of the sea, together with some views of
the hills and springs, to find out whether they
actually exist or not. For Greece has been and
still is the ideal world of our European culture ;
it is hard to believe that there is anything of it
but poetry. You ask me when I am going to
return horae ; how can I tell? You see that my
face is still turned toward the East ; wait till I
wheel around, then we may begin to calculate
the months or perhaps the days. Now I can
only say, I must first behold Greece if possible;

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 397
she is a coy maiden who will by no raeans show
herself at the first glance, though I think that I
have had sorae glirapse ,of her beauty frora the
distance. How long it will be before she will
reveal herself or whether she will reveal herself
at all, are problems beyond my power of compu
tation. I am at least going to the spot where
she once was, to her dwelling place, as it, were;
even though she be fled out of the house beyond
all vision of mine.
I desire to remain there long enough to let the
influences strike deep into me and work a per
manent cure. With my return to America I
hope that there will be no return to what I fled
frora, journeying thousands of railes towards
lands blessed with a spiritual as well as a natural
sunlight. It was a vague instinct which drove
me — for I really did not know what I was
doing — like a slender vine in a dark cellar which
sends up a lone weakly shoot in search of the
light of day. Of course I can not tell what the
future has in store ; it may be that America with
its Hell of Eestlessness will again infect me, for
it is the happy balance of activity and repose
whioh constitutes true living. What I shall then
do I cannot say ; but I can tell you what I shall
feel like doing — I shall feel like abandoning
forever that spot of earth which Providence has
deme me the disfavor to set me down on, though
it be my native country. But to arouse these

398 BOME IL
snaky-haired anxieties does not accord with my
present mood; so let them be driven off into
their obscure cavernous retreat. With them
clinging about me, I never can win the Greek
maid aforementioned, for she always flees from
such a brood of ugly monsters. Least of all can
they endure the happy sunshine of your letter ;
when I think of it just now, they all take to
flight and disappear.
I believe that there are some spiritual troubles
which the ancients knew better how to manage
than we; they were not dark brooders but
happy enjoyers. Their life, their poetry, and
above all their art called raan away from him
self, turned the feeUngs outwards instead of
allowing them to prey inwards. A view of those
transparent, plastic shapes must have cleared up
the soul after the wildest tempests. The other
day after an absence of some months in the
North I went to the Vatican Gallery of Sculp
ture ; how can I describe the impression ! It
was as if you would visit a divine friend who
sees through, Heaven and Earth, and who knows
exactly what chord to touch in order to raake
you happy. The visit was a communing, an
imparting of the celestial nature. Now I can
see what the genuine worship of the heathen
was, and why they could adore a statue as an
Apollo, as an all-healing God. But even here
in the decline of Art, and of Faith which gives

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 399
birth to Art, unhappy brooding and struggle en
ters; for instance the Locoon represents terrific
conflict with evil, and the final victory of the old
serpent whom we know so well from the Bible.
Life thus is a battle in which the Devil is always
the victor ; yet this is not the serene Greek world
any longer, but caught in the toil of Fate and
destroyed like Locoon
Rome, Oct. 16th, 1878.
I send you some very slight reminiscences in
the shape of leaves. It is hard to say in what
condition they will reach you after traveling so
many thousands of miles, tossed about on land
and sea. I raight send something better, but it
would.be apt to be confiscated on the way by the
officers of the revenue as an article requiring
duty. Leaves, I suppose, do not pay any tariff
even in our tariff-ridden country .
The largest bunch of leaves was plucked from
the olive, which abound inthis part of theworid,
as you know. I hope that they will retain their
double color, as well as their shape, for both are
modest and beautiful. The under side of the leaf
is sUvery with alraost a raetalUc luster, yet milder ;
while the upper side is of a soft green dotted with
an infinite number of sraall sparkling points. To
see an olive tree, or still better an olive orchard
under the rays of the sun with a slight breeze

400 BOME II.
moving the leaves, never fails to arouse the keen
est natural gladness ; there is such a tossing and
turabling of the foliage, such a sparkling play of
their tints that each tree-top seeras Uke a bevy
of raerry children. It laughs, yet always with a
winning comeliness — for notice the slender grace
ful forra of the leaf ; it never moves in an un
graceful manner. There is no object in nature
here more attractive than the olive ; then its
utility is beyond all computation, for it really
furnishes to this population meat in its vegetable
oil — meat here grows on trees.
How often have I stopped on my journey and
watched the dance of the leaves I I have even
lain down under the trees and looked at thera
playing on an ItaUan sky as a background. It
was the tree sacred to Minerva, and the ancients
have celebrated it in many a legend. The God
dess of Wisdora planted it on the Athenian Acrop
olis, whence it furnishes refreshing shade and
nourishment even until this day to man, and a
crop of poetry.
The cluster of four leaves is from the ilex, or
the holm-oak, a tree which you will encounter
in Virgil and other classical writers. It is dis
tinguished for its thick foliage forming a dense
shade — avery useful tree inthis hot climate.
The Pincio which, as you perhaps know, is the
elevated park of the Eomans, is planted with
them ; this twig was plucked from one of the

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 401
trees near the ViUa Medici. Now they are filled
with acorns.
The other two leaves are from the laurel, being
also taken from the Pincio. The garlands of
Poets and Co/iquerors were made of it, and it
has become the symbol of all that is beautiful
and noble in human kind. Though we have no
laurel in America, yet we often hear of laurels;
the word has traveled far out of the region of
the tree. It also has a special interest on
account of its connection with modern Italian
poets, Dante and Petrarch for example.
Now with a little aid frora your reading and
your iraagination, you can enter the classical
woods and look upon the trees whioh have been
sung ab^out so rauch that they theraselves seera
to .sing. Listen to these leaves and you wUl
hear a voice which perchance may set you even
in Araerica to singing of the olive, ilex and
laurel. Do, for once in your life be a liftle sen
timental ; I am sure that I have set you a good
exaraple in this respect. I see that you are
soraewhat alarraed at my increasing youthful
ness; you seera to fear that I shall return even
to babyhood. Just what I want to be — sorae?
body's baby. " Unless ye become as little
children," etc. — that is the Heayen which I am
entering. Soraething too much of this — so
adieu. 26

402 BOME II.
Rome, Oct. 19th, 1878.
I have broken away frora Eorae again, this
time southward. More than a raonth I have
tarried in the Eternal City, and somehovv I feel
that I shall see it on ray return. The eraotion
on leaving it is very different from that which
came over me when I quit it last sumraer for the
North and Germany. Now Hellas floats before
me in all sorts of bewitching forras, which cause
rae to live in a world of glorious anticipation.
I ara writing this in the Eailroad Station, while
waiting for the train to Naples, and I have tirae
to look back a little.
Let not my confession astonish you when I say
that I ara in a kind of reaction against Eome ; I
begin to feel its liraits, especially of its art and
culture. I must get out of it, back of it, beyond
it, to the original source of that stream which
pours through it down the ages, and which has
been not a little discolored by the passage. A
feeling of satiety has corae over rae, it seems to
rae that I have a touch of that Eoman world-
pain (Weltschmerz) which runs darkly through
the Latin poets, and which becomes the direct
raotive of the statue of Antinous, truly the
great work of a Eoman soul of the iraperial tirae.
But ray face this morning is turned away frora
Eorae toward Hellas, and when I think of that,
satiety will sink back into Orcus, I suppose,

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 403
while Joy and Hope flap their rainbow wings
before my eyes, beckoning me onward.
And now as a parting shot I ara going to let
fly at you over the Ocean, a little epigram whioh
has been rollicking through ray brain as I have
wormed through this variegated Italian crowd at
the Station, and has at last danced itself into
existence through the point of my pencil.
Swinging on high between two visions seemeth
my journey.
As the pendulum swings back fisom a tick to a
tick;
And on the clock of the world I am raarking the
weightiest raoraents.
As I sweep to and fro through the dead ages
erabalraed;
Substance fades to a dreara but the dreara soon
hardens to substance,
Huge Coliseum recedes, Parthenon rises to
view- Monte Cassino, Oct. 19th, 1878.
Eorae is now behind rae and I ara making my
way towards Greece; just at present, hovvever,
ray destination is Naples. But I could not pass
by the faraous monastery of Monte Cassino,
which was perched upon this high mountain
like a lighthouse during the Dark Ages- Frora
the railroad down in the valley I see the coronal

404 ROME II.
of buildings capping the sumrait and overlooking
the country far and wide. As that surarait is
my objective point, I at once start for it by the
shortest way, when I step out of the cars.
Guides are there offering to conduct me on foot
or to furnish me a mule for riding up the steep
and weary ascent ; but who with eyes can not
see yon building or who with legs can not walk
up a hill? So I pu.sh on alone, after having
deposited my baggage at the inn.
It is Saturday and the peasants from the sur
rounding country have flocked to the town which
lies at the foot of the mountain, in order to dis
pose of their products. The men have an
ancient costurae, usually variegated with patches
of raan-y colors ; shoes are not in use, but a
species of primitive sandal made of oxhide.
The women have an elaborate toilet of its kind,
with great variety of tints; upon the head is
laid a white cloth like a towel folded after iron
ing. They can not be called beautiful; very
early they are subjected to severe out-door labor;
the result is, they are deeply tanned by the sun,
wrinkled, distorted ; they look like dried-up oak-
knots. Full of bustle and chatter aud chaffer
ing they offer their wares ; I push through the
market to the foot of the hill where the road
leads upwards. Here too are leather-visaged
women with heavy burdens skipping over the
rocks, barefooted and happy.

A TOUR IN EURORE. 405
Around the mountain the road winds like a
spiral; this seems to rae too long, so I conclude
to cut these spirals by a straight line to the sura
mit. Over wallsj through olive orchards, up we
go till about half way ; a sense of fatigue begins
to raake itself felt ; but I turn around and look
at the glorious landscape, and] I ara refreshed.
A long peaceful valley surrounded by mountains
which alternately play or fight with the clouds is
reached over by the eye. On a neighboring hill
is an old castle; here you see side by side the
types of the Middle Ages, Cloister and Castle —
the one furnishing the men of thought, the other
the men of action. Both are placed upon steep
high places for security; each is divorced frora
the other, yet both dominate the houses below
where the people reside. From these structures
and their situation you can quickly catch the
spirit of those who built thera and of the times
in which they were built. So true is it that
man can construct only what he himself is, not
what he is not. At present, however, both
Castle and Cloister are in a state of decay, even
of ruin; Authority, religious and political, has
descended into the plain below, to abide among
the people. For what else does a ruin say but
this: Alas, behold rae with syrapathy; I am but
a dead body whose spirit has fled; unless thou
preservest rae, soon even my bones will disappear
into the elements. My day is past — woe is me.

406 BOME IL
But the hardest part of the ascent remains,
precipitous, rugged and henceforward unculti
vated. Still I go straight up, often scrarabling
on all fours in order to pass a difficult place.
My only corapany now is the lizard, a very agile
and not ungraceful little creature who has an
undisturbed paradise amid the rocks. I grow
tired, very tired; I begin to think that it was
the impetuosity of youth which caused me to
undertake such a trarap. But I ara soon in
breath again and begin with fresh delight after
a look over the country ; I glance toward the
surarait, it does not seera far, though I do not
now see the raonastery. But when I reach the
point upon which ray eye rested, behold, it is
not the top but merely a projection of the side
of the raountain. Still there is quite a distance
to the sumrait, which seeraed always to get
higher, till I thought I would enter the very
gates of Heaven. So doubtless thought the old
monks as they clirabed this mountain : the en
trance to their inonastery was the entrance to
Paradise. At last I reach the court, fatigued and heated ;
a large cistern offers abundance of water which
I ara afraid to drink, but I bathe ray temples and
arms till my thirst and perspiration are assuaged.
A servant coraes along, I ask him if he can give
me a" liftle wine; he bids me go with him, we
pass through long corridors lined with the cells

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 407
of monks, till we corae to his little chamber.
He was a curious old raan, this servant, with a
raysterious air of cunning about him ; concern
ing the most trivial matters he assuraed a secret
look of iraportance. He never talked above a
whisper; he slipped through the hall on tiptoe ;
he never used a word when he could eraploy a
gesture ; his inforraation was never conveyed
plainly, but always with sorae arabiguity. Still
he told me that he had been thirty-six years in
the service of the raonastery and had learned
something. Here was the genuine Italian clown,
who gives a comic reflection of what he finds in
his raaster; for I could not help drawing this
inference frora his actions; he had seen the cun
ning of his superiors all his life — he would be
cunning too. I knew him from Italian coraedy
previously, but here he was in person, in actual
flesh and blood.
But there was no ambiguity in the wine which
he served up to rae, nor was there any arabiguity
in ray drinking. I tell you it did rae good. I
rewarded hira with a handsorae quantity of cop
pers, whioh pleased him so rauch that he at once
conducted rae to the notable things of the place,
of which the most notable is 'the church. It has
the most gorgeously decorated interior that can
be imagined ; no church in Eome equals it in this
respect. The effect is peculiar, you are dazzled,
indeed benumbed for a tirae by the splendor.

408 ROME IL
The colors take absolute possession of the eye;
forra, proportion, syraraetry, not to speak of the
thought, are unseen in that glare of magnificance.
Pillars and walls are inlaid with every variety of
colored marble; every inch of ceiling is covered
with paintings ; where there is nothing else, there
is gilt; the whole' forms a wild, I should say,
feverish, phantasraagoria of color.
I do not think, however, that the delight in
such a structure can be perraanent, for it does
not appeal to that which is perraanent in man.
It was not long before I felt its violations of na
ture and good taste, such as flying cherubs hung
by the back from the ceiling; far different
does the Apollo Belvedere fly. Everything is
subservient to ornaraent apparently; in them
selves these objects have no ground of existence.
Indeed the church finally makes the irapression
that it stands there only for ornament, without
any spiritual necessity; it raight just as well be
something else, some other kind of scaffolding
for hanging ornaments on. StUl it is a won
derful work; color by itself can hardly do more.
This raonastery belongs to the Benedictines —
founded, it is said by St. Benedict hiraself in
525 A. D. It is thus the cradle of that great
order whioh has really done rauch good in forraer
ages. One can not help coraparing these struc
tures with those at Assisi, the home of St.
Francis. The church at Assisi is in every way

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 409
different, more earnest, more deeply religious,
yet more sombre. Whether this architectural
difference fairly adumbrates the difference be
tween the two founders or between the two
orders, I can not tell; but the comparison is
not fair on account of the great difference of
age between the two edifices. One thing is cer
tain : this church of Monte Cassino is worldly,
is devoted to enjoyment of the senses ; its ex
ternal magnificence is without any deep, earnest
spiritual principle. It is not yet a ruin, but the
raonastery is now secularized by law ; Time can
not long keep off his hand.
But the view frora the sumrait will reraain,
whoever raay dwell there ; this has a natural
gift of hoUness, as I raay call it, which made
raen well when the mountain was crowned by
the temple of Apollo in antiquity. To-raorrow
I start on my way to Naples with the intention
of stopping a few hours at Capua.

ttranstt. Naples, Oct. 22nd, 1878.
Last evening I reached the New City, which
still bears its Greek name somewhat mutilated
(Neapolis, in Greek, Napoli in ItaUan). This
raeans that I have crossed the first line from
Italia into Graecia, that is, into the transitional
territory which may be called Italic Greece and
which lay anciently in Southern Italy, partic
ularly in the Greek cities along the sea-coast.
Do I find any traces of that old Greek origin
and character still remaining among the people?
I have already corae upon soraething which has
impressed me in that way. Around the most
frequented Public Square stand many little
booths which are places of amusement for the
(410)

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 411
populace ^jugglers, sword-swallowers, ventrilo
quists and all that sort of artists ply their trade
there. Sauntering around I stroll into one of
these booths, lured by a show-bill which spoke
of the Wedding of Thetis. I said to myself:
" What! is that old Greek tale still told here in
Naples to the common people, most of whom
cannot read!" I enter the place for a penny,
and behold ! here comes hoary Neptune with his
trident heading a procession of sea-deities. A
young fellow tells the story, which is illustrated
by scenes, introducing the Nereids, Galathea,
and the rest (sorae of whora I could not raake
out). Then Peleus the raortal bridegroora en
tered and carried off the fair Thetis frora her
divine wooers. Out of this marriage, you know,
sprang Achilles, the supreme Greek hero at
Troy, who somehow carae forth on the stage at
the end, when the perforraance closed to the
great satisfaction of the little audience. As
soon as I reached the street, a beggar who had
been present at the show, asked rae for alras.
I said to hira: " I shall give you this (showing
hira a copper coin), if you will tell me who was
Achilles." The fellow knew of him as the
slayer of Hecter. "Another piece of money
here, if you will tell rae about Proteus." That
beggar replied: "two cents raore and I will
show you his transforraations." So I saw old
Proteus turned into a crawling snake, a devouring

41i TRANSIT.
lion, and a fluttering tree in about two rainutes.
You know that the Neapolitans are great mimics,
and can talk better by grimace and gesture thau
by word.
Now the interest of all this to me was that it
showed the Greek Mythus to be still alive among
the people here, and employed as an expression
of life. The Neapolitan dialect is beyond me,
so that I cannot say to what degree language is
still affected by the old Greek tongue. But
there are said to be villages in Southern Italy
and Sicily which to-day talk Greek, though
corrupt. Naples, Oct. 25th, 1878.
The popular art of this city has a tendency to
the small, to a great skill in making dainty' little
objects. Sleeve-buttons, and buttons of every
kind, jewelry, and raany petty utensils are
wrought exquisitely out of coraraon materials,
such as lava and sea-shell and coral. This fact,
I ara inclined to regard as an old Greek inherit
ance in which the whole people participate.
There seems to be a formative sense here which
is well-nigh general, a plastic feeling which has
corae down frora another tirae and faith.
The decorations which are found in Pompeii
appear to point to the sarae fact. They must
have been raostly made not by artists, but by
coramon artisans, to whom the Greek mythical

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 413
world vvas farailiar not only in its story but
also in its sculptured and painted shapes, the
vvorks of the best Greek artists for hundreds of
years. What a training ! In fact the Mythus
was once the chief education of the people, and
still ought to be employed as an educational in
strumentality. Now I shall tell you what this universal sense
of form in the minute things, of life has recalled :
the Greek Anthology, whioh has preserved the
versicles, themselves often little works of art,
which the ancients turned out on every little
occasion. Fortunately in a second-hand book
stall at Berlin, I came upon a selection of the
best of these by Frederick Jacobs, a German clas
sical scholar of distinction. His Delectus Epi-
grammatum GrcBCorum with Latin notes is now a
kind of manual with rae, ancl furnishes a striking
counterpart to what I see before me in the pretty
artistic shapes carved on a thousand little articles
both of decoration and utility. Previously Ihad
to work through the whole mass of these little
poeras good and bad, but now I rejoice in an
Anthology of the Anthology by the Gerraan
pedagogue of Gotha in usum scholarum. This
is a great boon.
As a result of all these favorable circurastances
the epigrammatic mood has overflowed me again
with considerable intensity. Naples is to me the
epigrararaatic city in its art, in its life, in its

414 TRANSIT.
stimulation. And the sea here moves to the same
measure. I rode out on the waters of the Medi
terranean, and the boat rocked in the waves to
the tune of an epigram :
Merrily under the touch of the rudder is rocking
the vessel,
Eising a little above, falling a little below.
Eager to dance on the sea with the billow and
rorap with the sunbeara,
While the wares in the hold safely to haven it
brings.
Epigraras, rise, your voyage begins, now rock
with the vessel,
One with the sway of the ship, one with the
storra and the calra.
So I invoked the little sprites all day, and they
buzzed around me in hundreds of flitting sportive
shapes teasing me to catch them and to put them
into the fettered word. Of course many escaped
my grasp, leaving no trace in meraory or only a
little shred of radiance, a mere film of the hum
ming-bird's wing. But raany I caught and caged
in writ, and soraetiraes an hexametral line would
sing itself fully out in an easy laughing way when
All the sea was a smile and a twinkle was every -
wavelet.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 415

Naples, Oct. 25th, 1878.
I carae to Naples with ray heart set upon
three things, naraely : Porapeii, the Museura and
Vesuvius. To be sure there are many other de
lights here which can be included in a trip; for
this city is peculiar in not a few respects. Mo
bility is the characteristic of the population;
such a chaffering, jolly set of vagabonds can not
elsewhere be found upon the face of the earth.
The degree to which cunning is carried has ex
cited my wonder to the highest pitch ; I have
been outrageously cheated three times with eyes
wide open in spite of myself, deception is here the
finest of all the fine arts, as far as my experience
goes. Then the irapudence of these people
deserves the highest praise for its grand propor
tions ; after deceiving you they are ready, in
fact, they think it a part of the coraedy, to let
you know how completely they have humbugged
you. A peddler, in the most ingenious raanner
succeeded in selling me a pair of sleeve-buttons
for five francs; in a few moments he returned
aud offered a similar pair for two francs, "for
says he, it is always well to have two pairs in case
you lose one." It was quite the sarae as telling
rae to my face that he had cheated me out of three
francs. On the second day after my arrival I took a

416 TBANSIT.
jaunt to Pozzuoli, a town on the sea-shore ten
miles distant from Naples. On the way is the
the torab of Virgil (said to be so at least) to
which I paid a pilgrimage and plucked a twig
frora a laurel which is in the grounds, and which
ruraor declars to have been planted by Petrarch
originally. Here too ray sentimental mood was
marred by an attempt at skulduggery on the part
of the guide. Passing through the grot of Pos-
silupo, I carae in a short tirae to the sea whose
waves soon washed away all petty vexations.
Here Neptune revealed hiraself in certain won
derful forras which I had never seen before. As
the billows came rolling and breaking upon the
coast, it seemed as if there could be in them
soraething of what the old Greeks beheld in the
water of the sea. So I trudged along the shore
occupied pleasantly with ray fancies, till Poz
zuoli stood in the way. Here as I entered the
market-place, half the woraen of the town were
engaged in a street fight ; I looked on a while,
but I could not understand the cause of the
trouble in the Neapolitan dialect. A return to
Naples on foot threw me intp the night ; but I
saw across the harbor above the summit of
Vesuvius a glowing red crown, the reflection frora
the crater below.
Two days already I have given to the Museura
without having seen half of its treasures, not to
speak of having studied them. That which at-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 417
tracts me most is the paintings of Porapeii ; they
reveal a new art, indeed a new world. Both the
subjects and raethods of execution surpass mod
ern painting ; I went through the gallery where
they are displayed, in a sort of fever of excite
raent. Here was an art which naturally grew
out of the theme, and was really a part of the
life of the people. I now became conscious of
what I had before vaguely felt, that the so-called
Christian painting, with the exception of a few
works by a few masters, has little real signifi
cance for me. I have tried to work into it with
my heart as well as with' my head here in Italy,
but I feel satisfied that in my present condition
of mind there is no use. After all, these descents
from the cross, marty rdoras, crucifixions with
fhe whole tribe of saints, moriks and church-
fathers are not congenial to me, and hereafter I
am going to leave them alone. As a purely his
torical development, the history of Modern Paint
ing has an interest, but a view of these ancient
works, though merely copies and in a half -ruined
condition, has given me a delightful foretaste
of what I have been vaguely hunting. In the
Museura is ^ large coUection of old Italtan pic
tures ; I did not have the heart to look at thera
after seeing the Porapeian coUection, though
there are three or four which I raust yet see.
27

418 TBANSIT. Naples, Oct. 26th, 1878.
I have seen him, the fire-breathing demon
Vesuvius who has done so much good and so
much evil in the world — his worst act being the
destruction and his best act the preservation of
Porapeii. So closely are good and evil chained
together in our world, so readily does each as
surae the form of the other ! Already I had
caught a glirapse of the top sending up a column
of steam, when the train wound slowly into
Naples ; I then had a longing to make a closer
acquaintance with the monster; to-day the plan
was carried out.
Starting from Naples I first went to Resina, a
town lying at the base of the mountain ; after a
toilsome drive the Observatory was reached, from
which point carriages proceed no further. A
mule is offered, but I preferred to walk to the
foot of the cone. Noyy begins the steep ascent
for which it is impossible to eraploy even a mule.
Three ways of getting up the cone : to be carried
up, to be pushed up, or to walk up; the latter
was ray way. You often slip back iu the yield
ing ashes; at points, if you look back, it seeras
dizzy down fhe precipitous sides ; you grow tired
of the struggle against a raountain — but courage,
you will conquor; here is the summit, or rim on
which you look over into the crater.
Dense fumes composed of steam and gas with

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 419
a strong sulphurous sraell greet us ; brirastone at
least is in that fire which leaps out of the earth.
At a short distance is the second small crater ;
here is the mouth, the hole of the monster. You
hear a detonation like that of heavy artillery ;
high up info the air are hurled stones red-hot
and lava accorapanied with smoke ; the frag
ments are scattered in every direction, most of
them, however, falling back info the small crater.
It was as if the monster just spirted out a few
small mouthfuls for our entertainment; we feel
that he could blow us all up into the air if he
would only try. So Vesuvius continues throw
ing out his liftle scattered masses day and night ;
you iraagine hira to be asleep and only breathing
somewhat heavily ; what if he would wake up
and in anger !
After watching this pit for a time, one becoraes
farailiar, even friendly with it ; so I concluded to
descend into it, and lay my hand on its mane, as
it were. You must now imagine the locality — a
large crafer in which is situated a small crater,
from which alone the fire is sent forth ; between
the two rims of the craters is quite a little plain
covered with the crust of hardened lava over
which one may walk. Figure to yourselves a
large wooden bowMn which is placed a teacup;
thus you will have a picture of the two craters and
the plain between them. So I descend, preceded
by my guide, into this plain by avery steep path,

420 TBANSIT.
througn ashes which still smoke ; putting my hand
info thera I feel that they are uncomfortably
warra. I run through them down to the edge of
the crust beneath which the fires are still
glowing. The guide steps over on this crust ; I follow, I
confess with sorae diffidence. Spitting on it to
see how hot it is, I observe that the spittle is at
once converted into steam ; still it is not too hot
for leather, if 'you move about. Eamming my
stick info a crevice at my feet, it at once takes
fire ; indeed the lava can be seen there still red ;
I stoop down near it and give it a friendly glance.
But it is evidently going fo sleep ; in a few raore
days if will lose its bioomingcolor and turn dark.
This stream of lava is the product of a recent
eruption ; it is said by the guide to be some ten
days old or more.
Notwithstanding the proximity of all these
devilish forces, a person becomes indifferent, nay
reckless ; so I run over the crust as freely and
carelessly as over the ice on a skating-pond. Iri
fact your experience very rauch reserables your
first atterapt to go on ice ; you hesitate, you are
afraid, till at last you becorae imprudent. I
conclude to see the sraall crafer from a closer
view; so I pass over the intervening plain of
lava, lured by the demon as it were, for- it is a
facination to see him tossing out his red-hot
rocks and to hear his deep grunts at every heave.

A TO UB IN E UR OPE. 421
A good-sized stone falUng notmanyf eet in front of
rae gives rae warning to retire ; the guide too calls
a retreat, so with sorae unwillingness I separate
from my new acquaintance. Now I wish thaf I
had stayed longer there in his presence. I only
raean that one leaves such a scene with regrtt,
as the only thing of the kind which he has seen,
or is likely to see again.
To get out of the crater is a short but very
toilsome piece of labor. Looking back at the
twisted lava as it lies there cooling, shapes of the
raost reraarkable kind come to view ; very often
the limbs or trunk of the human body seem fo be
prostrate in every variety of contorsion. No
sculptor could improve upon sorae of these forms ;
then their colossal size inspires terror, when com
bined with so rauch writhing, Truly these are
the old Giants, pierced by the thunderbolt of
Jove — the hundred-headed, the hundred-handed
monsters scattered over the plain and dying in
the intensest agony and convulsions. One of
these shapes I recollect — it was the only thing
that made me shudder in the whole spectacle of
these tremendous earth-born powers — it was
merely a mighty arm strained to the last limit of
tension and struggle. But here I must break off
suddenly for reasons which cannot be given on
account of the want of time. Enclosed I send a
laurel leaf from the tree before raentioned, that

422 TRANSIT.
is planted near Virgil's grave. Still address
your letters to Eome, Poste Eestante.

Pompeii, Oct. 29th, 1878.
I have now taken a fairly complete survey of
the resurrected city with its unique character.
I iraagine fhat there is nothing like it elsewhere
on the globe. This is an image of antiquity
which should be staraped upon the brain as giv
ing a view of ancient life which nothing else can.
To be sure Porapeii must be regarded mainly as a
rural town Hellenized, and belongs to a given
stage of the old Greco-Eoraan civilization. It
shows how completely art had been. taken up
into the life of the people, who lived and raoved
in a world of artistic forms greeting them on
every side, at 'home and abroad. But the
doraestic architecture is shabby and wholly un
developed, especiall}' on the outside. Evidently
the time for fhe Faraily actually fo appear has
not yet come. Still it seeras fo rae that I can
see the Florentine Palazzo evolving out of the
Pompeian House internally, for the latter exter
nally is hardly more than a hovel.
There is no doubt that Pompeii drives the
soul often to spells of pensive reflection, even
to brooding perchance, over the providential
order. The supererainent thought here is Ees-
urrection, yea Eesurrecfion of the Body, for

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 423
the material part of the old town rises out of
the earth, though skeleton-like and imperfect.
Even our happy, light-winged little epigrararaa-
tist grows meditative in an elegiac distich:
Many believe hereafter will be resurrection of
body,
But of the old buried town, look, resurrection
has come.
Three days I have devoted to its study and
direct inspection, not returning to Naples but
staying at the Hotel Diomede which stands just
atthe entrance. For ray studies I have ray very
full guide-book in German, Gsell-Fels; but this
seemed hardly enough, so I purchased at a
German book store in Naples a copy of Over-
beck's considerable, book on Pompeii, also in
Gerraan. By the way, it should be noted that
in every large city of Italy we find the German
bookseller, altogether the best and most enter
prising of his tribe in the whole world, I believe.
The fact would also seem to indicate that the
Germans, intellectually, have far raore inter
course with Italy than any other nation, though
it is probable that more English-speaking peo
ple (English and Americans) visit Italy, and it
is certain that they disburse far more money,
than the Germans. Thus the Teutons of both
great branches have again overflowed Italy, but
this tirae they are not conquering, destroying

424 TBANSIT.
and robbing, but paying their way, to the de
light and profit of impoverished Italy.
The course of the lava down the sides of
Vesuvius I have been much interested in tracing.
From the vineyards here is expressed the juice
of fhat famous wine which bears the narae of
Lacrima Christi. At a little wine shop by the
wayside I called for a drink of it, which the
tapster furnished, of course, though it was
probably not genuine. You know they have in
Italy many articles connected with Christ, for
example any quantity of wood of the true cross.
I asked ray cupbearer: "You are a Christian?"
"Yes, a good Catholic." The narae of the
wine had given me a little twinge, and so I en
quired further : " Then how dare you sell Christ's
tears?" His response was naive : "We sell our
guests what they call for." Good, thought I to
rayself ;, vult decipi et decipitur — I asked to be
deceived, and got it, of course, by paying for it.
But the raultitudinous shapes which this lava
takes are treraendously suggestive. They carry
me back again to the old Greek world, and bring
up a part of its mythology whose real side never
dawned on me before when I read it in Hesiod —
the war between the Gods and the Giants (or
Titans). The latter were depicted as monsters
of enorraous strength, raany-lirabed and many-
headed, and were hurled sprawling and writhing
and indeed dying upon the earth. Well, here

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 425
they lie, stiffened in their last convulsions, with
their limbs stretched out in a kind of agony —
truly a terror to behold.
Titans I saw whose limbs had been scattered all
over the mountain.
Writhing still they lay skewered by bolts of
high Jove.
There, with bundles of limbs wound together,
lay huge Hundred-Handed,
Knotted in wrath are his thews, vain is his
effort to rise.
Thus I actually saw fo my own satisfaction
the Giant Briareus lying there, the mighty mons
ter with his hundred hands clutching seeraingly
for Zeus, who has, with his thunderbolt laid out
the first anarchist. Here then is an awe-inspir
ing colossal image of Destruction, yea, of De
struction destroyed — image made by the first
artificer. Nature, in her priraordial work shop,
and copied, it seems to me, by the Greek
Mythus, especially in its Hesiodic vein. For
Homer is different and portrays a different
world, even if he sumraons up Briareus in a
noted scene, and gives a glirapse now and then
info a Titanesque background of his clear, sunny
Olympian world.

426 TRANSIT.
Brindisi, Nov. 3rd, 1878.
I concluded to wait here three days for fhe
Austrian steamer which passes through the
Ionian Islands and the Cyclades ; thus I shall be
able to get a view of the insular part of Greece,
which forms such an important eleraent in its
history as well as in its physical aspect. Also
I desired to bring up a Uttle. I had seen so
much at Naples in so short a time that it was
necessary to have sorae quiet hours for raental
digestion. When I see too rauch, without giv
ing adequate reflection to the objects seen, I
becorae confused in raind, and everything gets in
sipid or at least uninteresting. To observe and
to think are the Siaraese Twins, which cannot be
separated without the risk of destroying both.
So the three days have passed very quietly but
not disagreeably; only when I took a walk down
to the sea shore and looked across the waves,
did I experience a longing to be off for the
land lying beyond.
So I again went through that wonderful town,
Porapeii, with its treasures of art and doAestic
econoray. But I raust not at present atterapt to
describe it fo you ; it has fo be seen, for it is not
words — it is life. Though its inhabitants are
all dead, it is a vast dictionary of antiquities
turned into vivid iraages or rather into a sort
of vital activity. I regretted leaving it so soon.

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 427
but I have proraised rayself a full feast there on
ray return frora Greece. As I look back upon
that buried city, I begin to feel the first real
astonishment ; while I was walking through it and
looking at it I did not fully appreciate its won
derful character. So the first view seldora in
itiates you into the heart of the thing, or any
raere view ; thoughts raust follow in the wake of
th'e eye, if the latter is to have any true vision.
But ray raind has been turned rather to what
I am to see next than to what I have just seen.
Soon I shall be in the wafers of the Odyssey :
just think ofit!
So I was careful to provide myself with a copy
of that old Bible, as it may be called — Bible at
least for fhe ancient Hellenic race, and I ara
inclined to think that of Holy Books it is
one of the best. It is the great storehouse
of typical forras which have passed into the
language and conciousness of the European
peoples ; probably more of moral and intel
lectual syrabols it has furnished than any
other book. But I ara done wifh all these
terras, which I shall try now to throw away, and
simply enjoy the book, thankful above all things
that it has been written and that I may read it,
nor shall I have any quarrel with my neighbor
who may prefer another book. At present, how
ever, the Odyssey is going to be my cicerone, the
oldest of the kind, I venture to say, also the best;

428 TBANSIT.
for wifh all its indications of times and places,
it is an inner spiritual guide book, and its outer
forras and moveraents are only as a setting for the
cunning lore within. Still what a delight it
will be to snuff even the air of those isles of the
sea where its scene was laid ! Thus I pass my
time here iri a sort of dreamy anticipation, which
may be far raore pleasant than the reality, par
ticularly if sea sickness should happen to set in.
On my way hither I stopped in the seaport
town of Bari, which shows the difference be
tween old and new Italy in the most striking
raanner. The one part of the place has dirty
narrow streets, with houses like pig-sties and
with denizens of Darwinian tendency ; you feel
narrowed, choked, and incarcerated in a pinfold.
But the other part of the town is active, broad*
streeted and white ; how white it looks beside its
neighbor ! This I hope, pre-figures new Italy
everywhere. Also I was glad to see the ancient
filthy dens yielding before the whife houses and
wide streets. But the confiict was bitter, bitter
as the clerical conflict in Italy .

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 429
Brindisi, Nov. 3rd, 1878.
Horace's trip to Brundisium has kept this
place in my raeraory since school-days. Little
did I then think that I too would make the
journey from Eorae to Brundisium (modern
Brindisi). Horace was in company with his
patron, Maecenas; Virgil and other poets went
along; also a Greek rhetorician, Heliodorus,
Grcecorum longe doctissimus. What shall we
say to this set of men? Hardly more than a
decorative fringe to Maecenas, the prime min
ister of the new Empire, traveling on affairs of
State. All Gi'eek art has become decorative at
Eome and for Eomans, whose business is to rule
the world, notto body it forth seriously in artis
tic forms. That one feels still today, and is
what has driven me out of Eome to Hellas,
whose deepest vocation was that of artist, not
only to Eorae but to all Time. Even the Greek
marbles in the Vatican began to cry out to me
audibly with a sort of profest :
Art must be a true worship of Gods, not
merely enjoyment.
Goddess is the high Muse, scorns to be used
for desire.
Enough of that strain ; but let me give you
one or two glimpses of what I have just passed
through, looking back from .this half-way house

430 TRANSIT.
on the road from Eome to Greece. Three things
have roused in me a good deal of thought and
raore of excitement, whioh has risen at tiraes to
a kind of fever: Naples, Vesuvius, Pompeii. Do
you know what this trinity now calls up to me
imperiously? They show Life, Death, and
Eesurrecfion, separately yet working together
and bringing forth a strange harmony and unity
in my pre-attuned soul. Naples with its half a
raillion people is the raost lively and variegated
coil of human wrigglers knotted closely together
that is to be seen in Europe, probably; unroll
ing a panorama bright and ever-changing on the
whole, but darkened through and through by
beggary, lazzaronisra, and secret crime. Over if
hangs the Destroyer, Vesuvius, at present flam
ing red nightly, the most striking embodiraent
of ever-threatening Fafe that can be conceived.
Here carae up that ancient world-view which
put such fearful stress upon the tragic Nemesis
of existence, whioh actually seeraed suspended
over all antiquity and finally destroyed it, for
really it was a tragedy, as Aeschylus long before
hand mightily conceived it, and as both Greece
and Eome mightily reaUzed it afterwards. Vesu
vious and Pompeu smote me crushingly with
the idea that the ancient world is one colossal
tragedy, from which its gieat poets and artists
have simply cut off this and that fragment — in
the single little action or event imaging and in-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 431
deed pre-figuring the one great tragic fatality.
Another question can not be wholly kept down,
though unanswered and unanswerable : Is modern
Europe on the way toward making of itself a far
more colossal tragedy?
Many an image doth lie in thy ashen embrace,
Porapeii,
Sleeping the aeons away till the awakening
coraes ;
But of all of the iraages that lie hid in thy
bosom.
Greatest by far is thyself — Destiny's iraage
art thou. Off Ithaca, Nov. 5th, 1878.
On the steamer we are now plying through the
seas made world-famous by the Odyssey. At
Corcyra (Corfu) where the boat stopped sorae
hours, I was made aware that we had crossed the
line from Italy to Greece by a nuraber of changes.
The Greek costurae ( f ustanella ) began to appear
frequently, though it was by no means universal ;
I had seen it already in Venice and Brindisi.
The business signs over the doors of the shops
were in Greek, and excited my curiosity hugely.
I saw the Greek equivalents for cigar store, candy
shop, grocery etc., in Greek letters. Here
pours out suddenly upon me the language of the
economic world, which is certainly not prom-

432 TBANSIT.
inent in the old tongue of Hellas, as it has
come down to us. The bill-boards I ponder
and puzzle over, often taking out my pocket dic
tionary for help, and sometimes not getting if.
At Corcyra I first got hold of a Greek newspaper,
and am still digging away in it, devouring ad
vertisements as well as editorial. What can give
a better picture of the daily life of a coraraunity
than a newspaper? On the whole I read it with
out much difficulty, though I had to laugh over
what seemed to me at first its grot6squeness.
For these old, old words are still bubbling up
frora the living fountain of huraan speech, and
caper about youthfully in wholly new relations.
For instance the hack-driver will ask you if you
want his hamaxa, the very narae which the
Odyssey gives to Nausicaa's vehicle. In the
main the newspaper eraploys Xenophontic Greek,
as I diagnose it. , ^
Glancing back at my post-Eoman trip so far
and reviewing my notes, for which I have time
on this voyage, I am astonished at the nuraberof
epigrams I have spouted forth out of my inner
Artesian well. More than two dozen fairly com
plete I have counted, with fragmentary dashes
and splashes araounting fo quite a hundred. The
whole way is strown with these frisky little iraps
which keep dancing through ray brain and give
rae no peace. At Brindisi they took up raost of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 433
my time, plagueing me for utterance. And they
vvill have their way.
Yonder in the distance a sailor points out to
me rocky, sunny Ithaca, low-lying above the
surface of the water, home of Ulysses and chief
scene of the Odyssey. But our vessel is not go
ing thither; it does touch, however, at a town in
Cephallenia, an island which, though consider
ably larger than Ithaca, is comparatively faraeless.
Perhaps its best known act was to send its con
tingent of suitors for the hand of Penelope.
Again the Odyssey has taken hold of rae in its
own waters, ancl dominates me more strongly
than ever. I recollect, in crossing the Atlantic,
that the old Greek sea-poem, came up to me
mightily on view the Ocean, and drove me to
try to realize its manifold marine deities, and to
put them into some kind of form for my imagin
ation. That seems now to me a sort of dumb
instinctive groping after the chief boon of my
European journey. I did not then attempt to
shape into any utterance those fleeting images —
I had no form for doing it. But now I have, rae
thinks, ray poetic raould into which I can pour
the very elusive, changeful divinities of this
watery world. So you see the epigrararaatic
mood still haunts me, and insists upon raaking
rae a species of plastic artificer in words. In
fact the whole Oddyssey is running through ray
head, transrauted to epigraras. Ulysses, Alcin-
28

434 TBANSIT.
ous, its three women (Penelope, Arete, Nausicaa;
have each claimed a separate ver side, and have
gotten an epigrammatic shred at least. I am
sailing through the Greek sea-world thronging
with an untold multitude of billowy shapes, a few
of which I try to catch and hold in an epigrara :
Look far out on the line of the waves, there
rises Poseidon,
Heaving the billows suggest presences subtle
within ;
Proteus ancient, daughters of Nereus, thousands
of daughters,
Triton, who blows on his shell to the deep
music of seas.
Old Oceanus, Tethys the mother wifh floods of
her children.
All know their worshiper new, peer from the
waves and salute.
Such is my divine company ; do you not envy
rae? But I must tell you the counterpart. I
have become acquainted with a human company
on board the ship, Greek too, nay Athenian.
A man and his wife from Athens have furnished
rae more amuseraent than I ever got out of a
coraedy of Aristophanes. The husband speaks
Italian well and also Greek ; but the woman can
talk only Greek, which is the tongue I want to
practise. So I had been conversing with her,
innocently enough, when she, without warning.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 435
began playing the part of match-maker. She
had wormed out of me that I was a single man ;
of a sudden she turned upon me and declared
that she knew, at home, just the woman for me,
who had also a splendid dower (proika). Thus,
anew "Maid of Athens" started to hover around
me entrancingly even before my arrival. The
wife mentioned the scheme to her husband, who
seemed to approve. He was a man of sorae
education, and knew at least the names of the old
Greek authors of whom I was full. Something
led hini to say that an author or professor was
highly esteemed at Athens. I took the hint,
thinking I could add another scene to the com
edy. I went to my valise and from it brought
fhe two neatly bound volumes of the "System
of Shakespeare," and threw them down before
him, declaring my authorship. He looked at
them carefully, though he could not read Eng
lish, and then surveyed me from head to foot,
&aying flnally: "that work will bring you a
dower of 40,000 drachmas." He spoke to his
wife, implying that the first girl had too small a
dower for such a book. So, you see a second
'^'Maid of Athens" advancing into my horizon
with charms more irresistable than the first. Do
you expect me ever to get back to St. Louis
again? Of one thing I feel certain: never there
shall I have even the prospect of such a prize
(or price) for my book.

436 TBANSIT. Syr a, Nov. 6th, 1878.
Our vessel has reached the island of Syra
(ancient Syros) lying almost in the heart of the
Cyclades which are scattered about in every
direction. These islands peer above the surface
of the sea like hugh stepping stones for helping
man across the .^Egean out of Asia into Europe.
In the raoveraent of the race from Orient to
Occident this islanded Greece must have been
an iraportant stage, training a priraitive people
to a mastery of the sea. Man here has to be a
water raan as well as a landraan.
In the bay of Herraopolis, chief city of Syra,
\we have been transferred to a little Greek steara
boat which is soon to start for the Piraeus.
Thus ray transition frora Eome to Athens will
be concluded today if nothing happens. Part of
the way has been by land and part by water,
but I have been floating the whole distance on a
sea of epigraras whioh have indeed been to rae
quite everything.
Ye are the soul at the helra, and ye are the
voice of the helmsman.
Ye are the sea and the land, ye are fhe present
and past.
From Naples, then, where I came upon this
peculiar sea (or rather it came upon me) I have
been sailing on an upper epigrararaatic voyage.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 4'57
a counterpart yet also a reflection of the lower
terrestrial journey. \_Editorial Note — Under
the name of Epigrammatic Voyage the above-
mentioned collection of epigrams was printed in
1886, and afterwards (in 1892) was embraced in
the book called Prorsus Retrorsus'] .

atbens.
Athens, Nov.7th, 1878.
Yesterday evening our little boat, after a
turabling passage which upset everybody except
the toughest sea-dogs, sailed into the harbor of
the Piraeus, which has so great a place in the
World's History. A little railroad carries the
crowd to Athens, where I am now located in fair
quarters and have started to work. Passing
from the station, I could see the Parthenon and
the Theseion, the two remaining ancient tera
ples, whose look seemed to convey . a friendly
salutation to the stranger.
That I would push eastward as far as Athens,
I hardly dared dream in St. Louis. And yet I
wished it, and indeed was raore deeply bent upon
(438)

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 439
it than I was aware of. Looking back, I can
see that a European tour would lose for me its
true purpose, would be but a fragment, a pitiful
torso, unless it penetrated to the heart of Hellas.
And now the end has been reached,- though by
no means yet fulfilled. Still I feel a satisfaction
here that I did not experience at Eorae, though
my delight there was great and prolonged.
Greece is certainly the fountain-head of Euro
pean culture, and should be the fountain-head of
a European journey which is seeking to follow
the stream of that culture to its source.
Today I have been borne back in meraory to
my college days, quite twenty years since. The
instruction in Greek was passable, but not very
stimulating. Still, as a Freshman, I read not
only the four required books of the Odyssey,
but the whole poem in Greek, and took sorae
dips into the Iliad. I have never lost the
Homeric dialect and the hexametral swing from
that day to this; indeed, every year since then I
have kept my Homer alive by fresh reading, or
by instruction. And I shall tell you something
more, as I am in the line of recalling my youth
ful experiences in Greek. Though my words
may have the appearance of boasting, I cannot
otherwise fully account for my presence in
Athens today. As a young student of about 18
and 19, I felt strangely drawn to the old Greek
Historian Herodotus, whose theme is the birth

440 ATHENS.
of the Greek historic world through the Persian
War. As a modern comraentary on the ancient
narrative I read Grofe's History of Greece; I
had also Eawlinson's translation and notes, as
far as they had then appeared. I believe I may
say that the spirit of historic Hellas was born
into mine through those studies of Herodotus.
The names whioh I hear everywhere ringing
around me — Salamis, Aegina, Acropolis and
hundreds of others — are as farailiar to me as if
I had lived here all my days, or rather as if I
had been here in some forraer existence whose
irapressions I am now recalling by a kind of Pla
tonic reminiscence. It is indeed a unique feel
ing to go to places in which you know you have
never been before, yet which are well-known to
you, and even dear. I have pored over, in my
life-time, the map of Greece more than the map
of my own country, and Greek cities, previnces
and seas are engraved upon my brain so deeply
that I seem now to be coraing back to my own,
rather than going forward.
Herodotus is, therefore, my guide-book still,
having given me the original idea which is now
simply taking on before my eyes the vesture of
reality. But here I raay tell you of another
youthful exploit of raine in Greek. After He
rodotus comes Thucydides in the natural se
quence of History, probably the most difficult
Greek author, with the exception of Aristotle.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 441
Him, too, I read during College days, though he
was not in the course at all. He gives the inner
disintegration of that historic Greece of which
Herodotus gives the integration, as far as it ever
did^integrate. It is on fhe whole a raelancholy
negative book, especially in its Athenian part,
whose tale is the unraaking of that of which He
rodotus tells the .making. Still, I once read it
with an absorbing, yea, deeply emotional inter
est — that unemotional, impassive History. A,nd
the reason was that my own country was pass
ing through a crisis of inner separation similar to
that of the Greece of Thucydides. In 1861 I
was staying at a little Ohio town, Iberia by
name, erigaged in teaching Greek as fhe main
branch. South Carolina and the cotton states
were seceding, Lincoln entered upon the Presi
dency, when fhe whole Union seeraed to be fall
ing to pieces. In such a tirae I tackled Thucyd
ides, undoubtedly with tke help of translations
and coranientaries. Very often his words would
directly apply to the political situation in ray
very presence . His long story grew darker as
it went on toward fhe close ofthe Peloponnesian
War (whioh close he does not quite reach). Is
that to be the course of our confiict? Will our
war last twenty-seven years, or the tenth of it?
Thus, during that destiny-laden tirae I brooded
over Thucydides, whose irapartial tone had the
power of thrusting into me dagger blows of

442 ATHENS.
painful anxiety, whose cold words could often
throw me into feverish thrills of frightful pre
sentiment. So, I have good reason to remem
ber Thucydides and also his Athens, which was at
the start that of Pericles, and which continually
stands now before me in the Parthenon as its
supreme visible manifestation. By the way, I
ought to add that Thucydides does warm up very
perceptibly when he coraes to that fateful turn
ing-point for Athens, the Sicilian expedition, in
narrating which he grows pathetikos (the vvord
of old Greek critic). Of course the result of
our Civil War turned out the reverse of the
Grecian, so that Thucydides was not its prophet
in spite of my many forebodings.
These two Historians, Herodotus and Thucj'd-
ides, forra the background in my own soul-life
for ancient and also for modern Athens. As
such I am bringing them up before myself, as
well as recounting the fact to you, who are in
terested in what is going on within rae. Still,
my strongest creative impulse does not run to
ward history, but toward poetry. And what I
wish particularly to penetrate is not the historic
expression of Greece but the artistic. I would
certainly take delight in reading again those old
Historians here at Athens, to which both of them
essentially belonged, even if Herodotus was born
at Hallcarnassus. Then, it is still their lan
guage, fiundairienfaUy, whioh I talk on the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 443
streets, hear at the University and read in the
newspapers. Thus those two old friends of
thousands of years ago begin to have a presence
for me and even to talk to me with an intimacy
which is not elsewhere possible. Also to go
over Grote again — that old Athenian democrat
damning the aristocrats and defending the dema
gogues of Athens in modern London, with a
partisan conviction which makes his big book
very interesting to me — I would certain like,
but I dare not think of it on this trip. I ara too
much occupied with something else, another end
is impelling me, and the epigrammatic mood
dominates me stUl. Athens, Nov. 26th, 1878.
I am now pretty fully established here, so that
I begin to feel af horae. Just now I am lodged
in the house of an American Missionary who has
left the city for three weeks arid, who asked me
to occupy his quarters till he returns. He hardly
knows what a heathen he has taken under his
roof, else he might have found raissionary work
at horae. I have often tried to laugh at the in
congruities of this world; I, for instance, have
traveled so far in order to behold, study and
reverence the works of heathens, and I often
long to attain some portion of their culture and
excellence ; while a number of my good friends
here have traveled so far in order to convert the

444 ATHENS,
heathen. Somehow I have fallen into a sort of
colony of these American Missionaries who have
their headquarters at Athens ; they are certainly
very kind ancl agreeable, and I like them
muoh. But I can not help thinking of the almost
infinite difference between their aira and raine;
this necessarily prevents, or has prevented thus
far, fhe ultiraate bond of syrapathy, yet ray at
tachraent is growing.
My thoughts, however, are wholly in the
ancient world which had its outer appearance
herein these old edifices, streets and hills. The
imagination acquires the habit of throwing your
life back into that reraote period ; when you look
at an object, you always try fo think how it ap
peared then and who beheld it then. Nor is there
much here to disturb your reveries ; trade does
not intrude itself with its thousandfold noises upon
you; no manufactories darken these sunny
heights and plains with sraoke and soot ; every
where Nature seeras to say : ' 'I ara as I was 2,000
years ago — look upon rae."
As to myself personally, I am now wrestling
with the language — this is my chief business.
Not that I care so muoh for modern Greek, but
through it I hope to acquire some of the instinct
of the ancient tongue. Of modern tongues there
are raany which compete with modern Greek;
but the ancient stands alone in the history of
culture and has no competitor. I go daily to

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 445
the University where I hear a lecture or two ;
this is good practice for the ear. I visit some
times the Bouleterion or House of Eepresen
tatives; there I chiefly hear the noise, in making
which the members are very successful. Then
I take a stroll among the booths and aniong the
artisans ; here I see raany a lively picture which
probably has come down from the ancient city.
But my chief delight is to take a long walk in
the valleys and on the hills with which Athens is
surrounded. To-day I went to the Piraeus, the
seaport of the city, and passed through the
fields and vineyards instead of taking fhe raain
road. There was a inood in fhe landscape; it
was quiet, yet varied, and I raay say, happy. In
the fields along the Ilissus were raany larks, gay
with songs ; in the vineyards down by the sea
the grapes were still hanging ; some peasants, you
would think by their rude jollity, were celebrat
ing a festival of Bacchus. A boy plucked a
bunch for rae, fresh frora fhe vines; in eating
thera I thought I discovered why the old Greek
had a God of grapes. However I suppose it is
the atraosphere of the iraagination which is
subtly spread over this scenery and which gives
it such a peculiar poetical tone, for you seera to
be reading a poera all the time. Then these
draughts of Attic air — there is something in them
which transforms you ; you begin to see how this

446 ATHENS,
nature, transmuted through the feeUngs and
fancy, furnishes a setting for an art-world.

Athens, Dec. 7th, 1878.
It is an actual fact — here I am in Athens and
have been here now a month. It seems hardly
credible to myself; till recently not even my
dreams had the audacity to promise me that I
should ever tread the streets of this city. But I
am gradually getting used to the situation, and
the land is passing out of the borders of the
dream-world into a reaUty. Many prosaic mat
ters haive to be looked after ; a dishonest shop
keeper destroys your huraor for a tirae by a
piece of roguery ; but-the worst trouble is the dogs
prolific here beyond calculation, and infesting
both city and country. As you wander through
some ruin enjoying your fancies, or saunter
along the road looking at the rural scenes before
you, suddenly you are called upon to defend your
self against a cur which has slipped up behind
you and is trying to take a slice of fresh meat
out of the calf of your leg. But these are small
matters, very small indeed, compared to the de
lights of a visit to this country — merely fleeting
spots on the sun of your happiness. There can
be no doubt about fhe raatter. Greece is different
from all fhe other lands on the globe, "different
even from Eorae; for beside its own glorious

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 447
atmosphere given to it by Nature, it has also an
atmosphere of Poetry, which belongs to it and
colors it with all the hues of the Imagination. Mark
this second atmosphere whioh you are always
breathing here, and out which you never come,
except by sorae rude jostle — this is the boon of
Athens which she still gives the stranger, peer
ing out of her ragged and ruined shreds.
Just to the east of the city lies Hyraettus, a
raountain faraous both in ancient and raodern
tiraes for its delicious honey. Through the clear
air it seems to lie next door to you ; but it is
really several miles distant ; then the ridge of it
runs along so distinct against the blue sky be
yond. I can see it from my window, and often
I have longed to ascend its summit and to walk
the whole length of the sky-line, planting my out
lines as it were on the Heavens. Well a day or
two ago I rose early and started for the moun
tain. I believe I shall always remember that
day ; it was certainly one of the happiest of my
life, yet I was all alone, walking over rocks and
brushing through brambles. The delight lay in
the mood which the mountain, the scenery and
the sunlight excited within rae ; but how or why
such an effect was produced is raore than I can
tell. It was as if an idyl of Theocritus was hum
ming through me all the tirae; the day was
glorious, flowers were springing up through fhe
crevices, the bee and butterflies were out — it was

448 ATHENS.
spring in Deceraber. To the view there was no
obstacle; here on one side lay the sea
with the islands ^gina and Salarais tipped
with a Ught blue haze ; in front lay Athens
crowned with the Acropolis; while far up the
valley of the Ilissus villas and haralets sent forth
white gliraraerings from araong the olive frees.
Nature played upon me as upon an instruraent,
attuning rae exactly to her own mood — what if
I could only utter her music? I tell you it is no
wonder that those old Athenians had so much
harmony within them; their poetry, their art,
the Acropolis are simply the exalted expression
of what I heard on the Hyraettus. So I wan
dered all day over that ridge against the blue
sky, alone yet in good corapany, I think — dis
turbed only once by a solitary goafheard with
his flock. But that hum which kept running
through me, lighting up its way by all sorts of
radiant images — I wish I could convey it f o you
in some manner; then I am sure you would hear
a touch of Apollo's lyre and see the Nyraphs
and the Graces dancing in his train over the
fields. But I ara afraid that I have no instrument to
convey such delicate sounds so great a distance ;
so I can only tell you that I have eaten of the
honey of Hyraettus, the poetical honey gathered
by the Grecian bees frora the flowers of the
mountains. The difficulty is that it has to be

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 449
consumed on the spot, not being an article of
comraerce. Still I may be able to compress a
little of the sweet dew into some little box or
other, by which I may bring you a small sip,
just enough fo make you glad once. What do
you think I am talking about?
A few evenings ago I* was invited to a Greek
supper, on the occasion of some festival. Of
course the roast beef and turkey were quite what
they are everywhere, perhaps not so good as
in England or America. But around the floral
decorations and the fruits there was a certain
Oriental air which is always, to the mind, filled
with the fragrance of strange sweetmeats and
spices. The confectionery has a peculiar taste
derived from an aromatic gura naraed mastic,
which comes from the island of Scio; it has a
pleasant languid flavor whioh recalls the idle
luxury of the Turkish harem where the ladies
are said to find their chief amuseraent in chew
ing this gura. Then a box was brought before
rae filled with the figs of Smyrna mingled araong
kernels of nuts which I had not seen before ;
.their fragrance was delicious and subtly diffused
itself through the whole room. But my chief
surprise was excited by a new kind of sweet
meat — new to rae at least, naraely preserved
roseleaves. Did you ever hear of any such thing,
my dear Miss? They tasted quite as the flower
smells; they seemed to possess the quality of
29

450 ATHENS.
transferring a pleasant odor to the tongue, there
by delighting two senses together. Thus flowers
are preserved here, preserved doubly, in these
rose-flavored sweetraeats; they furnish their
fragrant repast to the Greeks and to the guests
of the Greeks ; so we have becorae flower-eaters
in this happy clirae, feasting the days away like
the ancient lotus-eaters. But rose-preserves are
a reality, believe me.
There are no galleries of art in Athens, and
the antiquities are not so plentiful, or in as good
condition as those of Eorae. Still the ancient
remains have a charm of their own, the charra of
originality. On this spot were produced the
types which control the Fine Arts today ; there
has been no iraprovement on the Greek coluran,
on the Phidian statue, and probably the old
painters were equally great in their line. The
Acropolis is still the center of interest, as in the
ancient days. Certainly, of the beautiful things
which have been produced on our earth, this was
one — shall we not say, the one? It rises up
over the city like a Heaven, it hangs yonder like
an ideal world toward which the people below in
the valley raust ever strive, and which they may
by happy effort attain. On its summit are the
temples of the Gods, still lying in repose and
sunlight; it is the realization of the Olympian
residence, with its raany palaces of the deities,
toward whioh the old Greek turned up his eyes

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 451
in lofty aspiration. If is strange how the Acrop
olis dominates the city below ; everywhere you
see it and seem directly under it, while it forces
you to carry your look upward to the abodes of
the Gods on its heights. Was not that an in
calculable means of culture in itself — to have
such objects falling into the eye whenever it
looks up? The Athenian populace had thus a
training in the sense of beauty and harraony
which they carried over into Poetry and into
Life; they were the best judges of the Draraa
and of Art generally. Sunny Olympus turned
into marble — that is the Acropolis.
I usually take my morning walk around the
Acropolis, and look up to its surarait not without
a feeling of reverence. Even its ruins breathe
a harmony which perhaps no other structure can
produce; and when lit up by the rising sun,
while the city below is still lying in the shadow
of the eastern hills, the heights begin to sing,
fhe architectural harmony becomes vocal. It is
no longer a wonder to me that the old statue of
Memnon was gifted with a voice when struck by
the first morning ray. I had intended to take
you inside of the Acropolis today and to show
you around a little on my pen's point; but I
have already filled up the space of my letter, and
you will have to remain outside now some weeks
probably. In the meanwhile I intend to give it
a great deal more study, for its edifices, like all

452 ATHENS.
great works of Art, refuse to reveal their best
secret to fhe first glance of any observer.
I have only one little flower to send you this
time, I plucked it frora the top of Hymettus,
and laid it in my note-book over a piece of
poetry; so you must imagine it possessing a
double fragrance. It remains in bloom during
the winter raonths, as some people told me; it is
also the main flower to which the bee resorts for
his stores during this period. To thrive on the
rocks, to grow during the winter, to offer so
freely its bloora, its odour, its honey — what a
brave Uttle flower ! I cannot help coraparing it
to some iraaginary Greek maiden who in the
olden tirae came out of her cabin on these hills
and offered to the wayfarer sweet refreshments
and her sweeter presence. At this picture I
must quit you. Good bye.

Athens, Dec. 7th, 1878.
I am very much obliged for your kind offers ;
and it may be that I shall accept some or all of
them. But af this distance I can not make any
definite plans ; I shall first have to find out the
state of ray finances, to see what the outlook is
at St. Louis ; in fine I shall have to wait tUl I re
turn to Araerica before beginning to live there.
Also I agree perfectly with what you say about the
little girl ; she must learn to make her own things

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 453
and to be economical, along with her education
and other accomplisments. These matters you,
must aid me in looking after, and your help will
be most gratefully received both by her and by
me. I would certainly like to remain in Cincinnati
with my kindred when I return ; but if I can not,
there is an end of the matter. If I do stay, it
will not be to lie around and wait for a situation
as a Professor. I do not wish you or any other
relative to push any clairas of raine; people can
find out far more about me than you can tell
them, for my career both as a teacher and as a
writer has not been wholly in the dark. But
there is tirae enough to talk over these matters
when you see my face lit up by your parlor fire.
Under any circumstances I shaU try to arrange
my affairs so that I can pass sorae time with
father. It -will certainly be my greatest pleasure
to be with him in his old age. I want his com
pany while he is here in this world, even if he is
so certain that he will not be separated from rae
in the next. I have gathered a good deal of
material abroad which, I think, would entertain
him, possibly would rejuvenate him a little. For
this is the effect of the journey upon me : it has
brought me back to youth, to the studies, feel
ings and dreams of my boyhood, even when
some hairs are beginning to bleach upon ray
teraples.

454 ATHENS.
A few days ago I was called upon by a Cin
cinnati boy who has made extensive tours
through Europe on foot. After remaining sev
eral months at the Paris Exposition in the em
ploy of the American Commission, he concluded
that he would spend his little cash in seeing fhe
world. One of his feats was to walk frora
Munich to Padua through the Tyrolese Alps,
stopping at the houses of the peasants on the way
for his food and lodging. He carae down the
Danube by stearaboat, making, as he said, only
one short trip in Turkey on account of dearness
of living and on account of the desolation caused
by the recent war. "One short trip" I asked —
"how far?" "Only 200 miles." I did not
consider that stretch so small, particularly in un
settled, barbarous Turkey. From Athens he
was going to raake the tour of Greece and then
go over to the Holy Land. A boy wifh so rauch
courage and adventure is the growth only of the
Araerican soil; Europe, as a rule does not pro
duce hira. He wanted me to go with him over
Greece, but I was so tied by other engagements
that I could not accept his proposal. So he set
out alone, and is now probably weathering the
snows of Arcadia.
I have just corae from church where I heard a
Presbyterian serraon in Greek preached by a
minister here who has been very friendly to me.
His wife is an American lady from Boston,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 455
though he is a native Greek, educated chiefly, I
believe, in the United States. I also go to
prayer meeting, not, alas! to pray, but in order
to learn religious Greek. The nearest I come to
devotion is when I look up to the top of the
Acropolis, or when I enfer the ruined colonnade
of some Heathen teraple. Christianity, as mani
fested here at Athens in the Byzantine mum
mery of the priests and inthe frightful dishonesty
of the people, seems a relapse into barbarisra
compared to the ancient Hellenic world. Yet I
like the Greeks exceedingly. They are trying to
redeem themselves, they have aspiration; they
are improving, and they are certain to bring about
the great Palingenesis in their nation. Any
people whioh shows as muoh ideal striving as
they are doing, can not help winning in the
end. But just now the realifv is not attractive
on all sides; the truth is, if you wish to enjoy
Athens, you must flee back in imagination to the
old Heathen City and People.
You speak of snow and cold weather. Noth
ing of the kind is here. As I look out of fhe win
dow now, the sun is shining with a mild autum
nal glow, flowers are in bloom, grapes fresh from
the vine are still hawked about on the streets, no
fire is required in the houses ; so the weather
eontinues, with a few interruptions, through the
whole winter. It is a bland climate, though the
heat of the summer is said to be severe. How

456 ATHENS.
long I shall remain I do not know ; long enough
at least to gorge my brain with pleasant images
sufficient to last through life. Every day I take
long walks through city and suburbs and am sure
to meet with some little incident or object which
leaves behind an agreeable memento for the
future. Athens, Dec. 10th, 1878.
I suppose that this letter will find you in the
very muck of prose — casting up accounts, mak
ing out balances, weighing and calculating, with
all the other activities of the vigorous business
man. How do you like such work, after having
taken your grand flight through the poetical
regions of Europe? Let me beg you to keep
your pinions in practice and spread thera often
high in air; don't let them get sticky by flapping
(too much on the earth. As you see by the
superscription of this letter, I have pushed still
farther toward the sun ; this dull terrestrial clod
of mine may now be truly said to be in^eW-
helion, whence, however, it must soon recede.
That is, I have reached the extrerae point of my
travels toward the East, the next is to return.
You, as the lover of Art, will first ask me
about the Parthenon. Though I see it many
times every day at a distance, looking down frora
its serene Olyrapian height, I have been inside
of it, as yet, only once, and it would be bias-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 457
phemy in me to judge of such a great work on
one slight inspection. But I may give you two
words which sound hollow by themselves as
mere language, but which, when interpreted by
this structure, have an Oceanic depth of mean
ing: these words are simplicity and grandeur.
Fuse these two terms into one vivid thought and
imagine to yourself its perfect representation in
Art — and you will- begin to see the Parthenon
before you.
It is battered to pieces, marks of cannon
balls can be seen on the walls of the Cella, many
colurans are lying prostrate and broken, it has
been calcined by fire and eaten by the air, and
worst of all, it is rent or rather exploded
asunder in the middle, so that the finest lines for
the eye are lost — still it is now the raost beauti
ful of temples, not the largest, not the most
impressive or awe-inspiring, but the most beau
tiful. Every part is treated in the sarae free
large style which reminds you of Pericles and
the great age ; it is not a world of sraall details
in whose infinitude fhe grand Whole is lost.
Your foot sturables against a piece of a broken
column in the rubbish — it is a mirror of the total
edifice. Even the steps are a delight to look
upon, and are one with the temple and with the
arras of Helius ; the large round letters engraved
in the raarble as well as the columns breathe the
same great spirit in the happiest harraony.

458 ATHENS.
We involuntarily inquire after the men who
could plan and build such works. For the
Parthenon lay in the soul with all its beauty and
proportion before it sprang info reality; it is
only an utterance of a harmony which already
existed in the spirit of some individual or nation.
You say to yourself on that hill of the Acrop
olis : Pericles and his associates were the raost
harraonious characters that g ver lived. His Age
was the great rausical Age; at its touch every
thing turned into music : speech and stone, body
and soul; truly an age whose statesmen even
were inspired bythe Muses.
The sensation here is different frora that of
Italy, though it would be hard to tell in words
wherein the difference consists. The mood is
lighter, more rhythmical ; you have a Pindaric
lyre in you all the tirae, which begins to play
quite loudly when you go out on a fine day into
the mountains. My chief delight is to climb the
hills and wander through the valleys near the
city. There is something which sets me to vi
brating inwardly whenever I take a walk in these
happy places; the influence is very subtle and
hardly traceable ; I only know that I often wake
up, as it were, and find myself played on like an
instruraent. I imagine that it is the mild yet
sympathetic Nature around me adorning itself
with the meraory of ancient things. As I saun
ter along over the rocks and around the fields, a

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 459
series of pictures, moving to a sort of rhythm,
laughingly dances through my brain and attunes
me to the happiest huraor. Of course, I look
upon the objects of the outer world, and gener
aUy with a good deal of attention ; but they are
soon transrauted into sorae iraage different from,
yet in unison with themselves. Never can I see
the grapes, which are still hanging on the vines
and are brought fresh to market, without think
ing that they were a poetic thing to the old
Greeks, and that these justly celebrated Bacchus
with festivals, dances and songs for his great
blessings. Nature, too, is here so friendly and
beneficent that man may well deify her in her
raost worthy manifestations. It is now winter,
but the air is mild, the sun shines pleasantly,
and the fruits of fall are still displayed in the
stalls fresh from their branches, oranges are
ripening, pomegranates, broken open, show their
red heart on every street-corner. The olives,
another truly divine gift to this land, for which
the ancients conceived a divine bestower, still
hang amid their silvery leaves, sorae just ripe,
some still green, but some have been long since
gathered. As I look out of my window now, I
can see long rows of the pepper-tree without one
withered leaf, and whose green is like that of
early May. Indeed I should say, were it not for
the almanach, that this morning was a morning
of early spring, for all Nature heems to be re-

460 ATHENS.
joicing in a new life, rather than preparing for
the death that winter brings. Now this outer
mood of natural objects goes Jnward, and there
rises in you the feeling of eternal spring. Doubt
less there are here, too, dark and disagreeable
days, but tliey have been very few since my ar
rival. This climate of youth attunes the humor
of the man, makes the atmosphere which he
breathes, and its full effect is reached when
meraory adds her colors from the past.
In this long monologue, I ara in doubt whether
I have been talking to you. or only to myself.
But I will tell what I have been trying to do : to
give you sorae dim, flickering notion of ray sen
sations here in this Athenian air, and, if possible
to throw you for a raoment into an Athenian
mood. I know the difficulties of your situation
for any such enjoyment; in the horrible rattle
of Sf. Louis the soft notes of Pan's pipe or of
Apollo's lute are quite extinguished, and through
coal smoke of industry never can be seen the
dance of the Nyraphs, or the transparent mo
tions of the Muses.
WeU, my dear friend, let us now take a walk
to the hill nearest Athens, whioh at the same
time overlooks the other summits in the neigh
borhood. It is a steep jagged rock without
trees, alraost without vegetation; speedily we go
half way up or raore, and then look around.
Why should I confuse you by trying to describe

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 461
ail tne objects which now rise into the vision?
There is the city — select just one point in if
— the teraple of Theseus. Frora this distance
you see only the whole structure; even the
columns are no longer standing separated from
one another, but they have all looked hands like
a chorus of beautiful youths, and are danc
ing some graceful measure around the fane of
old Theseus. I tell you they are moving, moving
iu harmony, and if you have the right kind of an
ear, you can hear the accompanying song. Be
yorid the teraple lies the happy valley of the
Cephissus, with its olive orchards following the
stream as children do their mother. Beyond
this valley and backing it like a wall lies an
other range of mountains, behind which is a
valley which can not be seen, and then beyond is
a second range of mountains whose tops are just
visible in the blue haze — where no doubt you are
lost, and so we shall go back and continue our
walk up the hill which, I forgot to tell you, is
called Lycabettus.
In our ascent we next corae to a grot in which,
we may suppose, the Nymphs once dwelt, who
from their rocky abode delighted to look upon
the joyous valley below. Why else is this cavern
so hollowed out like a dwelling? Here is the high
doorway, their work clearly ; here is the rude
fretted ceiling; here too corae drops of water
trickling down. But what sound is this — what

462 ATHENS.
lacrymose nasal whine turning the very air we
breathe into a hideous monster? Near by fhe
cave of the Nymphs there has been built a Byzan
tine chapel against the rook; this it is which has
frightened the festive Nymphs away with its
harsh dolorous. chants of struggle, of pain, of
death. I can well imagine how they fluttered in
consternation when they first heard fhat rude
bell echoing over these hills. So the joyous
Nyraphs fled, fled long ago ; and they have been
succeeded by the cry of the suppliant and the
moan of the priest. They were the happy festive
beings of Nature, of Life ; they could not endure
the thought of Death.
Let us now ascend to the very sumrait of the
mountain, and look down. Yonder in that
grove of olives was the Academy where Plato
was wont to discourse — about what, do you
think? Imraortality — since the Individual, how
ever joyous and beautiful, died; but is this the
end? Is the grand conclusion, then, death, and
is man merely a negative being? Here, it is
true. Nature ends; here also ended the old re
ligion of Nature ; but the mind coraes to revolt at
the thought. If raan is to live just in order that he
raay die, then the shorter the way to the end, the
better. Such questions, sorae 400 years before
Christ, were occupying thbse old heads down
yonder in fhat grove of olives. Look at it; you
can see their shades still wandering among the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 463
trees; certainly you can still hear their voice.
How the sun shines and the leaves glisten on
that spot ! But would you know the fruit of
their speculation. It raeant for one thing this
chapel, which frightened away the Nymphs, and
which now overlooks their own city, and their
very grove. Let us now descend from this
dizzy height, my friend; it is growing dark
and we may get lost — give me your hand for
a while in silence. Athens, Dec. 18th, 1878.
At last your letter, the long-expected has ar
rived, bringing delight both by its matter and
its manner. Of course I have read it over often,
it conveys me all the inforraation which I de
sired to possess concerning ray own affairs and
at the sarae tirae a raost happy account of other
things in which I take an interest. I have also
read suitable parts of it fo friends here in
Athens, to their great enjoyment; so your name
has been frequently pronounced in this classic
air, which once was laden with so many im
mortal words. Thus far you are at least in good
company. I join wifh you in hoping that the inflation of
the currency has raet with its death-blow in the
last election. If one wants to witness some of
the beauties of a fluctuating standard of value
and some of the trickery and moral corruption

464 ATHENS.
\
to which it gives rise, let him visit Greece just
at this moraent. There are at least four kinds
lof money in circulation — all different incharac-
iter and perpetually shifting in their relative
values. First comes the copper coin, the most
abundant and hence the cheapest; next follows
the legal tender in paper, worth just now 12 %
more than fhe copper; then the silver, at 20%
premiura, and highest of all gold at 25% pre
mium over copper. To make the mafter more
complicated, the different coinages of fhe silver
franc (or drachma) also varies, so fhat Greece
seems to present the worst financial muddle in
the world. But fhe Greek shopkeeper rather
prefers this state of things, for if gives him such
a good chance fo fleece the ignorant foreigner.
For instance, I go to a hat store and agree to
pay the hatter ten francs for a hat, after he has
dropped two or three francs on the article, since
all prices are here arranged for haggling. When
I offer him the money of the country he refuses
and says he must have gold francs, that is, he
adds one-fourth to the price on the spot. This,
of course, he does only to the man whora he sees
to be a stranger; then he will drop to silver
francs, and to paper francs, if he finds his cus-
toraer refractory. After the most explicit
agreement, the tradesmen try fo play this trick ;
I have had old, grey-haired mechanics lie with
the coolest effrontery about a few coppers.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 465
Then when you hold thera to the agreeinent, they
put on a look of injured innocence, and with a
shrug of the shoulders corabined with a twitch
of the lips, they try to iraply that you have
cheated them. Two or three tiraes I have been
provoked excessively; lately I took the white
locks of an aged tailor in my hand and asked
hira why, wifh these covering his teraples, he
would Ue for a few lepta. He coolly asked me
to call again when I wanted any mending done.
Still do not think that I am disgusted with the
modern Greek. I like especially his aspiration,
there is an ideal element in him which one thinks
is his chief heritage frora the ancient world.
Besides he has ability, great ability in certain
directions, and I believe that he- will yet reassurae
his place araong the high peoples of fhe earth.
But he raust stop his lying and cheating; for he
does not steal, since that is a sin in his creed.
Sorae old lawgiver ought again to rise up who
would hang the first raan caught in a wanton lie.
I can not but think that Draco in his severe code
raust have had some such emergency before him;
and if I were entrusted with the making of laws
for Greece at this tirae, the first one would be
capital punishraent fc5r the liar. I know very
well that falsehoods are also told in other lands,
but here lying has become so engrained in the
national character that it must be cut out sur
gically. One of the ancient branches of educa-
30

466 ATHENS.
tion was, to teach boys fo tell the truth ; I think
that it should be reinstated, if a professor can be
found. But I do not let these things trouble me ; I
take my flight into the other Athenian world,
and the present one with its little annoyances
disappears totally. For here at Athens it is
e'asier than anywhere else to rise out of the dis
agreeable reality info the happiest realms of the
Imagination; the transition is but a step. This
second atmosphere, as it may be called, is the
positive charm of the city ; it is filled with the
most beautiful forms which have appeared on
this earth, and also with sorae of the greatest
raen. There is but liftle object in coming to
Athens unless you can live in the past, unless
you can transport yourself, body and soul, into
that ancient world which once existed here in its
full splendor. Amid all the changes. Nature has
reraained quite the same ; she perpetually sug
gests what she once warraed info being on this
soil, she incites you to iraagine things as they
were in their glory. No one can walk over the
Acropolis without the strongest irapulse to re
store it to its pristine beauty, and to take part
in the worship at its altars, where this c'an be
done only through the Iraagination. I carae to
be an old Athenian for a time, not a modern one.
But, I confess, a portion of your letter caused
me fo drop frora the clouds ; on account of my

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 467
mad laughter the severe old Gods kicked me out
of Olympus. So you have been corapelled to
read, listen to, and pass judgraent on 13,000
lines of poetry — savage, death-dealing lines of
poetry — and you are still alive? How did
you escape? Tell me the secret, aa I foo may
have use for it sorae time, I can see you now
sitting in your arm-chair, with stoical fortitude
Ustening to that stuff reeled .off by the yard,
seeking a little protection behind the cloud of
smoke from your cigar. But you have one con
solation; sin as you may, you are now proof
against hell-fire and infernal torraents. And you
had also to deliver an opinion upon the produc
tion? Was it in your capacity of Judge that you
gave decision upon this case of an author? My
dear friend, I had intended to read you some
lines of my own when I returned — not 13,000,
however — but now I shall not, I feel that you
have suffered enough.
But let me not laugh at that poor devil who
has made 13,000 iambics, in the vain hope that
that he had something iraportant to say to the
world ; under all my raerriraent, I have a deep
sympathy for him, his case is too nearly my own
for me not to see myself, partially at least, re
flected in him. So many verses he has hara-
raered out, day after day, bringing thera into
some superficial jingle of rhyme if not into any
deep inner harraony of song. With infinite labor

468 ATHENS,.
he has worked away at his task, cheered on by a
lying fiend who in soft whispers has promised
him — what? Money, fame, honor — ah, perhaps
immortality. It is no fun to cut 13,000 verses
out of the chaos of speech, adjust them with
good walking feet and make thera all jingle at
the end. Great labor it is to construct thera,
but still greater to read them — -alas, here lies all
the trouble. People, as constituted at present,
have too much of earth in their minds ; they can
not be borne aloft on Pegasus' wings, particularly
if these wings are only made of pin-feathers or
goose-quils. "O Poef," I would address him,
"I too am of fhy kind, and deeply feel with fhy
disappointment. Take now this advice of mine,
expressed frora crushed hopes : write for thyself
and for nobody else ; read not thy productions to
unwilling listeners ; publish them not to an in
different world. On thine own slender pinions
perchance thou canst rise into the very heaven
of poetical ecstacy ; but if thou undertakest to
wing the multitude to flight from thy frail store
of feathers, not only will nobody be raised with
thee, but thou wilt be inevitably pulled down
into the bog where they are lying."
This leads you to think of, and once to speak of
my contribution to the printed Sahara of litera
ture. Yet I was just about to ask you whether
you had ever heard of a book called "The Sys
tem of Shakespeare's Dramas?" I must say that

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 469
I know very little about if — the few allusions in
my letters contain the sum of my information.
Poor child of my brain, now just one year old;
yet unable, I am afraid, to stand alone, still
crawling on the earth. If it had prospered, I
am confident that I would have heard of it ; not
to know, in this case, is ample knowledge. It
was born just before the holidays, last year; not
a word have I received from its godfather, fhe
publisher; and I, the cruel parent, have from its
birth been continually travelling away from it,
right in the opposite direction, putting between
it and myself space, tirae, and spiritual mu
tation. Now, looking back from Athens here,
over the whole year, over the great seas and
lands, over the changes within rae, back, back
to that babe, I alraost feel that it has already
becorae a stranger to rae.
I believe that it was just this day twelve
months ago that you accorapanied rae to the
Union Station, as I set out on ray journey. To
rae the year has been eventful, the most event
ful of my life — but wherein I can harcily say.
I seem to be sowing and scattering all sorts of
seeds on a stubblefield that has raised one little
crop already, and this has been reaped. What
the harvest will be — wheat, straw, cockle, grain,
lies beyond even my imagination. The tirae in
vites to retrospect, but I cannot now make it, I
must wait to the end. I hardly do anything

470 ATHENS.
consciously now, the demonic power urges me
on and I do not resist or even question. Think
of its driving me to Athens, to the extrerae limit
of ray drearas, whence I cast a glance back at
you, my friend, and wish you and yours a Happy
New Year. Athens, Jan. 10th, 1879.
With you the old year has passed away, and is
already half forgotten doubtless ; here it has not
yet arrived. That is, the Greek calendar is
twelve days behind ours, and somehow or other
can not overtake us, though the spirit of prog
ress is trying. Also my birthday has gone by,
as usual without ray thinking of it; this is now
the second birthday that I have passed in Europe.
I have been now a little raore than two months in
Greece, still I ara not yet ready to depart. It
will be hard to leave for raany reasons, but only
one reason I shall give you now, having just re
turned from my evening walk : I have become so
used to looking through the columns of the old
teraple of Jupiter Olyrapius at the outlines of
Mount Hyraettus under raoonlight, that this view
has alraost becorae a good slice of my daily
bread. This outburst sounds to my ears a little senti
mental and I wish I had not written it; I would
delete it were it not an honest part of me. But
as I have spoken of this wonderful temple you

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 471
may want to hear soraething about its purport
and present condition. The remains consist of
fifteen enorraous standing columns and one lying
prostrate ; this last one was thrown down some
years ago by a storm. The first question that you
ask yourself, as you walk under these mighty
marble oaks is — what was the power that brought
them hither? With infinite labor they had to be
broken from the mountains, transported many
miles and reared upright here — all for what? It
was some power, clearly sorae very strong power
it was— stronger by far than any power I see
around me in this city at present. It must have
been some deep conviction thaf nerved the arms
which brought together and shaped in one har
monious form all these stones — what was that
conviction? This raay not be so easy to tell, but
of its strength there can be no doubt, for here are
the manifest signs. One feels fhe power of these
arras as they hoist stone after stone upon the
columns, and then cap them with an immense
architrave. If was sorae honest conviction, for
the work is honest; these columns are no sham,
raade of brick and rubble and then plastered on
the outside into an appearance of marble, else
they had long ago perished with their makers. It
is strength, adamantine strength, and I can not
help adding strength of conviction — this is the
inner power which is felt here and of which fhe
outer structure is but the manifestation. See

472 ATHENS.
whole generations of men tugging away at these
blocks of stone, which must first be cut frora fhe
quarry, then carried ori slow vehicles to the dis
tant city, then hoisted to their place and chiseled
into shape. And how many of thera? The old
temple must have had 120 such columns at least,
without taking into account walls or foundation.
So much trouble do men take fo express what
is deepest within their souls ; indeed this expres
sion is the suprerae occupation of life. What
else is the huraan race good for, if not to utter
in stone or in speech, or in some permanent
form, its conviction? The old Greeks did then
realize the thought that raan hadsorae higher end
of existence than first getting and then eating his
dinner. This was the temple of Jupiter, the
Olympian ruler of Gods and of men ; the artist
asked and the people demanded : how can the
edifice be made worthy of the highest divinity?
From this conception flows the size of these
colurans, the vast proportions of the structure;
it must convey the impression of power, since it
was meant to be the suitable abode of the highest
power of the universe.
The history of the building of the temple is
curious, and reflects in itself the character of
many epochs. It was begun somewhere about
500 B. C. by the Peisistratidae, tyrants of
Athens, who beheld in Jupiter the type of kingly
authority, and were therefore the great pro mot-

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 473
ers of his worship. The people were to believe
in absolute power and gaze upon it with awe;
this primal conception still looks forth grandly
from these ruins. But republican Athens could
not favor such a faith ; the city, freed from its
tyrants, neglected their unfinished teraple, and
their God. On fhe contrary, the Athenians
concentrated their powers upon the Parthenon,
whioh was to be the beautiful horae, not of the
Olympian tyrant, but of their special protect
ress, Pallas Athena — the teraple built by Peri
cles, the great organizer of fhe Athenian de-
raocracy. If was also placed on fhe Acropolis,
overlooking proudly the precincts of even Jupiter
Olyrapius. But the Athenian deraocracy, in the
course of generations, passed away, and absolute
power refurned — and with it, what? The com
pletion of this temple, for Jupiter has again
obtained mastery and is henceforth to be wor
shipped. The successors of Alexander begin
anew work on the structure but it was corapleted
by a Eoraan Eraperor, Hadrian. Thus a world-
ruling Monarch finishes the temple of the world-
ruling God.
So is history written by monuments, which
ofteii have a better means of utterance than
language. Six hundred years lay between the
commenceraent and the completion of this tem
ple ; begun by one autocrat it had to wait so long
before it could be finished by another. The

474 ATHENS.
unity of the Eoman Empire was typified in the
unity of Olympus — and the Eraperor sees the
syrabol of himself in fhe Olyrapian ruler. Just
at this point enter the defects of the structure
which render it so inferior to the Parthenon.
First of all, there is too rauch of rude power
expressed in these colurans. Notice hpw large
they are, then notice how many there are, and
how closely placed together ; they have no archi
tectural purpose and thus they seem the ca
pricious, nay, the tyrannical, play of giants. You
feel thaf the man who built thera could do as he
pleased with all huraan resources. Draw near
to one of the colurans and measure yourself with
a single block of it, if you wish to see how small
you are. You look up and you are inwardly
crushed by the view. It is tyranny in architec
ture ; let us hope that the tyranny which if rep
resents has yet only these few columns standing
in the whole world. How different is the effect
of fhe Parthenon !
So, too, the ornaments seem out of place.
Why decorate mere rudeness with some outside
flourishes? Even the channeling or fluting ap
pears to be some external thing on the huge
body ; but the acanthus of the Corinthian order
is alraost revolting — af least fo ray feeling. To
make the graceful leaf sprout out of such a
huge column — fhat leaf which signifies slender-
ness, luxury, even weakness — is a horrible dis-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 475
cord, yet highly significant. What is here told
but that brute force is covered over with some
tincture of refinement, that the rude power of
Eorae has stuck in its dress some Grecian
flowers ?
Thus, of the old Greek temple there hardly
remains more than the conception ; in execution
it is Eoraan, and Eoman of the imperial age.
Some of its harshness disappears when it is looked
at from a distance in the transparent mellow
light of this climate. Tyranny always looks bet
ter when you are far off than when you are
directly under it. Still, it has its uses; one can
not pass beneath these columns without receiv
ing a sound lesson in humility. I walk daily
under them and trerable; here is visible that
earth- controlling power which once hurled moun
tains on the old Titans, or made them carry
mountains in order to builci this temple.
As this letter has thus far been very architec
tural, I suppose it may as well be corapleted with
architecture, and not left standing unfinished like
the Olympieium just mentioned. For this pur
pose we shall have to ascend the Acropolis and
take a lookat the Parthenon, though, do not be
afraid, this long look will only make my letter
shorter. I shall give no measurements; these
you can find in hundreds of books at your elbow,
if that will do you any good. It is a strange
thing about this measuring of the Parthenon,

476 ATHENS.
which is still going on with infinite detail ; yet
no Architect has been able to reproduce it from
his figures. The building manifestly refuses to
be raeasured, numbers can not tell its secret.
First of all coraes the magic of its situation.
It raakes no difference where you are, this
building falls into the eye before any other
object in the Athenian valley. Frora the sea,
frora the raountain, from the plain, all light
seeras to go to it and to come from it. I have
looked at it from every direction and at all
distances, from the bed of the Ilissos below
and frora fhe heights of Hyraettus above, from
the olive grove of fhe Cephissus, and from the
peaks of Parnes — I have never caught it at any
disadvantage or showing any weakness. Onthe
contrary some new virtue would be revealed,
some beauty which I had not before noticed.
Even when it grows small by distance, there is
no confusion to the eye, the harraony of its
parts is still perfect. I have watched it till it
quite disappeared, vanishing like the last notes
of distant music among the hills. Also it stands
up wonderfully ; at nearly every point you can
see it from foundation to top. Situation is first;
then comes its happy magnitude, for it was cer
tainly made to be seen from every part of the
Athenian valley.
But let us ascend the hill and look more closely
at the temple. Here is fhe wonderful structure

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 477
before our eyes, how can we work into the soul
of it and listen to what it has to say? There is
an outside crust which you have to toil through
before you eari reach the pure golden stream of
its creative conception ; you must wait patiently
and after a tirae it will becorae vocal. I sat a
whole day before it in the cold, well knowing
fhat it was telling soraething, nay, that it was
singing something, but I could at first only
gather faint snatches of its music ; the whole I
could not put together. Finally it seeraed to
break forth into one coraplete harraonious
rhythm, and now when I look at it frora the raost
distant peaks, I can hear its voice. So it has
been standing there these two thousand years and
more in a perpetual song — and happy the man
who has heard it!
Now I know that you are asking all this tirae,
"What did it say? TeU us what it said." Ah,
that is the difficult point. The language is here
of stone; alas, what translation into English can
I raake of that? Every person has his own way
of expressing these things to others; some
writers do not even beUeve in their existence.
But I will tell you the image under which I
like to think this temple, and which to me
best expresses in speech its nature. These
colurans are a chorus of beautiful youths dressed
in their decorous classic garraents, whose folds
fall down over their perfectly-forraed bodies;

478 ATHENS.
they do not stand alone, but they are joined
together in lines around the sacred house of the
Goddess; nor do they reraain still — but, behold,
they lean slightly forward and seem to be mov
ing. How happy they look ! they are celebra
ting a festival, an eternal festival fo their divine
protectress within ; you may now see the dance
and have the song.
Such is this colonnade; observe it closely, and
you will see that it does not exclude, does not
defend thaf whioh it encircles ; but it is celebra
ting a joyous festival. Then notice the garland
running around its forehead, whereon are sculp
tured in high relief the exploits of Theseus and
of other faraous heroes of antiquity. This gives
or raay give the therae of the song, as if did to the
Greek poets of old. Next let us look at the
building around which these colurans are raoving
in such harraonious rhythra — this is called the
cella of the teraple, as you know, and is fully
enclosed for the special seat of the Goddess.
This cella has also a wreath bound around it
above, on which is sculptured in low relief the
so-called Panathenaic Procession — but what was
this? A festival to the Goddess Athena; here
are beautiful youths, sorae mounted on horse
back, others afoot; maidens too are in line, bear
ing baskets, etc. Here then is a new expression
— an expression in sculpture — of what architec
ture expressed, raore faintly yet more grandly.

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 479
by its rows of enclosing columns. So the Arts
lock hands.
Now if you are not too 'fired, turn to the pedi
ments of the temple. The birth of the God
dess Athena, in the free group — from the relief
do not fail fo notice the transition — is announced
first; with her, Athens is possible. Still it is a
song and hints at those encircling colurans. In
the second pediment it is the victory of Athena
— now coraes the triuraphal ode which runs
through the whole structure. So each part be
comes an harraonious echo of the otherparts and
of the whole. Thus it turns vocal all through
and through, and sounds like a Pindaric ode,
which in some respects is its best commentary.
It is a glorious hoUday for any man merely to
sit down and look at it, corapleting it in his im
agination and feeling as he muses solitary on the
fragments of its pillars. When I was there, I
heard the miUtary band below in the streets of
the city ; may I say that its music fell far behind
that which I was listening to there on the hill?
I felt like shouting down: Musicians, play rae
this teraple.
A heavy dose of stone you have this tirae.
But at last good-bye.

480 ATHENS. Athens, Jan. 25th, 1879.
To-day the critical moment arrived, which I
have already some time been expecting; the
friend whose house I have been occupying for
the last two months returned frora his protracted
absence, and I am again af the Hotel. I can now
say that in about two or three weeks, unless
something unexpected interferes, I shall begin
to take the back track towards America. One
object remains unaccomplished, I have not yet
seen any of tbe country districts of Greece out
side of Attica. To-morrow therefore I shall
start for a short tour through some of the nearest
provinces before I sail for Italy.
I feel on the whole highly gratified at the re
sults of ray Greek journey, though of course I
can not yet tell what all those results are. One
thing is certain : I have stored up in ray mind
many beautiful images which I ean draw on af
will when I am in need of sorae happy enter
tainment. I feel too the old classics will be far
nearer to me now than they ever were before ; I
can always place them in the fair framework of
Nature in which their picture belongs, and with
out which they can not be fully understood. If
it were only to breathe this atmosphere and look
upon the scenery here, it were well worth the
trouble of fhe journey, to any lover of the old
classical literature. One begins to see why the

A TO UR IN E UR OPE. 481
Gods took up their abode here, though having
quite the whole earth to choose from, and why
they were so loth to forsake their happy home.
I can say that four leading points have been at
tained, if not perfectly at least approximately.
First, the Greek language, now begins to fall
familiarly into my ear, and to pass info my raind
instinctively, that is, without conscious effort;
this was a chief end of ray journey. In other
words Greek has gone down from ray head into
my impulses and their expression ; a result which
only living speech can bring about. So I can
now unlock more completely the greatest of all
the monuraents of antiquity — Greek Poetry.
Secondly Nature and climate have revealed their
forras and to a certain extent their secrets — for
Nature remains quite the same. Thirdly, the
people I have had a chance of studying — and
though the modern Greeks are very different
from the ancient Greeks, the forraer possess
many of the old traits and customs, and suggest
still more. Not a few doubtful points in ancient
life and usage have been cleared up by observing
the ways of a modern Greek peasant. Then
fourthly, there are the remains of antiquity here
— temples, statues, walls, etc — all of which have
received more or less attention.
Thus like a bee which has gone from flower to
flower and sipped up all sorts of sweet things,
and moreover has laden its thighs with rich
31

482 ATHENS.
material for the honeycomb wherein to store away
permanently what it has gathered on a bright
spring-day, land which after many circuitous
wanderings through fields and through gar
dens, turns back towards the hive in straight
flight, but still is tempted to stop by the flowers
in its path and to add just a pin's point raore to
its honeyed stores — so have I, a little bee, flown
around this southern European garden and col
lected till I can hardly carry anything more.
Not that I have gotten all that is here, but all
that I can carry. Consequently at tinies I begin
to feel tired, sated perhaps, yet even this feel
ing is very uncertain. For only a day or so ago,
I went to the Barbakeion where some ancient pot
tery is kept; there a new impulse seized me. It
was nothing else than to draw the ancient ce
ramic remains into my circle of studies — which I
have not hitherto done. Suddenly I have become
deeply interested in this branch of antiquities and
can fully account for its fascination. There is a
divinity here too who presides over these cun
ning works of clay, and inspiueshis devotees with
a kind of infatuation. I confess then to have ad
mitted a new God into my Pantheon already
large: Keramos he is called, and- I long to
occupy myself devoutly with his worship. I re
gret having neglected hira so long — it was a great
sin in me for which I am now paying the penalty
by poignant repentance. Still I feel his inspira-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 483
tion, and hereafter I intend to become a fre
quenter of his temple and a participant in his
service .
I had a classical race yesterday through the
olive orchards of the Cephissus towards the
famous pass of Phyle. As I was looking af
some ancient objects in the lower part of the
city, I heard a low rumble succeeded by a very
heavy rolling sound ; looking up I saw at a dis
tance across the valley a dense cloud of white
smoke ascending into the skies and assuraing the
form of a winged dragon or devil as it flew away
to the South ; I knew by its looks that it had done
some miscjhief. The whole population turned
out, I followed — what a rush of carriages, carts
and pedestrians ! A powder mill had exploded
some three or four miles distant, but nobody was
killed. I was repaid for my run by seeing the
olive trees, beneath which I walked back to the
city at my leisure, in most excellent company I
thought. You will probably be surprised when I tell you
'that to-day I rose early and attended morning
prayers. That is, I took a walk to behold in the
sunrise the temple of Theseus, which although
of stone utters a perpetual hymn of praise. Its
harmony is such that if I visit it early in the
morning, it sets me in tune for the whole day —
what other happier result can a prayer have?
One only needs to look at it attentively and with-

484 ¦ ATHENS.
out distraction, to be drawn into its rhythm
which, I tell you, enters deep into the soul and
harmonizes all its discordant elements. It is
true that I have nothing else to do here but to
give myself up to such influences, and hence
comes my susceptibility to the beauty of these
old structures and, I should say, to their religion.
For if it be one of the prirae objects of religion
to raake raan within hiraself an organ of har
monious utterance in which all the feelings, pas
sions and thoughts are attuned in happy con
cordance, then the old teraples of the Heathens
are for rae at least the most holy objects in
Athens. My society here has been a very unusual one
for me, ciomposed as it is alraost entirely of
Araerican Missionaries. Most excellent and
friendly people I have found thera, and more
over they have not troubled rae with their prose-
lyfisra. Conversion of Heathendom is hard,
very hard in the presence of the Parthenon.
The modern Greeks are, however, a Christian
people and very religious ; but one feels com
pelled to ask — what have you gained by renoun
cing the faith of the Marathonian Heroes? As
one looks down frora fhe Acropolis into the
valley below, his eye passes from happy, har
monious Heathendom into Christianity and de
generacy. Those old fellows possessed something
which has been lost to their people, if not to the

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 485
world. As to the Missionaries, my end is just
the opposite : I would like to carry over a liftle
of Greek culture to my native land, and to convert
it in a certain sense to Heathendom, whioh has
been such blessing to me. But I shall have to
conclude this therae right here, lest ife becorae
(Uscordant to you.
Athens, Jan. 26th, 1879.
In looking back through my Athenian stay,
I can see that I have had one dominating pas
sion, one never-failing undercurrent whioh has
swept along within itself all my various studies
in Art, Nature, and History. The classic raood
still runs to epigraras which, however, seem fo
me to be tuned a little differently from what
they were in Italy. A couple of dozen of them
or more have insisted on corapleting theraselves,
leaving a hundred fragraents, each of which is
still throbbing to get born into one of these little
sprites. I shall send you a saraple which gives
my attuneraent as I wander through this Athen
ian landscape.
Each faint rustle of branches above is a
Goddess' whisper.
Each petty murraur of brooks is a low laugh
of the Nymphs,
And a sweet little epigrara steals frora the
glance of each maiden,
Dewdrops hung on each leaf are the pure
tears of fhe Muse ;

486 ATHENS.
But fhe miracle is, thou too art becoming a
poem
In this clime of the Gods; wonder, O man,
at thyself.
I have come to believe that my deepest inter
est in things here hovers abbut two main ones :
Parthenon and Hymettus. Very different these
objects seera, one of Art and the other of Nature ;
still they have becorae connected, as it were
twinned in my Athenian life, which is now nearly
three months old. Eeally there is not much
sculpture here of any great worth; painting
hardly exists. In this regard Italy is far ahead
of Greece, though the latter was the source. To
be sure, architecture is supreraely represented
at Athens in the two remaining ancient edifices.
Literature in modern Greece asserts a place,
but has called forth no genius. The popular
poetry of the peasant is a genuine atterance as
far as it goes ; it has been collected in several
books, and I have been digging into it prepara
tory to my round through the provinces, using
the Passow collection and getting my chief help
in deciphering its provincialisms from Spiridion,
my Ithacan cameriere at the Hotel. How easily
this fellow weeps — as easily as an Homeric hero.
Across the way is a little Greek bookstore whose
proprietor has made a translation of the Odyssey
into the vernacular, but it is in prose. This I
have bought and ara reading, to see how Homer's

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 487
Greek looks in the Greek of today. Instead of
a translation it is a kind of transmigration of
speech after twenty-five centuries and several
more probably, one knows not how many.
But it is Hyraettus that has been my chief
deUght, af least my chief inspiration to raake
soraething sing. Many tiraes I have rambled
over it and from it viewed towns, islands, seas.
The result is that I have turned Hymettus into
epigrams, which would always be bubbling up
along my path. Unless I deceive myself, they
came spontaneously. I would sit down to rest
on a stone and take out of ray pocket ray note
book, jotting down an iraage present there be
fore rae, which seldom failed to word itself to a
metrical gait. Strangely these multitudinous
shreds, plucked during many visits and in many
moods, at last began to coalesce into something
like a world-view :
Now I look out on the world from the top of
sunny Hymettus,
Far below me it lies, all its mad struggle
unheard ;
And its bounds on the farthest sea I hold in
my vision ;
How does it seera ? you inquire. Look in
these epigraras here,
Hundreds of mirrors I place them, ever return-.
ing one image. —

^be Delpbic Xoup.
Marathon, Jan. 30, 1879.
What do you say to the heading of this letter?
Could you have dreamed of my reaching this
spot when I left St. Louis? Still here I ara at
Marathon writing in a wineshop, after having
run over the old battle-field all day. There must
be thirty or forty denizens of this town now
standing around and looking at me.
I still think of brigands, on account of the
warnings repeated so often and so emphatically
by my friends both Araerican and Greek at
Athens. Not one person would sanction this
trip, and most tried to dissuade rae. I yielded
for a tirae to their adraonitions. But finally I
(488)

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 489
resolved that I must make the attempt to see
primitive Greece, which, as I had both heard
and read, was stiU to be found in the Parnassian
region. Athens had indeed given me much, but
I was getting satiated ; I began to be in a state
of reaction against it as previously against Rome,
after a long stay. I felt that Greece still had
something which I had not, and which was not
to be gotten at the capital, in the main a
modern city. So anpther end has risen up, to
be attained beyond Athens ; I hardly know what
it is or whether attainable. Nevertheless I am
going to raake the quest. To-raorrow morning
therefore, I shall start forward again, and I
shall not turn back to Athens, not yet at least.
[Editorial Note. — The details of this journey
from Athens to fhe Parnassian region are given
in the Walk in Hellas.]

Aulis, Feb. 3rd, 1879.
You will at once recognize this place as fa
mous in Greek legend ; it was here that the old
Achaeans gathered under the leadership of Aga
memnon, and set out for Troy in order to restore
Helen. Such a mythical atmosphere hovers
over this little town, now Albanian and called
Vathy. The ancient story comes up before the
imagination and is wrought over with raany a
new turn ancl fransf orination of heroic shapes.

490 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
But I must tell you what has most strongly
taken hold of me in this locality : Iphigenia, the
daughter of Agameranon and her sacrifice. She
has thrown into the background every other
mythical personage. About a dozen years ago
I read and re-read Goefhe's Iphigenia in Tauris
and was strongly impressed by it in a number
of ways. This impression was deepened by a
conversation upon it with Brockmeyer, whose
opinion about it I asked in a casual way. He at
once started off into one of the flnest disserta
tions on Goethe and on this drama that I ever
heard from him or anybody else. He was at
his best. You know that he does not and per
haps cannot control his supreme raoods of insight
and expression. These corae and go on the raost
trivial ppefext, often on no pretext at all. Sorae
years later I read and studied Goethe's Iphigenia
again, along with the two Iphigenias of Eurip
ides. Again I asked Brockmeyer about this
subject, trying to tap that wonderful fountain
once more, but it would not flow except jn un
satisfying droplets, and these rather turbid. If
he could have written out and fully elaborated
that first conversation, it would have been the
best essay of its kind that I know of. I sug
gested to him some such thing, but no ! he had
plunged head downward into Missouri politics,
where he still sticks fast, wifh his better parts
neglected if not obscured, I am afraid. You

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 491
need not tell this to him, as it would probably
cause a Vesuvian eruption. Still he remains the
one genius of all men known to me personally —
he is the one who ought to be taking this Greek
trip instead of me and re-creating the antique
world for modern, and especially for American
life, which he, though a German, understands
profoundly^. Thebes, Feb. 5th, 1879.
Another great name of an historic city I in
scribe as the caption of a little letter. I walked
across the country from Aulis, accompanied
chiefly by one image, fhat of Iphigenia, who
somehow would not leave me. Scenes of her
drama, or rather of her two dramas (at Aulis
and at Tauris) kept playing before my raind', and
exciting now and then quite a little outlay of
emotion. For how could I help putting myself
into the place of that father who had to sacrifice
his daughter, and being torn with syrapathy for
both, even in my imaginings? Let rae confess to
you, a kind of draraa'has outlined itself within me
on this subject of Iphigenia different from the
Euripidean as well as from the Goethean.
After sleeping a night in Thebes I wake up
with a new figure in possession of me, namely
the Theban lyric poet Pindar. A copy of his
works I by a kind of premonition purchased in
Gerraany, Dissen's edition with notes, whioh

492 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
give me needful help. Already in Eorae I had a
Pindaric spell, and worked into his lyrical spirit,
of which I think I appropriated quite a little. He
is a unique part of that grand totality of Greek
Literature, a part different frora its epic or dra-
niatio phase. So I take him in hand early in the
morning, and start up Dirke, the little runnel
made famous by hira, and I sauntered rausingly
toward the plain of Plataea where the great battle
took place, which is so familiar to me frora old
Herodotus. Lebedeia, Feb. 8th, 1879.
Eain-bound in this place after walking from
Thebes, and after having a good time with old
Hesiod, Helicon, and the Muses, all to myself,
on the way hither. Lebedeia (or Livadia) is
quite an active town with a trade life of its own.
The Turks in their day made a good deal of it —
under them it was the capital of Middle Greece.
The chief center of the town, at least now (there
is an election pending and politics are lively ) is the
large wine-shop, where the raen come together,
smoke and drink and talk. A streara, at present
swollen with the falling showers, runs past the
wine-shop and mingles the roar of its waters with
the political buzz of the people. Between the
two streams I am lulled fo sleep in my chair till
Ploutarchos plucks rae by fhe arm f o tell me that
Lord Byron once stayed in this town, dressedin

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 493
fez and fustanella, like a Greek. Friend Plou
tarchos (Plutarch in EngUsh) asks me why I do
not put on the said costurae, and thus " become
as great a man as Lord Byron." I suppose that
this comparison was provoked by his seeing rae
take out my note-book in the wine-shop and jot
down an item. I answered carefully, that as far
as I yet knew, I was not a poet like Lord Byron.
And still I could not help thinking how different
a mood frora mine Greece inspired in Byron's
poeras, which have no epigraras in the old sense
or forra, no elegiacs, no classic rhythra but
romantic rhyme mostly in larabs as we see in
Childe Harold, in the Giaour, and others.
Byron, you know, traveled through Greece, and
was stimulated by it to much poetizing, some of
which was full of imagery and ecstasy. The
best known sample runs :
Maid of Athens we must part.
Give, oh, give me back ray heart.
Arachoba, Feb. llth, 1879.
Unforgettable is the act of Demetrios Pefrides
who, seeing me to be a stranger, picked me up
in an eating-house and insisted upon my going
horae with hira to his family, entertaining me
till I was ready to leave Lebedeia. The rain
tied me up two full days, and my host and hostess
never wearied in their friendly attentions. It

494 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
was my first experience of that hospitality — fhe
love of itforits own sake — which the rural Greeks
of the better class regard as one of the virtues.
My entertainer was truly a friend of the stranger
(philoxenos): he put into my hand letters fo
gentleraen of the same hospitable spirit who
live in the towns through which I intended fo pass.
And now I have corae to Arachoba, a town of
several thousarid people lying high up the slope
of Parnassus, not so very far from its peak.
Actual, natural Parnassus, the old seat of the
Muses, accordingly, lies just above rae, visible as
a real object, which has always been hitherto
soraething imaged if not iraaginary, a kind of
bodiless symbol. One begins to feel that the idea
is going to, get incorporate in this Parnassian
region. A new type of people begiris to show itself.
You will be astonished to meet the golden-haired
blue-eyed woman at the town fountain, along
with her darker sister. The people still asserable
in the ancient agora, especially in the adjoining
wineshops for discussion. Ou Sunday after
church, and on other holidays the young people
and sorae of fhe old ones, can be seen hurrj'ing
to the choros or the place for song and dance in
the open air. It seeras to rae that I have caught
certain turns of Homeric speech which I have
not heard elsewhere. This is not Athenian
Greece, though there are sorae educated raen here

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 495
from the University. I cannot help feeling a
peculiar character iri this lofty mountain town,
as if I had come upon a primeval strand of older
Hellas in these more reriiof e and secluded portions
of the country. A germinal Greek life appears
to belong to this locality, having its roofs far
back in antiquity.
The occupations of the people have a priraitive
cast; chiefly they cultivate the vine and the
olive, though there are also herdsmen on the
mountains above. A native idyllic life has flow
ered out upon these hill-sides with its unsophis
ticated poetry. I watched the maidens going
down into the olive orchards to their labor, it
was to rae a beautiful sight for its suggestiveness.
Have I here really gotteri back to the beginning
of even antique Hellas, to the original germ of
her art and civilization? Delphi, Feb. 13th, 1879.
Yesterday I reached this place which the
ancients deeraed the navel of the world, the cen
tral and prophetic part of the universal organism.
Last night I spent at the Metochi, a religious
foundation whichgives entertainraent to strangers,
and which is pleasantly situated at the entrance
to the little haralet, on the rill running down
frora Castalia. I have wandered about the place
and seen the location of the old teraple, of which
only sorae of the lower stones of the wall are

496 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
visible. In its enclosure is the hut of an aged
veteran of the Greek Eevolution ; with him I
strike a bargain and take lodgment, for it has
become already plain to rae that I shall have to
stay here sorae days. The Delphic problem has
risen within me and is demanding some sort of
answer before another step forward on this
journey can be taken. What was anciently
upon this spot anyhow? Of course we have
often heard of the Oracle, the Pythia, and
Apollo the, God of Light. Herodotus has put
prophetic Delphi into the very heart of his His
tory, and revealed it as the center of the Greek
world of that age, namely of the age of the
Greco-Persian War.
Already I have been quite overwhelmed at the
view of this Nature whioh appears before me. The
physical setting of the old Oracle and of its
temple cannot have changed rauch. Mountain,
vale, cloud, Parnassus above, the rivulet Pleistos
below, Castalia and its deep gorge are quite same,
even if earthquakes have toppled down some
rocks from overhead. Nature is still here with
her primordial suggestion, whispering quite as
she did to the original Greek when he created
Delphi as the oracular horae of his people.
I have brought with me the image of Iphigenia
frora Aulis, where she took strong possession of
me, quite to the exclusion of everything else.
Well, she has re-appeared here at Delphi in a

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 497
series of dramatic pictures, having returned from
her long stay at Tauris. You know that the old
legend brings her back to Greece, though there is
no ancient poetic embodiment of this return of
Iphigenia, as far as I am aware. But her life is
certainly not complete, her destiny not fulfilled
till she is restored to that Greece which has
sacrificed her. Goethe, I beUeve, thought of an
Iphigenia at Delphi, but never did much with the
plan ; if he were here now in his prime, having
come by way of Aulis, he would have carried out
his project. In my own brain certain scenes and
characters keep dancing before me alluringly, as
if they had a wish fo be born into writ.

Delphi, Feb. 21st, 1879.
Eight days I have now stayed in Delphi,
twice as long as I at first intended. On this
spot there is a peculiar fascination, different
from Athens different even from the neighboring
Arachoba. Delphi is still a kind of oracle giving
dark, yet often suggestive responses to its own
raultitudinous problems, sorae of whioh reach
far back into crepuscular Hellas. In fact I find
rayself on a par with the earliest Greek who
settled here and began to evolve that later Del
phic world which we know best frora the Father
of History. Here is still the original germ of
Nature; can I unfold it into historic Delphi, or
32

498 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
at least make clear to myself the main stages of
that old Delphic evolution?
I know you will be asking me, how is your
trilogy of Iphigenia getting along? Well, I shall
have to confess to you, it has been supplanted
by another more immediate, more insistent in
terest. As I wandered through the OUves down
the Delphic slopes, looking at the ever-shifting
aspects of this grandiose Nature, observing the
customs of the people in this environment, and
seeking to live back into the old from the new,
I becarae aware of a change going on within
me, a change of delights, of loves I raay say.
Iphigenia began to withdraw into the background,
and a living shape, which I saw flitting through
the Olives, slipped into her place. In fact the
maidens, often grouped in a kind of natural
bunch or bevy, often singly picking the olives to
a song, becarae very soon the center of the Del
phic world for me, having thrust both antiquity
and modernity into the background, and having
started ine to making responsive strains to their
ever-bubbling lays. So I answer the songs of
the maidens scattered for railes through the
Olives. Moreover my measures soon begin to
gather about one name and one person of course.
Out of the hundreds one I select, altogether the
fairest.
For without just the one hundreds and hun
dreds are none.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 499
Now I am going fo tell you that name, whioh
persists in winding through all ray fancies and
their raainfold cadences. It is Elpinike, which
means the Victory of Hope, certainly a beautiful
thought for accompanying a beautiful woman
through life. There was an ancient Athenian
Elpinike, the first one of the name, as far as I
know ; she was the daughter of the hero Miltiades
who gained the battle of Marathon, and the
sister of Cimon info whose history she plays,
having won by her beauty the hand of Callias,
the richest Athenian, who furnished the money
for paying the fine of Miltiades. Look into
Greek history, for I can't rehearse to you the
rest of this. But what I wish to tell you is that
among these modern Greek folks of Parnassus
the name is still alive. I first heard it in the
house of ray host at Lebedeia, where it was
applied to one of the daughters. So the old
lives in the new here, preserving and re-vivifying
the ancient naraes of persons, and possibly
reaching back to sources beyond history. A
Parnassian Elpinike may have existed long be
fore the Athenian Elpinike was born.
Furthermore, I must tell you that my over
flowing Delphic fancies still run into the elegiac
raould, of which I have already said to you
enough. But these growing distichs seem in
clined to organize themselves into a new sort of
a whole, into a form different from those which

500 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
have hitherto unfolded at Eorae and at Athens.
An idyllic tinge pervades this Delphic world and
necessarily colors any picture of it, making the
same quite distinct from an urban portrayal.
When the matter develops, I shall be able to
tell you raore. It is enough to say just now
that a new poetic life has dawned upon me at
Delphi, with the strong irapulse to attune it to
the music of raeasured speech in the raother-
tongue. Great as is fhe delight and stiraulation of this
old-new Parnassian world, I have resolved to
start out to-morrow morning for Itea which lies
on the Corinthian gulf and is the seaport of
Delphi. There I shall take the Greek steamer
for Corinth and round out my little journey
rapidly to a reasonable degree of fullness, taking
a dip into fhe Peloponnesus.

Corinth, Feb. 23rd, 1879.
Again I address you from the site of a city
famous in antiquity, and bearing a name which
winds through all Greek History. I write this
in an Albanian hovel wifh a very dira light from
a paper wick floating on a little olive-oil. All
day I have tramped over fhe Isthmus ; nothing
much is to be observed except the remarkable
situation between two seas and two countries. It
is plain that Corinth was more completely than

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 501
any other ancient city, fhe connecting point be
tween Orient and Occident, and could have made
itself the chief highway of coraraerce between
Asia and Europe. Later Constantinople took its
place. And yet Corinth was far surpassed in
everything by Athens, which has a much less
favorable site for naval and commercial suprera
acy. Moreover Corinth added alraost nothing to
the spiritual treasures of Greece in coraparison
with Athens. Whence conies this difference, I
ask myself, rarabling over the waste places of
old Corinth (there is a new Corinth some miles
distant). A few columns (seven) of a very old
Doric temple are still standing ; perhaps they can
tell the story if compared with the Doric columns
of the Parthenon. How heavy, unideal, sunk in
their material do they seera, with their enor
mously protruding capitals, whioh raake them
look like toad-stools ! Then the dominant ¦ wor
ship of Venus suggests the deepest fact of the
Corinthian character, as the worship of Pallas
tells us what is the fundaraental trait of
Athenian spirit. An old Oriental (Phcenician)
strain, reaching far back into pre-historic time
seeraed always to raake itself valid at Corinth, in
dicated in the persistent worship of the Gods
Astarte and Melkarth (in Greek, Aphrodite and
Hercules). I climbed to the top of Acrocorinthus, once
the mo&t iraportant citadel of Greece — what

502 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
dpsolation ! I think I must have invaded the
nest of sorae eagles for several circled around my
head, and one big fellow flew so near that I
raised ray staff for a fight with hira. The view
from Acrocorinthus is very fine ; one sees the
small neck of land between the two bodies of
water, and thinks of the old canal for connecting
them and of the old wall for separating the Pelo
ponnesus from Northern Greece. But my chief
thought, as I looked over fhe water toward the
Athenian Acropolis, which I could see, took the
form of this question: Why should the World's
History turn away from this more striking and
more favorable location, and choose that? This,
being on the direct line of its passage out of the
Orient to the Occident, is spurned, while that,
being quite to one side, is chosen ; — is there any
discoverable reason for such an historic deflec
tion? There is, I believe, and herewith enough
of this, lest I may begin writing a Philosophy of
History frora fhe top of Acrocorinthus.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE 503

MycenoB, Feb. 24th, 1879.
So it carae about that under a bright afternoon
sun I entered the Lion's Gate of golden Mycenae,
and inspected the citidel of Agamemnon, not
neglecting to take a look at his supposed tomb
and that of his wife Clytemnestra, along with
the other sepulcres.
Here, then, we catch a glimpse of the Homeric,
yea pre-Horaeric tirae in these huge walls and
ruins. The whole is but an erapty and broken
shell from which the life has long since gone
out; still we may read in these reraains some
thing of the spirit which produced them. The
wall, with its enorraous boulders piled one on the
other, means protection of the budding com
munity, and of its God and king.
More strongly than even Horaer, the image of
Aeschylus as the poet of the Agaraemnonian
legend perches upon the citadel. The inner
tragedy of the conquerors of Troy — the destroyers
themselves being destroyed — reveals the blood
curdling Nemesis of his theme, in the course of
which the terrible Furies are born of the guilty
deed. But that noble trilogy (the Oresteia) has
also the idea of atonement and reconciliation — a
fact which gives to it a lofty place in the world's
Great Books.
And still it is not this drama of Aeschylus but
perchance an off-shoot of it, which haunts rae as

504 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
I sit in the sun on these walls or kick up frag
ments of ancient pottery frora this soil. I con
fess to you that the forra of Iphigenia has again
risen up here, with a new and coercive power.
She had appeared before in my journey, at AuUs,
but had vanished at Delphi, in the presence Of
a stronger iraage. Still here she comes again,
with tenfold energy.
But the sun goes down and all the ways are
darkened. I follow the path to the sraall haralet
of Charvati, whioh is not far off and where I
lodge in the hut of the keeper of the antiquities
of Mycenae. Argos, Feb. 25th, 1879.
To-day I have been rambling around in the
Argive plain, and have landed here at its chief
town, where I shall stay over night. Early this
morning I again took a hasty walk to what I call
Iphigenia's garden, under the walls of Mycenae.
But soon I struck out into the road for Tiryns,
another dismantled city of the Homeric (or pre-
Homeric) age. In fact, this entire Argolic plain
had all its glory in the mythical period ; its light
seeras to go out when history arrives. More
over, the historical farae of Argos is not only
sraall but bad ; it sided with the Persians in the
great struggle of Hellas with fhe Orient — -which
conduct is recorded against it for all tirae by the
Father of History.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 505
Tiryns has remained probably in its present
condition since its destruction by Argos, which
destroyed Mycenae also about the sarae tirae
(4(>8 B.C.). The raassive walls of Tiryns have
always excited wonder. A strong protection
they were certainly — but of what? Seemingly of
that incipient communal life, which was destined
later to work the grand Hellenic miracle. Tiryns,
I would fain believe, is an early form of the
Greek city, which as an infant had to be guarded
and nurtured in this Cyclopean cradle.
A Scotch gentleman whom I knew at Athens
drives up in a carriage not far from Tiryns. From
him I get the latest news — the plague, the quar
antine and other disagreeable occurrences in the
world from which I have been cut off. I might
have strolled over into Arcadia and Sparta, but
I feel that I must return fo civilization as
soon as possible. So I trudge up the road, some
what disquieted, till I corae to Argos where I ara
now located for the night.

606 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
Mycen(B,Feh. 26th, 1879.
This spot insists upon another visit with greater
emphasis than ever. You may laugh at me, but
Iphigenia in this old Argive environment has
driven out Elpinike of Delphi. What am I
going to do with all of these Greek maidens,
ancient and modern? This tirae I explored the
gorge which bounds Mycenae on one side. Here
I plucked some flowers from Iphigenia's garden;
I sat down upon a stone seat which was hers,
or could have been. I wandered up to a small
spring, near which I built the temple of Artemis
who was her Goddess. In the distance the sea is
visible, and on it floats the ship of Paris bound
for Lacedaemon. For my own behoof I make a
festival in ancient Mycenae, at which Helen ap
pears and meets Iphigenia. One is the sinner, and
the other is the sacrifice for the sin. Here it
touches strangely the Christ Story.
Thus I toy the hours away from early morning
till nearly noon. Dear me ! how the time runs
off with me in this Elysium ! And yet I have to
reach Corinth to-night on foot or sleep out in the
mountains. But I shall stop long enough, though
it kills me, to tell you that I have planned an
Iphigenia at Mycence as a stage of her career
¦antecedent to her sacrifice at Aulis. There is no
account of any such draraa, or any separate story
of it as far as I know. You see I am playing

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 507
the myth-maker in this old Greek world — rather
a new part for me. That is indeed the final test
of my journey — can I make that old mythical
world creative, make it complete itself even in
our raodern unmythical tirae? Now I pick up
my knapsack and staff and hurry out of the
Lions' Gate.
Megara, Feb. 28th, 1879.
A brief note from this miserable town of
moderate farae in antiquity, I must send you.
The first trouble of ray journey I had here, within
a day's walk of Athens. An officious Greek sol
dier proposed to arrest me as a klepht. I turned
away from him and went into an eating-house
for a raeal. While I was af the table, aman in
fustanella, who declared that hewas a poUceman,
entered and sat down in front of me, asking who
I was and what was my business. I told hira, but
as that did not satisfy him, I added that I was an
American citizen and showed him ray pass-port.
Of course he could not read it and said I must
identify myself in some other way. I took this to
be an attempt at black-mail and resolved to resist
on the spot. I asked the man to give me his name
in writing, and I gave him raine, and declared
that, if he detained me, I would report him at
Athens, and, if necessary, appeal to the American
embassy. Therewith he let me go, but I could
not help thinking he must have reraerabered that

508 THE DELPHIC LOUP.
American frigate which once appeared in the
Piraeus on behalf of an outraged American citi
zen, a missionary at Athens. After I went to
my quarters, the fat landlady tried to extort from
me a double price for ray bed — which again I
resented with emphasis and with success. So I
have lost my Greek mood in the town of Megara,
which already in ancient days raust have deserved
the punishment which Athens dealt out to it just
before the Peloponnesian War. At least in that
meraory I am finding sorae consolation. But my
chief delight is to recall old Theognis, who,
though a native of Megara, has scored its short
comings, holding them up for reprobation before
all the future. He flourished here over twenty
four hundred years ago (birth set down at 583
B.C.). And another co-incidence I cannot well
leave out : he traveled through Greece and wrote
epigrams in the elegiac measure. So I salute my
hoary predecessor in reeling off verses and in
damning Megara — and thereby get into a good
humor again.

atbens IIII.
Athens, March 1st, 1879.
To the surprise of friends I dropped down
upon them this afternoon. They did not know
what had become of me, whether I was lost
somewhere in the mountains or had been captured
by brigands. Most of them shook their heads
at the account of my solitary perambulations,
and gave me credit for an araount of courage
which certainly my exploits did not deserve. I
did my best to relieve the hospitable country
people from the stigraa of brigandage, giving thus
a small requital for their favors to me personally.
Still the terror of Takes and his band, after
nearly nine years, causes Athens to shiver a Uttle
in memory. (509)

510 ATHENS II.
I was very glad to greet again two other
friends to whom ray attachment has become
strong — Parthenon and Hymettos. These im
personal loves are now to be tested by the recent
Parnassian experience, which has not quit me on
entering the city. By the way I found here my
old veteran, who gave me lodgment at Delphi,
having come to Athens yesterday on business.
He visited the family of Dr. Hill (the American
Missionary) where he produced much merriment
at my expense by miraioking me as I stitched
my own garments, and as I would sit on a stone
writing in a book, and as' I would look at the
girls going down into the orchards. The old
fellow declared that I would rather wander about
and see the koritzi (maidens) picking the olives
from the ground and fhe trees, than sit in the
wineshop among men and drink and talk politics.
Certainly I was an oddity, of which he had been
able to make nothing, and I iraagine his opinion
reflected that of raodern Delphi, perchance of
modern St. Louis.

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 511

Athens, March 1st, 1879.
Here I am again at Athens after a trip of ]
nearly five weeks in the provinces. But I find
some changes ; first of all I am quarantined out
of Europe, I might say out of the world on
account of the plague in Eussia. I had intended
to return soon to Italy — but who can say now
what is to be done. I only tell you this in order
to inforra you that just at this moment I have
no plan; external powers have interfered, I must
cast about for something else. So I still can
give no definite answer to your inquiries con
cerning my return. I hope that in a few days
the quarantine will be removed — but this is
merely a hope ; in the mean while I can deUght
myself with pleasent fancies of home and of
friends, when I can not possess fhe reality. But
I have here agreeable acquaintances who are ever
ready to kill an hour or so stone-dead with me.
The second change is in myself. I discovered
it some hours ago on looking into the mirror —
the vain fellow ! It is that my complexion, never
fair, has quite turned to that of a Hottentot
under this Grecian sun. One whife streak alone
remains to indicate my race: that lies in my
forehead where the forepiece of my cap gave
some protection against the Africanising sun
beams. Imagine me climbing up and down
mountains, passing over plains, threading through

612 ATHENS IL
valleys — always in a sturdy tramp, one, two,
three, day in and day out — ^you will see that old
Helios had a good chance to blacken me well.
But he was otherwise very hospitable to the
stranger; especially during the last week he
never hid his face once in his cloudy folds in
order to dash a rainstorm upon me, nor on the
other hand did he in rage hurl down his showers
of burning rays.
But what about my trip? I can not now tell
you the details, it would take too long; besides,
I want to have something new for you when I
return. It was, however, based on two main
principles: on foot and alone. That is, I walked
the whole distance, except a small stretch by
water, whioh I could not well walk; also I was
without a corapanion of any kind. I saw the
Greek people of to-day ; slept in their cabins, ate
with ray fingers, sat cross-legged at their tables
flat on the floor, flirted a little with their
daughters ; in general I felt their pulse throbbing
live red blood, to the extent of ray ability. The
result is an iraage of the physical aspects of fhe
country and an idea of the inhabitants which
just at present refuses to let itself be expressed
in language ; wait a year or so and I may be able
to utter it to you. I saw the scenes of the most
famous conflicts in the world's history— Marathon,
Plataea, Salamis, not to mention other places of
lesser note — all still echoing, so the traveler

A TOUR IN EUBOPE. 513
imagines, with the clangor of arms and the neigh
ing of war-steeds and the clash of ships. Also
Mycenae I beheld — fhat grand palacC overflowing
with the poetry of thirty centuries, filled to-day
with a crowd of heroic personages that still
move along its ruined walls with a startling dis
tinctness. Let rae tell you a fragment of my
delight : I spoke to Iphigenia, the beautiful Greek
maiden, daughter of Agamemnon, when I saw
her in her garden watering flowers just back of
the King's palace.
But on the whole the region which attracted me
most was the Parnassus, with its high moun
tains and beautiful valleys, with its rosy-cheeked,
blue-eyed, joyous people. Here some voice
comraanded me to stop in my journey, whether
it was the voice of one of the Muses from off
the summit of Parnassus, I dare not say: for I
may be mistaken, like so many good people in
these days, who have thought that they
heard the voice of a Muse whereas it is only the
invisible cackle of a wild goose flying over. But
I obeyed the command speaking down from the
heights, and was rewarded. At Arachoba — a
town just under the highest peak of Parnassus —
are the prettiest women in all Greece ; so I heard
everywhere along the road from the Greeks
themselves. There I remained sorae days ; but
I made the longest stay in the neighboring vil
lage of Castri — ^the ancient Delphi, where
33

614 ATHENS n.
bubbles up still in full beauty and transparency
the CastaUan fountain. Fourteen days about I
spent in the Parnassian region — alas ! now I look
back and find that the time was altogether too
short. Here I found what is doubtless the original
germ of the old Hellenic stock. It is only as yet
a germ still undeveloped ; nevertheless from it
sprang the ancient Greek with all his culture,
and under similar institutions he would again
sprout into being. But modern education makes
the Greek a European ; thus the natural develop
ment of the original germ is thwarted, being
turned aside into something foreign and destruc
tive of its true nature. But cease thy specu-
latiori on matters remote and uncertain, says my
guardian spirit : tell the young ladies about the
dance on the village green, wherein thou, along
wifh the youths and maidens of Arachoba, didst
join in the chorus to the sound of the pipe and
the drum.
Sunday afternoon the whole village turns out
to the place of the dance ; a circle is formed by
joining hands and the movements begin. Whife
and red are main colors both in the garments and
in the faces — all of which now commence to
wind around and through one another in light
graceful curves. There is no wild extravagance
in the measure, no labyrinthine intricacy in the
figures; an easy delightful rhythm of body is

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 516
sought, which breathes a quiet harmony, almost
repose. The eye catches the play of the move
ments and of colors, and is quietly rocked in
cheerful unison with the vibrations of that ring
of living bodies. You now begin to catch a
glimpse of what the old chorus was in its bloom ;
the nature of the old Greek lyric poetry with its
complicated meter dawns dreamily upon you, as
you cast about for the ground of its existence
expressed in this peculiar music and movement.
Such was my state of mind when a friendly hand
grasped mine and led me into the circle. After
a modest protest I stepped along with the dancers,
though my step and still more my dress were
discordant notes in that harraonius corapany.
It was not so difficult to catch the rhythra of
their motions, and so I swung along without
exertion to the sound of the music ancl to the sway
of the bodies. But my dark long overcoat and
cape and European pantaloons did not belong
there. The incongruity made the whole as
sembled people laugh, but I danced on and
laughed too at myself. The greatest advantage
was that while moving around with the circle,
I had a good opportunity to look right into
the faces of all the pretty girls in the town,
with roses in their cheeks and lilies on their
brows. I looked eagerly and intently, for here
in Greece I have everywhere been hunting
after the ancient Greek type of feraale beauty,

516 ATHENS U.
that type which the old sculptors must have
had before thera when they made their Goddes
ses. I saw that old type, I am confident, but
undeveloped, untrained, still in its priraitive
rustic garb. Many a face is here which contains
the possibilities of what we now see in marble.
Also I have seen in the faces of women working
in the fields and picking up olives, the most
finely turned lines as well as the most delicately
knit features. Not all are so by any means,
but some are, and that too women ignorant,
poor, grubbing every day in the earth for a
living. This was not the only time that I joined
in the dance during my journey : also on the
Isthmus of Corinth I came upon the villagers
delighting theraselves with the melody of move
ment, and I at once took part in their happy and
innocent pastime.
What do you think of such a climate? People
dancing in the open air during winter, dressing
themselves in shining white garments which
set off their graceful forms and easy move
ments, with heads uncovered and tresses that
fall in one braid down the back — the young
raaidens of Parnassus have certainly divine
privileges. Bright and kindly shimes the sun
as I look on that company, everybody is cbra-
fortable and in happy mood; the day is a
sweet erabrace of earth and heaven. Yet look

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 517
up yonder above the town ; there is snow and
winter in the raountains; a two hours' walk will
bring you to the climate of Canada. Take your
choice of seasons; here they are not separated
by the solstices, but only by a snow-line. In
the valley below are olives and oranges ; the
alraond trees are already in bloora; but above are
bleak pine forests with lirabs in a case of ice.
Parnassus is the world, and weak raan can here
make the circle of the zodiac in a day, while it
takes divine Helios a year to perform the
sarae task. What wonder is it that this God
concluded to come down from fhe skies and stay
here inhis favorite abode at Delphi, having taken
the narae and forra of Phoebus ApoUo?
I am afraid you raay think that I ara getting
as dark in my utterances as the faraous oracle was
at that place. I shall break off at once to tell
that I have enclosed this time a flower plucked
frora Iphigenia's garden. I found it growing in
the liftle valley behind Mycenae, To which there
is an easy descent from the palace above ; I have
no doubt fhat it is a lineal descendant of the
flowers of the Atridse, It stood all alone with its
slight modest forra bent over, looking .towards
the ground ; about it everywhere were only rude
rocks that seeraed fo threaten with sorae violence
the delicate, unresisting, beautiful shape. It was
Iphigenia's flower, I have no doubt ofthe fact,

518 ATHENS II.
and its ancestors were reared and trained by her
hands. I also picked up some other treasures around
Mycenae which I would gladly send you by letter,
but I can not, on account of their weight and
refractory material. I mean, I have some frag
raents of Iphigenia's pottery, which, if the lands
and seas between do not covet them of me, you
shall have in good season, each one of you a piece.
They are of no account, merely bits of burnt clay
lying loose in the soil ; their only value is that
they once belonged to Iphigenia, were a part of
her toilet, held precious unguents and perfumes
when they were entire. Behold the vases; there
they stand arranged in her room ; she takes first
the one, then the other down from the shelf
when she is making herself beautiful for the
dance, to which she, the King's daughter, des
cends from the high palace. But I must leave
you, my dear young ladies, to complete the
details of the picture, since you are far better
acquainted with the mysteries of the toilet than
I am !
It seems to have given you some trouble to
interpret my raeaning when I told you I had
eaten of the honey of Hymettus — that famous
classical diet. But now I shall have to add to
the fog instead pf chasing it off with a sunbeam :
I have also drunk of the water of Castalia — that
famous classical draught. What can he mean?

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 619
I hear you cry — Is our dear teacher going crazy
all alone, so far from home? No, it is only the
influence of the Delphic oracle which still exerts
a subtle mystery in those mountains. Wait,
wait, and in time the priestess will give a clear
answer to all of your perplexing questions. But
I must stop, the fog is growing to® thick; we
shall never find our way out unless we turn to
the end right now. . Athens, March 7th, 1879.
It has now been about a week since I returned
from the provinces, and I already am thinking
of resuming my trip. Athens can be unpleasant,
which is the case just now; there is a strong
wind, and one can not go into the streets with
out being enfolded in a cloud of blinding dust.
If I could give you a picture of myself at this
moment, I would bring myself before you, as
I now sit in this rocking-chair enjoying a hearty
laugh. For this thought will intrude itself upon
me in a comic light, with a very reflective under
tone : why did those Greek country-girls exercise
such a fascination upon me? It is a ridiculous
question, yet my actions were equally ridiculous ;
I am just now looking back at myself and find
that I was a comic character. Imagine me roam
ing through olive orchards, standing for hours
along the road, summoning into activity every
faculty that I have for attracting people — all

520 ATHENS IL
for what? Just in order that I may see and in
¦some fortunate cases raay converse with rustic
maidens dressed in the rudest garments of the
peasantry and sometimes in tatters, ignorant
beyond measure, not being able to read a syllable
of their maternal tongue, who have never been
outside of their native valley, who go every day
into the fields and work like men ; what do you
say to that ? Laugh along with me that I, only
within a few steps of forty years of age, should
do such things. If you have seen any better
comedy recently, you are a lucky man. Not
withstanding my own consciousness of the ridic
ulous situation, I was absorbed in the chase,
highly excited and several times roaring mad
with disappointraent.
Now I ask myself the serious question : Why
is this? Moreover I find that sorae other men
have occasionally been afflicted with the same
disease. They have made themselves ridiculous
by chasing after the country girls of Parnassus.
It is, then, a not uncommon irapulse, shared
often by those who have no right to love — which
at least is not my case, as you know. People
with an ideal instinctively ask after and look for
the woman in Greece. It is the old story, they
want to find Helen who still fascinates the world ;
when they corae here the first question that they
ask is, where is Helen? They wander through
the streets of the capital and do not find her;

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 521
often their iraagination tricks thera for a little
while, but the final unwilUng conclusion is that
she does not Uve at Athens. So off they go to
the provinces, and I believe that nine travelers
out of ten will say that in the Parnassian region
may be seen the possibility, though not the
reality, of the old Greek- ideal.
Here, my friend, I have been on a search, I
may say, for some living embodiraent of Helen.
Can you wonder then fhat I looked into the face
of every Parnassian woman and girl. whom I raet?
It is strange how the whole world is hunting for
this lost ideal just now. Art has again become
a necessity for human beings ; it furnishes props
for the drooping soul which religion seemingly
can not give ; many would like, for a time at
least, to throw themselves back into that old
Greek world and be again whole and happy.
And it can be done ; we can still enter the temple
of beauty, restore the statues of the Gods, and
to a certain degree worship, that is, we can be
filled with reverence and joy. So everywhere
we seek Helen, the eternal woman of beauty, and
soraetiraes we catch a glimpse of her form
darting through marble colonnades or reposing
in the sunlight by a fountain.
Somehow or other in Greece alone do we ex
pect to find Helen — not a wife by any means,
but quite a different entity. The simple country
people, however, can not understand the nature

622 ATHENS IL
of this strange pursuit. They at once imagine
that the foreigner has come info their rocky
abodes to get married. Such at least I judge to
be the case by the repeated offers made to me of
a Parnassian spouse with a handsome dowry of
oUve trees. The peasants saw the interest with
which I regarded their mountain beauties, having
corae all the way from Araerica just to see thera
— what could they help thinking? That irapal-
pable Greek ideal which enchants the whole world
and beckons to it afar just from these suraraits of
Parnassus, they can not see, though right under
i\,s snowy peak to-day. So they thought, when
I looked so long and intently on the sweet little
peasant girl Marina, that I intended to carry her
off across fhe ocean. Something far different
would I like to carry off, could I but lay hold
of it.
Of those two ways which man takes in order
to express what is deepest within him, Eeligion
has as its supreme type a masculine being — a
God — -while Art employs for its supreme type the
feminine in some form. People will turn away,
in certain frames of mind at least, from the God,
from the masculine ideal ; it is too just, too severe
and heroic, perhaps too intellectual. That which
gives solace and happiness is the woman ; in con
templation she becomes the ideal of Art which
thus is the true mediator of man. Do you know
that I feel a secret restoration here as regards re-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 623
ligion? An old inclination has been intensified
through the comparison of ancient and modern
Greece, which is here forced upon the mind.
But the chief enjoyment which my Delphic
trip imparted was the glorious mood which this
Grecian scenery everywhere calls forth. It may
partly lie inthe associations, but it also partly lies
in the cUraate and in nature fo inspire the hap
piest harraony of the eraotions. All the while a
kind of unwritten music was playing within me ;
there was such a concord between earth, sky,
and sun, that it attuned the soul; even the voice
soraetiraes felt impelled to give a slight utter
ance to that which was going on within. What
is this invisible influence whioh seems to come
down from the tops of Helicon? So I asked- my
self, as I stepped along the road, alone, on foot,
entirely resigning myself to the thrill of this
pecuUar harmony. It must be that subtle power
which the ancients called the Muses, and located
here and built for thera a sanctuary with song
and sacrifice — a hyraning power that takes pos
session of raen and makes them utter these har
monious things. So they invoked the Muses to
breathe into their strains this joyous concordant
spirit ; such was the old Poet. He then became
a holy instrument of song, because he could put
into the word the unuttered prorapfings of this
glorious Nature. All men heard that power

524 ATHENS II.
speaking in his song, like oracles which they
had before merely felt in the mountains.
Of course this is not all which one meets with
in such a trip. The ancient poetical types rise
out of the deep, those divine shapes which seem
eternal on account of their beauty. At Aulis
who does not think of Iphigenia; nay, who does
not make a new Iphigenia, adding another to
those already in existence? Such a power has
this shape, everlastingly reproducing itself inthe
new ages, which pour their own spirit into it,
and thus Iphigenia reraains ever young. Such
is the corapany which that solitary pedestrian
has had all through Greece.

Athens, March 12th, 1879.
This is ray last day in Athens, to night at
12 o'clock I shall set out for Delphi again. This
raay be considered as the day on which 1 turn
around in my journey, turn around and set my
face toward the Far West, toward Home. But
the return will be slow, -and like other wanderers
in the skies I shall gradually increase in velocity
as I approach that grand luminary called Father
land, which now will shine in my face every day.
I can not yet tell the exact day or month of my
arrival ; this is beyond ray mathematical cal
culation, but frora present appearances it will be
sorae tirae between the beginning and end of

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 525
sumraer. I feel that I have plucked the chief
fruit of my travels ; I have climbed to fhe high
est points of my little tree, bent over the last
sprig ancl grasped the apple at its surarait; now
I have nothing to do but to descend and cull
a little fruit on my way down through the
branches. A day or two ago I went out to the Hymettus
for the last time. No object of inanimate nature,
certainly no mountain has ever seized hold of me
so strongly as this hilly outline. I have often
taken a walk to its summit and along its sides,
and frora the city raany times a day I have
looked up at it lying calraly and -clearly in the soft
blue haze ; what is it in the wizard that trans
forms the soul into his own mild image of re
pose? But this time there was a new tinge in the
emotions, caused by the reflection : I shall not,
friendly mountain, soon see thee again. It is
not a high precipice, not a deep gorge, it is
nothing extravagant ; it is siraply an harraonious
work of Nature wifh all the noble moderation
and serene ecstasy of Greek Art.
This raay be only a classic meraory which
takes a bare rock and transmutes it into a mirac
ulous hUl of poetry. Very well, let it be merely
a fancy. I am content provided we get the
poetry ; Hymettus still remains a wonderful stone
which Mineralogy can not classify. As far as
prosaic science goes , what is it but a conglomerate

526 ATHENS IL
mass of rock and brambles? Many other masses
far surpass it in quality and quantity, still they
have no song, and evoke no song. What are the
genus and species of Hyraettus? You laugh at
the man who would look info a scientific book to
answer such a question. Hymettus is not araen-
able to science: only can it be seen when reflected
in the fountain of the Muses. A biologist hear
ing my praises of the mountain, might ask me
if I had found the bones of a new species of
monkey there, thinking probably that Hymettus
might furnish the missing link.
So we mortals dance through this phantasmo-
gory called the world, each of us has a little
inner Paradise of our own at the same tirae, thus
we are and thus we seem to be. It is but too
manifest that what many people call solid facts
are only a foundation for the gorgeous palaces
of Spain.
Of course what can I do to-day but pay a visit
to the Parthenon, the first and last object in the
eye and in the heart of the stranger? I pass
through the old theatre of Bacchus and still try
to see the actors and the audience, and to hear
the old poetic strain. What could it have been
that made just this spot overflow with the world's
fountain of beauty ? Look down across the plain
toward the sea, behold the blue waters and the
clear skies, with the hills and their olive trees
lying so quietly but so joyously in this spring

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 527
sun ; here is the mood of fhe Greek Muse and
you feel her subtle breath. So the audience from
these stone steps looked out into the open air, all
the while hearing the echoes of this beautiful
Nature from the words spoken on the stage.
Not confined in a close room by gaslight, they
were poetically attuned by a glance into the
distance where they saw that harmony which
found its suprerae utterance in their Art. But
a somewhat pensive color darkens my mood
to-day, which even casts a slight shadow against
the sun: this is the last tirae that I shall look upon
the scene.
But, my friend, I ara detaining you and myself
too long at the foot and on the sides of the hills ;
let me at once pass by all other lesser glories and
enter the Propylaea. This is the Portal, and it
has become a type of entrance into the realm of
the Beautiful, being itself one of the' supreme
products of Art. The happy man who is being
inducted into the higher regions of the Acro
polis, stops and looks; he would fain stay here
for a long time, as it suggests in the most subtle
yet transparent manner all the glories which lie
within. The beautiful Gate unto the Beautiful—
that is the Propylaea.
Now We pass through this Gate-^then looking up
we behold in the fullest revelation the Parthenon ;
all at once it breaks out of space on the view at
the most favorable point for grasping it as a

528 ATHENS IL
whole. The colurans are all seen in their
totality moving around the temple, the metopes
above show various phases of huraan struggle ;
the sculptures would come out in the boldest re
lief if they were here and not in London, whence
they raust at present be supplied by the fancy.
But I can not talk to you about details, to-day I
hardly looked at them ; I only beheld the entire
structure. Why should I study like a pedant the
last day, the day of final separation? So I re
mained several hours there just looking at the
face and forra of the beautiful virgin Parthenos.
Here too a melancholy tinge clouded my feelings,
as I reflected, indeed spake aloud to my fair cora
panion of raarble : we shall not soon meet again.
Turning about one beholds another noble
work, yet of a very different kind — the Erech-
theion. But I must be off, the sun is declining;
it is time to say good-bye. One more look atthe
Parthenon ! weak-hearted wanderer, why dost
thou delay ? Sol break away from my enthrall-
ment with many a pang, with many a glance back
as I pass out, thinking this is the last. So too,
my friend, I must break loose from this distracted
letter written araid farewells to friends, to ancient
monuraents. Supply the missing words, rectify
my errant fancies and think with me Auf
Wiedersehen.

TReturn to 2)elpbi.
Pelphi, March 14th, 1879.
Well, here I am once raore, to my own amaze
ment and no little mystification. Eeally I ara
somewhat dazed at my own labyrinth of move
ments, quizzing my demon about what he intends
to do with rae and whither he is leading me. I had
not been in Athens a week this last tirae before
I began to feel an intense need of going back fo
Delphi and the Parnassian region. When I left
here three weeks ago, after quite a liftle stay, I
hardly thought of returning, even if I raay have
sometimes wished if. My original plan was to
go back to Athens, say good-bye to friends-,
then take the steamer at the Piraeus on my way
homewards. But 1 soon felt an influence whioh
34 (529)

630 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
kept growing more imperious, till my destina
tion was, when the boat steamed out of port, to get
to Delphi again by the straightest route. So I am
once more lying down along the hearth of my
good Greek veteran, whose cabin is in the
enclosure of Apollo's ancient temple. I ara
resolved to stay till I work through my Delphic
mood, throwing it out of me into sorae kind of
writ, and thus freeing myself of that ancient
demon who has gotten such a grip upon my very
soul. Nor do I know how long I shall stay —
possibly forever. What do you say to that, my
friend? I confess to you that the conception
has come up to me that I raay never be able to
extricate myself from this Delphic world, and so
never see you in St. Louis again, unless upon a
chance visit to the Father of Waters. Still do
not shed any tears, at least not yet, for I think
that after some weeks, by diligent seeing, ram
bling and scribbling, I shall succeed not only in
freeing myself of the tyrannous demon, but in
actually nabbing him who now has nabbed me
with such violence. Perhaps I can even cage
him (in words), and carry him across the ocean
to show him to you, making him also dance a
little in his chains for your delectation.
I come before myself now as having departed
from the modern world, even from modern
Greece, and as having gotten back into fhe liv
ing presence of antiquity. While at Athens I

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 531
bought the History of Tricoupis, a much-praised
work whose theme is the War for Greek Inde
pendence (1821-30). It did not take me long
to find out that I could not read such a book now,
though its author was declared to be the new
Thucydides. The truth is Athens had become
too modern for me. Then I am free here of
another Athenian discord, which, though sup
pressed, was quite real. My chief associates at
Athens were the American missionaries, of
whom there are four different sets, and who did
not fail to see and express the shortcomings of
one another. But to me personally they all
were very friendly and hospitable, though our
aims were so different. On the basic point both
sides soon found each other out, and preserved a
rather ominous silence; only once did one of
the more zealous ladies lecture me just a little
for my too great "heatheness." We had rauch
pleasant intercourse ; still through it all ran that
undertone of dissonant purposes. By the Greek
Christian population these Missionaries were
shunned, and they were very unpopular. I
recollect that when I first arrived at Arachoba,
and said that I was an American, people wanted
to know whether I was " one of those Araerican
Missionaries down at Athens." I obtained the
Arachobite good-wiU at once by saying that when
I becarae a Missionary, I would certainly not
come fo Arachoba, but would go across the

532 BETUBN TO DELPHL
border and try my hand on the barbarous
Turks.

Delphi, March 14th, 1879.
So you are inclined to laugh at me, my dear
little girl, for going* so far away to get into
Greece, which, you think, I could easily have
found at home. But the two words which sound
so much alike to your ear, are very different in
meaning, though I have no doubt your little head
and your little hands also are far better
acquainted with grease than with Greece. SpeU
the two words now, and when you go to school,
ask your teacher to fell you the difference
between them. Sometime you may want to
visit Greece too, I mean this Greece where I ara,
not that which you know at horae. Possibly
when I corae back again to this Greece, you will
be along. Delphi, March 21st, 1879.
Before my veteran's cabin lies the drum of
one of the colurans which colonnaded the old
Delphic teraple. It tips down into the soil, in
which one-half of it lies buried and raakes a
good se^t, though with edges broken here and
there, and with weeds clarabering about its sides.
I can read in it a pleasant Greek salutation from
antique Delphi, though I have to ask: What hit

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 533
you so hard, and why? Let these questionings pass
for the present, and build up anew the old temple
which you can frora the diameter of this colum
nar drum. Out of the one measurement the
whole structure flows in all its merabers. But
not simply the single edifice but the entire Del
phic world I am trying to reconstruct as I sit on
its fragment of stone, which is an integral part
of it, and which seems to peep out at rae from its
covering of ages, and smile, as if getting ready
to speak. It has becorae for rae a syrabol of the
ancient city, wtich can be seen with the syrapa-
thetio eye everywhere taking furtive glances
from this soil.
My host, Paraskevas, the veteran, has built
his hut in the sacred enclosure, about fhe center
of it as I measure the matter. I fancy every night
that I stretch rayself out to drearas on the very
triangle where anciently stood the famous Del
phic tripod, from which the Pythia uttered her
responses under the influence of that prophetic
exhalation which has so troubled antiquaries as
well as theologians. So fhe problem comes up fo
me now : Cannot I, too, here on this spot, snuff
a little of that divine vapor, and get sufficiently
intoxicated on it to throw off sorae Delphic
oracles in the old measures? Let me confess to
you secretly, ray friend, that is just what I am
doing, and ere long you may get some of these

534 BBTUBN TO DELPHI.
modern responses uttered in a spell of Delphic
inebriation. Still there is a modern world here, and to-day
I was plunged into it down from Parnassian
heights in a way that made me shiver. The mis
tress of my cabin, whom I may call ray aged
landlady, the wife of the veteran, was born a Mo-
hararaedan, but was baptized when a girl, info the
Greek Christian fold. I had not been in the village
twenty-four hours when a gossipy fellow at the
wineshop inforraed me of the fact, with a mali
cious teehee which I did not then understand.
Last evening at supper I casually dropped my
information when there carae an explosion -which
shook fhe hut, as if a spark had fallen into a keg
of powder. The old woraan flew into a grand
rage, and even the grizzled veteran showed anger
in his question: "Tell me the raan who has been
talking about ray wife — I'll raake if hot for hira ;
he is worse than a Turk. She has been baptized
these forty years." I apologized hurably, and
fortunately found an intercessor in the old
man's son, but a step-son to this his second wife,
who does not like him. She sulked to-day till
evening, when I gave her a few pennies for some
tapers which she wished to light at church before
some saint, whose festival is being celebrated.
This seeraed to reconcile her by giving her an
opportunity of showing to fhe village women hovv
good a Christian she is. But this raodern

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 535
religious hate nearly blew me up, hence I shall
try all the more to keep in that ancient serene
world.
Arachoba, March 28th, 1879-
After staying two weeks at Delphi I have come
over to Arachoba for a change, distant only a
good hour's walk. The town has its own distinct
life in which I take a peculiar delight. It is not
modern, but ancient, still it is alive and throb
bing. That is what it means to me : an old Greek
town truly, yet full of living human activity.
Somehow I imagine it to have been lifted out of
antiquity, whirled through twenty-five centuries,
and set down to-day on Parnassus, quite as it was
born long ago amid these mountains. It would
seem that the heights and valleys with their re
cesses and caves were places of secure refuge for
these people and preserved them through all the
invasions and revolutions which have swept over
the lowlands. On the whole it is the most fas
cinating piece of antiquity which I have come
upon in all my travels. Could I have ever ex
pected to see my desiccated Greek Lexicon spring
into living speech ! and my Dictionary of Anti
quities, with its vast stores of carefully dried,
arranged and labelled speciraens suddenly whisk
into ruddy reality ! Soulful indeed it is to behold
the labyrinthine hortus siccus of classical erudi
tion actually bloora and put forth fresh flowers
once more ! Imagine me, ray friend talking face

536 BBTUBN TO DELPHI.
to face with Homeric, or perchance pre-Homeric
Greeks, in their own dialect, saluting by name
Ulysses, Paris (Alexandres), yea Venus herself
(Aphrodite). Am I not getting back to the
beginning? Yet all this, which sounds so
dreamy, is here the most natural thing in the
world, in fact a daily prosaic occurrence.

Arachoba, March 30th, 1879.
While at Athens, I talked a good deal about
Arachoba and the Parnassian region, of course
with a considerable outlay of gesticulated enthu
siasm (as is ray wont, you know). The result
is that sorae few people are straying hitherwards.
The Cincinnati boy who has wandered over so
rauch territory afoot turned up the other day af
Delphi. I did not see him there, but Paraskevas
tells me that he did not stay long, and that he
had no papoutzi (shoes). He also claimed to
have been captured by brigands on Mount Ithome,
but was turned loose again because he had no
money. So his lack of cash saved his ears and
nose and possibly his neck. But the great visit
in these regions has been that of the ambassadors
with their grand reception by tfie people, and
with an address by the mayor Pappayohonnes.
They came over from Delphi, and entered the
town in a spectacular cavalcade. I got pushed
forward into the presence of the German Embas-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 537
sador, who said that he had heard about me —
which was probably a diplomatic truth. I
laughed to myself as I thought: "Now I have
more fame on Parnassus than I ever had before
or shall ever have again." [Pditorial Note.
An account of this visit of the Ambassadors at
Arachoba is given in the Walkiii Hellas].
But just think of it! An Araerican Missionary
has also corae hither on a trip and has hunted me
up in Arachoba. It was of course not hard to
find me, as every man, woraan and child in the
town knew rae. He was not one of the Mission
aries located at Athens, who are not liked in the
provinces, but he belonged to a place in Asiatic
Turkey, and had come to Athens chiefly to learn
Greek, where I had made his acquaintance. He
tramped into Arachoba in a pedestrian's rough
outfit, having corae by stearaer to Itea, whence
he followed my track to Delphi, where he
expected to find me. Paraskevas put hira in the
road after me, and now I have found for him a
room and bed, which have to be looked up in
this town.
Of course we took a long walk through the
Olives, but I did not entice hira into the wine
shop, where these Parnassian Greeks let thera
selves out best, pouring out their souls wifh
recinafo. I took hira to see my favorite views,
and pointed out the raain objects in the land
scape. Very congenial was our intercourse; I

538 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
could see that the Missionary situation at Athens
was as discordant to hira as to myself, though
for other reasons. Chiefly we talked of Greek
things, old and new, of customs, costumes, of
Greek men and women, touching now and then
upon America. At last we encountered a group of
maidens picking olives ; I began telling him what
that meant to me, but here he drew inwards.
"That" says I, "is a glirapse into the old Greek
world, long before the birth of Christ, perhaps
even before Horaer." He was soraewhat
astonished at the proposition, probably wonder
ing what he, as a Missionary, was going to do
with an idea like that in his head. But I went
on talking, and unfolded the beauty of this Par
nassian world, till at last I pointed directly at
one of the group, exclairaing, "There she is, the
central figure ! That is Elpinike." He looked
and looked again, but did not see her, whereat
we both turned about and walked up the slope fo
town where a good dinner awaited us. In the
morning he started off on his journey toward
Lebedeia, wondering what it was that kept me
so long in Arachoba. Once I clapped my hand
to my pocket and drew out my note-book, wifh
the design of reading to hira one pf my Delphic
hymns, which were singing themselves every day
over the Parnassian slopes Uke music in the air.
But my hand was stopped by the thought fhat
the good man was used to a wholly different

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 539
kind of hymnody, and that mine might produce
in him a discord at parting.

Arachoba, March 31st, 1879.
What a wonderful dip backward into the old
Hellenic fountain ! It seeras to me that I to-day
came upon traces of the ancient Greek Mythos
still alive in the mouths of fhe people. And the
village bard or rhapsode is certainly here, not
now ready to rehearse some episode of the Tro
jan War, but of the conflict with the Turk. One
thinks of him as fhe lineal descendant of the
Homeric Aoidos, like Phemius and Deraodocus
of the Odyssey. In the present case, however,
the rhapsode was a woman, long known as the
chief depository of legends, fairy-tales, ballads,
the primordial literature of the people.
- There are two 'schools in the fown, both of
great interest to the teacher. A third very sraall
one for little girls I have visited, which is taught
by a woman. I asked her if she knew anything
of the kindergarten, but she had only heard of
it. I often go to hear the youths of Arachoba
construe Xenophon, after whose style modern
Greek seeras to pattern itself as a literary tongue.
At this point, however, the edge is entering.
Modern civilization is creeping in through educa
tion, these youngsters will all be able to read the
newspapers from Athens, and thus will share in

640 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
the movement of the world of to-day. Isolated
Arachoba will be whirled into the stream of the
ages, and be assimilated slowly to the rest of
Europe. In fact there is at Arachoba just now quite a
liftle conflict between the two sides, the sup
porters of the old and of the new. Said one of
the schoolmasters in fez and fustanella: "This
costume of mine is vanishing; in twenty years
more it wUl be a rarity. The great majority of
people here still wear it, as I do; but the other
schoolmaster, you see has thrown it off. In like
manner the rest of our old ideas and customs are
bound to disappear. I have seen great changes
in my own time, greater still are coming. I
have held oiit so far, alia ti na kamo."
At these words he gave a significant shrug of the
shoulders, as if he too were in fhe clutches of
the inevitable Fate which was hanging over old
Arachoba. Since he knew of my intense delight
in the town as a survival of Greek antiquity, he
went on: "You have arrived just in time; ten
years hence you will not see half so much. You
would have seen a good deal raore ten yedrs ago."
Such was the gloomy vaticination of my fel
low-craftsman at Arachoba, foreboding that his
world would soon pass away, being already
caught in the grip of Destiny. Do you know
what he recaUed to me vividly? The old
Greek Fate, -vvhich was always hovering over

A TOUB IN EUBOBE. 541
HeUas and the Hellenic man from Homer down,
and which finds such a tremendous expression in
Athenian Tragedy. And what else indeed is
that Laocoon which I pondered over so often at
Eome in the Vatican Gallery, where it stands as
the most overwhelming utterance of Greek
antiquity concerning itself — and that too in its
own supreme art, namely sculpture? Litt'le did
I then expect to find that statue in a manner
re-incarnated and still alive.
This was truly a new experience of the ancient
life here represented. So Arachoba deems
itself doomed, yet it goes its way with serenity,
yea with joy and many a happy festival. A little
green island I iraage if, lodged ori the slope of
Parnassus, saved frora the wreck of a world.
And wifh it has strangely survived that antique
idea of Fate, irabedded so deep in the old Greek
consciousness, which really therein saw and
foretold itself. History has recorded the grand
cataclysm of the Hellenic world, but here comes
a little piece oi flotsam frora the colossal nau-
frage, this Arachoba, upon which you must
picture rae to have leaped, and to be now seek
ing to live its life, very old yet also very young.

542 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
Delphi, April 4th, 1879.
Back again to Delphi in the hut of good old
Paraskevas, the veteran. I fell into a longing for
this spot yesterday, since it gives soraething
which Arachoba cannot furnish. Here is the
actual wreck of antiquity broken to ruins and
hurabled into the dust of the earth; still its
spirit glances forth [everywhere frora its frag
ments. The blow of Fate which smote that
antique life is seen and even felt still in this
place ; the tragedy qf old Hellas is impressively
present, and can be read when you learn fhe
hand-writing. And that is the ever-recurring
interest, the interest of the tragic.
Delphi and Arachoba have become two worlds
for me, or rather two stages of the Hellenic
world. I can pass from one to the other in an
hour's walk. Both must be appropriated and
uttered. You know that Horaer has two worlds,
an upper, Olympian, of the Gods, and a lower
terrestrial, of men. And so it is here.
The people of Castri (the modern narae for
Delphi) are an hurable peasantry, who live in a
faint wonder about their town and its ruins. It
is the antique shell into which I try to put the
life of Arachoba. The two thus belong together,
af least I think so. So I often pass and repass
between thera, as each furnishes its own different
material for the structure I am building. Eeally

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 643
the Arachoba of to-day is pre-Delphic, it shows .
the bud out of which Delphi flowered in the
olden time and with it civilized Greece. Can I
again make these ruins spring out of their origi
nal living germ? This is ray problera, which
keeps rae so long in these Parnassian regions ; I
have corae to believe it to be the stake of my
whole European journey, which I have just now
reached and am grasping for, though I had no
such concious end at the beginning.

Delphi, April 4th, 1879.
While I was at Eome, Davidson gave me a
minute account of his trip in Greece, starting
from Athens, going around the Peloponnesus, to
the excavations at Olympia (whioh I raust yet
see), and returning through Northern Greece.
His company was a large one — fen or a dozen, if
I recollect aright — having their own guides,
donkeys, and utensils, and cooking their own pro
visions mainly. Such a company would see
places and people on the outside, and have
experiences of their own, if that were the
object of the trip. I was much interested in
Davidson's account, as I thought already at
Eome that I might wish to do something of the
same sort. The incident which impressed
Davidson was a Greek mother who took off her
shoe and poured some goat's milk into it, which

544 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
she gave to her child to drink. I, eating and
sleeping in the huts of the comraon people, have
seen no such thing, though that does not invali
date it. I heard Davidson repeat the incident
three or four times at least, while at Eome with
I him. Indeed he showed soraething of a reaction
against the Greek world through his stay iri
Greece, whioh must have disillusioned him. In
St, Louis, you know, he warsfond of caUing him
self a Greek Heathen with a kind of badinage,
I always thought. To be sure, his reaction
against the Germans was far more eraphatic and
bitter. Then his catholicizing tendency may
have quite neutralized his former "heathenesse."
All this has been brought up to me because
Paraskevas tells me that he recollects very well
the corapany, and that it found less than a day
sufficient for Delphi. The next tirae I see
Davidson I shall say to hira if the subject coraes
up : "You never really saw Greece in that donkey
cavalcade of yours — how could you? Greece is
its people, and they would hold aloof frora you
all the journey. Trie only way is afoot and
alone (monos kai pezos) ; then the people will
corae out of their shell and associate with you, so
that you can find them out. You never saw the
old Greek world in the modern, when you rode
on your donkey through Delphi and Arachoba —
it cannot be seen in that fashion, though it be
present and also alive. Nor could you see it even

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 545
in your year's stay at Athens, for there it is not
present, at least not in its original life."
[Pditorial Note. Many years afterward I saw
a good deal of Davidson at Chicago during the
Literary Schools, but this Greek subject did not
rise to the surface, as other matters were upper
most in the minds of both of us. Once I pointed
out to hira on the street there a Greek fruit-
vender, whora I knew, and whora he addressed
in the native tongue. His railk story, however,
I heard from him again in a company].
Delphi, April 5th, 1879.
I have been here so long that I often think
back upon my trip, wondering what it all means
to me both as present and as future. But to one
conclusion I have corae, which you may deem
fantastic : This Parnassian world in which I am
now abiding, is what lies back of all the Art I
saw at Eome. This is the original reality out of
which that evolved. Of course this is but a
small fragraent of the total Hellenic world from
which poetic and artistic Eome sprang, as we see
it to-day. So I flatter myself that I have fol
lowed the stream fo its fountain-head at which I
ara now daily sipping in solitary ecstasy.
Moreover I have been attempting to give ex
pression to what I find here, quite ^ as I did at
Eome and on the way hither from Eome. But
35

546 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
the background is very different ; there is no art
here, no developed feeling for it, all is still a
possibiUty. The characterof the country and
of fhe people is what may be called idyUic ; still
these utterances of mine are not strictly idyls of
the cast of Theocritus and Virgil, both of whom
fled back to a siraple pastoral life out of their
respective civilizations, Greek and Eoman,
from which they were in a manner estranged.
Shakespeare has repeatedly made such a flight to
an idyllic life the subject of a comedy (see for
instance As you like it). My mood, on the con
trary, is not that of flight from, but of advance
to ; I seem returning, not leaving.
So these new productions I have concluded to
call Hyrans, whose setting is ancient Delphi,
peculiarly the abode of the God, the ancient
theme of many Hymns, and also the home of the
Muses, inspirers of all song. Moreover these
Hyrans move still to the elegiac measure, which
for me at least, has become native to all this classic
world reproducing itself in English. To be sure
it takes a different color in a different environ-
raent and with a different subject-matter, which
is here the iraraediate poetic life out of which
Hellas arose milleniums agone.
Af Delphi I can not help thinking that Nature
took a primordial part in shaping the inner
Hellenic world of old. She is to-day what she
was when the hoary Pelasgians first debouched

A TOTfR IN EUBOPE. 547
into this valley on their long Aryan migration.
By repeated contemplation one gets to making
here Natura a kind of person or Goddess
endowed with life and a peculiar individuality.
Now it is Spring over the Delphic slopes, and
Nature appears before me as a fair Greek maiden
dressing herself for her raarriage. Of course
no mortal raan in such a case can keep his eyes
off, but will modestly peep at her ways of dis
porting herself at her Parnassian toilet :
Over her body she draws in her triumph a flowing
• green garment;
Emeralds under her touch burst from each bud
on the bough ;
Garlands of blossoms she winds round her
bosom, velvety, vermeil,
Here they are white wifh her hand, there
they are blue with her eye.
Ha ! tl;ie bright face of the bridegroom peering
just over the mountain !
'Tis the new Sun from the skies, flinging his
gold on her path.
Now her song she begins, her sweet passion trills
over the olives.
With her each bird on fhe twig chants its own
bridal refrain.
And the Parnassian pilgrim, tuned to the beams
of the Sungod,
Chants responsive a hymn rocked fo the roll
of the heights.

548 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
Delphi, April 6th, 1879.
There is no doubt that the narae of Lord
Byron is more, familiar to fhe Greek people than
that of any other European. Not that they
know his poetry, or thathe was a poet; to them
he is a kind of hero who descended into their
world from above to fight for their freedom.
That deed has raade hira more famous than his
verse, which, however, is still very interesting to
one who visits Greece at present. He passed
through this Parnassian region, andin the'first
stanza of Childe Harold he declares, in speaking
of fhe Muse :
"Yet there I've wandered by thy vaunted rill.
Yes ! sighed o'er Delphi's long deserted shrine.
Where, save that feeble fountain, all is still."
I can say, not still to me, but endowed with a
voice and even happy. The conflict between the
Turk and the Greek took strong hold of Byron
who reproduced it poetically in various ways,
and finally lost his life in that same struggle of
races and religions. My old veteran (if I under
stand hira) thinks that he as a youth saw Byron,
who died fifty-five years ago at Missolonghi. At
Athens there were many legends about him, par
ticularly about his loves. In his way he was
enthusiastic for the old Greeks; but he never
seems to have gotten a glirapse of classic form ;

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 549
certainly he did not try to reproduce it, but
thrusts everything Q-reek into his fore-ordained
Anglo-Saxon poetic raould. So I feel here at
Delphi, recalling diraly his works and their ira
pression upon me a good while ago. Still of all
the Philhellenes he is the greatest person
age, according to the Greeks theraselves.
A good subject for future study would be
Byron's Hellenisra, its worth and its liraits; I
can not help contrasting it with thaf of Goethe,
though the latter never got to Greece, but only
as far as Greek Sicily. I have often wondered
what our friend Brockraeyer would do with this
Delphic world, if he were here. Would he raake
it over with that unique creative power of his,
and put it into shape? Or would his work in
this case too reraain a huge torso, unfinished and
unfinishable? No person whora I have ever raet
has shown such a keen appreciation of Greek
Art; "it is the only Art as yet," I heard hira
once say, after a magnificent exposition of
Antigone. "What a keen sense of Greek form"
I thought — and still he never forms. I know at
least a dozen pieces which he has begun — poeras,
roraances, dramas, apologues, adventures in a
Eabelaisian vein of humor — but they all break
off somewhere before the raiddle, reraaining
Titanic fragraents. Of course in his present
political office he may not be able to do much
literary labor ; but I watched the fen years pre-

650 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
vious to his election and often urged him to
coraplete something, such as Reynard in
America, or Hans Grotsnoot, or his philosophi
cal treatise on the American Con.sti tution, of
whose spirit he knew raore than Story or any
other writer within ray knowledge. I have some
right to say this, since I, as teacher of the Con
stitution in the High School, read quite a little
speck of the Uterature of this subject. Now I
am going. to impart to you, as the friend of both
of us, ray Delphic impression : Brockmeyer, who
has exerted such a mighty influence upon the
deepest currents of my existence, is a genius,
but unrealized and probably unrealizable, he can
not give to hiraself a form — even that form
which he appreciates so highly.
I have also reveried over what Goethe would
have been inspired to write, were he here
in my place. It is ray judgment that he is the
greatest reproducer of the antique that ever
lived, greater than the old Eoman poets. Cer
tainly his elegiacs have more poetic life than
any Latin ones I have come across in Ovid, Prop-
pertius and Tibullus. It keeps buzzing through
my head that he would have created his chief
classic masterpiece in a drama on Iphigenia at
Delphi. Perhaps, however, this Arachobite life
would have impelled to produce a throbbing
idyllic epos after the kind of Hermann and
Dorothea, but with a Greek, not a Gerraan

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 551
setting and content. It is a surprise to me that
he could be satisfied with Eome and Sicily, mere
echoes of the original Hellenic world. Why did
he not make a push for Greece? Certainly such
a trip was possible in his tirae. Sorae lirait in
side of hira raust have kept him back, the nature
of which I have not yet made out.
Still Goethe is fhe genius who forras, and
cannot help himself, whatever be his material —
Teutonic, Classic, Persian, or even Chinese. And
as to the great admirer and EngUsh interpreter
of Goethe, Thoraas Carlyle — I have interrogated
the Oracle here about what his genius would
make out of this Delphic world, Goth fhat he is.
I can hear only the response : he would knock it
to pieces in writ, doing over again what the
original Goths and Vandals did really to the
Classic world. It is true that he once reviewed
Goethe's Helena appreciatively, but he never
struck" into that path afterwards ; he never, like
Faust and like Goethe hiraself wooed Helen, the
elusive Greek beauty. He remained a Northern
barbarian to the last, and even iraproved on his
barbarisra. Certainly he would not be the archi
tect chosen to rebuild the ruined Delphic temple.

552 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
Arachoba, April 8th, 1879.
I have again corae over to Arachoba, that
Greek infant 3,000 years old, but lively still and
kicking. Not siraply ancient civilized Greece, but
the yet older Greece lying back of it I live in
afresh, having walked out of the Delphic tomb,
which, nevertheless, is later oryounger. What
a time-upsetting world is here, if one not only
incorporates it, but actually insouls it! This
Parnassian life reverses the ages ; the oldest folk
stUl lives infantile, while fhe progeny is long
since dead and its sepulcher is in ruins. Aged
Time, having traveled dbwnward for aeons in
succession, picks rae up just here and whirls rae
backward in a sort of recession, bearing me sud
denly round fo his Hellenic beginnings. On this
spot the reality is so ghostly and the ghosts are
so real that you have to get used to a new kind
of universe, and even set it to music, for it cer
tainly has its own song.
For the third and proba'nly last time I went
and stayed nearly a day in the Corycian Cave,
whioh has had a great narae in this region from
antiquity till the present. In fhe old legend it was
deemed sacred to Pan and had its specialNymphs
called Corycian. It is full of the strangest
stalactite forras, which in a remarkable way sug
gest sculpture. There was a multitude of raasks
leering out af rae everywhere frora the walls and

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 553
ceilings. Many statuesque shapes would just
outline themselves and then seem to dart back
into the limestone. They would overflow one an
other, and make groups in a kind of relief. A
mother and child (one would say) were given in
a striking attitude ; certainly I thought of Niobe
and the Madonna. Here I would fain see
Nature as the original sculptor, and ray delight
was to find in this Cave the original art gallery,
which met rae at Eome, Paris, London, in fact
along the whole course of my journey. My
fancy capers with joy at seeing this lovely Par
nassian Mountain pregnant with such a happy line
of beautiful progeny streaming down through
Europe till Araerica. And not only Sculpture but
Architecture is strongly suggested, especially fhe
column which drops frora fhe ceiling ^ to the
ground. Again the erabryo of the Greek world
in one of its raost notable phases I seera to find
here; Nature shows the Greek artist in what way
and in what material he is to make his sculp
turesque forras, which will even rival the Gods
coming down from Olympus.
The Corycian Cave has also been the source of
much myfhologizing. Still to-day it has its elves
and sprites, which I hear strangely called
Nereids at Arachoba. As I sit down in the Cave
I try to recreate its divine population of little
deities, and feel their influence. I creep through
its secret charabers large and small, and light my

554 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
taper to see the ever-changing shapes. Once I
have to lie down flat and squeeze through^ a hole
which fits ray back very closely. Then I ascend
to a room in the second story and strike a light.
In it I saw the God Pan and also felt him. For
there came over rae a kind of panic, I thought
for a moraent that I must retreat. Quite ex
hausted I sank down on a rock and found at ray
feet a drink of water: the stone had been hol
lowed out into a little cup whioh caught and
gathered the droplets trickling down frora above.
The first tirae I visited the Corycian Cave I
had Diraitri as guide, with whom I became
acquainted at Delphi, and whora I often met as
I sauntered over the hills. More than any
other human being he has becorae fo me the in
carnation of the Faun, also an old Greek con
ception lying back of civilized Greece. It has
won great fame through a statue by Praxiteles,
of which there are several copies in existence.
In fact there was in the Cave, a stalactite form
which seemed to have some reserablance to
Diraitri himself. [Editorial Note. See for
further details the chapter called the Delphic
Faun in the Walk in Hellas].

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 555

Arachoba, April 14th, 1879.
A peculiar sensation has corae over me to-day :
it is fhat I have reached the summit. My whole
trip seeras to have flowered out to a finish this
afternoon, yea this hour, which is verily the
most beautiful hour of this beautiful spring
in this beautiful world. I once heard Brock
meyer say fhat a young maiden has her most
perfect day, aye her most perfect rainute, and
that he could detect it. I doubt if I could, but
I have felt sorae such premonition in my own ex
perience to-day, rarabling and gazing over the
roll of the Parnassian tops, as they vanish into
the distant haze. But after fhe culraination
comes the decline, and this feeling also stealthily
creeps along underneath the supreme efflores
cence of my Delphic mood. And now I am
going to send a little elegiac outburst, which
seeks to describe this day of days, or rather this
moment of moments which I call my Delphic
Moment.
All the year has suddenly bloomed in this day,
in this minute ;
The whole world is a flower fragrantly blowing
just now. '
Every rise of the Sun hath seemed in some joy
to look forward.
This is the moraent it saw far in the glow of its
eye.

656 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
All the days of the year have been climbing above
to this summit.
Now each tick of the clock sadly must knell
their decline.
But thy journey of life has now reached its most
beautiful moment,
Hold it fast in thy heart — that is thy conquest
of Tirae. Delphi, April 15th, 1879.
Once more with my Delphic veteran in his
hut. I have come to like old Paraskevas, par
tially perchance out of comradeship, for you
know I am a veteran foo, and have my budget of
soldier's experiences. The old fellow's son was
recently caught by the conscription and the
father was wrought up a good deal over the
matter, though there is no war at present or in
sight. I begin to feel the regret of parting from
him and from Delphi ; his hearty invitation at
meals phage (eat) I shall miss, but get over.
To-day the feeling of near separation over
shadows nie,l seem to be looking at farailiar scenes
for the last tirae, fhe olives are nodding good-by
to rae, and Castalia gurgles a low farewell.
Eeally I have now plucked the topraost fruit
of ray European journey, though I thought so
before, particularly after my two stays at
Athens. But my two stays here in this Par
nassian region, especially the last one, have
given me what I now know I carae to Europe

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 867
for, even if I was totally unconscious of any
such object at the start. This modern islarid of
old Hellenism I have pretty well explored, having
gone over it and around it and through it a
number of times ; especially I have resided at its
two central points, Delphi and Arachoba, or the
ancient in the modern and the modern in the
ancient. I thought at first a week raight suffice,
but at the end of it another week was exacted,
even at the end of the third week there was an
inner coercive voice saying, not yet, not yet. So
it came about that the demon imprisoned me
here the fourth and the fifth week, giving me,
however, bounteous entertainment all the while.
But for a day or two I have felt him relaxing his
grasp, ancl this evening he said. Depart on the
morrow. Thus I deem to-night my Delphic
apprenticeship done, after a service which I
imagine I shall not soon forget.
The last evening it was that I saw Elpinike at
Delphi,
Softly her words in mine ear throbbed the
low strain of a hymn.
After I had come home and lain down on my
rugs at the hearthstone.
There I lay down by myself filled with her
musical speech.
Always my thoughts were lingering over her
tones and her glances.
Till by degrees I had strayed into the realm
of the dreara.

568 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
[Editorial Note. What this last Delphic
dream was, being too long for quotation here,
can be seen in Delphic Days, where it is printed
as the last poem of the book, under the title of
The Outlook].
[As the stay in the Parnassian region has had
some Uterary results in fhe author's life, it may
be permitted at this point to mention them to
those interested. Nearly thirty years have
passed since then ; some of the old friends may
wish to have their memory refreshed, and some
of the new friends may wish to know a little
about these raatters.
1'. The first and most immediate fruit of the
Parnassian abode, and of the trip to Greece and in.
deed of the whole European journey , was the book
called Delphic Days, printed at St. Louis in the
spring of 1880 (second edition with a good many
needed corrections in 1891). It is made up of
eighty-four poems in the elegiac measure, which
are naraed Hyrans (as before stated). This is
the part of ray journey which insisted on expres
sion first, and got itself fairly corapleted before
anything else. It was alraost done when I
reached home. Still many a fragment had to be
left behind, refusing fo be finished, or contented
to stay down in the realm of prose. For instance,
a poera on the Delphic Oracle was repeatedly
scheraed, but it would dance off into soraething
else, or break loose from the measured gait of

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 659
the Hymn. Here is a shred never before
printed, which I have corae upon whUe rum
maging through my old papers:
Oracle, show me, grave prophet, the source of
thy Delphian vision;
Let me but look on thy face beamiiig full into
thy face;
Bend thy oracular countenance back to itself
as a mirror,
I would see thine own glance doubly beholding
itself. —
Asker, thy question is mine, I now voyage my
world to discover,
I have, like thee, O man, never yet found
out myself.
With this response of the Oracle, the conclu
sion was reached and the poem would not move
farther, having wound itself up into soraething
like an Epigrara rather than a Hymn, which
latter was the poetic form of the book.
2. A product of this same trip to the Par
nassian regions is The Walk in Hellas, which
gives an account of the traveler afoot and alone
as he journeys from Athens to Delphi. It was
written out from notes for friends who wished
to hear of the author's experiences. First part
printed at St. Louis in 1881, second part in
1882; the whole reprinted in 1892. This book
is in several respects the counterpart in prose of
Delphic Days'. The two worlds of Parnassus,

560 BETUBN TO DELPHL
represented by Delphi and Arachoba, and so
strongly irapressed upon the author, found
utterance in two books, without any such thing
being intended or thought of till accorapUshed.
It may also be added that both move to same
Parnassian* region, but from opposite directions.
3. Slower in coraing to maturity was The
Epigrammatic Voyage which is the collec
tion of the Epigrams which kept bubbling
up along -my path when I once struck into
the classical world at Eome, and thence on the
way from Eome to Athens, and also while at
Athens, (see preceding pp. 166, 169, 186-7,
248-50, 310, 362, 403, 414, 425, 431, 434,
485, 487). Thus they continued streaming
through my whole journey from Italy to Delphi,
where they stopped for a time in fhe presence of
a stronger bent. Still at home they would
occasionally rise to the surface and have a little
carnival, especially when I read them to a small
circle of appreciative friends, who would talk
back at thera. Here is one never printed which
I have just dug out of its hiding-place of a score
of years; it is American-born evidently, and
sprang up from some occasion not now re
membered :
Eeading these epigrams starts between me and
thee a keen ball-play.
Listener, thou must take part, else the whole
game will be nought;

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 561
Do not simply look on, but hold up thy hand
like a catcher.
Fling back at me the ball, then I another shall
send.
The epigr ammic mood ceased, or rather began
to be transformed into something different in
1886, when the book was printed as a sort of
farewell to a departing phase of one's life.
About 200 have found a place in the collection,
though many a little shred had to be sheared off
and many a little motive left unfinished.
4. Another direct fruit of the European
journey was Prorsus^ Retrorsus, the product of
my three stays at Eorae, lasting all together
raore than five months. These, for want of a
better word, I have called by the traditional
name of Elegies, which have that city and
specially its ancient art-life as the background.
Thus they are quite distinct from the Epigrams
and the Hymns, though in the same measure.
But they were the last to get finished ; some of them
staying by rae in an incomplete state till 1892,
when they were banished out of me into a
printed book, and thus gotten rid of, not hav
ing troubled me since. Still they were a long,
long delight, bringing before rae living persons,
scenes, and experiences set in a Eoraan frarae-
work of raultitudes of statues peopling for me
that old world. ^ 36

562 BETUBN TO DELPHI.
5. I have already sufficiently indicated that in
this trip through Greece, the conception of
Agamemnon's Paughter rose upon my mind, at
first in the form of a dramatic Tetralogy, which
afterwards changed into a romantic poem, when
the intensity of the classic mood had subsided-
About my personal relation to this book I have
spoken elsewhere. Printed first in 1885; re
printed with an appendix in 1892.
6. The present work, which embraces the
whole ground traveled over, is now to be added
to the above as one of the direct results of the
journey. As to the indirect results they show
themselves in the author's various writings on
Homer, on Greek Philosophy, on Architecture,
etc. But the foregoing six books all belong
properly to what may be deemed a classical
itinerary].

IbomewarD.
Patras, April 18th, 1879.
When I sprang on board of the little Greek
steamer at Itea (the landing place for Delphi
and Arachoba on the Corinthian Gulf) and the
vessel faced about to the West, I felt that my
journey homeward had actually begun at last.
I knew that I had gotten the boon which I came
for, as far as I could get if, and which for many
raonths had lured or rather driven me on to the
end. What that boon is, I should find it very
hard to describe now; I imagine that I shall
.rspend years in trying to describe it and to im
part if, and then I may not succeed very well.
But while on the vessel I had a crushing mis
fortune. A Greek sailor who had been in the
(563)

564 HOMEWABD.
naval service of England, taking me for a Brit
isher, I suppose, came up to me and addressed
rae in English. I was at the moraent jotting
down an item, but I closed ray note-book and put
it into my side pocket, as I thought, when if
slipped down to the floor and rolled over info the
sea. Thaf book contained all my Delphic inspira
tion for weeks — scenes, observations, images,
raotives for hymns. I felt at first as if I
would have to jump info the wafer after it. But
I did not, and a pang came over me which made
me for a while a soul damned : I thought I had
lost my boon. Ere long, however, I recovered
myself enough to set about recalling and writing
down again everything that plunged overboard in
that book. I have been staying two days at this
place engaged wholly in the work of memory. A
few things have refused fo come back ; at least
in that form of words in which they first leaped
out of the mind.
I cannot describe to you the anguish which
overflowed me for a full. day; I wandered about
forlorn, plunged suddenly into a Hell out of my
Parnassian Paradise. But now I begin to feel
that the visitation was a trial of my faith, and
perchance a blessing. It has compelled nie to
re-think, to re-imagine, and to re-enact before
myself that whole Delphic experience, by an in
tense and desperate effort of Will which hasstirred
me up from the bottom. I could not have pther-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 565
wise known how deeply that sojourn had taken
hold of rae. Though such a re-creation of it,
doubtless it has cut deeper grooves than ever in
the bed-rock of ray being.
But at present the lost is pretty well restored,
and with it myself; some gaps there are still,
which raay yet be partially "filled, and some im
provements have been made in the rescript. So
to-morrow I shall infernally be calraed down
enough to look outside of myself again. But I
did have an Oceanic terapest inside, which utterly
prevented my journey to Olympia where I must
be again serene, in order to view with delight and
profit that new phase of the old Greek world
recently uncovered by the Gerraan excavators.
To-raorrow, however, I hope to be off again ; if
not then, the day after.
Olympia, April 25th, 1879.
The Gerraan excavation of this far- faraed
locality is still going on, and I have seen the
gangs digging and finding a few little objects.
Some four years the work has been prosecuted,
so that the temple and the raain area are prac
tically uncovered. Frora the village of Druva,
which lies on an eminence nearby, I can look
down into the ruinous shell of the chief religious
center of Greece dedicated to Zeus Olyrapius, the
supreme God. It was a satisfaction to stand ok

666 HOMEWABD.
the spot where was placed the ancient statue of
him by Phidias, about which such rapturous re
ports have corae down from antiquity. The
Athenian artist, it seems, had the power to make
the much-divided Greek people feel its oneness,
as they looked upon his revelation of their com
mon highest divinity. Such was and is the chief
function of Art. Phidias united all Hellas as
no Greek statesman or conqueror ever did or
could, and the act of unification was felt on this
spot in fhe mighty epiphany of the God. But
alack a-day, it reraained only a feeling, or af
most an inspiration ; it never rose to be a reality
in an actual institution. But the statue itself
has completely disappeared, possibly some frag
ments of its pedestal may be lying around in this
rubbish. Still quite a little bit of sculpture has been dug
up, and is now collected in an open shed on the
grounds under the charge of a Greek keeper of
antiquities, who is very polite. Of course I start
to work at it iraraediately, and find many sug
gestive fragraents to keep me busy in trying to
reconstruct that old sculpturesque world. But
there are two works which are the main centers
of attraction. First is the Hermes of Praxiteles
found on the spot where it was described by
ancient Pausanias. Dr. Treu gave me a vivid
description of its first discovery. On the whole
this must be pronounced the most perfect work

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 667
of art which antiquity has transmitted — not the
greatest, not the strongest, but the most flaw
less. Next in importance probably is the Victory
of Paeonius, which shows the stone getting over
its own weight, the statue flying against gravity ;
thus it indicates how early Sculpture was in a
struggle with its own limits.
The chief interest of Olympia now is that it
shows us, fragmentary as if is, the art-world of
Hellas concentrated in one of its most noted
localities. If differs from Eome in having works
at first hand, not a reproduction, or a repro
duction of a reproduction. If Athens could
get back the Elgin marbles, people would
have to go f o Greece to see Greek Art in its
highest primal efflorescence. Naturally I cora
pare Olyrapia with Delphi, which may be exca
vated sorae day with pick and spade. But I have
a preference for my kind of excavation into the
soul of old Hellas through the still pulsing life,
speech, manners, customs, and world-view of
the people. I think I caught glimpses back of
Olympia in what I saw at Arachoba. At least
that is the strong impression which I am carry
ing with rae homeward. But what a cluster of
temples stood here, what a forest of statues !
Why should all Hellas concentrate itself on this
spot, and express itself in art, games, poetry,
and religion? Nature at Delphi is far raore
suggestive, varied and colossal. In the great

568 HOMEWABD, '
conflict between Greece and the Orient, Olyrapia
seems to have taken no part, and it never had a
Herodotus like Delphi, to tell of it.
The visitor will be interested in studying the
excavation, the greatest and best organized of all
yet undertaken. It is truly a Gerraan work in
its thoroughness and system. I watch the
laborers — raore than 200 it is said; they are
Greeks who are now paid good wages for digging
out their own things, which they are to keep in
fhe country. One watches the impleraents throw
ing up dirt, to see if a treasure of some kind
may be unearthed ; it has the interest of a game
of chance. A German overseer tells me thaf
these Greek laborers had fo be drilled to their
task; they had a tendency to do things separ
ately andin their own way, spading a little here
ancl a little there, individually. Well, that was
their old trouble. Now they proceed with the
discipline of the German army. Eeport runs
thaf the appropriation may not be granted next
year by the Diet; if this happens, I shall have
come just in time again.
Very hospitable was Dr. Treu, fhe Director of
fhe work ; at his invitation I dined several times
with his family, and with his German assistants,
whose autographs I stUl find in my note-book,
namely, Dr. Ad. Furtwangler, Dr. Wilhelm
Dorpfeld, Dr. Eichard Borrmann. These were
young fellows busied in onp way or other with

A TOUR IN EUROPE, 569
the archaeological details of the excavation. But
my feeUngs and raeraories chiefly hovered
around Dr. Treu's little daughter; the mother
observing my interest, asked me if I had ein
Meines Mddchen. I answered, "yes, and about
of the same age and Wesen-" Whereat came a
very cordial invitation that we should visit them
at Berlin ten years hence, when both the
daughters would be young ladies.
I have my own roora in a separate house of
the village where I sleep and work. Every day
I go down into the plain of Olyrapia, watching
the laborers and studying the remains, even tak
ing little excursions in the neighborhood and up
the two strearas, the' Alpheius and the Cladeus,
to whose overflows and sedimentary deposits the
preservation of what we now see, is due.
Four days have passed pleasantly enough, but
I cannot get out of Olympia my Delphic
enthusiasm. Prosaic archseology is now domi
nant, and to it I feel that I have done my duty
and must be off. When I was in my room alone,
the Parnassian hymn would begin to jingle in
spite of me, and to sing liftle radiant snatches of
itself. To-morrow I shall walk to the lively
business town of Pyrgos ; thence to its port
called Kafakolon, where I shall board the Greek
steamer again, which will wind through the
Ionian Islands to Corfu, whence an Italian
piroscafo will land me at Brindisi on the back
track toward home.

570 HOMEWABD, Naples, May 2-5, 1879.
Of course I went straight to the Museum
again, for the purpose of seeing the Porapeian
pictures. They are still beautiful, but not quite
so attractive as they were before. Some remain
the same, but on the whole one feels that Art
was sinking in the Pompeian world, and was be
coming the degraded slave of the senses, not
their transfigurer. What an enorraous quantity
of pretty graceful figures seeking to arause their
conqueror! How different frora the Parthenon
and its spirit! Still more remote does this
Porapeian raanifestation stand from the Per-
nassian. It seems to be a kind of anesthetic for
the Eoraan world-pain ( Weltschmerz) of the im
perial time. I peeped into the forbidden room
in which is looked from the general public the
night-side of heathen life and art. I could not
help chuckling at an old priest who gazed
intently at an undraped Venus. The Pompeian
dancers and swaying figures seem to be the great
favorites, if one may judge by the number of
of their copyists.
I went out to Porapeii itself and spent another
full day in seeing and renewing my former ac
quaintances. I found them all quite the sarae as
before. Tne excavation is going on here too,
though slowly. Porapeii still remains for me the
colossal image of ancient Fate vvhich finally over-

A TOUR IN EUROPE. 571
whelmed the Greco-Eoman world. Olympia,
too, received the same blow though in a very
different way. When I was tired of rarabling, I
took out my note-book and read my Pompeian
epigraras, for I had, when here before, an
epigrararaatic fit, whioh found relief only by in
dulgence. I confess that I have no such creative
tendency now, for the Delphic bent continues the
undertone of all my productive moments. StiU
I have renewed the meraory of my former mood
by re-reading some little elegiac turns like
Ages on ages were working in Eome the mighty
destruction
Which Porapeii befell in but a moment of
Time.
Pompeii persists, in spite of its reality, in be
ing symbolic above anything that I have seen in
classic lands. The whole appearance impresses
itself upon my mind as a symbol, betokening not
merely what it is by itself alone, but what its
worldis — that old world of which it is only a little
part. Nature (in Vesuvius) seems here actually
to symbolize through her own inner necessity.
She speaks in her way and foretells in a tongue
which utters, to me at least, the same meaning
as that of Greek Tragedy :
Language of Destiny, lettered in furious flames
on this mountain ;
Alphabet mighty of Fate carved on this town.
long ago.

672 HOMEWABD.
I cannot agairi ascend to the mouth of
Vesuvius, as fhe old Titan has shown himself
very restless in the last few days under his
enormous terrestrial burden. The result is
excursionists are not allowed to go up to the
cone, let alone descend into the crater. I desired
once raore to enter fhe jaws of the monster and
take a peep down his fiery throat, but of course
I don't want to be swallowed by him, or to leap
into his flaraing belly as the Greek philosopher
Empedocles is reported to have done at ^tna.
Looking at the smoke-wreathed mountain in the
distance frora Porapeii, and soliloquizing upon
its peculiar syrabolic promptings, I put together
some odd fragments of an epigram from my
note-book, piecing it out thus :
Destiny smiteth one with her scepter, that all
be forever,
Slayeth this moment of Time that so Eter
nity be;
Evil she is to the moment, but to Eternity holy ;
Wrecked she Pompeii then, hence thou
beholdest it now.

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 573
Rome, May 6-16, 1879.
As I entered Eome for fhe third time on the
way back from Greece, the emotion was strangely
altered, I may say, reversed. Coraing from
Paris or Germany to the Eternal City, one seems
tobe swimming up stream, against the currrntof
civilization; but passing from Hellas fo Italy I
am floating down streara, along with the sweep
of fhe World's History. I have been, as I
believe, at the head waters of Europe's culture
and have taken a dip there to the extent of ray
powers. That little Parnassian world is or rep-
r-esents the gerrainal raicrocosm out of which
Time has unfolded the present civilized niacro-
cosra, which of course reaches out fo America.
Now I have come down to Eome (not come up
to it as before) in the descent of the ages, as
Greece herself once flowed over this way long ere
the Christian era began. Thus I feel myself to
be making the round of European civilization, on
its ascending and descending aros, the latter
being now my path horaeward.
Quite instinctively I knocked at my former
landlady's door; she came and again she put rae
into my old room, for the third time after sepa
ration. Also there is another change in her,
whioh has taken place during ray six raonths'
absence : she appears before rae now transformed
into the happy mother with babe at the breast.

574 HOMEWABD.
Of course I am delighted; "that just suits me,"
I exclaira, "now we shall have the Madonna and
Barabino alive and at home, instead of having to
go to the picture gallery for them or to the
church." At once I began to get ready for another dive
into Eorae, bringing together ray books, charts,
drawings, etc. As I laid out my scribbled
Delphic papers in considerable quantity upon the
table, my landlady happened to come info the
roora and to take notice of thera — a thing she
never did before. " What is all that writing?"
she asked naively: "is it 7^oba d'amoreT' I con
fess I was puzzled for a reply. She wanted fo
know if it was all about love, and I could not
exactly say yes nor no, for I had not settled the
question in ray own raind. The baby cried, and
out she ran without quizzing me any further;
thus the little drama got solved by a new Deus
ex machina.
At my quarters I am in ear-shot of the Foun
tain of Trevi, to which I soon went for a sight
and a drink. There I met my young Italian
friend Giovanni, the devoted admirer of Leo
pardi, who has been called the Heine of Italy.
Whether the coraparison fits I do not know.
We went off together to a neighboring restaurant
and had a dish of raacaroni washed down by the
wine of Albano from a wicker flask. All this
was in raemory of old times. I asked after

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 675
our common German friend from Magdeburg,
the Pythagorean, who started for Naples and
Southern Italy on foot about the time I quit
Eome last year. "He is in town" said Gio
vanni. Then we shall see hira this afternoon on
the Pincio where he always attends the concert,
and hear soraething about his experiences.
I visit the Vatican Museura of Sculpture and
salute all my old friends there, to whora I have
grown affectionate, though they be of cold stone.
Particularly I ara drawn toward the tragic
Laocoon, whioh seems to me now more prophetic
than ever, after I have seen ruined Hellas at
Delphi, Olympia, Athens. That preraonitory
Greek Fafe like a serpent comes down upon rae
again, and actually bites rae to pain, since I have
becorae so deeply Hellenic. I re-read my forraer
notes upon the Loocoon, araounting to ten closely
written pages of letter-paper ; I studied again
the lengthy account of it in Overbeck ; what is
all this writing corapared to that visible comraen
tary written in the ruins of Greece? Overcom
ing is the sympathy ; I too have to feel myself to
be tragic, in so far as I am Greek. Hardly can
I live outside of the World's History, which is
so impressive here at Eome. Indeed one has on
this spot to die vicariously with antiquity and
then be resurrected.
At the Capitoline Museum also I renewed ray
marble friendships. Who there allures rae the

576 HOMEWABD.
most now? The Faun of Praxiteles, not the
artist's own work, but the best copy of it ex
tant. StiU I had to say to it, dialogizing
inwardly with myself : I know you better than I
did when here before. "I have seen you aUve at
Delphi, on the sunny Parnassian declivities, in
side the dark Corycean Cave ; I have talked to
you in rural Greek, and even addressed to you a
Delphic hymn in EngUsh. Your original, the
statue of Praxitiles I have not seen, but I have
seen fhe original of his original, back yonder in
that Parnassian world." Sol speak fo the Marble
Faun on the Capitol, but behold in him the liv
ing Faun in his happy primitive Delphic environ
ment A beautiful urn, which I recognized as having
been already a favorite of mine, I look at again
with the old delight, contemplating the merry
scene depicted on its sides, though it seems to
have contained the ashes of a youth. Already I
have noticed this ancient contrast to our gloomy
view of death, and its peculiar influence over rae.
I was led to write an epitaph upon this strange
gravestone, which ran as follows :
O fair boy, around this urn where thy ashes are
resting.
Nymphs are dancing in glee fo the mad flute of
the Faun;
Joyous was ever thy life, each day was the bloom
of a banquet,

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 677
Through this gate of the tomb on thou dost
leap with a laugh.
Still with this rout of merry musicians and
dancers around thee.
E'en old Hades will smile, all his dark grot
will be lit.
This is in the form of the epigram (or inscrip
tion), which rerainds me that the epigrararaatic
bent with its utterance in elegiacs began here at
Eorae about one year ago. It throbs up now and
then, but the Delphic mood is what still domi
nates me creatively. But I ara chiefly engaged
in the prosaic task of refreshing and reviewing
all my former Eoman work, which task keeps
me busy at three main matters : f o see the
objects thoroughly again, to read my former
notes upon them and make new comments,
finally to consult the necessary books.
At my quarters two recent arrivals I may note.
The first flea appeared an hour or so since; I
have a greater terror of him than before because
of a Greek experience. Wandering through
Attica one day, night overtook me and I stayed
in a Uttle hamlet called Heracleon, a settleraent
chiefly of old Bavarian soldiers of King Otho's
time. Next morning I counted 64 red gouges on
my wrist alone, the battle having continued all
night. The second arrival is the rapper, what
ever he be, making a pother over my head in
the garret late at night. I again asked fhe land-
37

578 HOMEWABD.
lady about it, but she professed ignorance,
though I could see by her color and action that
sh-e knew soraewhat. She turned away as from
a forbidden thing, and of course I dropped the
matter. I shall have to suffer it to remain as an
unsolved problem along wifh some other Eoman
mysteries, for instance that of the great Michael
Angelo himself. Let it stand as a symbol of
that Eome which I did not see — doubtless avery
considerable fragment of it.
But the hour has come when I must leave
Rome flnally, though I have repeatedly made and
unmade my resolution fo stay a week, a month
longer at this vast ganglion of antiquity, into
which all once carae and all once went out. I
am, however, on the descending arc of the
World's History, and also of my European Jour
ney — and this must now get itself done. Pretty
well I have connected Eome with the past in its
monuments. The Colosseum, for instance, that
enormous shell of the Eoman Empire, now lying
here broken, with the living thing gone out of it
which made it and of which it was a mighty
manifestation, I have linked backwards with
Pompeii, with Olympia, even with the Parthenon.
The line for me at present always runs on till it
reaches the Parnassus, the little living cell which
exi.sted long before the rest of the huge body,
and still exists in priraordial activity.' The old
Greek seems to have had some far-off presenti-

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 579
ment of its destiny by making it the seat of the
Muses, who are iramortal. Thus I ara now
always looking backward while going forward,
interlooping the end with the beginning.
This is the last afternoon of my Eoman stay,
ere I take the evening train for the North ; I
long to see the whole city again and I go out for
a view from the Pincio. Eome lies before mein
all her sunlit grandeur, and reveals her most
majestic moraent, but the sun yonder, the source
of the grand illumination, is rapidly dropping
seaward. I sit down on a stone bench under an
ilex, and start to elegizing him in accord with ray
mood. It is the last elegy written in Eome, where
the first bubbled up more than twelve months ago
in a way which still makes me a puzzle to myself.
Stay, O Sun, in thy course, restrain the mad
flight of fhe Hours !
Look from thy chariot on high, ponder the
glories of Eome ;
Nothing so great ever rose up under thine eye on
this planet.
Thou, I know, hast seen all, measuring
bloom and decay ;
Stop thy steeds for to-day, let them rest on the
slopes of the mountains
Ere thou fling thyself down under the waves of
the sea;
Pour thy fiery glances over the grand Colosseum,

580 HOMEWABD.
Burnish anew the old fanes with thy warm
shimmer of gold.
— For a raoraent methought the Sungod an
swered my prayer,
Suddenly info one glance flashing Eorae's
present and past.
Letting me see with his eye all at once her ages
of glory.
Showing her last best look as he sprang under
the sea.

Paris, May 18th to June 18th, 1879.
I enter my old stopping-place again in Eue
Vivienne, seventh story, and find my Swiss-
French landlady quite the sarae as I left her,
whose husband is still the bed-raaker for the
lodgers. She thanked me for the people I had
sent her along the path of ray travels. At once
she brought out of the closet fhe French books
which I had left in'her charge sorae fifteen months
ago, when my face was turned in the opposite
direction. Thefirst days I have spent in looking over Pans
again. Bernhardt is still the rage, and I go to see
her rendition of Victor Hugo's plays, especially
those in which I saw her before. What a quantify
of theaters in Paris, yet each with its own pecu
liar character! I run after thera all, often with
out much result. The piece which has produced

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 581
the strongest impression upon rae is the Tartuffe
by MoUfere. I knew the play as an old acquaint
ance, but the actor of the main part, that of the
religious hypocrite, was the best expositor of the
meaning of this drama I have ever seen. The
building was packed and the audience was anti
clerical ; every hit against the priests received a
thunderous response, in whioh particularly a large
number of women joined. Once I thought there
might be a riot, but the uproar toned down, as
there was no opposition. It was interesting and
very suggestive to see irreligious Paris having a
liftle picnic.
I have been going a good deal to the Univer
sity for the purpose of hearing three lecturers,
some of whose books are known to rae. Meziferes
has written acceptably about Shakespeare, and
isnow discoursing upon Don Quixote. With a
fair araount of good-will and application I can
not get much out of it, except a laugh now and
then which really belongs to Cervantes. M.
Caro I have heard upon the classic French
Tragedy (Eacine and Corneille) which I also try
to see as often as possible on the boards. Icannot
say that I have yet become sympathetic with it,
in spite of all niy repeated efforts. Is it that ray
long study of Shakespeare (Voltaire's drunken
savage) has warped me? Still I like the old
Greek drama, which is declared to be' the origin of
these Franco-classical plays. Caro is an eloquent

582 HOMEWABD,
and also a very handsorae man : it is said that the
fine ladies, who flock to his lectures to see him
more than to hear hira, have re-baptized him
Carissimo. Another lecture which I took pains
to attend on account of St. Louis associations
was given by M. Paul Janet, a neaf dapper little
fellow with a buttonhole bouquet and with a very
precise ennunciation. I remembered him from
his attack on Hegel, whioh Harris reviewed in a
telling article which he read to the philosophical
group on Salisbury street. Afterwards the
article was printed in an early number of the
Journal of Speculative Philosophy.
Of course I have often gone to the Louvre
GaUeries, and saluted ray familiars there. Iwas
astonished that I knew thera so well after my
considerable absence. Still I shall have to con
fess that the first keen edge of interest was a
little worn. The statues had a tendency to go
back to Greece, and I went with thera; the Diana
of Versailles for instance, protecting her fawn
became intimately associated in ray mind with
Iphigenia, who was sacrificed to her at Aulis.
Therewith carae up again my Greek tetralogy,
which haunted rae for several days. But par
ticularly in this distant sculpturesque world my
Delphic Moment rises as the end toward which I
frora the first was tending (though I did not
know it), and from which I am now returning.
That is now my real genetic Self, so that, if I

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 583
write anything creatively, it drops into a Delphic
Hyran, of which I have produced at least a dozen
saraples here at Paris.
Still I have tried fo do something else in a
kind of desperation. My distinctive local study
has been the old classical drama of the tirae of
Louis XIV, which once played such a high part
in European Literature. It is a raodern repro
duction of the Greek draraa. Thus it might
give me assistance in building ray Iphigenia
edifice of four draraas. It is largely this which
has caused my month's delay in Paris, where the
environment is favorable and where the old
French dramatic tradition still prevails. [Pdi-
torial Note. The author's travail over Iphigenia
never producecl a draraa at all. Affer^years of
incubation, which may be considered an evolu
tion, the legend insisted upon eschewing a dra
matic and even a classic forra, and finally got
born as rhyraed Tale of a roraantic cast.]
And I have had here another little deflection
frora the Delphic bent. Sauntering thrpugh the
Latin Quarter one day, I carae upon the busi
ness house of Didot, the great publisher of Greek
and Latin Classics. I yielded to the temptation
of buying his edition of the Anthologia Palatina,
with Latin translation, though I had already two
other editions, and was besides overburdened
with luggage. I carried the volumes to my room
and delved in them for several days, having
caught another little spell of the epigrammatic

584 HOMEWABD.
fever. The many epigrams or rather epitaphs
upon Anacreon attracted me specially, written by
a number of Greek poets of different ages, and
celebrating various sides of his poetic character.
Two of the best of these poets were Siraonides
of Cos, who is said fo have perfected the epigrara,
and the rauch later Leonidas of Tarentum. To
this fact should be added that modern poets have
taken up the same theme, the most celebrated
being Goethe, who has also left his epitaph upon
Anacreon in elegiacs. Herder likewise is said to
have busied hiraself with this subject, by way of
translation into German, though he was a
preacher. As to Anacreon himself he seems to voice in
song the sensuous side of the Greek world taken
by itself. All art indeed has this element,
though not for it own sake in the highest works.
Anacreon, therefore, represents a phase of Greek
life and art, though not the loftiest phase. Still
his fascination has always been great. I recol
lect that as a boy I read sorae of his pieces in
Bullions' Greek Eeader and was captivated. At
Eome I picked him up again, and even made
some verses after his pattern, as I also tried niy
hand at reproducing in English some of Horace's
meters. But the elegiac stream soon swallowed
all these little rills.
Here at Paris I too have written an epitaph on
Anacreon, in audacious rivalry with the old
Greeks and with Goethe, In fact Paris is a

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 685
stimulating environment for such a vein, this
city being famous for its Anacreontic charac
ter. The sense-life is here fully unfolded and
portrayed, chiefly in the form of the novel.
To me Anacreon is intoxicated not siraply with
wine but with every forra of sensation, his own
poetry even works on hira like an intoxicant. I
appreciate him the better now, since I have be
come a little inebriated on my own epigram.
But enough ! toss it off and be done wifh it, and
therewith be done with gay Anacreontic Paris.
Merry Anacreon, many an epigram tells of thy
joyance,
And thy epitaph too ever is written afresh ;
Wine and Love and the Muse made thy life one
intoxication,
Even thy death is a feast lighting grim Hades
with joy.
AU made thee drunk — the twitter of swallows
the chirp of cicadas.
Love of maiden and youth, gift of mad Bac
chus as well.
Nature becomes a melodious roundel reeling in
verses,
Eoses and ivy and vines twirl in thy Unes with
a laugh;
But the most maddening draught to thyself and
to me is thy poera,
A true singer thou art, on thine own song
thou art drunk.

586 HOMEWABD.
London, June 19th io July 1st, 1879.
Not far from Victoria Station is the Shakes
peare building in which I had my quarters when
I flrst came to London. I rap atthe door; be
hold the same landlady, who says: "you can have
[your old room." It seeras to be a mark of Euro
pean stability that these landladies never change.
On this back track already at Naples I found my
former hostess (a German by the way, Frau
Zepf- Weber). So it has beenatEome and Paris.
It was not long before I found rayself in the
British Museum taking ray old positions for
viewing fully the Elgin Marbles, fhe other half
of the Parthenon which has been transported to
London. Artistically ray European journey has
lain between these two halves of the most perfect
Greek temple; the sculptural and the architec
tural halves. I started with the first here in
London eighten months ago, traveled on to the
second, and have circled back to the first again.
Externally, and in a way internally I believe I
have united the disrupted Parthenon, the type of
the Greek world, putting together the merabers
of its beautiful organisra from the extremes of
Europe. Of course I feel my attitude now to
be different from what it first was : I seek to
join both the Arts, Sculpture and Architecture,
together, as they were anciently conjoined ; then
I try to behold each of thera, diverse as they are,

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 587
rising frora a common conception. This was the
divine epiphany whioh was shown in the central
figure of each pediment, whose triangular form
indicates a gradual ascent to the Highest. Here
is the one genetic source frora which flow both
the statuary and the teraple.
I am repeating myself again, as everywhere on
this back track of raine, reading my former
notes, which are quite extensive, as well as re-
perusing my Overbeck. 1 have to laugh at some
of my previous observations on the Elgin
Marbles, hardly more than desperate struggles to
dive into the heart of the refractory stone. I
seera to read between the lines of ray own writ
ing: "Not now, not now: you must goto Hellas
first and then corae back." Eeally I have a mind
to beUeve that good-fortune led me info the best
way ; genetically the statue, or the divine appear
ance, is first, and calls forth a dwelling-place ex
pressive and worthy of the God whose habitation
it is. Architecture creatively comes after Sculp
ture, not before if, where it is usually placed in
the ordering of the Fine Arts, for instance by
Hegel and his followers. Moreover we are not'
to 'forget that the original divine appearance
reaches back to Homer of whose poetry it is the
center and directive agency. The group of the
pediment, and indeed all highest Sculpture is
Homer reaUzed, materialized, his Gods being
transformed into visible objective shapes.

588 HOME WABD.
Thus the Elgin Marbles have caused me to look
back to the Parthenon through the line of Greek
Art along which I have passed. Still there is
soraething which they cannot bring with them :
the cliraate, the atraosphere, the harraonious
Nature out pf which they seem to bloom. They
cannot bring Hymettus srailing down upon its
own artistic world in a kind of visible at
tunement :
Look! on this side Parthenon lies, on that side
Hyraettus ;
If thou canst hear with the eye, both of them
chime to one note.
The clear teraple doth echo along all the lines of
the mountain,
And the mountain of stone throbs into temples
unbuilt.
Still less do we catch any note here of that
Parnassian life which, as we think, lies back
even of the Elgin Marbles and of Phidias, and is
the far-off prelude of their coming. Naturally I
travel back through them to ray Delphic Moment,
reproducing in a kind of Neo-Platonic ecstacy,
the original creative idea of the Hellenic wcjrld.
Undoubtedly the plaintive sigh of these
marble exiles for the sunny land of their birth I
still hear, but my feeling toward it has changed.
Forraerly strong sympathy led me to wish for
their immediate restoration to the horae from

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 589
which they were torn in an unhappy time ; this
restoration is also the fervent prayer of the
modern Greek, for I have often heard it from his
lips. But I have corae to think of thera as mis
sionaries to us barbarous Northerners, preaching
the evangel of Greek culture and beauty. So I
have now to respond to their horae-sick cry :
"You are inthe right place, where the benificent
Powers have brought you; you can do moregood
in London than anywhere else, directing us, as
you do, significantly to the source of European
civilization. I lean to the opinion that unless
you had been here in England pleading your
cause, Greece would not have been free to-day;
an English adrairal would not have destroyed the
Turkish fleet in the bay of Navarino, and Lord
Byron would not have gone to fight for Greek
independence, taking all ideal Europe with hira.
Your eloquent forras, though battered and broken
and crying the distress of a crushed world, have
been and still are all-persuading through their
revelation of eternal beauty. On ray own part
let me say to you that unless I had seen you here
at the start, I doubt if I would have ever seen
your Hellas, and have renewed my own youth
by a fresh dip in the youth of the world. And
what is true of me is now true of thousands, and
is going to be true of mUlions. Starting from
you here in London they will raake, in one way
or other, the grand Greek loop, sweeping round

590 HOME WABD,
to Hellas through Europe and back again,
in thousand fold itineraries, which erabrace the
cycle of European civiUzation."
Such, at least, has been my loop of Europe,
quite unpurposed but now concluded, having
swung from this initial push to the Parnassian
El Dorado with its culminating Delphic Moment,
and then having vibrated back again to its start
ing-point. Moreover I cannot help noting that
this one greatest loop has had a tendency to
curvet about in lesser loops, large and little. But
after all the loop is not yet ended, though it has
taken up Europe; it must still reach out to
Araerica, even to St. Louis on the Mississippi.
To-raorrow I shall board the vessel on this last
stretch of my journey.

St. Louis, Aug. 1st, 1879.
Having arrived early this morning I hastened
from the Eailroad Station to the corner of Fifth
and Market, waiting for my friend Judge Woer-
ner [to whom many of the foregoing letters,
probably the raost intiraate ones, were addressed] .
Soon I saw him jurap off the street-car, and I
went up to him, as he walked toward his office in
the Court House. After a hearty greeting, we
spoke together of raatters of mutual interest, not
failing to have a word about our coraraon friend
Brockraeyer, whose, influence has gone so deep

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 591
into the lives of both of us. " But you," he
said " have taken quite a turn in life, since I saw
you off two years ago this coming December.
You seem the same, yet are not." " I suppose
so," I replied, " but I do not know what it all
means myself." " Well, you have reachedthe
end of it safely anyhow," he added. "Yes,",
I replied, " the end of it but also the beginning.
Indeed I am thinking that the end of it is so
complete that I shall have to begin all over
again."

IPostscript.
St. Louis, September 1907.
Certain editorial notes which have been scat
tered through the preceding book, have doubt
less hinted to the reader this fact : an author is
here editing his own letters after a considerable
lapse of tirae. Let it be added, that this final
letter is addressed " to whom it may concern,"
a person not' hitherto on the list of correspond
ents, but for whom above all others the present
book is now to be taken out of its long storage
in raanuscript and put into type.
If the date of the first letter be compared witlT
that of this last one, thirty years lacking a few
months will be seen to lie between thera. The
general reader will be apt to ask: Why print
(592)

A TOUB IN EUBOPE, 593
such an old lof of scribbUng so far behind the
time? The answer is, that the book is not in
tended for the general public, at least not pri
marily; not every book is for everybody, very
few are for many, not one is for all, and very
many are for nobody. The present collection of
fluttering leaflets has been stamped in printer's
ink and sewed together for the author's pupils
and friends first of all — for those who may wish
to see him as he was nearly a generation ago in
a pivotal act at a pivotal tirae of life. The pub
lic in general cannot well have any such interest,
though of course it is not prohibited from read
ing the book, and finding as much fault with the
same as it pleases. We repeat, the book is now
addressed to whom it may concern.
The main ground for its existence is, then,
personal, biographic — at least such is the
author's own view of the matter. The prime
object is not to give inforraation about European
lands, though the contents raay not be lacking in
some information for earnest seekers.
The letters were written to about a dozen
different persons, of different ages, creeds, sexes,
nationalities, and world-views — also of different
grades and kinds of culture. In each letter
probably there is some sort of spiritual adjust
ment to the person to whom it is written. To
my own father, then living, I wrote frequently ;
I could send to him an account of the old German
38

594 POSTSCBIPT.
Pythogorean hailing from Magdeburg, but he
would not be much interested in Greek sculpture.
Another correspondent was quite the reverse
both in teraperaraent and knowledge. The reader
may have sometimes to take this adjustment into
account. But at any rate the whole thing is
honestly mine, and that is what must finally
hold its flying atoms together.
In performing the editorial function for my
self, I have made a nuraber of excisions upon my
own productions. Some readers will doubtless
think that I ought to have been more pitiless,
and to have cut out this and that passage offen
sive to somebody for this and that reason. Cer
tainly 1 have left in the text a number of things
which I would not write at present. But the
prime duty of this book is to give a picture of
myself as I was thirty years ago, not as I am
now ; it must show enough of the good and the
bad to make the likeness fairly authentic. The
psychology of the total life should be flnally the
main interest; hence the data must be reasonably
accurate, if anybody wishes to see the entire
evolution of the raan and his works.
The materials of the preceding book are con
tained chiefly in a series of letters written from
Europe and preserved in copies . and origi
nals. But I have also drawn upon two other
sources which should be mentioned. The first is
a quantify of note-books, diaries, items which

A TOUB IN EUROPE. 595
were written on the spot, brought across the
ocean, and stored away in a safe nook till they
were exhumed from the dust during the present
year for the present purpose, never having been
read as a whole by me before on this side of
the water. Many were the surprises which they
gave me, recalling old forgotten things, some
of which were buried so deep in Lethe's stream
that I cannof now recollect that they ever took
place, though they raust, as they stand definitely
recorded in tirae and locality and circurastance.
On the other hand the second source is that of
pure memory, which has retained and kept alive
numerous characteristic facts and events of which
there is no contemporary record in the letters or
in the diaries. Such a curious sport ,and sup
port our memory furnishes us : what we neglect
to set down in writing at the moraent and in
presence of the object or event, is often the
weightiest part of it, which, however, we remem
ber, and call up when needed and thus keep fresh
by a kind of traditional transraission. From the
first month after my arrival home I began to
narrate the incidents of ray Greek trip to friends
and even to little audiences ; of sorae of the most
significant of these incidents there is no trace .in
the original accounts. So I have supplied them
from Meraory, which hasnot only pieservedthem
but kept them in activity through repeated
rehearsals.

596 POSTSCBIPT.
I have asked myself the question : Were these
letters' intended for publication when written?
The reader has probably had a similar query.
After so long a time the mind refuses to give
particulars in such a matter; but so much can
be affirraed : they were left to wait till the later
life of the author had given to them their place
and value. Otherwise they would have been
burned, or perchance printed as soon as the
Walk in Hellas, before which indeed they had
been written. As far as can now be remembered,
that which has happened to them, was in a vague
way purposed frora the start. Tirae had to ap
prove their appearance, ere they could be born
into print even for those who may now have an
interest in what they recprd.
I may add that the diaries and memories had
to be re-written, and adapted to their connection.
The facts, however, all belong to the one period,
and are bound together in the unity of the one
experience. But I can at present say, looking backwards
through these past thirty years nearly, thaf this
European journey was an episode wedged into
the center of my life. Such a statement could
hardly be raade till now, when the lapse of tirae
has put the fact into its central place. I was
thirty-six years old when I set out, was thus
about " in the raiddle of the journey of our life,"
according to Dante (who started on his very

A TOUB IN EUBOPE. 597
different itinerary at thirty-five). Some other
antecedent facts I raay state for the reader's
assistance, without going into biographic details.
My profession was that of a teacher ; I had been
connected with the St. Louis High School for
the previous ten years. My first book had just
been published, under the title of The System
of Shakespeare's Dramas. I hadbeen connected
with the St. Louis philosophical raoveraent,
which was chiefly, thojugh not exclusively de
voted to the study of Hegel, but whose inspiring
genius for rae was Governor Brockraeyer. So I
had philosophized a good deal ; but another fact
was that I had also poetized a good deal, though
in a rather suppressed way — a tendency which
likewise asserted itself in this European journey.
A moderate classical training I had obtained in
my youth at a fairly good College ; but its in
struction I supplemented by studies of my own,
never letting them drop, so that my Latin and
Greek were not rusty when I touched Italy and
Greece, their original homes. Not without some
preparation as well as some predisposition has
this book turned out essentially a classical tour,
a movement toward and perchance into the heart
of the antique world, or, if the expression be
taken aright, an Itinerary to Hellenic Heathen
dom.

0436

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