causes operated in affecting my mind.  It was a still and beautiful evening in the end of May; the last sunbeams were dying away in the western sky and the first moonbeams shining in the eastern; the bright orange tints lighted up the ruins and as it were kindled the snows that still remained on the distant Apennines, which were visible from the highest accessible part of the amphitheatre.  In this glow of colouring, the green of advanced spring softened the grey and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as the lights gradually became fainter, the masses appeared grander and more gigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast of light and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of the brightest sapphire, but so highly illuminated that only Jupiter and a few stars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity and magnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of that emotion which is so properly termed the sublime.  The beauty and the permanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging to the system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and Divine Architect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of man in his most active and powerful state.  And at this moment so humble appeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to the earth, so feeble their combinations, so minute the point of space, and so limited the period of time in which they act, that I could hardly avoid comparing the generations of man, and the effects of his genius and power, to the swarms

of luceoli or fire-flies which were dancing around me and that appeared flitting and sparkling amidst the gloom and darkness of the ruins, but which were no longer visible when they rose above the horizon, their feeble light being lost and utterly obscured in the brightness of the moonbeams in the heavens.”

Onuphrio said: “I am not sorry that you have changed the conversation.  You have given us the history of a most interesting recollection and well expressed a solemn though humiliating feeling.  In such moments and among such scenes it is impossible not to be struck with the nothingness of human glory and the transiency of human works.  This, one of the greatest monuments on the face of the earth, was raised by a people, then its masters, only seventeen centuries ago; in a few ages more it will be but as dust, and of all the testimonials of the vanity or power of man, whether raised to immortalise his name, or to contain his decaying bones without a name, no one is known to have a duration beyond what is measured by the existence of a hundred generations; and it is only to multiply centuple for instance the period of time, and the memorials of a village and the monuments of a country churchyard may be compared with those of an empire and the remains of the world.”

Ambrosio, to whom the conversation seemed disagreeable, put us in mind of an engagement we had made to spend the evening at the conversazione of a celebrated lady, and proposed to call the carriage.  The reflections which the conversation and the scene had left in my mind little disposed me for general society.  I requested them to keep their engagement, and said I was resolved to spend an hour amidst the

solitude of the ruins, and desired them to send back the carriage for me.  They left me, expressing a hope that my poetical or melancholy fancy might not be the occasion of a cold, and wished me the company of some of the spectres of the ancient Romans.

When I was left alone, I seated myself in the moonshine, on one of the steps leading to the seats supposed to have been occupied by the patricians in the Colosæum at the time of the public games.  The train of ideas in which I had indulged before my friends left me continued to flow with a vividness and force increased by the stillness and solitude of the scene; and the full moon has always a peculiar effect on these moods of feeling in my mind, giving to them a wildness and a kind of indefinite sensation, such as I suppose belong at all times to the true poetical temperament.  It must be so, I thought to myself; no new city will rise again out of the double ruins of this; no new empire will be founded upon these colossal remains of that of the old Romans.  The world, like the individual, flourishes in youth, rises to strength in manhood, falls into decay in age; and the ruins of an empire are like the decrepit frame of an individual, except that they have some tints of beauty which nature bestows upon them.  The sun of civilisation arose in the East, advanced towards the West, and is now at its meridian; in a few centuries more it will probably be seen sinking below the horizon even in the new world, and there will be left darkness only where there is a bright light, deserts of sand where there were populous cities, and stagnant morasses where the green meadow or the bright cornfield once appeared.  I called up images of this kind

in my imagination.  “Time,” I said, “which purifies, and as it were sanctifies the mind, destroys and brings into utter decay the body; and, even in nature, its influence seems always degrading.  She is represented by the poets as eternal in her youth, but amongst these ruins she appears to me eternal in her age, and here no traces of renovation appear in the ancient of days.”  I had scarcely concluded this ideal sentence when my reverie became deeper, the ruins surrounding me appeared to vanish from my sight, the light of the moon became more intense, and the orb itself seemed to expand in a flood of splendour.  At the same time that my visual organs appeared so singularly affected, the most melodious sounds filled my ear, softer yet at the same time deeper and fuller than I had ever heard in the most harmonious and perfect concert.  It appeared to me that I had entered a new state of existence, and I was so perfectly lost in the new kind of sensation which I experienced that I had no recollections and no perceptions of identity.  On a sudden the music ceased, but the brilliant light still continued to surround me, and I heard a low but extremely distinct and sweet voice, which appeared to issue from the centre of it.  The sounds were at first musical like those of a harp, but they soon became articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of sublime poetical composition.  “You, like all your brethren,” said the voice, “are entirely ignorant of every thing belonging to yourselves, the world you inhabit, your future destinies, and the scheme of the universe; and yet you have the folly to believe you are acquainted with the past, the present, and the future.  I am an intelligence somewhat superior to you, though there are

millions of beings as much above me in power and in intellect as man is above the meanest and weakest reptile that crawls beneath his feet; yet something I can teach you: yield your mind wholly to the influence which I shall exert upon it, and you shall be undeceived in your views of the history of the world, and of the system you inhabit.”  At this moment the bright light disappeared, the sweet and harmonious voice, which was the only proof of the presence of a superior intelligence, ceased; I was in utter darkness and silence, and seemed to myself to be carried rapidly upon a stream of air, without any other sensation than that of moving quickly through space.  Whilst I was still in motion, a dim and hazy light, which seemed like that of twilight in a rainy morning, broke upon my sight, and gradually a country displayed itself to my view covered with forests and marshes.  I saw wild animals grazing in large savannahs, and carnivorous beasts, such as lions and tigers,