'The sacred tapers' lights are gone, Gray moss has clad the altar stone, The holy image is o'erthrown, The bell has ceased to toll; The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk, The holy shrines to ruin sunk; Departed is the pious monk-- God's blessing on his soul!' Returned, he finished 'Count Robert' and 'Castle Dangerous.' Both novels were really the fruit of a paralytic brain. The 'Magnum Opus,'[16] too, proposed by Cadell (a huge success), engaged much of his attention. But Sir Walter's work was done. At length, doctors' treatment doing him little good, from his constant determination to be at his desk, it was decided, not without difficulty, that Scott should spend the winter of 1831 in Italy, where his son Charles was attached to the British Legation at Naples. On September 22 all was in readiness. A round of touching adieus, one or two gatherings of old friends, the final instructions to Laidlaw, and Scott quitted Abbotsford practically for ever. He returned, to be sure, but more a dead man than a living one. Of his journey to London (meeting again with Moore, Milman, Croker, Wilkie, and Washington Irving) there is no need to write, nor of the Italian tour--Malta, Naples, Rome,[17] Florence, Venice--for which, no matter the brilliance of their associations, he exhibited but a mere passive interest. His heart was in the homeland. _Its_ voices had the strongest appeal for him; an exile song rang in his ears: 'Hame! hame! hame! O hame fain wad I be! O hame! hame! hame! to my ain countrie.'