"Ye solemn scenes!" cried Corinne, "where, at this hour, no being breathes beside me--where but the echoes of my own voice answer me--how are the storms of passion calmed by nature, who thus peacefully permits so many generations to glide by! Has not the universe some better end than man? or are its marvels scattered here, merely to be reflected in his mind? Oswald! why do I love with such idolatry? why live but for the feelings of a day compared to the infinite hopes that unite us with divinity? My God! if it be true, as I believe, that we admire thee the more capable we are of reflection, make my own mind my refuge against my heart! The noble being whose gentle looks I can never forget is but a perishable mortal like myself. Among the stars there is eternal love, alone sufficing to a boundless heart." Corinne remained long in these ideas, and, at last, turned slowly towards her own abode; but, ere she re-entered it, she wished to await the dawn at St. Peter's, and from its dome take her last leave of all beneath. Her imagination represented this edifice as it must be, when, in its turn, a wreck--the theme of wonder for yet unborn ages. The columns, now erect, half bedded in earth; the porch dilapidated, with the Egyptian obelisk exulting over the decay of novelties, wrought for an earthly immortality. From the summit of St. Peter's Corinne beheld day rise over Rome, which, in its uncultivated Campagna, looks like the oasis of a Libyan desert. Devastation is around it; but the multitude of spires and cupolas, over which St. Peter's rises, give a strange beauty to its aspect. This city may boast one peculiar charm: we love it as an animated being: its very ruins are as friends, from whom we cannot part without farewell. Corinne addressed the Pantheon, St. Angelo's, and all the sites that once renewed the pleasures of her fancy. "Adieu!" she said, "land of remembrances! scenes where life depends not on events, nor on society; where enthusiasm refreshes itself through the eyes, and links the soul to each external object. I leave you, to follow Oswald, not knowing to what fate he may consign me. I prefer him to the independence which here afforded me such happy days. I may return to more; but for a broken heart and blighted mind, ye arts and monuments so oft invoked, while I was exiled beneath his stormy sky, ye could do nothing to console!" She wept; yet thought not, for an instant, of letting Oswald depart without her. Resolutions springing from the heart we often justly blame, yet hesitate not to adopt. When passion masters a superior mind, it separates our judgment from our conduct, and need not cloud the one in order to overrule the other.