"Nay," said Godolphin, "to you the view may be an inspiration, to others a warning. The arch and the ruin you survey speak of change yet more eloquently than glory. Look on the spot where once was the temple of Romulus:--there stands the little church of an obscure saint. Just below you is the Tarpeian Rock: we cannot see it; it is hidden from us by a crowd of miserable houses. Along the ancient plain of the Campus Martins behold the numberless spires of a new religion, and the palaces of a modern race! Amidst them you see the triumphal columns of Trajan and Marcus lntoninus; but whose are the figures that crown their summits? St. Peter's and St. Paul's! And this awful wilderness of men's labours--this scene and token of human revolutions--inspires you with a love of glory; to me it proves its nothingness. An irresistible--a crushing sense of the littleness and brief life of our most ardent and sagacious achievements seems to me to float like a voice over the place!" "And are you still, then," said Constance, with a half sigh, "dead to all but the enjoyment of the present moment?" "No," replied Godolphin, in a low and trembling voice: "I am not dead to the regret of the past!" Constance blushed deeply; but Godolphin, as if feeling he had committed himself too far, continued in a hurried tone:--"Let us turn our eyes," said he, "yonder among the olive groves. There 'Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,' were the summer retreats of Rome's brightest and most enduring spirits. There was the retirement of Horace and Mecaenas: there Brutus forgot his harsher genius; and there the inscrutable and profound Augustus indulged in those graceful relaxations-those sacrifices to wit, and poetry, and wisdom--which have made us do so unwilling and reserved a justice to the crimes of his earlier and the hypocrisy of his later years. Here, again, is a reproach to your ambition," added Godolphin, smiling; "his ambition made Augustus odious; his occasional forgetfulness of ambition alone redeems him." "And what, then," said Constance, "would you consider inactivity the happiest life for one sensible of talents higher than the common standard?" "Nay, let those talents be devoted to the discovery of pleasures, not the search after labours; the higher our talents, the keener our perceptions; the keener our perceptions the more intense our capacities for pleasure:[1]--let pleasure then, be our object. Let us find out what is best fitted to give our peculiar tastes gratification, and, having found out, steadily pursue it."