oven-like foundations waiting for more capital and more enterprise to cover them with houses. There can be just as little pleasure in seeing your scanty pavement breaking suddenly off before your door, and your muddy, hilly road tapering away in a few rotten planks that lead into a marshy, grassless field, where you may stand and easily fancy yourself the last man at the end of a melancholy, unsuccessful, deserted world, looking into space, with no one person or thing behind you. The old places that I shall always cling to are unhappily often visited by decay; but it is the decay of ripe old age, which is always venerable. My ideal toy-house—the nearest approach to it that I can find—may become uninhabitable in the fulness of years, but it will still be picturesque; and those who may despise it as a dwelling will admire it upon canvas. In this form it is often brought within my humble reach, and I secure the shadow if I cannot obtain the substance. I still, however, look longingly at the reality, as my little girl looked at her toy-house in her morning’s walk; and, like her, I shall doubtless be swept past it, still looking back, until I am sucked into that countless crowd from which there is no returning. FOOTNOTES [14] _The Town: its Memorable Characters and Events._ Dante. I wait, in patience, and in trembling hope, The last sands in my glass; a few brief grains Divide me from the Angel in yon cope, Whose studded azure never sheltered pains Keener than mine! But, from my mount of years, I look on my past life, as one whose chains Have fall’n, saint-touched; and thro’ the mist of tears Sweet glimmerings of the Empyrean come Athwart the troubled vale of doubts and fears; And as a child, who, wandered from his home, Sees, suddenly, with speechless joy, his cot, Thus seems the hour, when I no more shall roam, But, in a blessed, and abiding lot, Merge my long exile. Florence! when these eyes, So long athirst! shall gaze upon the spot, This atom-earth, in space, with ken more wise Than erring nature would permit to clay, Methinks that sorrow, for thy destinies, Will yet pursue me to the realms of day; For, wert not thou the life-hope of my breast? Altho’, my grief-schooled spirit gave not way To its deep yearning, so, at thy behest, To tread thy streets once more: I could not bend Truth to the shameless compromise! Unrest, Want, banishment, were better, than to lend Myself to falsehood! More thou neededst me Than I thee. So, I know, unto the end, How hard ’tis to climb others’ stairs; to see Anarchy’s gory reign; to beg my bread In alien courts, midst lewd society; At times without a shelter for the head A price was set on! Centuries follow this, When thou shalt think upon thy Dante dead, And his poor tomb; which ever the abyss