[Sight is at first sight a sad enemy to imagination and to those pleasures belonging to old times with which some exertions of that power will always mingle: nothing perhaps brings this truth home to the feelings more than the city of Rome; not so much in respect to the impression made at the moment when it is first seen and looked at as a whole, for then the imagination may be invigorated and the mind’s eye quickened; but when particular spots or objects are sought out, disappointment is I believe invariably felt. Ability to recover from this disappointment will exist in proportion to knowledge, and the power of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and parts, and to make details in the present subservient to more adequate comprehension of the past.--I.F.] Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill? Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful Rock, Tarpeian named of yore,[107] and keeping still That name, a local Phantom proud to mock The Traveller’s expectation?--Could our Will Destroy the ideal Power within, ’twere done Thro’ what men see and touch,--slaves wandering on, Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill. Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh; Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn, 10 From that depression raised, to mount on high With stronger wing, more clearly to discern Eternal things; and, if need be, defy Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern. [107] The Tarpeian rock, from which those condemned to death were hurled, is not now precipitous, as it used to be: the ground having been much raised by successive heaps of ruin.--ED. IV AT ROME--REGRETS--IN ALLUSION TO NIEBUHR AND OTHER MODERN HISTORIANS Those old credulities, to nature dear, Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock Of History, stript naked as a rock ’Mid a dry desert? What is it we hear? The glory of Infant Rome must disappear,[108] 5 Her morning splendours vanish, and their place Know them no more. If Truth, who veiled her face With those bright beams yet hid it not, must steer Henceforth a humbler course perplexed and slow; One solace yet remains for us who came 10 Into this world in days when story lacked Severe research, that in our hearts we know How, for exciting youth’s heroic flame, Assent is power, belief the soul of fact. [108] Niebuhr, in his Lectures on Roman History (1826-29), was one of the first to point out the legendary character of much of the earlier history, and its “historical impossibility.” He explained the way in which much of it had originated in family and national vanity, etc.--ED. V CONTINUED