Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/149

Rh Wednesday.—Better weather! decidedly better!—The sky, however, is still cloudy, but without rain; and there is a perpetual movement on the Corso, and a skirmishing in Carnival fashion. Whilst Jenny drove with our amiable young countryman, Baron Nordenfalks, I went out upon a solitary ramble of observation, as I am fond of doing. First to the harbor of the Tiber, La Ripetta, where all was unusually quiet and deserted, but the Tiber, now swollen by the rain, rolled its waters more turbidly than ever beneath the dark, leaden-gray sky, carrying down impurity and dirty foam to the sea. It was a dismal scene. Thence I went to the Piazza del Popolo, where good military music was being played, and the carriages of the Corso turned round the obelisk of Heliopolis with its Egyptian lion; lastly, up to Monte Pincio, in order, from its summit, to look down upon the variegated scene below.

The air, which was unspeakably mild and soft, seemed to me like a youthful face bathed in tears—as one which wept without suffering. There was a promise of spring, of new, young life in this air, and the earth was fragrant as cowslips in Sweden. It went to my heart and quite affected me. From the hill-top I looked out over Rome. Its vast buildings appeared, in the present state of the atmosphere, quite close together. St. Peter's and the Capitol, the fortress of St. Angelo, the mausoleum of Adrian, and the ruins of the tower from which Nero saw Rome burning and rejoiced, the separate heights, the various chief points of Rome, all now lay as in a gloomy melancholy picture under the dark heavens. But a border of