Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/126

 declare that the only thing worth living for was to build a colossal bronze and set it aloft in the light of a public square. In Rome his first care was for the Vatican; he went there again and again. But the old imperial and papal city altogether delighted him; only there he really found what he had been looking for from the first, the sufficient negation of his native scene. And indeed Rome is the natural home of those spirits with which we just now claimed fellowship for Roderick—the spirits with a deep relish for the element of accumulation in the human picture and for the infinite superpositions of history. It is the immemorial city of convention; and in that still recent day the most impressive convention in all history was visible to men's eyes in the reverberating streets, erect in a gilded coach drawn by four black horses. Roderick's first fortnight was a high æsthetic revel. He declared that Rome made him feel and understand more things than he could express; he was sure that life must have there for all one's senses an incomparable fineness; that more interesting things must happen to one there than anywhere else. And he gave Rowland to understand that he meant to live freely and largely and be as interested as occasion demanded. Rowland saw no reason to regard this as a menace of undue surrender to the senses, because in the first place there was in almost any crudity of "pleasure," refine upon it as the imagination might, a vulgar side which would disqualify it for Roderick's favour; and because in the second the young sculptor was a man to regard all things 92