67/137 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. '_At Rome_.' 'They who have seen the noble Roman's scorn.' [VII. l. 1.] I have a private interest in this sonnet, for I doubt whether it would ever have been written, but for the lively picture given me by Anna Ricketts of what they had witnessed of the indignation and sorrow expressed by some Italian noblemen of their acquaintance upon the surrender, which circumstances had obliged them to make, of the best portion of their family mansions to strangers. |