Our indolent life is scarcely perceived, the silence of the living is homage paid to the dead; they endure and we pass away.
"They only are honoured, they are still celebrated: our obscure destinies serve only to heighten the lustre of our ancestors: our present existence leaves nothing standing but the past; it will exact no tribute from future recollections! All our masterpieces are the work of those who are no more, and genius itself is numbered among the illustrious dead.
"Perhaps one of the secret charms of Rome, is to reconcile the imagination with the sleep of death.

Here we learn resignation, and suffer less pangs of regret for the objects of our love.

The people of the south picture to themselves the end of life in colours less gloomy than the inhabitants of the north.

The sun, like glory, warms even the tomb.
"The cold and isolation of the sepulchre beneath our lovely sky, by the side of so many funereal urns, have less terrors for the human mind.

We believe a crowd of spirits is waiting for our company; and from our solitary city to the subterranean one the transition seems easy and gentle.
"Thus the edge of grief is taken off; not that the heart becomes indifferent, or the soul dried up; but a more perfect harmony, a more odoriferous air, mingles with existence.