We may wander through them, of an afternoon, it is true, but they cannot be made a home and a reality, and to sleep among them is death.

They are but illusions, therefore, like the show of gleaming waters and shadowy foliage in a desert.
But Rome, within the walls, at this dreaded season, enjoys its festal days, and makes itself merry with characteristic and hereditary pas-times, for which its broad piazzas afford abundant room.

It leads its own life with a freer spirit, now that the artists and foreign visitors are scattered abroad.

No bloom, perhaps, would be visible in a cheek that should be unvisited, throughout the summer, by more invigorating winds than any within fifty miles of the city; no bloom, but yet, if the mind kept its healthy energy, a subdued and colorless well-being.

There was consequently little risk in Hilda's purpose to pass the summer days in the galleries of Roman palaces, and her nights in that aerial chamber, whither the heavy breath of the city and its suburbs could not aspire.