I was at ramble in the lanes, when, from somewhere at a distance,
there sounded the voice of a countryman--strange to say--singing.

The notes were indistinct, but they rose, to my ear, with a moment's
musical sadness, and of a sudden my heart was stricken with a memory

so keen that I knew not whether it was pain or delight. For the
sound seemed to me that of a peasant's song which I once heard

whilst sitting among the ruins of Paestum. The English landscape
faded before my eyes. I saw great Doric columns of honey-golden

travertine; between them, as I looked one way, a deep strip of sea;
when I turned, the purple gorges of the Apennine; and all about the

temple, where I sat in solitude, a wilderness dead and still but for
that long note of wailing melody. I had not thought it possible

that here, in my beloved home, where regret and desire are all but
unknown to me, I could have been so deeply troubled by a thought of

things far off. I returned with head bent, that voice singing in my
memory. All the delight I have known in Italian travel burned again

within my heart. The old spell has not lost its power. Never, I
know, will it again draw me away from England; but the Southern

sunlight cannot fade from my imagination, and to dream of its glow
upon the ruins of old time wakes in me the voiceless desire which

once was anguish.
In his Italienische Reise, Goethe tells that at one moment of his

life the desire for Italy became to him a scarce endurable
suffering; at length he could not bear to hear or to read of things

Italian, even the sight of a Latin book so tortured him that he
turned away from it; and the day arrived when, in spite of every

obstacle, he yielded to the sickness of longing, and in secret stole
away southward. When first I read that passage, it represented

exactly the state of my own mind; to think of Italy was to feel
myself goaded by a longing which, at times, made me literally ill;

I, too, had put aside my Latin books, simply because I could not
endure the torment of imagination they caused me. And I had so

little hope (nay, for years no shadow of reasonable hope) that I
should ever be able to appease my desire. I taught myself to read

Italian; that was something. I worked (half-heartedly) at a
colloquial phrase-book. But my sickness only grew towards despair.

Then came into my hands a sum of money (such a poor little sum) for
a book I had written. It was early autumn. I chanced to hear some

one speak of Naples--and only death would have held me back.
XX

Truly, I grow aged. I have no longer much delight in wine.
But then, no wine ever much rejoiced me save that of Italy. Wine-

drinking in England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing
with an exotic inspiration. Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a

good old tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these
drinks are not for us. Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux

or Burgundy; to get good of them, soul's good, you must be on the
green side of thirty. Once or twice they have plucked me from

despair; I would not speak unkindly of anything in cask or bottle
which bears the great name of wine. But for me it is a thing of

days gone by. Never again shall I know the mellow hour cum regnat
rosa, cum madent capilli. Yet how it lives in memory!

"What call you this wine?" I asked of the temple-guardian at
Paestum, when he ministered to my thirst. "Vino di Calabria," he

answered, and what a glow in the name! There I drank it, seated
against the column of Poseidon's temple. There I drank it, my feet

resting on acanthus, my eyes wandering from sea to mountain, or
peering at little shells niched in the crumbling surface of the

sacred stone. The autumn day declined; a breeze of evening
whispered about the forsaken shore; on the far summit lay a long,

still cloud, and its hue was that of my Calabrian wine.
How many such moments come back to me as my thoughts wander! Dim

little trattorie in city byways, inns smelling of the sun in
forgotten valleys, on the mountain side, or by the tideless shore,

where the grape has given me of its blood, and made life a rapture.
Who but the veriest fanatic of teetotalism would grudge me those

hours so gloriously" target="_blank" title="ad.光荣地，辉煌地">gloriously redeemed? No draught of wine amid the old tombs
under the violet sky but made me for the time a better man, larger

of brain, more courageous, more gentle. 'Twas a revelry whereon
came no repentance. Could I but live for ever in thoughts and

feelings such as those born to me in the shadow of the Italian vine!
There I listened to the sacred poets; there I walked with the wise

of old; there did the gods reveal to me the secret of their eternal
calm. I hear the red rillet as it flows into the rustic glass; I

see the purple light upon the hills. Fill to me again, thou of the
Roman visage and all but Roman speech! Is not yonder the long

gleaming of the Appian Way? Chant in the old measure, the song
imperishable

"dum Capitolium
Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex--"

aye, and for how many an age when Pontiff and Vestal sleep in the
eternal silence. Let the slave of the iron gods chatter what he

will; for him flows no Falernian, for him the Muses have no smile,
no melody. Ere the sun set, and the darkness fall about us, fill

again!
XXI

Is there, at this moment, any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but
without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain

and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret, and
writes for dear life? There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have

read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a
very different aspect. No garretteers, these novelists and

journalists awaiting their promotion. They eat--and entertain their
critics--at fashionable restaurants; they are seen in expensive

seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome flats--photographed for
an illustrated paper on the first excuse. At the worst, they belong

to a reputable club, and have garments which permit them to attend a
garden party or an evening "at home" without attracting unpleasant

notice. Many biographical sketches have I read, during the last
decade, making personal introduction of young Mr. This or young Miss

That, whose book was--as the sweet language of the day will have it-
-"booming"; but never one in which there was a hint of stern

struggle, of the pinched stomach and frozen fingers. I surmise that
the path of "literature" is being made too easy. Doubtless it is a

rare thing nowadays for a lad whose education ranks him with the
upper middle class to find himself utterly without resources, should

he wish to devote himself to the profession of letters. And there
is the root of the matter; writing has come to be recognized as a

profession, almost as cut-and-dried as church or law; a lad may go
into it with full parental approval, with ready avuncular support.

I heard not long ago of an eminentlawyer, who had paid a couple of
hundred per annum for his son's instruction in the art of fiction--

yea, the art of fiction--by a not very brilliant professor of that
art. Really, when one comes to think of it, an astonishing fact, a

fact vastlysignificant. Starvation, it is true, does not
necessarily produce fine literature; but one feels uneasy about

these carpet-authors. To the two or three who have a measure of
conscience and vision, I could wish, as the best thing, some

calamity which would leave them friendless in the streets. They
would perish, perhaps. But set that possibility against the all but

certainty of their present prospect--fatty degeneration of the soul;
and is it not acceptable?

I thought of this as I stood yesterday watching a noble sunset,
which brought back to my memory the sunsets of a London autumn,

thirty years ago; more glorious, it seems to me, than any I have
since beheld. It happened that, on one such evening, I was by the

river at Chelsea, with nothing to do except to feel that I was
hungry, and to reflect that, before morning, I should be hungrier

still. I loitered upon Battersea Bridge--the old picturesque wooden
bridge, and there the western sky took hold upon me. Half an hour

later, I was speeding home. I sat down, and wrote a description of
what I had seen, and straightway sent it to an evening newspaper,

which, to my astonishment, published the thing next day--"On
Battersea Bridge." How proud I was of that little bit of writing!

I should not much like to see it again, for I thought it then so
good that I am sure it would give me an unpleasantsensation now.

Still, I wrote it because I enjoyed doing so, quite as much as
because I was hungry; and the couple of guineas it brought me had as

pleasant a ring as any money I ever earned.
XXII