The Argosy — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

64 ‘““Ficco Roma!” the word. For the present, she still lives in our eyes by means of her “solemn temples, her cloud-capp’d towers”; and when these have finally disappeared, she will still live in the imaginations of those who shall come after, clothed with beauty and romance; once the great mistress of a great world; the beloved of a great people; the controller of destinies ; directing the course of nations and of the whole universe with an influence which will end only with time itself. ‘Ecco Roma!” It is almost with the eyes of faith and fancy that we now repeat the words. All, all has passed away. And we pass with it: our little lives, our brief authority. It is the inevitable law. Nowhere does it come home to us more forcibly than when standing under the old walls in the cemetery of Rome, listening to the sad and whispering cypresses: or than when, tracing the outlines of the famous seven hills, the eye wanders from the proud cupolas of to-day to the sad but refined ruins of the once great and glorious Forum. ; Let us here leave Rome and all her traditions and recollections ; Jet us turn from the seven hills whilst the dream is still upon us. With allits sadness and warning, we would not be without it. Happy they who have heard the words “‘ Ecco Roma!” pronounced by their own lips or those of a companion ; and hearing, have been privileged to feast with the reverence due to the majesty of age and death, ruin and decay, upon a scene that is matchless: a record of past glories ; a silvery stream moving through vast plains, ghost-haunted ; hills far- off shutting out the distant, ever-moving sea, a greater emblem of the eternal than Rome itself. And over all, Heaven’s brightest and fairest skies, that, we have already observed, seem to whisper for ever divine words of hope and consolation, of peace and goodwill towards men: bidding them re- member that if Paradise was lost to this world, so in like manner it has been regained for that which is to come. ir kLEA THE LAST THOUGHT. It’s weary lying here, While my throbbing forehead echoes all the hum of London near, And oh! my heart is heavy, in this dull and darkened room, When I think about our village, where the orchards are in bloom— Our little red-roofed village, where the cherry orchards are— So far away, so far! They say that I shall die— And I’m tired, and life is noisy, and the good days have gone by: But oh! my red-roofed village—I should die with more content, Could I see again your gables, and the orchard slopes of Kent, And the eyes that look out vainly, from a rose-wreathed cottage door, For one who comes no more. E. NESBIT. COMIC OOOKS (eC) Lad i f 7