406 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



Taormina he got much pleasure from long walks up the sheer 

 mountain-sides on roads that tapered off into zigzag footpaths, 

 seldom trod. He was loath to turn away from this paradise of 

 natural beauty, this library of human history where almost 

 every tongue in its time had been heard ; but each day the snow- 

 cap on ^Etna was growing less, the grateful warmth had turned 

 to heat, and the body had begun to feel a warning languor. He 

 therefore turned his face to the North. 



At Rome Mr. Shaler began again his old habit of long tramps 

 into the surrounding country. More than once he went to Rocca 

 di Papa to study its geology, its fortress, and Hannibal's old 

 camping-ground; to Monte Cavo; to Nemi and Subiaco, and 

 there met good company at the albergo, where he and a Catholic 

 bishop exchanged ideas on the cardinal virtues, Mr. Shaler 

 paying his tribute in coin to the chiefest of all, charity : its sym- 

 bol at the moment a new church just then mounting heaven- 

 wards in the bishop's diocese. Other points of interest tempted 

 him abroad. Probing for the heart of humanity, he hobnobbed 

 with the simple people, ate with them in the village trattoria, 

 talked with them on their own level of interests, and trusted 

 them in every way. And yet for all that, he fell among thieves, 

 and a handsome gold watch and chain which he valued was 

 stolen from him. Still, it must be said, this happened not in the 

 country, but in Rome itself. 



The city had little persistent attraction for him. "The pot- 

 shards of a great world flung around " were too closely pressed in 

 by flimsy new structures. It was too populous, and its life 

 pitched on too strident a key. All this shut down on the per- 

 spective. In the uproar he found it hard to put the breath of 

 life, as he would have liked, into the great past. He could better 

 patch together the fragment of ancient glory, recall to the mind 

 " the great free people, the voice of the orators, the procession 

 to the Capitol," outside of its walls than within. 



In the month of May roses and nightingales were everywhere 

 ambushed behind the garden walls, the one loading the air with 



