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The present time was too gloomy for me, I longed for things nobler and more perfect. In the period of a blooming imagination, I could not but create a more beautiful world, in which virtue, justice, and truth, embraced each other, and where the senses diffused the tenderest feelings. I turned poet, and lamented the fall of Rome and Greece, which gave hopes of a more delightful existence of mankind, and bitterly disappointed their expectations.

The ruins of the vast amphitheatre at Nismes, that ancient splendid monument of Roman greatness, became my favourite haunt. When walking through the lofty arcades between the gray pillasters, or looking down over the magnificent ruins from the Attica, I felt as if the spirit of that majestic antiquity embraced me, and, lamenting, pressed me to its breast.

Here I lingered with pleasure, but never without a feeling of sadness. The remains of long-departed human generations became to me books of history. The hands of several nations have been patching up this work of Roman magnificence. The two half-decayed towers of the Attica, solitary masses of stone piled up without taste and sense of art, were reared by the Goths, the conquerors of the Romans. And the huts of wood in the arena beneath, are the dwellings of poor labourers and workmen of modern days. What a change of times, and of the men that lived in them!

The shriek of a female under the vaults startled me one evening out of my dreams. Darkness had already crept into the halls. I hastened down the steps from the second story, and perceived a well-dressed woman in the power of a common man. The sound of my steps frightened the villain, and he disappeared among the columns. A young girl with dishevelled hair sat on a block of marble, trembling, and almost beside herself with fright.

“Have you sustained any harm?” I asked her.

She raised her hand to her head, and said: “It was a robber, sir, who had torn off my head-dress, consisting of some pins of value;–nothing further. I entreat you to afford me your protection, as I am a stranger in this place. It was from curiosity I left my mother and sister who are waiting without. This man was to guide me back from this extensive labyrinth, and he led me to this remote spot.”

I offered her my arm; we stepped out to the daylight. Oh! my Clementine! ….

She was sixteen years of age, delicately and beautifully formed. She floats at my side, like an aerial being; I did not perceive her steps. The sweetness, freshness, and intellectual expression of her countenance were angelic, and her look, full of innocence and love, penetrated my inmost soul.

I sank into a pleasant confusion. I had never before known such a sensation of confidence and admiration, of inexpressible affection and profound respect. I had grown up to the age of twenty-one, I knew love only from the pictures of the ancient poets, and I called it a passionate friendship, unworthy a man. Alas! it was, indeed, something very different. Love is the poetry of human nature. The sensation we experience in contemplating beauty, ennobles rude sensuality, and elevates it to a point of contact with the spiritual, so that the virtuous, independent spirit unites itself, under the magic influence of grace, with the earthly. Thus it is true that love deifies the mortal clay, and draws down upon earth what is heavenly.

Thus I went on, and I had lost all my recollection, till we arrived at the Carmelite-gate, where, suddenly, I came to myself again.

“You are a stranger?” I asked, in a faltering voice.

“Yes,” she replied; “but it is in vain that we seek my mother and sister. Do you know the house of M. Albertas? It is there we live.”