the pangs of the heart receive consolation_;" and had not raised it
since. Corinne remarked it, and soon, from his features, the colour of
his hair, his costume, his lofty figure, from his whole manner in short,
she knew him for an Englishman: she was struck with his mourning habit,
and the melancholy pictured in his countenance. His look, at that moment
fixed upon her, seemed full of gentle reproaches; she guessed the
thoughts that occupied his mind, and felt the necessity of satisfying
him, by speaking of happiness with less confidence, by consecrating some
verses to death in the midst of a festival. She then resumed her lyre,
with this design, and having produced silence in the assembly, by the
moving and prolonged sounds which she drew from her instrument, began
thus:

"There are griefs however which our consoling sky cannot efface, but in
what retreat can sorrow make a more sweet and more noble impression upon
the soul than here?

"In other countries hardly do the living find space sufficient for their
rapid motions and their ardent desires; here, ruins, deserts and
uninhabited palaces, afford an asylum for the shades of the departed. Is
not Rome now the land of tombs?

"The Coliseum, the obelisks, all the wonders which from Egypt and from
Greece, from the extremity of ages, from Romulus to Leo X. are assembled
here, as if grandeur attracted grandeur, and as if the same spot was to
enclose all that man could secure from the ravages of time; all these
wonders are consecrated to the monuments of the dead. Our indolent life
is scarcely perceived, the silence of the living is homage paid to the
dead; they endure and we pass away.