I went
out of the city gate, and leaned on the parapet that encloses the
pyramid, advancing its high, unbroken slope and peak, where the great
blocks of marble still fit almost as closely to one another as when they
were first laid; though, indeed, there are crevices just large enough for
plants to root themselves, and flaunt and trail over the face of this
great tomb; only a little verdure, however, over a vast space of marble,
still white in spots, but pervadingly turned gray by two thousand years'
action of the atmosphere. Thence I came home by the Caelian, and sat
down on an ancient flight of steps under one of the arches of the
Coliseum, into which the sunshine fell sidelong. It was a delightful
afternoon, not precisely like any weather that I have known elsewhere;
certainly never in America, where it is always too cold or too hot. It,
resembles summer more than anything which we New-Englanders recognize in
our idea of spring, but there was an indescribable something, sweet,
fresh, gentle, that does not belong to summer, and that thrilled and
tickled my heart with a feeling partly sensuous, partly spiritual.
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