"miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!" exclaimed hilda; "and he, a rude, uncultivated boy!no, no, no!""it would seem impossible," said the sculptor."but, on the other hand, a gifted woman flings away her affections so unaccountably, sometimes! miriam of late has been very morbid and miserable, as we both know.young as she is, the morning light seems already to have faded out of her life; and now comes donatello, with natural sunshine enough for himself and her, and offers her the opportunity of making her heart and life all new and cheery again.people of high intellectual endowments do not require similar ones in those they love.they are just the persons to appreciate the wholesome gush of natural feeling, the honest affection, the simple joy, the fulness of contentment with what he loves, which miriam sees in donatello.true; she may call him a simpleton.it is a necessity of the case; for a man loses the capacity for this kind of affection, in proportion as he cultivates and refines himself.""dear me!" said hilda, drawing imperceptibly away from her companion."is this the penalty of refinement? pardon me; i do not believe it.it is because you are a sculptor, that you think nothing can be finely wrought except it be cold and hard, like the marble in which your ideas take shape.i am a painter, and know that the most delicate beauty may be softened and warmed throughout.""i said a foolish thing, indeed," answered the sculptor."it surprises me, for i might have drawn a wiser knowledge out of my own experience.it is the surest test of genuine love, that it brings back our early simplicity to the worldliest of us."thus talking, they loitered slowly along beside the parapet which borders the level summit of the pincian with its irregular sweep.at intervals they looked through the lattice-work of their thoughts at the varied prospects that lay before and beneath them.
from the terrace where they now stood there is an abrupt descent towards the piazza del popolo; and looking down into its broad space they beheld the tall palatial edifices, the church domes, and the ornamented gateway, which grew and were consolidated out of the thought of michaelangelo.they saw, too, the red granite obelisk, oldest of things, even in rome, which rises in the centre of the piazza, with a fourfold fountain at its base.all roman works and ruins (whether of the empire, the far-off republic, or the still more distant kings) assume a transient, visionary, and impalpable character when we think that this indestructible monument supplied one of the recollections which moses and the israelites bore from egypt into the desert.perchance, on beholding the cloudy pillar and the fiery column, they whispered awestricken to one another, "in its shape it is like that old obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen on the borders of the nile." and now that very obelisk, with hardly a trace of decay upon it, is the first thing that the modern traveller sees after entering the flaminian gate!