Tell me more about yourself first, and how those years came to be "lost." I am not sure that they were; though I am very far from holding the empty theory of compensation; but much of the slighter pleasure you lost then is evidently still open to you, fresh all the more from having been for a time withdrawn.
The Roman peasants are very gay to-day, with roses in their hair; legitimately and honorably decorated, and looking lovely. Oh me, if they had a few Susies to take human care of them what a glorious people they would be!
THE LOST CHURCH IN THE CAMPAGNA
Rome, 2d June, 1874.
Ah if you were but among the marbles here, though there are none finer than that you so strangely discerned in my study; but they are as a white company innumerable, ghost after ghost. And how you would rejoice in them and in a thousand things besides, to which I am dead, from having seen too much or worked too painfully—or, worst of all, lost the hope which gives all life.
Last Sunday I was in a lost church found again,—a church of the second or third century, dug in a green hill of the Campagna, built underground;—its secret entrance like a sand-martin's nest. Such the temple of the Lord, as the King Solomon of that time had to build it; not "the mountains of the Lord's house shall be established above the hills," but the cave of the Lord's house as the fox's hole, beneath them.
And here, now lighted by the sun for the first time (for they are still digging the earth from the steps), are the marbles of those early Christian days; the first efforts of their new hope to show itself in enduring record, the new hope of a Good Shepherd:—there they carved Him, with a spring flowing at His feet, and round Him the cattle of the Campagna in which they had dug their church, the very self-same goats which this morning have been trotting past my window through the most populous streets of Rome, innocently following their shepherd, tinkling their bells, and shaking their long spiral horns and white beards; the very same dew-lapped cattle which were that Sunday morning feeding on the hillside above, carved on the tomb-marbles sixteen hundred years ago.
How you would have liked to see it, Susie!
And now to-day I am going to work in an eleventh century church of quite proud and victorious Christianity, with its grand bishops and saints lording it over Italy. The bishop's throne all marble and mosaic of precious colors and of gold, high under the vaulted roof at the end behind the altar; and line upon line of pillars of massive porphyry and marble, gathered out of the ruins of the temples of the great race who had persecuted them, till they had said to the hills, Cover us, like the wicked. And then their proud time came, and their enthronement on the seven hills; and now, what is to be their fate once more?—of pope and cardinal and dome, Peter's or Paul's by name only,—"My house, no more a house of prayer, but a den of thieves."
I can't write any more this morning. Oh me, if one could only write and draw all one wanted, and have our Susies and be young again, oneself and they! (As if there were two Susies, or could be!)
Ever my one Susie's very loving
REGRETS
Assisi, June 9th (1874).
Yes, I am a little oppressed just now with overwork, nor is this avoidable. I am obliged to leave all my drawings unfinished as the last days come, and the point possible of approximate completion fatally contracts, every hour to a more ludicrous and warped mockery of the hope in which one began. It is impossible not to work against time, and that is killing. It is not labor itself, but competitive, anxious, disappointed labor that dries one's soul out.
But don't be frightened about me, you sweet Susie. I know when I must stop; forgive and pity me only, because sometimes, nay often my letter (or word) to Susie must be sacrificed to the last effort on one's drawing.
The letter to one's Susie should be a rest, do you think? It is always more or less comforting, but not rest; it means further employment of the already extremely strained sensational power. What one really wants! I believe the only true restorative is the natural one, the actual presence of one's "helpmeet." The far worse than absence of mine reverses rest, and what is more, destroys one's power of receiving from others or giving.
How much love of mine have others lost, because that poor sick child would not have the part of love that belonged to her!
I am very anxious about your eyes too. For any favor don't write more extracts just now. The books are yours forever and a day—no loan; enjoy any bits that you find enjoyable, but don't copy just now.
I left Rome yesterday, and am on my way home; but, alas! might as well be on my way home from Cochin China, for any chance I have of speedily arriving. Meantime your letters will reach me here with speed, and will be a great comfort to me, if they don't fatigue you.
"FRONDES AGRESTES."
Perugia, 12th June (1874).
I am more and more pleased at the thought of this gathering of yours, and soon expect to tell you what the bookseller says.
Meantime I want you to think of the form the collection should take with reference to my proposed re-publication. I mean to take the botany, the geology, the Turner defense, and the general art criticism of "Modern Painters," as four separate books, cutting out nearly all the preaching, and a good deal of the sentiment. Now what you find pleasant and helpful to you of general maxim or reflection, must be of some value; and I think therefore that your selection will just do for me what no other reader could have done, least of all I myself; keep together, that is to say, what may be right and true of those youthful thoughts. I should like you to add anything that specially pleases you, of whatever kind; but to keep the notion of your book being the didactic one as opposed to the other picturesque and scientific volumes, will I think help you in choosing between passages when one or other is to be rejected.
HOW HE FELL AMONG THIEVES
Assisi, 17th June (1874).
I have been having a bad time lately, and have no heart to write to you. Very difficult and melancholy work, deciphering what remains of a great painter 9 among stains of ruin and blotches of repair, of five hundred years' gathering. It makes me sadder than idleness, which is saying much.
I was greatly flattered and petted by a saying in one of your last letters, about the difficulty I had in unpacking my mind. That is true; one of my chief troubles at present is with the quantity of things I want to say at once. But you don't know how I find things I laid by carefully in it, all moldy and moth-eaten when I take them out; and what a lot of mending and airing they need, and what a wearisome and bothering business it is compared to the early packing,—one used to be so proud to get things into the corners neatly!
I have been failing in my drawings, too, and I'm in a horrible inn kept by a Garibaldian bandit; and the various sorts of disgusting dishes sent up to look like a dinner, and to be charged for, are a daily increasing horror and amazement to me. They succeed in getting everything bad; no exertion, no invention, could produce such badness, I believe, anywhere else. The hills are covered for leagues with olive trees, and the oil's bad; there are no such lovely cattle elsewhere in the world, and the butter's bad; half the country people are shepherds, but there's no mutton; half the old women walk about with a pig tied to their waists, but there's no pork; the vine grows wild anywhere, and the wine would make my teeth drop out of my head if I took a glass of it; there are no strawberries, no oranges, no melons, the cherries are as hard as their stones, the beans only good for horses, or Jack and the beanstalk, and this is the size of the biggest asparagus—
I