WHAT THE MOON SAW. 308

yet exceedingly affected. He thought of death, of suicide; I be-
lieve he pitied himself, for he wept bitterly; and when a man
has had his cry out he doesn’t kill himself.

“Since that time a year had rolled by. Again a play was. to
be acted, but in a little theatre, and by a poor strolling company.
Again I saw the well-remembered face, with the painted cheeks
and the crisp beard. He looked up at me and smiled; and yet
he had been hissed off only a minute before—hissed off from a
wretched theatre by a miserable audience. And to-night a shabby
hearse rolled out of the town gate. It was a suicide—our painted,
despised hero, The driver of the hearse was the only person pre-
sent, for no one followed except my beams, Ina corner of the
churchyard the corpse of the suicide was shovelled into the
earth, and nettles will soon be rankly growing over his grave, and
the sexton will throw thorns and weeds from the other graves
upon it.”

NINETEENTH EVENING.

“I come from Rome,” said the Moon. “In the midst of the
city, upon one of the seven hills, lie the ruins of the imperial
palace. The wild fig tree grows in the clefts of the wall, and
covers the nakedness thereof with its broad grey-green leaves ;
trampling among heaps of rubbish, the ass treads upon green
laurels, and rejoices over the rank thistles. From this spot,
whence the eagles of Rome once flew abroad, whence they ‘ came,
saw, and conquered,’ one door leads into a little mean house,
built of clay between two pillars; the wild vine hangs like a
mourning garland over the crooked window. An old woman and
her little granddaughter live there : they rule now in the palace
of the Czesars, and show to strangers the remains of its past
glories. Of the splendid throne-hall only a naked wall yet stands,
and a black cypress throws its dark shadow on the spot where
the throne once stood. ‘The dust lies several feet deep on the
broken pavement; and the little maiden, now the daughter of
the imperial palace, often sits there on her stool when the even-
ing bells ring. The keyhole of the door close by she calls her
turret-window ; through this she can see half Rome, as faras the
mighty cupola of St. Peter’s.

“On this evening, as usual, stillness reigned around; and in
the full beam of my light came the little granddaughter. On her
head she carried an earthen pitcher of antique shape filked with
water Her feet were bare, her short frock and her white sleeves
were ton. I kissed her pretty round shoulders, her dark eyes,
and black shining hair. She mounted the stairs ; they were steep, '
having been made up of rough blocks of broken marble and the
capital of a fallen pillar. The coloured lizards slipped away,
startled, from before her feet, but she was not frightened at them,

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