THE EFFECT OF YEARS AND EXPERIENCE.--THE ITALIAN CHARACTER.
Godolphin now came almost daily to the astrologer's abode. He was shocked
to perceive the physical alteration four years had wrought in his singular
friend; and, with the warmth of a heart naturally kind, he sought to
contribute to the comfort and enjoyment of a life that was evidently
drawing to a close.
Godolphin's company seemed to give Volktman a pleasure which nothing else
could afford him. He loved to converse on the various incidents that had
occurred to each since they met; and, in whatsoever Godolphin communicated
to him, the mystic sought to impress upon his friend's attention the
fulfilment of an astrological prediction.
Godolphin, though no longer impressed with a belief in the visionary's
science, did not affect to combat his assertions. He had not, in his
progress through life, found much to shake his habitual indolence in
ordinary affairs; and it was no easy matter to provoke one of his quiet
temper and self-indulging wisdom into conversational dispute. Besides,
who argues with fanaticism?
Since the young idealist had left England, the elements of his character
had been slowly performing the ordination of time, and working their due
change in its general aspect. The warm fountains of youth flowed not so
freely as before the selfishness that always comes, sooner or later, to
solitary men of the world, had gradually mingled itself with all the
channels of his heart. The brooding and thoughtful disposition of his
faculties having turned from romance to what he deemed philosophy, that
which once was enthusiasm had hardened into wisdom. He neither hated men
nor loved them with a sanguine philanthropy; he viewed them with cool and
discerning eyes. He did not think it within the power of governments to
make the mass, in any country, much happier or more elevated than they
are. Republics, he was wont to say, favoured aristocratic virtues, and
despotisms extinguished them: but, whether in a monarchy or republic, the
hewers of wood and the drawers of the water, the multitude, still remained
intrinsically the same.
This theory heightened his indifference to ambition. The watchwords of
party appeared to him ridiculous; and politics in general--what a great
moralist termed one question in particular--a shuttlecock kept up by the
contention of noisy children. His mind thus rested as to all public
matters in a state of quietude, and covered over with the mantle of a most
false, a most perilous philosophy. His appetites to pleasure had grown
somewhat dulled by experience, but he was as yet neither sated nor
discontented. One feeling at his breast still remained scarcely
diminished of its effect, when the string was touched--his tender
remembrance of Constance; and this had prevented any subsequent but
momentary attachment deepening into love. Thus, at the age of seven and
twenty, Percy Godolphin reappears on our stage.
There was a great deal in the Italian character that our traveller liked:
its love of ease, reduced into a system; its courtesy; its content with
the world as it is; its moral apathy as regards all that agitates life,
save one passion--and the universal tenderness, ardour, and delicacy
which, in that passion, it ennobles itself in displaying. The commonest
peasant of Rome or Naples, though not perhaps in the freer land of
Tuscany, can comprehend all the romance and mystery of the most subtle
species of love; all that it requires in England the idle habits of
aristocracy, or the sensitive fibre of genius, even to conceive. And what
is yet stranger, the worn-out debauches, sage with an experience and
variety of licentiousness, which come not within the compass of a northern
profligacy, remains alive to the earliest and most innocent sentiments of
the passion. And if Platonism in its coldest purity exist on earth, it is
among the Aretins of southern Italy.
This unworldly refinement, amidst so much worldly callousness, was a
peculiarity that afforded perpetual amusement to the nice eye and subtle
judgment of Godolphin. He loved not to note the common elements of
character; whatever was most abstract and difficult to analyse, pleased
him most. He mixed then much with the Romans, and was a favourite amongst
them; but, during his present visit to the Immortal City, he did not, how
distantly soever, associate with the English. His carelessness of show,
and the independence of a single man from burdensome connexions, rendered
his income fully competent to his wants; but, like many proud men, he was
not willing to make it seem even to himself, as a comparative poverty,
beside the lavish expenses of his ostentatious countrymen. Travel,
moreover, had augmented those stores of reflection which rob solitude of
ennui.