For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famous road is as desolate2 and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues. It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque3, nor homelike and social; they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary4 inn or a wine-shop, designated by the withered5 bush beside the entrance, within which you discern a stone-built and sepulchral6 interior, where guests refresh themselves with sour bread and goats’-milk cheese, washed down with wine of dolorous7 acerbity8.
At frequent intervals9 along the roadside up-rises the ruin of an ancient tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high and broken mounds11 of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles12, and earth, all molten by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were composed of a single boulder13 of granite14. When first erected15, they were cased externally, no doubt, with slabs16 of polished marble, artfully wrought17 bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered majestically19 beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antique splendor20 has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the palaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains21 to the dishonored sepulchres, except their massiveness.
Even the pyramids form hardly a stranger spectacle, or are more alien from human sympathies, than the tombs of the Appian Way, with their gigantic height, breadth, and solidity, defying time and the elements, and far too mighty22 to be demolished23 by an ordinary earthquake. Here you may see a modern dwelling24, and a garden with its vines and olive-trees, perched on the lofty dilapidation25 of a tomb, which forms a precipice26 of fifty feet in depth on each of the four sides. There is a home on that funereal27 mound10, where generations of children have been born, and successive lives been spent, undisturbed by the ghost of the stern Roman whose ashes were so preposterously28 burdened. Other sepulchres wear a crown of grass, shrubbery, and forest-trees, which throw out a broad sweep of branches, having had time, twice over, to be a thousand years of age. On one of them stands a tower, which, though immemorially more modern than the tomb, was itself built by immemorial hands, and is now rifted quite from top to bottom by a vast fissure29 of decay; the tomb-hillock, its foundation, being still as firm as ever, and likely to endure until the last trump30 shall rend18 it wide asunder31, and summon forth32 its unknown dead.
Yes; its unknown dead! For, except in one or two doubtful instances, these mountainous sepulchral edifices33 have not availed to keep so much as the bare name of an individual or a family from oblivion. Ambitious of everlasting34 remembrance, as they were, the slumberers might just as well have gone quietly to rest, each in his pigeon-hole of a columbarium, or under his little green hillock in a graveyard36, without a headstone to mark the spot. It is rather satisfactory than otherwise, to think that all these idle pains have turned out so utterly37 abortive38.
About two miles, or more, from the city gate, and right upon the roadside, Kenyon passed an immense round pile, sepulchral in its original purposes, like those already mentioned. It was built of great blocks of hewn stone, on a vast, square foundation of rough, agglomerated39 material, such as composes the mass of all the other ruinous tombs. But whatever might be the cause, it was in a far better state of preservation40 than they. On its broad summit rose the battlements of a mediaeval fortress41, out of the midst of which (so long since had time begun to crumble42 the supplemental structure, and cover it with soil, by means of wayside dust) grew trees, bushes, and thick festoons of ivy43. This tomb of a woman had become the citadel44 and donjon-keep of a castle; and all the care that Cecilia Metella’s husband could bestow45, to secure endless peace for her beloved relics46, had only sufficed to make that handful of precious ashes the nucleus47 of battles, long ages after her death.
A little beyond this point, the sculptor turned aside from the Appian Way, and directed his course across the Campagna, guided by tokens that were obvious only to himself. On one side of him, but at a distance, the Claudian aqueduct was striding over fields and watercourses. Before him, many miles away, with a blue atmosphere between, rose the Alban hills, brilliantly silvered with snow and sunshine.
He was not without a companion. A buffalo-calf, that seemed shy and sociable48 by the selfsame impulse, had begun to make acquaintance with him, from the moment when he left the road. This frolicsome50 creature gambolled51 along, now before, now behind; standing52 a moment to gaze at him, with wild, curious eyes, he leaped aside and shook his shaggy head, as Kenyon advanced too nigh; then, after loitering in the rear, he came galloping53 up, like a charge of cavalry54, but halted, all of a sudden, when the sculptor turned to look, and bolted across the Campagna at the slightest signal of nearer approach. The young, sportive thing, Kenyon half fancied, was serving him as a guide, like the heifer that led Cadmus to the site of his destined55 city; for, in spite of a hundred vagaries56, his general course was in the right direction, and along by several objects which the sculptor had noted57 as landmarks58 of his way.
In this natural intercourse59 with a rude and healthy form of animal life, there was something that wonderfully revived Kenyon’s spirits. The warm rays of the sun, too, were wholesome60 for him in body and soul; and so was a breeze that bestirred itself occasionally, as if for the sole purpose of breathing upon his cheek and dying softly away, when he would fain have felt a little more decided61 kiss. This shy but loving breeze reminded him strangely of what Hilda’s deportment had sometimes been towards himself.
The weather had very much to do, no doubt, with these genial62 and delightful63 sensations, that made the sculptor so happy with mere64 life, in spite of a head and heart full of doleful thoughts, anxieties, and fears, which ought in all reason to have depressed65 him. It was like no weather that exists anywhere, save in Paradise and in Italy; certainly not in America, where it is always too strenuous66 on the side either of heat or cold. Young as the season was, and wintry, as it would have been under a more rigid67 sky, it resembled summer rather than what we New Englanders recognize in our idea of spring. But there was an indescribable something, sweet, fresh, and remotely affectionate, which the matronly summer loses, and which thrilled, and, as it were, tickled68 Kenyon’s heart with a feeling partly of the senses, yet far more a spiritual delight. In a word, it was as if Hilda’s delicate breath were on his cheek.
After walking at a brisk pace for about half an hour, he reached a spot where an excavation69 appeared to have been begun, at some not very distant period. There was a hollow space in the earth, looking exceedingly like a deserted70 cellar, being enclosed within old subterranean71 walls, constructed of thin Roman bricks, and made accessible by a narrow flight of stone steps. A suburban72 villa73 had probably stood over this site, in the imperial days of Rome, and these might have been the ruins of a bathroom, or some other apartment that was required to be wholly or partly under ground. A spade can scarcely be put into that soil, so rich in lost and forgotten things, without hitting upon some discovery which would attract all eyes, in any other land. If you dig but a little way, you gather bits of precious marble, coins, rings, and engraved74 gems75; if you go deeper, you break into columbaria, or into sculptured and richly frescoed76 apartments that look like festive77 halls, but were only sepulchres.
The sculptor descended78 into the cellar-like cavity, and sat down on a block of stone. His eagerness had brought him thither79 sooner than the appointed hour. The sunshine fell slantwise into the hollow, and happened to be resting on what Kenyon at first took to be a shapeless fragment of stone, possibly marble, which was partly concealed80 by the crumbling81 down of earth.
But his practised eye was soon aware of something artistic82 in this rude object. To relieve the anxious tedium83 of his situation, he cleared away some of the soil, which seemed to have fallen very recently, and discovered a headless figure of marble. It was earth stained, as well it might be, and had a slightly corroded84 surface, but at once impressed the sculptor as a Greek production, and wonderfully delicate and beautiful. The head was gone; both arms were broken off at the elbow. Protruding85 from the loose earth, however, Kenyon beheld86 the fingers of a marble hand; it was still appended to its arm, and a little further search enabled him to find the other. Placing these limbs in what the nice adjustment of the fractures proved to be their true position, the poor, fragmentary woman forthwith showed that she retained her modest instincts to the last. She had perished with them, and snatched them back at the moment of revival87. For these long-buried hands immediately disposed themselves in the manner that nature prompts, as the antique artist knew, and as all the world has seen, in the Venus de’ Medici.
“What a discovery is here!” thought Kenyon to himself. “I seek for Hilda, and find a marble woman! Is the omen49 good or ill?”
In a corner of the excavation lay a small round block of stone, much incrusted with earth that had dried and hardened upon it. So, at least, you would have described this object, until the sculptor lifted it, turned it hither and thither in his hands, brushed off the clinging soil, and finally placed it on the slender neck of the newly discovered statue. The effect was magical. It immediately lighted up and vivified the whole figure, endowing it with personality, soul, and intelligence. The beautiful Idea at once asserted its immortality88, and converted that heap of forlorn fragments into a whole, as perfect to the mind, if not to the eye, as when the new marble gleamed with snowy lustre89; nor was the impression marred90 by the earth that still hung upon the exquisitely91 graceful92 limbs, and even filled the lovely crevice93 of the lips. Kenyon cleared it away from between them, and almost deemed himself rewarded with a living smile.
It was either the prototype or a better repetition of the Venus of the Tribune. But those who have been dissatisfied with the small head, the narrow, soulless face, the button-hole eyelids94, of that famous statue, and its mouth such as nature never moulded, should see the genial breadth of this far nobler and sweeter countenance95. It is one of the few works of antique sculpture in which we recognize womanhood, and that, moreover, without prejudice to its divinity.
Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have found! How happened it to be lying there, beside its grave of twenty centuries? Why were not the tidings of its discovery already noised abroad? The world was richer than yesterday, by something far more precious than gold. Forgotten beauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from her long slumber35, and was a goddess still. Another cabinet in the Vatican was destined to shine as lustrously96 as that of the Apollo Belvedere; or, if the aged97 pope should resign his claim, an emperor would woo this tender marble, and win her as proudly as an imperial bride!
Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated to himself the importance of the newly discovered statue, and strove to feel at least a portion of the interest which this event would have inspired in him a little while before. But, in reality, he found it difficult to fix his mind upon the subject. He could hardly, we fear, be reckoned a consummate98 artist, because there was something dearer to him than his art; and, by the greater strength of a human affection, the divine statue seemed to fall asunder again, and become only a heap of worthless fragments.
While the sculptor sat listlessly gazing at it, there was a sound of small hoofs99, clumsily galloping on the Campagna; and soon his frisky100 acquaintance, the buffalo-calf, came and peeped over the edge of the excavation. Almost at the same moment he heard voices, which approached nearer and nearer; a man’s voice, and a feminine one, talking the musical tongue of Italy. Besides the hairy visage of his four footed friend, Kenyon now saw the figures of a peasant and a contadina, making gestures of salutation to him, on the opposite verge101 of the hollow space.
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1
sculptor
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| n.雕刻家，雕刻家 | |
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2
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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4
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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sepulchral
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| adj.坟墓的，阴深的 | |
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dolorous
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| adj.悲伤的；忧愁的 | |
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acerbity
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| n.涩，酸，刻薄 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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10
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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13
boulder
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| n.巨砾；卵石，圆石 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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15
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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dilapidation
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| n.倒塌；毁坏 | |
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precipice
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| n.悬崖，危急的处境 | |
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funereal
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| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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preposterously
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| adv.反常地；荒谬地；荒谬可笑地；不合理地 | |
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fissure
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| n.裂缝；裂伤 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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edifices
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| n.大建筑物( edifice的名词复数 ) | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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abortive
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| adj.不成功的，发育不全的 | |
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agglomerated
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| 团聚颗粒 | |
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preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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42
crumble
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| vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁 | |
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43
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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citadel
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| n.城堡；堡垒；避难所 | |
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45
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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46
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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48
sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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49
omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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50
frolicsome
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| adj.嬉戏的，闹着玩的 | |
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51
gambolled
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| v.蹦跳，跳跃，嬉戏( gambol的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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53
galloping
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| adj. 飞驰的, 急性的 动词gallop的现在分词形式 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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56
vagaries
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| n.奇想( vagary的名词复数 )；异想天开；异常行为；难以预测的情况 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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excavation
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| n.挖掘，发掘；被挖掘之地 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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subterranean
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| adj.地下的，地表下的 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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engraved
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| v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的过去式和过去分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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frescoed
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| 壁画( fresco的名词复数 )； 温壁画技法，湿壁画 | |
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festive
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| adj.欢宴的，节日的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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81
crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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82
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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83
tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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84
corroded
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| 已被腐蚀的 | |
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85
protruding
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的现在分词 )；凸 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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87
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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89
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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90
marred
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| adj. 被损毁, 污损的 | |
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91
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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92
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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93
crevice
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| n.(岩石、墙等)裂缝；缺口 | |
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94
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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95
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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96
lustrously
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| adv.光亮地；有光泽地；灿烂地 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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100
frisky
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| adj.活泼的，欢闹的；n.活泼，闹着玩；adv.活泼地，闹着玩地 | |
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101
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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