The Flight of Hilda's Doves

Along with the lamp on Hilda's tower, the sculptor now felt that a light
had gone out, or, at least, was ominously obscured, to which he owed
whatever cheerfulness had heretofore illuminated his cold, artistic
life. The idea of this girl had been like a taper of virgin wax, burning
with a pure and steady flame, and chasing away the evil spirits out of
the magic circle of its beams. It had darted its rays afar, and modified
the whole sphere in which Kenyon had his being. Beholding it no more, he
at once found himself in darkness and astray.

This was the time, perhaps, when Kenyon first became sensible what a
dreary city is Rome, and what a terrible weight is there imposed on
human life, when any gloom within the heart corresponds to the spell of
ruin that has been thrown over the site of ancient empire. He wandered,
as it were, and stumbled over the fallen columns, and among the tombs,
and groped his way into the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs, and
found no path emerging from them. The happy may well enough continue to
be such, beneath the brilliant sky of Rome. But, if you go thither in
melancholy mood, if you go with a ruin in your heart, or with a
vacant site there, where once stood the airy fabric of happiness, now
vanished,--all the ponderous gloom of the Roman Past will pile itself
upon that spot, and crush you down as with the heaped-up marble and
granite, the earth-mounds, and multitudinous bricks of its material
decay.