At any rate, I would not have him note the intimations of such a drive
at less worth than those of any more conventional fact of his Roman
sojourn. If one is quite honest, or merely as honest as one may be with
safety, one will often own to one's self that something merely
incidental to one's purpose, in visiting this memorable place or that,
was of greater charm and greater value than the fulfilment of a direct
purpose. One happy morning I went, being in the vicinity, to renew the
acquaintance with the Tarpeian Rock, which I had hastened to make on my
first visit to Rome. I had then found it so far from such a frightfully
precipitous height as I had led myself to expect that I came away and
rather mocked it in print. But now, possibly because the years had
moderated all my expectations in life, I thought the Tarpeian Rock very
respectably steep and quite impressively lofty; either the houses at its
foot had sunk with their chimneys and balconies, or the rock had risen,
so that one could no longer be hurled from it with impunity.
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