"Will you always live then in the midst of your books," Lavinia begins, "and never take any repose, Olympia? Rest awhile, and you will return with renewed vigour to your favourite studies."
"Would to Heaven, my friend," says Olympia, after some few words on her devotion to her study,—"Would to Heaven that I had not been so long plunged in oblivion of the only truths worthy of occupying our thoughts. I fancied myself learned, because I read the books of worldly philosophers, and intoxicated myself with the poison of their writings. But just when I was most puffed up with the praises of men, I made the discovery of my profound ignorance. I had wandered so far from the truth, as to imagine the universe to be the production of chance, without governance and without God."...
DIALOGUE WITH LAVINIA.
"But Italy," rejoins Lavinia, "had before this rung with the fame of your piety and your virtues."
"It is true;" answers her friend; "and perhaps this fame may have reached you—
"'Audieras et fama fuit;'
but if men only knew how to estimate at their just worth the flattery addressed to princes and those around them, they would have judged me less favourably. You at least, my friend, must know how far I then was from having any sentiments of true piety."
Lavinia answers, that even so she cannot help admiring the constancy with which Olympia had devoted to the acquisition of learning those long hours which others employ "in adorning themselves, in arranging their hair, and in running after vain pleasures. What especially surprises me is, that you could remain faithful to those studies in the years of your youth, in spite of the raillery of the men and girls, who were always dinning into your ears that life had something else to do, and that husbands would look more after what you possessed than what you knew."
"It is the Lord who willed it so!" returns Olympia; and at this point the dialogue, which it must be admitted has been composed by our Muse in a rather egotistic tone, passes off into a kind of rhapsody, in which the writer sets forth the vanity of earthly things, and the inestimable price of heavenly wisdom.
Meanwhile Grünthler had been but very partially successful in the objects of his journey. Germany was in no condition to offer, in any part of it, a desirable home to a peaceful student and his wife. True, that in many of its cities the profession of the reformed faith was a recommendation instead of a sure title to the honours of martyrdom. True, that the new theology had there acquired a respectability of standing, that enabled it to enjoy a share occasionally of the ecclesiastical luxury of persecuting its opponents. But the country was distracted by war or rumours of war on all sides;—war of a different kind, and productive of very different national results from the miserable mercenary contests, which ruined Italy, and only prepared the way for the slavery and degradation of the nation. For the gist of the German fighting, however confused, barbarous, and devastating, was to be found in the determination of men to resist authority and oppression, to have souls of their own, and to say they were their own.