Earlier, they would have been more. Art is not important to me now.
I like only what little I find that is transcendently good, and even
with that feel very familiar and calm. I take interest in the state
of the people, their manners, the state of the race in them. I see
the future dawning; it is in important aspects Fourier's future. But
I like no Fourierites; they are terribly wearisome here in Europe; the
tide of things does not wash through them as violently as with us, and
they have time to run in the tread-mill of system. Still, they serve
this great future which I shall not live to see. I must be born again.
TO R.W.E.
_Florence, June_ 20, 1847.--I have just come hither from Rome. Every
minute, day and night, there is something to be seen or done at Rome,
which we cannot bear to lose. We lived on the Corso, and all night
long, after the weather became fine, there was conversation or music
before my window. I never seemed really to sleep while there, and now,
at Florence, where there is less to excite, and I live in a more quiet
quarter, I feel as if I needed to sleep all the time, and cannot rest
as I ought, there is so much to do.
I now speak French fluently, though not correctly, yet well enough
to make my thoughts avail in the cultivated society here, where it
is much spoken.
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