Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

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[354]

Unyoke your oxen, you fellow,
And take the coulter out of your plough;
For you are ploughing amid the graves of men,
And the dust you turn up is the dust of your ancestors.

Herbert has substituted buffalos for oxen as being more picturesque, though they were not imported into Italy until some time in the Middle Ages. It is generally predicted that Herbert will become an R. A. like his father; but the subject is even more to his credit than his treatment of it. It is discussed at the Lapre whether this verse has been equalled by Tennyson or Longfellow, and the conclusion was: “Not proven.”

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March 1, 1869.

The Longfellows are gone, and Rome is filling up with a different class of people who have come here to witness the fatiguing spectacles of Easter. One look at Michael Angelo's “Last judgment” would be worth the whole of it to me.

P-- is said to have captured his young lady, and it seems probable, for I see very little of him now. He disappears after breakfast, rushes through his dinner, and returns late in the evenings. So all the world changes.