Excerpt from Roderick Hudson, Vol. 1 of 2 For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose framed porch, while Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Roderick Hudson, Vol. 2 of 2 Some days afterwards it happened that Rowland, on a long afternoon ramble, took his way through one of the quiet comers of the Trastevere. He was particularly fond of this part of Rome, though he could hardly have expressed the charm he found in it. As you pass away from the dusky swarming purlieus of the Ghetto, you emerge into a region of empty, soundless, grass-grown lanes and alleys, where the shabby houses seem mouldering away in disuse, and yet your footstep brings figures of startling Roman type to the doorways. There are few monuments here, but no part of Rome seemed more historic, in the sense of being weighted with a ponderous past, blighted with the melancholy of things that had had their day. When the yellow afternoon sunshine slept on the sallow battered walls and lengthened the shadows in the grassy courtyards of small closed churches, the place acquired a strange fascination. The church of St Cecilia has one of these sunny waste-looking courts; the edifice seems abandoned to silence and the charity of chance devotion. Rowland never passed it without going in, and he was generally the only visitor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Roderick Hudson " Roderick Hudson" was begun in Florence in the spring of 1874, designed from the first for serial publication in "The Atlantic Monthly," where it opened in January 1875 and persisted through the year. I yield to the pleasure of placing these circumstances on record, as I shall place others, and as I have yielded to the need of renewing acquaintance with the book after a quarter of a century. This revival of an all but extinct relation with an early work may often produce for an artist, I think, more kinds of interest and emotion than he shall find it easy to express, and yet will light not a little, to his eyes, that veiled face of his Muse which he is condemned for ever and all anxiously to study. The art of representation bristles with questions the very terms of which are difficult to apply and to appreciate; but whatever makes it arduous makes it, for our refreshment, infinite, causes the practice of it, with experience, to spread round us in a widening, not in a narrowing circle. Therefore it is that experience has to organise, for convenience and cheer, some system of observation - for fear, in the admirable immensity, of losing its way. We see it as pausing from time to time to consult its notes, to measure, for guidance, as many aspects and distances as possible, as many steps taken and obstacles mastered and fruits gathered and beauties enjoyed. Everything counts, nothing is superfluous in such a survey; the explorer's note-book strikes me here as endlessly receptive. This accordingly is what I mean by the contributive value - or put it simply as, to ones own sense, the beguiling charm of the accessory facts in a given artistic case. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Early on the morrow Rowland received a visit from his new friend. Roderick was in a state ofextreme exhilaration, tempered, however, by a certain amount of righteous wrath. He had had adomestic struggle, but he had remained master of the situation. He had shaken the dust of Mr.Striker's office from his feet."I had it out last night with my mother," he said. "I dreaded the scene, for she takes thingsterribly hard. She does n't scold nor storm, and she does n't argue nor insist. She sits with her eyesfull of tears that never fall, and looks at me, when I displease her, as if I were a perfect monster ofdepravity. And the trouble is that I was born to displease her. She does n't trust me; she never hasand she never will. I don't know what I have done to set her against me, but ever since I canremember I have been looked at with tears. The trouble is," he went on, giving a twist to hismoustache, "I 've been too absurdly docile. I 've been sprawling all my days by the maternal fireside, and my dear mother has grown used to bullying me. I 've made myself cheap! If I 'm not in my bedby eleven o'clock, the girl is sent out to explore with a lantern. When I think of it, I fairly despise myamiability. It 's rather a hard fate, to live like a saint and to pass for a sinner! I should like for sixmonths to lead Mrs. Hudson the life some fellows lead their mothers!""Allow me to believe," said Rowland, "that you would like nothing of the sort. If you have been agood boy, don't spoil it by pretending you don't like it. You have been very happy, I suspect, in spiteof your virtues, and there are worse fates in the world than being loved too well. I have not had thepleasure of seeing your mother, but I would lay you a wager that that is the trouble. She ispassionately fond of you, and her hopes, like all intense hopes, keep trembling into fears." Rowland, as he spoke, had an instinctive vision of how such a beautiful young fellow must be loved by hisfemale relatives.Roderick frowned.

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