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CXIII.

Than from these wrecks of Jove's deserted shrine!

What a noble view is opened from the Alban Mount, contemplated in quiet from the crumbled ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Latialis! The most interesting part of all Italy lies spread beneath us here-plains once crowned with Ardea, Lavinium, Laurentum, the scene of the last six books of the Æneid. The Tibur glides along as ever; and groves still shade its banks, fresh as when first hailed by the Æneas of the eternal Poet. The Alban Mount of the Æneid is what Mount Ida is in the Iliad: the station of the gods, while contemplating beneath the fortunes of the Italian war. True, indeed, was the remark of Walpole-" Our memory

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sees more than our eyes in this country."

What bright epochs in our life are such moments as these!— how the past and the future are dignified and ennobled by their recollections! We have mingled our sensations with those of the illustrious dead, who, gazing on the same scenes, felt, and have expressed to us, their feelings as freshly as if uttered only yesterday. We have familiarised ourselves with the land of their birth; and the natural illustrations of a thousand passages are spread before our eyes. The sphere of our existence, and of our mental vision, appears, nay, is, enlarged: which, otherwise, could not have occurred with any duration of life, whilst bounded, and cabined in, by the mists and mountains of our native land.

Nature has been shown to us in her most awful, her most

lovely features; and we have seen the works of men—a race of Titans, which we could not have imagined, excepting in the most vague and undefined outlines; they were the inspirations of the Scenes they lived in; the beauty and the greatness round them were the eternal Archetypes of all their creations.

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I STOOD on the shore which Virgil so loved, that I do believe his poem was partially inspired by its localities; for, how cautiously, and with what a careful pencil, and a provident and frugal love, has he developed almost every creek and cranny of his favourite haunts! How often must his eye have rested on Capri, on Pausilipo,-near which we know is his tomb;-on Baiæ, and on Misenum, while he blessed them all! The very air here inspires poetry, for it is toned with everything which is fresh and buoyant from the sea, and perfumed with all the flowers from the land, which seem stolen, for the hour, from Paradise. The promenade of the Chiaja on the sea-shore is unique in the world: it must necessarily be so from its localities alone. One walks, buried among acacias, (there is music in the name,) whose fragrance fills the air; myrtles, laurels, cypresses, roses, are flourishing everywhere around; and fountains, gracefully adorned, and statues, placed among orange and citron trees,

crown the whole. The circling hills gird in the sea; on the one hand, animated with the lazzaroni and fishermen, while, on the other, Vesuvius, distinct from all the range, marked by its breath of clouds, grey and desolate, rises like some saddening Image on the mind, where all else is bright, and joyous, and revelling.

It is a singular proof of the versatility of Italian character that each city seems to bear its peculiar stamp; the ecclesiastical Milan, the sullen Ferrara, and the "superb Genoa," each have an impress of their own.

Rome sits like a Queen upon the ground, commanding, rather than demanding, our reverence and admiration. Florence, like Calypso, would make us forget home and all else, while dwelling on her smiles, and among the stores of her mind; Venice, like a beauty in decline, inspires in us a melancholy and a too painful interest; but Naples, the buoyant and ever-laughing Naples, is the true Comus: he throws a veil of enchantment over every object; heightens every colour, and turns nature herself into a masquerade scene. Approaching the city, the noise and bustle fill the mind with anticipation, with a prepared feeling of enjoyment. The song is for ever sounding; "tipsy dance and jollity" are for ever revelling here. The night is turned into day, and the day into night, by sleeping under its overpowering sun. Life appears on the tiptoe of expectation of something to come; the past is nothing-the present is instantly joining it; but the future is full of hope-teeming with promise. All are in constant motion: there is a restless movement everywhere

around. Nature seems to have put on her holiday garments; and men catch from her the same tone of light and levity. Naples stands, then, like Comus amidst his Bacchanals, on the sands, and on the highways, and offers his cup of oblivion to drown everything except present and instant enjoyment. Life is too short to sigh any longer; the aspect of himself and of nature round, are too seducing to be resisted; the invitation is accepted, and life and pleasure from that hour are JOURNAL.

one.

VI.

Rent from her parent mountains all alone.

The Neapolitans term the Bay, the Crater, from its cup-like shape; no one can look at the map of the territory, or, a better proof, sail (as the writer of this note has done) from the promontory of Sorrento to the opposite shores of Caprea, without observing the fitting parts, the dove-tailing, as it were, of the points and sinuosities of the opposing coasts, palpably marked as they are between the little isle of Nisida and the main land. No reflective mind can survey Procida and Ischia, nor feel that they-heaps of volcanic matter as they are-once formed, with Capreæ, the extreme points of an immense spherical ridge; and that the Bay of Naples was, perhaps, for ages, that which the Solfaterra is today-the region of Fires; one vast Crater, of which Monte Barbaro, Avernus, Fusaro, and the Mare Morto, were among the chief eruptive parts. Solfaterra is a volcano burnt down to the ground: Avernus, another, in its last stage, filled

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