“It is ever the common fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;” said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty.  “In this instance, however, Europe has not so greatly erred.  They who see much resemblance between the bay of Naples and this of Manhattan, have fertile brains; since it rests altogether on the circumstance that there is much water in both, and a passage between an island and the main-land, in one, to resemble a passage between two islands in the other.  This is an estuary, that a gulf; and while the former has the green and turbid water of a shelving shore and of tributary rivers, the latter has the blue and limpid element of a deep sea.  In these distinctions, I take no account of ragged and rocky mountains, with the indescribable play of golden and rosy light upon their broken surfaces, nor of a coast that teems with the recollections of three thousand years!”

“I fear to question more.  But surely our skies may be mentioned, even by the side of those you vaunt?”

“Of the skies, truly, you have more reason to be confident.  I remember that standing on the Capo di Monte, which overlooks the little, picturesque, and crowded beach of the Marina Grande, and Sorrento, a spot that teems with all that is poetic in the fisher man’s life, he of whom I have spoken, once pointed to the transparent vault above, and said, ’There is the moon of America!’ The colors of the rocket were not more vivid than the stars that night, for a Tramontana had swept every impurity from the air, far upon the neighboring sea.  But nights like that are rare, indeed, in any clime!  The inhabitants of low latitudes enjoy them occasionally; those of higher never.”

“And then our flattering belief, that these western sunsets rival those of Italy, is delusion?”

“Not so, lady.  They rival, without resembling.  The color of the etui, on which so fair a hand is resting, is not softer than the hues one sees in the heavens of Italy.  But if your evening sky wants the pearly light, the rosy clouds, and the soft tints which, at that hour, melt into each other, across the entire vault of Napoli, it far excels in the vividness of the glow, in the depth of the transitions, and in the richness of colors.  Those are only more delicate, while these are more gorgeous!  When there shall be less exhalation from your forests, the same causes may produce the same effects.  Until then, America must be content to pride herself on an exhibition of nature’s beauty, in a new, though scarcely in a less pleasing, form.”

“Then they who come among us from Europe, are but half right, when they deride the pretensions of our bay and heavens?”