Oswald and Corinne, after the anxious passage of the marshes, at length arrived at Terracina, on the sea coast, near the confines of the kingdom of Naples.  It is there that the south truly begins; it is there that it receives travellers in all its magnificence.  Naples, that happy country, is, as it were, separated from the rest of Europe by the sea which surrounds it and by that dangerous district which must be passed in order to arrive at it.  One would say that nature, wishing to secure to herself this charming abode, has designedly made all access to it perilous.  At Rome we are not yet in the south; we have there a foretaste of its sweets, but its enchantment only truly begins in the territory of Naples.  Not far from Terracina is the promontory fixed upon by the poets as the abode of Circe:  and behind Terracina rises Mount Anxur, where Theodoric, king of the Goths, had placed one of those strong castles with which the northern warriors have covered the earth.  There are few traces of the invasion of Italy by the barbarians; or at least, where those traces consist in devastation, they are confounded with the effects of time.  The northern nations have not given to Italy that warlike aspect which Germany has preserved.  It seems that the gentle soil of Ausonia was unable to support the fortifications and citadels which bristle in northern countries.  Rarely is a Gothic edifice or a feudal castle to be met with here; and the monuments of the ancient Romans reign alone triumphant over Time, and the nations by whom they have been conquered.

The whole mountain which dominates Terracina, is covered with orange and lemon trees, which embalm the air in a delicious manner.  There is nothing in our climate that resembles the southern perfume of lemon trees in the open air; it produces on the imagination almost the same effect as melodious music; it gives a poetic disposition to the soul, stimulates genius, and intoxicates with the charms of nature.  The aloe and the broad-leaved cactus, which are met here at every step, have a peculiar aspect, which brings to mind all that we know of the formidable productions of Africa.  These plants inspire a sort of terror:  they seem to belong to a violent and despotic nature.  The whole aspect of the country is foreign:  we feel ourselves in another world, a world which is only known by the descriptions of the ancient poets, who have at the same time so much imagination and so much exactness in their descriptions.  On entering Terracina, the children threw into the carriage of Corinne an immense quantity of flowers which they gather by the road-side or on the mountain, and which they carelessly scatter about; such is their reliance on the prodigality of nature!  The carts which bring home the harvest from the fields are every day ornamented with garlands of roses, and sometimes the children surround the cups they drink out of with flowers; for beneath such a sky the imagination of the common people becomes poetical.  By the side of these smiling pictures the sea, whose billows lashed the shore with fury, was seen and heard.  It was not agitated by the storm; but by the rocks which stand in habitual opposition to its waves, irritating its grandeur.