From my bed this morning I stepped out upon my balcony just as the sun was rising.  I wished to convince myself whether the beauty on which I had lately looked with such admiration and delight, had indeed lost all power to touch my heart.  The impression made upon my mind at that instant I can only compare to the rolling away of a palpable and suffocating cloud:  every thing on which I looked had the freshness and brightness of novelty:  a glory beyond its own was again diffused over the enchanting scene from the stores of my own imagination:  the sea breeze which blew against my temples new-strung every nerve; and I left Mola with a heart so lightened and so grateful, that not for hours afterwards, not till fatigue and hurry had again wearied down my spirits, did that impression of happy thankfulness pass away.

I am sensible I owed this sudden renovation of health solely to the contemplation of Nature; and a true feeling for all the “maggior pompa” she has poured forth over this glorious region.  The shores of Terracina, the azure sea, dancing in the breeze, the waves rolling to our feet, the sublime cliffs, the fleet of forty sail stretching away till lost in the blaze of the horizon, the Circean promontory, even the picturesque fisherman, whom we saw throwing his nets from an insulated rock at some distance from the shore, and whom a very trifling exertion of fancy might have converted into some sea divinity, a Glaucus, or a Proteus, formed altogether a picture of the most wonderful and luxuriant beauty.  In England there is a peculiar charm in the soft aerial perspective, which even in the broadest glare of noonday, blends and masses the forms of the distant landscape; and in that mingling of colours into a cool neutral gray tint so grateful to the eye.  Hence it has happened that in some of the Italian pictures I have seen in England, I have often been struck by what appeared to me a violence in the colouring, and a sharp decision in the outline, o’erstepping the modesty of nature—­that is, of English nature:  but there is in this climate a prismatic splendour of tint, a glorious all-embracing light, a vivid distinctness of outline, something in the reality more gorgeous, glowing, and luxuriant, than poetry could dare to express, or painting imitate.

    “Ah that such beauty, varying in the light
    Of living nature, cannot be portrayed
    By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;
    But is the property of those alone
    Who have beheld it, noted it with care,
    And in their minds recorded it with love.”

WORDSWORTH.

And now we have left the enchanting south; myrtle-hedges, palm-trees, orange-groves, bright Mediterranean, all adieu!  How, under other circumstances, should I regret you, with what reluctance should I leave you, thus half explored, half enjoyed! but now other thoughts engross me, the hard struggle to overcome myself, or at least to appear the thing I am not.——­