I am here above most earthly annoyances, and on a level with the heavenly influences.  It has always seemed to me that the higher one gets, the easier it must be to write; and that, especially at a great elevation, one could strike into lofty themes, and launch out, without fear of shipwreck on any of the earthly headlands, in his aerial voyages.  Yet, after all, he would be likely to arrive nowhere, I suspect; or, to change the figure, to find that, in parting with the taste of the earth, he had produced a flavorless composition.  If it were not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very house in Naples—­that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,—­where Tasso found a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that hospitable nobleman.  I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for the adornment of the garden.  Of course, it is well that his immortal production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these seductive shores, or it would have been more strongly flavored with classic mythology than it is.  But, letting Milton go, it may be necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place that I have yet found.

I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person delicately enough organized could hear beat.  Beyond the brown roofs of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves.  I sit with my back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun, which is full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I remember such a full flood of it would at home.  It is putting sweetness, too, into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting redder and softer day by day.  We have here, by the way, such a habit of taking up an orange, weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it is ripe, that the test is extending to other things.  I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast, weighing an egg in the same manner; and some one asked him if it was ripe.

It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is to-day.  It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky:  though I like the sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an illimitable opportunity of exploration.  Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it.  There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I do not feel here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there flecks and sparkles.  But the schooners sail idly, and the