pure and yielding
to us over the unfooted sea; and at the basement of those
fortress-cliffs the sea was dreaming in its caves; and far away, to
east and south and west, soft light was blent with mist upon the
surface of the shimmering waters.

The distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain overlooking
a great plain, or viewed from heights that, like this, dominate the
sea, principally lies in this: that while the former only offer
cloud shadows cast upon the fields below our feet, in the latter
these shadows are diversified with cloud reflections. This gives
superiority in qualities of colour, variety of tone, and luminous
effect to the sea, compensating in some measure for the lack of
those associations which render the outlook over a wide extent of
populated land so thrilling. The emergence of towered cities into
sunlight at the skirts of moving shadows, the liquid lapse of rivers
half disclosed by windings among woods, the upturned mirrors of
unruffled lakes, are wanting to the sea. For such episodes the white
sails of vessels, with all their wistfulness of going to and fro on
the mysterious deep, are but a poor exchange. Yet the sea-lover may
justify his preference by appealing to the beauty of empurpled
shadows, toned by amethyst or opal, or shining with violet light,
reflected from the clouds that cross and find in those dark shields
a mirror. There are suggestions, too, of immensity, of liberty, of
action, presented by the boundless horizons and the changeful
changeless tracts of ocean which no plain possesses.

It was nigh upon sunset when we descended to Ana-Capri. That evening
the clouds assembled suddenly. The armistice of storm was broken.
They were terribly blue, and the sea grew dark as steel beneath
them, till the moment when the sun's lip reached the last edge of
the waters. Then a courier of rosy flame sent forth from him passed
swift across the gulf, touching, where it trod, the waves with
accidental fire. The messenger reached Naples; and in a moment, as
by some diabolical illumination, the sinful city kindled into light
like glowing charcoal. From Posilippo on the left, along the palaces
of the Chiaja, up to S. Elmo on the hill, past Santa Lucia, down on
the Marinella, beyond Portici, beyond Torre del Greco, where
Vesuvius towered up aloof, an angry mount of amethystine gloom, the
conflagration spread and reached Pompeii, and dwelt on Torre dell'
Annunziata. Stationary, lurid, it smould