Martial sings of _Paestanae rosae_ and _Paestani gloria
ruris_. Even Ausonius, at the very end of Latin literature, draws
from the rosaries of Paestum a pretty picture of beauty doomed to
premature decline:--

Vidi Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu
Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero.

'I have watched the rose-beds that luxuriate on Paestum's well-tilled
soil, all dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star.'

What a place indeed was this for a rose-garden, spreading far and
wide along the fertile plain, with its deep loam reclaimed from
swamps and irrigated by the passing of perpetual streams! But where
are the roses now? As well ask, _ou sont les neiges d'antan?_

We left Amalfi for Capri in the freshness of an early morning at the
end of May. As we stepped into our six-oared boat the sun rose above
the horizon, flooding the sea with gold and flashing on the terraces
above Amalfi. High up along the mountains hung pearly and empurpled
mists, set like resting-places between a world too beautiful and
heaven too far for mortal feet. Not a breath of any wind was
stirring. The water heaved with a scarcely perceptible swell, and
the vapours lifted gradually as the sun's rays grew in power. Here
the hills descend abruptly on the sea, ending in cliffs where light
reflected from the water dances. Huge caverns open in the limestone;
on their edges hang stalactites like beards, and the sea within
sleeps dark as night. For some of these caves the maidenhair fern
makes a shadowy curtain; and all of them might be the home of
Proteus, or of Calypso, by whose side her mortal lover passed his
nights in vain home-sickness:--

[Greek: en spessi glaphyroisi par' ouk ethelon ethelouse].

This is a truly Odyssean journey. Soon the islands of the Sirens come in
sight,--bare bluffs of rock, shaped like galleys taking flight for the
broad sea. As we row past in this ambrosial weather, the oarsmen keeping
time and ploughing furrows in the fruitless fields of Nereus, it is not
difficult to hear the siren voices--for earth and heaven and sea make
melodies far above mortal singing. The water round the Galli--so the
islands are now called, as antiquaries tell us, from an ancient fortress
named Guallo--is very deep, and not a sign of habitation is to be seen
upon them. In bygone ages they were used as prisons; and many doges of
Amalfi languished their lives away upon those shadeless stones, watching
the sea around them blaze like a