sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper
home of a race which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of
shape and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in
richness of colouring, in form and not in size.

At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and Cephalonia we
glide 'under a roof of blue Ionian weather;' or, if the sky has been
troubled with storm, we watch the moulding of long glittering
cloud-lines, processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and
frieze of alabaster piled above the islands, pearled promontories
and domes of rounded snow. Soon Santa Maura comes in sight:--

Leucatae nimbosa cacumina montis,
Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo.

Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing, according to
the ancient story; and he who sees the white cliffs chafed with
breakers and burning with fierce light, as it was once my luck to
see them, may well with Childe Harold 'feel or deem he feels no
common glow.' All through the afternoon it had been raining, and the
sea was running high beneath a petulant west wind. But just before
evening, while yet there remained a hand's-breadth between the sea
and the sinking sun, the clouds were rent and blown in masses about
the sky. Rain still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where
for hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness,
suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in commotion.
Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow rose and grew above
Leucadia, planting one foot on Actium and the other on Ithaca, and
spanning with a horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long
line of roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was woven
were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and the bow itself was
bathed in fire--its violets and greens and yellows visibly ignited
by the liquid flame on which it rested. The sea beneath, stormily
dancing, flashed back from all its crest the same red glow, shining
like a ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the sun
sank, the crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes as of blood, and
with passionate bloom as of pomegranate or oleander flowers. Could
Turner rise from the grave to paint a picture that should bear the
name of 'Sappho's Leap,' he might strive to paint it thus: and the
world would complain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture.
But who could _dream_ anything so wild and yet so definite? Only the
passion of orchestras, the fire-flight of the last