iled in despair, and she
experienced, that, though her mind was already occupied by peculiar
distress, it was still alive to the influence of new and local
circumstance; why else did she shudder at the idea of this desolate
castle?

As the travellers still ascended among the pine forests, steep rose over
steep, the mountains seemed to multiply, as they went, and what was the
summit of one eminence proved to be only the base of another. At length,
they reached a little plain, where the drivers stopped to rest the
mules, whence a scene of such extent and magnificence opened below, as
drew even from Madame Montoni a note of admiration. Emily lost, for a
moment, her sorrows, in the immensity of nature. Beyond the amphitheatre
of mountains, that stretched below, whose tops appeared as numerous
almost, as the waves of the sea, and whose feet were concealed by the
forests--extended the campagna of Italy, where cities and rivers, and
woods and all the glow of cultivation were mingled in gay confusion. The
Adriatic bounded the horizon, into which the Po and the Brenta, after
winding through the whole extent of the landscape, poured their fruitful
waves. Emily gazed long on the splendours of the world she was quitting,
of which the whole magnificence seemed thus given to her sight only to
increase her regret on leaving it; for her, Valancourt alone was in that
world; to him alone her heart turned, and for him alone fell her bitter
tears.

From this sublime scene the travellers continued to ascend among the
pines, till they entered a narrow pass of the mountains, which shut out
every feature of the distant country, and, in its stead, exhibited only
tremendous crags, impending over the road, where no vestige of humanity,
or even of vegetation, appeared, except here and there the trunk and
scathed branches of an oak, that hung nearly headlong from the rock,
into which its strong roots had fastened. This pass, which led into the
heart of the Apennine, at length opened to day, and a scene of mountains
stretched in long perspective, as wild as any the travellers had yet
passed. Still vast pine-forests hung upon their base, and crowned the
ridgy precipice, that rose perpendicularly from the vale, while, above,
the rolling mists caught the sun-beams, and touched their cliffs
with all the magical colouring of light and shade. The scene seemed
perpetually changing, and its features to assume new forms, as the
winding road brought them to