nities, just risen from the bosom of their element."--_Italy, etc._,
p. 249.

"Before the entrance, formed by two ledges of ponderous rock, extends a
smooth level of greensward.... The Hermitage, its cell, chapel, and
refectory, are all scooped out of the native marble, and lined with the
bark of the cork tree. Several of the passages are not only roofed, but
floored with the same material ... The shrubberies and garden-plots
dispersed amongst the mossy rocks ... are delightful, and I took great
pleasure in ... following the course of a transparent rill, which was
conducted through a rustic water-shoot, between bushes of lavender and
roses, many of the tenderest green."--_Ibid._, p. 250.

The inscription to the memory of Honorius (d. 159, aet. 95) is on a stone
in front of the cave--

"Hic Honorius vitam finivit;
Et ideo cum Deo in coelis revivit."]

[48] {36} "I don't remember any crosses there."--[Pencilled note by J.C.
Hobhouse.]

[The crosses made no impression upon Hobhouse, who, no doubt, had
realized that they were nothing but guideposts. For an explanation, see
letter of Mr. Matthew Lewtas to the _Athenaeum_, July 19, 1873: "The
track from the main road to the convent, rugged and devious, leading up
to the mountain, is marked out by numerous crosses now, just as it was
when Byron rode along it in 1809, and it would appear he fell into the
mistake of considering that the crosses were erected to show where
assassinations had been committed."]

[49] [Beckford, describing the view from the convent, notices the wild
flowers which adorned "the ruined splendour." "Amidst the crevices of
the mouldering walls ... I noticed some capillaries and polypodiums of
infinite delicacy; and on a little flat space before the convent a
numerous tribe of pinks, gentians, and other Alpine plants, fanned and
invigorated by the fresh mountain air."--_Italy, etc.,_ 1834, p. 229.

The "Prince's palace" (line 5) may be the royal palace at Cintra, "the
Alhambra of the Moorish kings," or, possibly, the palace (_vide post_,
stanza xxix. line 7) at Mafra, ten miles from Cintra.]

[bb] {37} _There too proud Vathek--England's wealthiest son_.--[MS. D.]

[50] [William Beckford, 1760 (?1759)-1844, published _Vathek_ in French
in 1784, and in English in 1787. He spent two years (1794-96) in
retirement at Quinta da Monserrate, three miles from Cintra. Byron
thought highly of _Vathek_. "I do not know," he writes (_The Giaour_, l.
1