ud floating across the firmament,
white sails glided by.

Pleasant green hills framed this lovely view. On their well-cultivated
slopes appeared here the white, glimmering walls of a temple; yonder
villages, houses, and cottages, like the herds and single sheep that he
half concealed by dense foliage.

Garlands of flowers surround the heads of happy mortals, and here the
house of every wealthy land-owner was inclosed by a hedge or garden.

Behind the hills rose the sharply-cut outlines of the naked cliffs of
the lofty, distant mountains, and the snowy head of sleeping Mount Etna
gleamed brightly through the mist.

Now, in the early morning, sea and garden, hills and distant mountains
were covered with a delicate veil of indescribable hue. It seemed as if
the sea had furnished the warp of this fabric, and the golden sun the
woof.

The scene was wondrously beautiful, but Xanthe had not gone to the
spring to gaze at the landscape; nay, she scarcely knew that it was
lovely.

When the sea shone with the hue of the sky and lay motionless, as it
did to-day, she thought Glaucus, the god of the blue sea, was sunning
himself in pleasant slumber.

On other bright days when the waves and surges swelled, white foam
crowned their crests, and a never-ending succession of breakers dashed
upon the shore, she believed the fifty daughters of Nereus were pursuing
their sports under the clear water.

They were all lovely women, and full of exuberant gayety.

Some rocked quietly on the gleaming waves, others boldly swung
themselves on the backs of the bearded Tritons, and merrily urged them
through the flood.

When the surf beat roaring on the strand, Xanthe thought she could hear
these creatures guiding their course with their scaly tails and blowing
into shells, and many a glimmering foam-crest on a deep-blue wave was
no transparent bubble-no, the girl distinctly saw that it was the white
neck, the gleaming arm, or the snowy foot of one of Nereus's daughters.
She believed that she clearly distinguished them sporting joyously up
and down through the azure water, now plunging into the depths with
their feet, and now with their heads foremost, anon floating gently on
the surface of the waves. One held out her hand to another, and in so
doing their beautiful, rounded arms often gleamed beneath the crest of a
surge.

Every day they practised new games, as the sea never looks precisely the
same; each hour it changed its hue, here,