to rest, and watch the approaching sunset.

'Say what they like,' said Herbert, 'there is a spell in the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea which no others can rival. Never was such a
union of natural loveliness and magical associations! On these shores
have risen all that interests us in the past: Egypt and Palestine,
Greece, Rome, and Carthage, Moorish Spain, and feodal Italy. These
shores have yielded us our religion, our arts, our literature, and our
laws. If all that we have gained from the shores of the Mediterranean
was erased from the memory of man, we should be savages. Will the
Atlantic ever be so memorable? Its civilisation will be more rapid,
but will it be as refined? and, far more important, will it be as
permanent? Will it not lack the racy vigour and the subtle spirit of
aboriginal genius? Will not a colonial character cling to its society,
feeble, inanimate, evanescent? What America is deficient in is
creative intellect. It has no nationality. Its intelligence has been
imported, like its manufactured goods. Its inhabitants are a people,
but are they a nation? I wish that the empire of the Incas and the
kingdom of Montezuma had not been sacrificed. I wish that the republic
of the Puritans had blended with the tribes of the wilderness.'

The red sun was now hovering over the horizon; it quivered for an
instant, and then sank. Immediately the high and undulating coast was
covered with a crimson flush; the cliffs, the groves, the bays and
jutting promontories, each straggling sail and tall white tower,
suffused with a rosy light. Gradually that rosy tint became a bright
violet, and then faded into purple. But the glory of the sunset long
lingered in the glowing west, streaming with every colour of the Iris,
while a solitary star glittered with silver light amid the shifting
splendour.

'Hesperus rises from the sunset like the fountain of fresh water from
the sea,' said Herbert. 'The sky and the ocean have two natures, like
ourselves,'

At this moment the boat of the vessel, which had anchored about an
hour back, put to shore.

'That seems an English brig,' said Herbert. 'I cannot exactly make out
its trim; it scarcely seems a merchant vessel.'

The projection of the shore hid the boat from their sight as it
landed. The Herberts rose, and proceeded towards the harbour. There
were some rude steps cut in the rock which led from the immediate
shore to the terrace. As they approached these, two gentlemen
i