her in such numbers, that they form an
innumerable number of narrow havens, of profound caverns, of
sounding grottoes, of gloomy fissures--of which the children of
some of the neighbouring fishermen alone know the windings and
the issues. One of these caverns, into which you enter by a
natural arch, the summit of which is formed by an enormous
block of granite, lets in the sea, through which it flows into
a dark and narrow valley, which the waters fill entirely, with
a surface as limpid and smooth as the firmament which they
reflect. The sea preserves in this sequestered nook that
beautiful tint of bright green, of which marine painters so
strongly feel the value, but which they can never transfer
exactly to their canvass; for the eye sees much which the hand
strives in vain to imitate.

"On the two sides of that marine valley rise two prodigious
walls of perpendicular rock, of an uniform and sombre hue,
similar to that of iron ore, after it has issued and cooled
from the furnace. Not a plant, not a moss can find a slope or a
crevice wherein to insert its roots, or cover the rocks with
those waving garlands which so often in Savoy clothe the
cliffs, where they flower to God alone. Black, naked,
perpendicular, repelling the eye by their awful aspect--they
seem to have been placed there for no other purpose but to
protect from the sea-breezes the hills of olives and vines,
which bloom under their shelter; an image of those ruling men
in a stormy epoch, who seem placed by Providence to bear the
fury of all the tempests of passion and of time, to screen the
weaker but happier race of mortals. At the bottom of the bay
the sea expands a little, assumes a bluer tint as it comes to
reflect more of the cloudless heavens, and at length its tiny
waves die away on a bed of violets, as closely netted together
as the sand upon the shore. If you disembark from the boat, you
find in the cleft of a neighbouring ravine a fountain of living
water, which gushes beneath a narrow path formed by the goats,
which leads up from this sequestered solitude, amidst
overshadowing fig-trees and oleanders, to the cultivated abodes
of man. Few scenes struck me so much in my long wanderings. Its
charm consists in that exquisite union of force and grace,
which forms