roduced a flavorless composition. If it were
not for the haze in the horizon to-day, I could distinguish the very
house in Naples--that of Manso, Marquis of Villa,--where Tasso found
a home, and where John Milton was entertained at a later day by that
hospitable nobleman. I wonder, if he had come to the Villa Nardi and
written on the roof, if the theological features of his epic would have
been softened, and if he would not have received new suggestions for
the adornment of the garden. Of course, it is well that his immortal
production was not composed on this roof, and in sight of these
seductive shores, or it would have been more strongly flavored with
classic mythology than it is. But, letting Milton go, it may be
necessary to say that my writing to-day has nothing to do with my theory
of composition in an elevated position; for this is the laziest place
that I have yet found.

I am above the highest olive-trees, and, if I turned that way, should
look over the tops of what seems a vast grove of them, out of which a
white roof, and an old time-eaten tower here and there, appears; and
the sun is flooding them with waves of light, which I think a person
delicately enough organized could hear beat. Beyond the brown roofs
of the town, the terraced hills arise, in semicircular embrace of the
plain; and the fine veil over them is partly the natural shimmer of the
heat, and partly the silver duskiness of the olive-leaves. I sit with my
back to all this, taking the entire force of this winter sun, which is
full of life and genial heat, and does not scorch one, as I remember
such a full flood of it would at home. It is putting sweetness, too,
into the oranges, which, I observe, are getting redder and softer day
by day. We have here, by the way, such a habit of taking up an orange,
weighing it in the hand, and guessing if it is ripe, that the test is
extending to other things. I saw a gentleman this morning, at breakfast,
weighing an egg in the same manner; and some one asked him if it was
ripe.

It seems to me that the Mediterranean was never bluer than it is to-day.
It has a shade or two the advantage of the sky: though I like the
sky best, after all; for it is less opaque, and offers an illimitable
opportunity of exploration. Perhaps this is because I am nearer to it.
There are some little ruffles of air on the sea, which I do not feel
here, making broad spots of shadow, and here and there flecks and
sparkles. But the scho